Google SEO: What should I do with duplicate content?

According to Google, duplicate content refers to the information that either fully matches content from other domains or partially repeats already indexed information. There are a lot of concerns around duplicated content exist. Most of them are just myths, while other make sense. Website owners generally think that SEO duplicate content causes Google penalties and hurts website rankings.

There are so many misinformation about duplicate content on the web that even Google representatives tried to destroy all these myths. Susan Moska posted on the Google Webmaster blog the following words:

“Let’s put this to bed once and for all, folks: There’s no such thing as a “duplicate content penalty.” At least, not in the way most people mean when they say that.

You can help your fellow webmasters by not perpetuating the myth of duplicate content penalties!”

However, even after this statement webmasters continue to warn their client about Google penalties for duplicate content.

To understand who is right concerning this affair, let us first get a clear understanding of what duplicate content is.

Google SEO duplicate content

The biggest amount of marketers accept content as any non-unique information copy pasted from other source and can cause search engine penalties.

Some specialists even go further accepting technically duplicate content as a threat for a website. They advise avoiding using multiple categories or landing pages which serve to different audiences. However, it’s obvious that technically duplicate content can not influence site rankings as it is not accepted by Google bots as something wrong or forbidden.

Google only pays attention to the content that has countless copies. It limits the results with a duplicate content that gets returned to the user. There is the only disadvantage of this filtering is that a less desirable version of the content might be displayed first. I agree that is not entirely fair. However, it does not mean that your site may receive penalties.

What are the solutions to duplicate content?

The best way to ensure Google bots will recognize the unique piece of content is label this content with a canonical tag. To implement a real canonical tag to your site, you just need to add a line of HTML code to your article or post header that will refer readers to your site. This technique will help search crawlers to understand the original source of duplicate content.

If you noticed that someone copied your content without referring to your source, you could request Google, and this material will be removed according to Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Conclusion

To conclude I would like to say that there is a small percent that a duplicated content can affect your site rankings or cause Google penalties, especially if you are naturally syndicating your content.