Bad SEO: The Duplication of Content

The Duplication of content, in one way or another, is a factor that will reduce the SEO of your web presence. This is because Google and other Search Engines will normally consider duplicate content on the internet to be suspicious. Bear in mind that a Search Engine such as Google, wants it's clients to find original and informative content. So if it sees the duplication of content, then alarm bells will ring.  Generally speaking it will think that one of the following things are happening and downgrade you web presence accordingly ......

Bad SEO Firstly and more obviously, someone has just used copy and paste to copy an original article on the internet and paste it into their own web site or web presence, thus saving themselves the effort of writing something original from scratch. Good SEO Don't copy material from other web sites. Write your own material. Even if this means reading a really good article, that you find really informative, then writing it in your own words and your own style. Oscar Wilde said .... "Bad Writers Copy .... Good Writers Borrow" .. ;) Also if you have Printer Friendly versions of pages on your web site, make sure that for the Printer Friendly Pages, you have the robots.txt file set appropriately, so that Search Engines won't index those pages and then think they are duplicates.

Bad SEO On an e-Commerce site someone has copied the description of a product and merely changed the product name, price, code etc. Thus indicating that the product could be bought from the original manufacturer's web site and that the new web site is just offering exactly the same product with no additional customer service and help. This also looks highly suspicious from a fraud/con point of view. Good SEO Is as above i.e. write your own copy. Plus if you are selling something on the internet, that the original manufacturer is also selling on the internet, then you should seriously reconsider your Business Model. Are you offering a better Customer Experience / Back Up / Training than the original manufacturer? i.e. what is the Added Value that you are giving to the consumer? Make the description of the Added Value the core of the product description on your e-Commerce Web Pages.

Bad SEO Multiple domains are pointing at the same piece of information. This will make the Search Engines think that you are trying to game them. This is a Black Hat SEO technique that has worked well in the past, but now is a known Black Hat technique and will be punished accordingly. Good SEO Try and stick with one URL for each of your Web Pages and one overall domain for your main web site. However most web presences are going to have multiple domains for legacy or for URL memorability reasons and if this is the case make sure that 301 Redirects are used to point these other URLs to your main URL.

So remember for Good SEO don't Duplicate ... I said ... don't Duplicate!

BY SEO STEER