8 January 2014

5 Effective Tips to Tackle Duplicate Content Issues

By Vasim
duplicate content

Duplicate content is a problem because search engines will tend to punish you for it. They do not want people using the same content because it makes their search engine results less useful. If people are clicking on their search engine results and finding the same text then people are going to stop using that search engine. Duplicate content may come about for a number of reasons, so here are a few tips to help you avoid or recover from search engine penalizations.

1. Check the type of duplicate content you have

Locating and figuring out what type of duplicate content you have is imperative. There is the type where people have copied your content, but it is also possible that you have copied the work of another (knowingly or not). There are many bugs that may cause your website to have duplicate content, and there are things such as boilerplate text that are also classed as duplicate content.

2. Try to remove it from the other domains

This means going to the other domains and asking them to cease and desist. Start out in a friendly manner for two reasons. The first is because the website you are about to contact will probably take down the duplicate content the second you make them aware that it is duplicate content.

The second reason is because most web masters are not the ones copying your work. Usually it is the writers they employ that have stolen your content. There are ways of getting around plagiarism detectors. If you go in all angry then the web master will probably react with anger at both you and the writer they employed.

3. Fix any bugs that may be causing such a problem

There are quite a few commonly seen bugs that will create duplicate content problems. The most common involves printer friendly malfunctions. This is where the printer friendly pages are set out incorrectly and it looks as if you are mirroring your own content on your own website. This is still classed as duplicate content and your website will be penalized for it.

You should do bug check on a regular occasion. They often appear through many page refreshes and updates. After a while you end up accidentally creating bugs and there are quite a few that end up looking like duplicate content.

4. Use "noindex, follow" to stop content being indexed

This is a method you may use to stop Google from crawling your content and indexing it on the search engine. If you have content on your website that you know is plagiarized then add in the “noindex, follow” code and it will not be indexed. This will stop you from being penalized by Google.

5. Be wary of your boilerplate content

This is content such as copyright notices and tag lines. Many people put terms and conditions or copyright notices at some point on their page. They are okay in moderation or if they are only small pieces of text (such as the copyright word and date), but any larger and they are classed as duplicate content. The most prevalent is the logo and tag line.

A lot of people will put their logo on every page and follow it with their tag line. If you are planning on doing this then write your tag line on the home page or the about us page and then every time it appears make sure it is within an image. If you put your tag line into an image and then place it besides or under your logo then nobody will know the difference (it should look the same). However, the search engine cannot read the tag line if it is on an image so you will avoid the duplicate content penalty.
No duplicate content

Item descriptions are another place where content is duplicated. Firstly, do not ever use the manufacturer’s descriptions because they are already online. Secondly, you either need to write a whole new description for each item or you need to find a way of getting similar items on one page.

Amazon and EBay have gotten around this by allowing people to click drop down menus to pick size, color, shape, etc. It allows the seller to put all of the details onto one page and sell directly from there. It means they do not have to write out hundreds of different web page content snippets. It saves time and is still search engine friendly where Google and the Bing/Yahoo search engines are concerned.

Author’s Bio:

My name is Sonia Jackson. I write for http://www.royal-essay.com that provides well-written and quality essays and research papers for college and university students.

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