Duplicate Content Problems How to Find and Fix Them
Duplicate Content Problems How to Find and Fix Them
If you are someone who is struggling to increase your size, website search traffic
- Appears duplicate or copied content on the internet in more than one place. If you always make sure that you find and fix such content issues on your site, you can definitely get a better ranking along with a great user experience on the website.
- So in this post, let's discuss what it is, how to find that problematic content inside (and outside) your website and how to easily fix those content problems. Are you curious to find out? Let's jump into the details.
Duplicate Content Problems: How to Find and Fix Them
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1. What is Duplicate Content?
It contains similar (or exactly the same) content on multiple pages. It can be found within your website (because of technical problems on your site) or outside your website (because others copy your content).
There's no point in keeping such problematic content on your website because it doesn't add value to your website audience or search engine crawlers.
Having multiple websites with almost exactly the same text can confuse Google search engine crawlers and they choose just one of many duplicate sites to rank.
Here you can use canonical URLs to avoid problems caused by identical or "duplicate" content displayed on multiple URLs (more about this canonical tag later in the same post).
To keep it simple, always keep an eye out for duplicate content issues on your website if you want to improve your search rankings and provide the readers with a better experience.
Read: Silo structure for SEO: this is how you can even surpass authority sites
How does identical content occur?
There can be 2 main reasons why such content appears on your website.
Technical Causes
Manually Copied Content
Let's talk briefly about the above two reasons for such content so that you can understand it better.
1. Technical Accidents: Even if you don't copy content from other websites and genuinely write original content on your blog or website, content issues can still arise.
Yes that's right. This is due to technical accidents within your website. If you are wondering what they are and how they can arise, read on.
So let's talk about some of the technical issues that can lead to content issues on your website.
HTTP and HTTPS (make sure that all your site pages are loaded on https version, this problem occurs when you don't install correctly SSL certificates)
www and non-www (make sure all your site content is loaded on www or non-www )
Parameters and facet navigation (facet navigation can be helpful for users, but it negatively impacts your website's SEO, wasted crawl budget and so on)
Session IDs
Pagination (you should use rel = prev and rel = next tags to use this type of page correct and make sure to check out this post from Search Engine Journal for more information about passing pagination on your website)
Scrapers (a scraper site is just a website that copies content from other websites with web scraping, avoid such things at the expense of all)
Different language versions (if your site is a multilingual website, meaning that if your website offers content in more than one language , Hreflang must be used correctly)
Try to prevent the above technical accidents within your website and you are safe from all these content issues.
2. Manually Copied Content: Another important reason could be that you are either pasting content from others or that other websites are copying and publishing your content as their own.
So you should also keep an eye on manually copied content and make sure you are not using any other content as this will not add value to your audience. Likewise, when you find someone copying your content, send an email (by visiting their website or contacting them via social media) to remove it.
Otherwise, you can easily file a DMCA complaint and it will work like a charm (more on this later on how to do it in the same post).
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2. Is it bad for SEO?
Whether you know it or not, there is no such thing as a “double substantive fine”.
Did you know that 29% of the pages had duplicates or something similar on the internet?
According to a study of Raven tools, here are some interesting statistics on the content of duplicate blogs.
29% of pages had duplicate website content
22% of page titles were duplicate
20% of pages had low word count
17% of meta descriptions were duplicate
So clear, duplicate website content does not make your site punished in Google search results.
Why, you might be wondering?
The reason is simple: Google is smart enough to know the original source of the content. Google tries to determine the original source of the content and show it in search results instead of showing duplicate or copied content.
But that doesn't mean you have to paste articles from other websites.
Here are a few reasons why you should never use such content, especially from other websites.
Other blog owners can easily find who is copying their content by using tools such as Copyscape or simply searching for some of their content in Google Search. As soon as someone notices that you are copying their content, they will ask you to delete it. If you don't respond, they can easily remove it using DMCA. So you will not get away quickly if you copy other things.
Copying other content does not add value to the readers of your website site. If you don't add value to your website audience, you will never succeed.
Scraping the contents of others is unethical. If you seriously want to make money from blogging, you should avoid such unethical practices as it can directly affect your authority online.
