In your SEO implementation, content production is one of the key activities. The amount of content produced sometimes makes a similar content to another. If you find that your website has a big amount of content, you better check for duplicate content. 

Duplicate content can happen when you use the same or similar keyword on a different page. This issue can stop the other content from getting high-ranking. So, finding and fixing it can save your SEO.

In this article, we will explain deeper about duplicate content and the best practice you can implement.

What Is Duplicate Content?

Duplicate content is similar content or a copy of other content within the same website. The content with the same discussion can be considered duplicate content even if it is written differently. This kind of content is considered an issue since it brings bad impacts on the website ranking.

 So, avoiding making duplicate content will bring more benefits to your website. To know how it affects the SEO implementation of your website, please read thoroughly in this article.

The Effect of Duplicate Content

Duplicate content can have effects on the search engine and your site. For the search engine, such content can cause issues like it couldn't understand which content should be indexed and prioritized, then they will find it difficult to give proper rank for a relevant query. Or worse, Google will deindex your site so that it will not appear in the SERP.

While for the site owner, those content can cause ranking and traffics drop. If that issue happens, then your business will likely fail in the search engine. Here are what will happen if search engines detect duplicate content on your site.

• Since the search engine is confused about giving the ranking to your intended page,  it rarely gives similar content a ranking.

• You need to choose which content you should be omitted.

It is clear that this kind of content brings no good either for search engines or site owners. Thus, it should be fixed as soon as you notice it. Below are the SEO best practices in dealing with duplicate content.

SEO Best Practice for Duplicate Content

The core SEO best practice for duplicate content is to specify which content is the correct one. Once you find multiple URLs with the same content, it should be fixed correctly. However, you should know more practices to fix it. Here are those.

Watch for Similar Content on Your Site

This practice is more of a way of avoiding duplicate content. You need to keep an eye on all your content. This is the most possible reason why duplicate issues appear. 

For example, if you have a page that offers SEO service in one URL, then you write content about SEO service with a similar URL and content. Then, those two pages will fight for a higher ranking or we can say it is cannibalization. 

Before that happened, you can audit your content and see if there is a possibility of a duplicate issue. It also will prevent you from creating the copied content from the existing page. This could be the best action you can take before you struggle with more damaged duplicate issues.

Use 301 Redirect Strategy

When you have considered which one of the content is the duplicate one, you might need to set up 301 redirects. It will prevent broken links because you have deleted the page. Combining two similar contents also stops them from competing in SERP.

Besides that, the combined information can enrich the page and offer more in-depth content for readers. Then, it will give the signal to the search engine to give a higher rank to the relevant queries. 

Ask your technical SEO specialist or web developer to do it for you. Once the search engine crawler stops, it will follow the redirect to the original content. That way, no more confusing search engines.

Implement Canonical Tag

A canonical tag is one of the HTML elements that function to tell the search engine about the main version of a page. This tag is aimed to help site owners deal with duplicate content as quickly as possible.

With canonical tags, you can specify which page is the main version and should be indexed upon others. It is usually put in the <head> of the page. Here is an example:

<link rel=“canonical” href=“https://example.com/other-product-page/” />

This is why you need to keep the technical issues clear. It can help you solve the issues quicker. You can build a special team in your SEO team structure that specializes in technical SEO. 

Setting Up Noindex Tag

Besides the canonical tag, the Noindex tag can be used to deal with the duplicate issue. You can add content=”noindex,follow” to the HTML head of the page to exclude the page from the Google index. 

robots tag will tell the search engine crawler to crawl the link and make an exception to the noindex link, Even if the duplicate content needs to be fixed, it still needs to be crawled by a search engine.

Use Sequence Stats to Spot Duplicate Content

The last best practice in dealing with the duplicate issue is to use Sequence Stats to detect it. This SEO tool has an SEO Concern feature where it can tell important issues in your keywords. 

For your information, Sequence Stats is an SEO tool where you can do multiple SEO tasks within one tool only. Tracking keyword position, doing keyword research, managing a bunch of teams, doing competitor analysis, and so on. 

You can use Sequence to spot duplicate content to the level of keyword cannibalization. SEO concerns in Sequence Stats can tell you the page security, significant rank drop, and keyword cannibalization.

Picture 1 - SEO Concern feature

If you are tracking valuable keywords then this tool indicates keyword cannibalization, there must be duplicate content. Next, you will need to assign someone to fix the issue. You can use Sequence Kanban to deliver the task to your team. It will save you time and be efficient in task documentation.

Picture 2 - assign a task from SEO concern

So, you can monitor the task progress to see if the issue is solved already. By using Sequence, you don’t need to subscribe to many tools to do multiple tasks. Sound like a perfect fit for your project? Explore the features. 

Wrapping Up

That is everything! You can start looking for duplicate content that can pull your website back from a high rank in the SERP. Once you find it, immediately assign your team for fixing. The above are the best practices you can use to deal with it.

To spot it quickly, you can use Sequence Stats to tell you the issue. From the SEO Concern feature, you can create a task and deliver it to your team with ease. So, you can utilize one tool to monitor your SEO and manage team tasks at once. 

Register yourself to the Sequence Stats and get a free trial for one year plus a free balance. This won’t last forever, so you better be quick.