Websites are all about content, no matter the purpose or topic, it’s the content that attracts new users and retains old ones. This content comes in many different forms, from text and images to newer more cutting edge technologies such as video. With all this information flying around, it’s easy to get caught up in the idea that your site needs content at all costs – surely a website put together quickly, full of content, with many pages is better than a smaller site with bespoke content, right?
I’m afraid not. That website packed quickly with information is probably going to have issues with duplicate content. Duplicate content is, as its name suggests, the presence of the same information on one or more pages. In many cases this is entirely understandable – you may have the option to view ‘printer friendly’ versions of your pages, in which case you have a copy of each of your pages containing almost identical information.
These situations can present a problem for search engines, they don’t know if the site has been specially created to try and manipulate and craft a better search ranking. That duplicate content could have been presented to make it look like the site is more relevant for specific search terms than it actually is.
There are other times where duplicate content may be created in a non-malicious way. One common situation is ecommerce websites using manufacturers / suppliers descriptions of products on their website. In many ways this seems reasonable, the website is looking for a list of product details, so why not use the text produced by the manufacturer? Unfortunately this is duplicate content, not only in relation to the original supplier’s description, but also with any other shop copying the same text.
For a search engine, this situation has generated many (possibly thousands) of pages across the internet with almost identical content. For the search engine user this has also presented a problem of identifying which page is most relevant.
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What will search engines do when they find duplicate content? In many cases they will simply decide to index only one of the pages where that content is present, whether that is your page or not is now a decision taken by the search engine. If your page is not chosen by the search engine then it may be, in effect, ‘invisible’ when people search.
What is the solution to duplicate content? The answer is unique content – that is content exclusive to your site. In most cases, this means that time and attention should be paid when writing new descriptions and other copy for your website. This insures that when a search engine comes to index your site, the content it evaluates is only available on your in one place – your site has become a beacon of bespoke information!
One final point should be made with regards to your gleaming new content – other people may be tempted to plagiarise this for their own websites. This is a situation difficult to control, but you can monitor it by using tools such as Copyscape. If you feel your content has been copied and want to ensure your site is considered to be the original site you can file a Digital Millennium Copyright Act request with Google.
With some knowledge of the operation of search engines, you can now see that generating content exclusive to your site is certainly to your benefit. Any ‘time savings’ created by copying text present elsewhere on the internet are far outweighed by the possible ramifications for your sites position in the search rankings.
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