Additionally, as already discussed, Google is smart enough to know the original source of the content, so it clearly ranks the original source higher, not those websites that copy other content. It's that simple.
Read: Waiting time: the most important ranking factor
How to find comparable content on your website?
So far we've talked about what duplicate blog content is, how it occurs and why you should avoid it. Now let's talk about the most important thing: how to actually find duplicate content on your website.
Again, finding such content can be done in 2 ways.
One is: finding identical content within your own website (which usually happens due to technical accidents).
Other is: finding duplicate or copied content outside of your website.
Let's talk about how to find such content in both cases.
Finding identical content on your website
Finding similar content on your website should be your primary focus as it is usually the result of technical accidents as discussed above such as moving to https version and still loading some pages on http, using www versus non- www version and so on.
Aside from those technical issues, here are a few more ways to deal with spam content on your website.
Crawl through your website for duplicate titles and meta descriptions
Whether you know it or not, the old version of Google Search Console was better where it offered you an option of "HTML Enhancements" that made it easy to find duplicate titles and meta descriptions. They have removed this feature since the introduction of the new version of Google Search Console.
But here's the thing: there's another incredible tool called Visual SEO that you can use to crawl your entire website to easily find all the issues with your page titles, meta descriptions, and H1 tags.
Here's what it looks like;
As you can see above, this tool helps you find a lot of things on your website, including;
Pages with missing title tags
Duplicate title tags
pages with missing meta descriptions
Duplicate meta descriptions
Dual H1 tags
Short title tags
Long title tags
Short or long meta descriptions, etc.
This shows you an overview of your website and all major dual problems can be solved easily to such content issues on your site.
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3. Manual content check with Google Search
The easiest way to find similar content is to do a manual Google search.
Make sure to find a post or page you want to check for plagiarism.
Now copy a text fragment or paragraph from that page or blog post (which you think others will copy) and insert that text fragment into Google Search with double quotes (').
It looks like this;
Google will immediately give you a list of results if that text fragment has similar content, or you won't find search results for it (meaning no identical content is found for that text fragment).
Finding identical content outside of your website
In the section above, we discussed how to find similar content on your website. Now let's talk about how to find spam content outside of your content which means you are looking for copied content from your website.
Here you have to use plagiarism checking tools to perform the task as you can't always use Google manually for checking copied content.
That said, here are the top 3 tools to easily find whether other websites are copying content or not.
1. Copyscape
Although there are a lot of content checkers, Copyscape is one of the best tools for checking duplicate or spam content.
It works perfectly. You just need to enter their website visits and your website URL. That's it, it will search the entire web to find websites that have similar content to you. It also shows how much of the text is copied along with the highlighted text.
2. Grammar Plagiarism Checker
Grammar is one of the most popular grammar editing tools called It can also be used as plagiarism checker (you can even do it with their free version).
You can easily find plagiarism in the Grammarly tool because it uses ProQuest databases and over 16 billion web pages to find deleted content.
Visit this page and you can enter text blocks from your website or upload a file to see if another duplicate has been copied on the Internet.
The good thing about using this tool is that it highlights passages that require citations and gives you the resources you need to correctly list your sources.
3. Plagiarism
This is another ultimate free plagiarism checking tool that works like a charm in finding duplicate content and scraped content. The best part about using this tool is that it supports over 190 languages around the world!
All you have to do is paste some of your website content and click on "check duplicate or copied content" (while selecting your favorite search engine ie Google or Bing) and the tool will start automatically searching for copied articles with the same text.
Easily fix duplicate or similar content issues
So far we've discussed how to find identical content both within your website and outside of your website.
Now let's talk about how to easily solve such content issues.
Remove copied content from Google
The best way to remove duplicate content from Google Search is to submit a legal request from Google.
Google offers you a tool that allows you to submit a legal request to remove duplicate (or copyrighted) content from Google Search.
Here's what it looks like;
You will see several Google services (choose where your content will be displayed accordingly) so you can submit a removal request. These services include;
YouTube videos (use this option if someone uses your videos without credit)
Search for images (use your images without giving you credit)
Google My Business
Web Search (you can search for copied or copyrighted content issues to fix such content issues Google search)
Blogger platform and so on.
