Maisie Lloyd
I'm passionate about recording the world, but most of all driven by creativity and collaborative environments. My experience revolves around the production of digital content, pertaining to graphic design, writing copy, and video and audio content.
What is identical content?
Identical content refers to the same, or content closely resembling another, being on a website twice. This particularly pertains to content devised for a site’s SEO needs, so it’s important to understand the distinction between content which is fine being repeated, and that which isn’t.
For instance, content that is fine to be repeated would be product specs. This is critical information, regardless of if multiple products across different pages share the same specs, this should always be included. However, the content on the rest of the pages should vary, for the product descriptions, the content needs to be varied.
A great example of content that should not be repeated, is on both product pages and blogs. Take a medical provider as the example, they might have a conditions page for tonsillitis. They might then create a blog about different holistic methods used to ease tonsillitis at home, rather than repeating the information on the conditions page, it should offer new information that also leads users back to the original content.
The same principle applies for e-commerce stores, creating blogs around the products, but not repeating the same information, allows a business to effectively draw in traffic as well as creating an opportunity to redirect the reader to a product or service, which is referred to in some capacity, within the content.
Why does duplicate content need to be removed?
Having duplicated content on a site can impact ranking. Let’s revisit the example we just used; a person is seeking out medical advice about tonsillitis treatment. If it were to lead them to the blog around different holistic at-home treatments, it may misdirect them from seeking out information on their condition. Which can ultimately make SEO efforts futile, if keywords aren’t being strategically used within content to drive traffic, the SEO efforts can be negligible for success.
In terms of content production, it can be inefficient producing ‘samey’ content, creating unique, purpose-driven content can prevent time and money from being wasted. Giving any business a strategic advantage.
How to identify duplicate content?
One of the best ways to identify any repetitive content is to conduct a site-wide content audit on a routine basis. This is an effective way to ensure all the content on your site is original and is not repetitive.
Another tool which can be used, which is free, is Google search console. Google search consoles indexing reporting tool is able to flag any repetitive content.
Troubleshooting duplicate content
Canonical Tags
Canonical tags are HTML codes which help label pages, this helps Google and other search engines identify which page is the original content. This is applicable for paginated content (content across multiple pages).
Introducing a canonical tag is simple, you’ll need to open up the secondary contents HTML code, navigate to the <head> section and then paste in the following with your primary pages link in place of the example link:
<link rel=”canonical” href=”https://www.example.com”>
Remove and redirect traffic
A simple way to ensure traffic is going to the right content, is to implement a 301 redirect. A 301 redirect allows one URL (HTTP) to automatically redirect to the original/primary content.
A 301 is a permanent redirect, unlike a 302, this ensures the duplicate content won’t reappear on the search engine results page.
Doing this will work in various ways depending on the hosting provider, most make it simple with redirect plugins. On WordPress users can access plugins like All-in-One SEO or Redirection.
