When Google perceives that your content is identical or at least too similar to content found elsewhere on your website, it may issue a duplicate content warning.
Duplicate content can be the result of poor content practices, but it can also be due to an unintentional technical error. In either case, it’s essential to respond to any duplicate content issues by implementing the right fix.
Otherwise, search engines can struggle to understand which version of the page or content should rank for that keyword. Over the long term, duplicate content can have negative SEO consequences. While there can be various reasons behind a duplicate content warning, here are some of the most common reasons along with suggested fixes.
URL Variations
When upgrading your website security, your pages may migrate from HTTP to HTTPS.
However, if your content remains accessible on the HTTP version of your pages, this can be flagged as duplicate content. Another term to look out for here is canonical issues.
As with many duplicate content issues, these can be identified in Google Search Console along with various SEO tools.
The fix for URL variations involves ensuring that HTTPS (which you can access after purchasing an SSL certificate) has been correctly set up. Additional steps may include deploying 301 redirects, updating internal links, updating external links and manually specifying the preferred URL in Google Search Console.
Site Structure Issues (Sorting And Filtering)
Another issue closely related to URL variations is when duplicate pages of the same product exist. This is common with ecommerce websites. Usually, it is due to the way that products are sorted and filtered.
Careful management of ecommerce websites and particularly online inventory is required to avoid and fix this issue. Otherwise, users may use different URLs for the same products, which can create various related problems. For instance, the inability to track page performance effectively.
Poor Content
AI-generated, scraped, spun or copied content – they might involve different things but all result in a poor experience for users. Not only that, but a lack of unique content also signals to search engines that you have content on your website which originated on another website first, which can result in SEO penalties.
To avoid duplicate content issues as a result of the quality of your content, it’s essential to enlist the right help when creating any kind of content for your website. Namely, content should be unique to your website and written by a human so that it is rich with context and perspective.
As tempting as shortcuts or even ‘cheap’ content mills may seem at the time, they usually result in this kind of ‘spammy’ problem and add up to lost conversions over the longer term.
By hiring the right people, plus having a clear content strategy in place, content duplications due to poor techniques are far less likely to become an issue.
Imaginaire – Discover Our SEO Services In Nottingham
Confused about duplicate content on your website? There can be lots of reasons why Google is warning you about various errors including duplicate content. So let us help you there!
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