4. You can also specifically use "copyrighted removal" from Google.
Visit this link where you can file a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) notification.
Here's what it looks like;
As you can see above, you can specify the exact URL (s) where a preview of the copyrighted work can be viewed. This will be used by their team to verify that the work appears on the pages you ask them to delete.
You must also provide the URL (s) of the allegedly infringing material that you are asking them to remove.
That's it, you're done. Within a few days (usually about 10 days), all copied content will be removed from Google Search.
Some Easy Ways to Fix Duplicate or Similar Content Problems
Here are some of the easiest yet most effective ways to fix duplicate or copied content problems on your website in 2020 and beyond.
Use 301 Redirects
One of the simplest yet most effective ways to deal with copied content (or even thin pages) on your website is to use 301 redirects.
301 redirects to search engines like Google that a given URL has been permanently moved to a new location (new URL). 301 redirects contain the URL address to which the source was moved.
There are a lot of plugins available for WordPress and you can use a free and simple plugin like the Simple 301 Redirects plugin to redirect duplicate or thin quality URLs on your site to other relevant but high quality pages on your website. You can also use Yoast SEO or Rank Math plugins for these redirects. The problem is solved!
Use canonical tag
A canonical tag (called "rel = canonical") is just a way of telling search engines like Google that a specific URL on your website represents the main copy of a page. That way, Google will only rank that specific page, even if it finds other pages with similar content on your website.
If you can't remove all those duplicate URLs, you always have the option to redirect them to a single URL.
You need to add an extra tag in the body of the duplicate page so that search engines like Google direct all traffic to the main article.
To put it simply, canonical URL helps avoid duplicate or copied content issues within your website with certain content.
Setting up a canonical tag is extremely easy when using WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin.
Yoast SEO WordPress plugin helps you easily change the canonical URL of different page types in the plugin settings.
Quick note: Only use the canonical tag of the Yoast SEO plugin if you want to change the canonical to something other than the URL of the current page.
Here's what it looks like;
As you can see above, just go to the settings of the Yoast SEO plugin and enter the canonical URL to which one of your specific pages should point. You can also leave that field blank as the default for permalink.
Tip: Make sure to check out this detailed tutorial on how to use the canonical tag from the Yoast website, where you can find all the details on how to use it.
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5. Be consistent with your internal links
We all know how important internal links are. If you want to increase your website's searchability, improve link depth, pass link juice to other pages on your site, or get better rankings, internal links can really help you.
But here's the thing. You must be consistent with your internal linking practices to avoid problems with copied content.
For example, do not link to http://www.example.com/page/ and http://www.example.com/page and http://www.example.com/page/index.htm.
You can also use the search console to tell Google how you want your website to be indexed. That means you can tell Google your preferred domain (for example, http://www.example.com or http://example.com).
So decide if you want to index your website pages with www or non-www from Google Search Console.
Use SEMrush Site Audit
SEMrush is one of the best SEO tools that can help you with everything from keyword research to backlink analysis. But the main reason why we mention SEMrush on this particular page is because it offers you an incredible feature called "site audit" that will help you find and fix all technical and SEO problems on your website.
These include;
Easily optimize your internal and external links
Add meta tags where they are missing (including title tags, meta description, alt tags for images)
easily duplicate content pages
Find Find and fix hreflang issues and the list goes on
If you're looking for a free trial of SEMrush, use the link below and you will get it free for 14 days.
Click this link to obtain a 30-day free SEMrush Pro account (worth $ 99.95).
Quick note: You can also refer to this detailed guide on how to perform site audits with SEMrush.
Use different summaries
As bloggers, we often rely on a wide variety of platforms to promote our latest blog posts, including;
Forums
Social Media SitesSites
Blog SubmissionBlog
Folders etc.
The key here is NOT to use the same summary of your blog posts across all those platforms. Instead, create unique mentions or summaries where you promote your blog post to avoid such content issues.
Also make sure to avoid blank pages on your website. For example, don't publish pages for which you don't have content yet. When creating such pages, make sure to use the noindex tag to avoid indexing such pages in Google search results.
