In SEO, duplicate content is often a dirty word.  Depending on which SEO expert you subscribe to, duplicate content can either cause your site not to rank well or can actually incur the wrath of the Gods.  Either way, it is something best to be avoided.  Here’s a look at some of the ways in which duplicate content might affect your site and how you can make the necessary changes to ensure you don’t suffer in the search engines – even though my colleague, Tim, argues convincingly that some types of duplicated content is very good for your rankings.

When it comes to duplicate content, sometimes this is international (someone stealing someone else’s copy and using it as their own, or quoting a news story from an associated press distributor) and sometimes unintentional (using product details and specifications that many other websites selling the same product are using).

There are essentially two types of duplicate content you need to be wary about:

1 - Content duplicated within your own website
2 - Content duplicated on other websites

Duplication on your own site

This is possibly more of a concern than offsite duplication, but also easier to fix as you have full control over your own site.

There are a number of reasons you might have duplicate content.  One could be that you have two domains mirroring each other (www.holidayinfrance.com and www.holidayinfrance.co.uk).  Another could be, for example, a right hand margin where the content is the same for each page of your site.  Another example I have seen is where a hotel page appears twice in a site, once in the luxury category and once in the family category.

Going through your pages and reconsidering any duplicate content you find is a very worthwhile, and often an enlightening process, to say the least.

Offsite duplicate content

The second type is offsite duplication.  Here I refer to content on your site that also appears on other pages on the internet.

One example of this kind of duplication is when you use content from another site (either with or without permission).  For example, if you post an article or news story from another site onto your site, this can be considered duplicate content.  This could also work the other way around – as in when other sites use your copy (either with or without permission).

When it comes to using other people’s copy, if you are concerned about duplicate content issues, it is always advisable to rewrite the copy in your own words and, while you are about it, to give credit to the originator.

If you are concerned about other sites using your copy, don’t worry.  Generally, if you printed the content on your site first, then Google is smart enough to realise and give you additional kudos for it 90% of the time, and any duplication issues will not be attributed to your site by the search engines.

Another example of duplicate content is that of using product descriptions from a wholesaler.  Often these descriptions are used by almost all other online retailers selling the same product from the sale wholesaler and so a situation occurs where many sites all have exactly the same product descriptions.

To best deal with this type of duplication, if you take a bit of extra time to paraphrase and make the content unique, you will not only be rewarded by search engine rankings, but also by the readership who will appreciate a better description (let’s face it, most of these descriptions are terrible!).

What is the penalty for duplicate content?

Well, this is a tricky one as, while more and more SEOs are warning that this is not good, there currently appears to be no penalty – other than your page not showing up. One duplicated page doesn’t seem to effect the rest of your site, though obviously if the majority of your content is taken from elsewhere you have problems.  It is evident that search engines do not want to have 10 sites in the top 10 all giving the same text, and so makes sense that search engines need to find a way of dealing with duplicate content.

Personally I do not believe that search engines will ever actively punish sites for duplicate content – news sites publish plenty of duplicates, authority sites like the BBC and CNN!  Instead they will simply rank only one instance of each body of text.

But even if there is no overt harm in having some duplicate content, it is still best avoided – the more of your pages that rank the better! Search engines want to serve people unique content tailored to their needs, and to continue to rank well your site will need to do the same.  If it does, everybody wins.

Is duplicate content ever good?

Just to throw a cat amongst the pigeons, our newest SEO star Tim +, s and his article talks about when duplicate content can be extremely good for your site.