What is not considered duplicated or pirated content?
In some cases, the same copy (exact text) is available on the Internet, but is not considered duplicate or similar content at all. So what are those cases when it is not really considered double content. Here are a few.
Mobile version content
There are a lot of sites that use a mobile version of their website content. Having the same content (including the articles, pages, products, etc.) on your website along with the mobile site versions does not count as copied content.
Google is smart enough to distinguish the two versions (desktop and mobile site version) from the same website. So it just doesn't treat it as pirated content, so you can safely create a mobile version for your website without any problem. The same is also true for AMP pages.
Translated Content
There are a few websites that translate their content into multiple languages, and translated content is NOT considered duplicate or spam content (although the context is literally the same).
Why? Let's see what exactly Google thinks of copied content. Google has defined duplicate content as "content content blocks within or between domains that are either completely similar to other content or are significantly similar."
This means that translated content is NOT duplicate or identical content because it does not match other content.
Frequently asked questions about dealing with duplicate or identical content issues in 2020
Here is a list of some important questions you may want to know about duplicate content or spam issues on your website in 2020 and beyond.
1. Is there a double substantive sanction?
No, there is no such thing as double or copied content penalty.
If you're curious, here's what Google has to say about content penalty.
Duplicate content on a site is not a reason for action on that site unless it appears that the purpose of the duplicate content is to be misleading and to manipulate search engine results. If your site has such content issues and you do not follow the advice above, we recommend that you choose a version of the content to display in our search results.
We strongly recommend that you find and fix such content issues as search engines like Google don't know which pages to rank if you have duplicate content on your website (due to technical issues mentioned in the post above).
That's why it's so important to find and fix all of these content issues on your website if you want to improve your organic rankings.
2. How can I check plagiarized content online?
There are multiple plagiarism checker tools available online that you can use to easily find out if someone has copied content from your website or not.
Copyscape
Quetext
Unicheck
Plagium
Grammarly
The above tools are free to use (some also have premium versions that give you higher limits and faster content control processing) so use them when in doubt about someone copying your stuff.
3. Do duplicate page titles affect SEO?
Hell yes. You should avoid making duplicate page titles at all costs because your page titles (meta titles) matter a lot when it comes to ranking your page in organic search results.
Make sure to quickly search Google for the title you're going to use for your blog posts or pages. That way you can avoid using the same page titles used by other websites. Use head generator tools like Portent to easily come up with a lot of head ideas.
Also, make sure to create a unique and original meta description for every blog post and page you publish and index in Google Search. Use plugins like Yoast SEO to create unique page titles along with the meta description instead of letting Google choose arbitrary text summaries of your posts.
4. Can duplicate content be arranged in Google Search?
Gone are the days when few authority sites were ranked higher by republishing content from other websites. Now Google gives the least priority to such duplicate content websites.
Let's quote Google's Search Quality Guidelines from March 2017.
evaluation of The lowest rating is suitable if all or almost all MC (main content) on the page is copied with little or no time, effort, expertise, manual curation or added value for users. Such pages should be rated lowest, even if the page grants content credit to another source.
As you can see, duplicate content is given the lowest priority when ranking. So make sure you focus on creating original, high-quality and unique content to get a higher ranking.
Read: How to easily get Google SiteLinks for your website
5. How does Google determine the primary version of duplicate content?
That is an interesting question.
According to a highly rated SEO event speaker Dan Petrovic, “If there are multiple copies of the same document on the web, the URL with the highest authority becomes the canonical version. The rest are considered duplicates.
"Thereyou go! You don't have to worry about Google ranking your content or not as long as you don't copy other content.
Final thoughts
The popular content myth is "Google penalizes the site with duplicate or copied content" - although this is not entirely true, but having such content can affect the user experience of your website and you never know when Google will actually penalize the sites with double content issues.
As they say "prevention is better than cure" so it's always better to fix those issues and we've talked about some of the best practices to find and fix such content issues on your website above.
Try to find and fix those issues on your website as early as possible, and always keep an eye out for duplicate or similar content for a better search and user experience.
Do you have any questions? Share your thoughts in the comments.
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