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Video is the ultimate tool for engaging and influencing buyers throughout their self-research journey. Read to uncover which ones are the most impactful at each stage.
Duplicate content exists when the same piece of web content is hosted on the Internet at more than one web address (URL).
Google defines duplicate content as “substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content in the same language or are appreciably similar.”
Search marketers have known for a long time that search engines like Google prefer to index unique or original content, and that hosting duplicate content on your website can potentially impact your organic search performance.
To minimize the potential negative impact of duplicate content on organic search performance, marketers follow search engine optimization (SEO) best practices like:
Some duplicate content is the result of intentional plagiarism, but the majority is created (often unintentionally) by marketers and web developers implementing website features (e.g. user tracking, print-only pages, etc.) that create multiple versions of the same page.
Some typical causes of duplicate content include:
Google avoids indexing multiple versions of the same content, or showing multiple versions of the same page in the search engine results pages (SERPs) for a given query. For this reason, publishing duplicate content is an ineffective strategy for generating organic search traffic.
Not only that, publishing duplicate content can actually have a negative impact on your search rankings.
When the same piece of content appears at multiple URLs on your website, search engines have a more difficult time determining which of the duplicate pages should be indexed, which page is most relevant to a given search query, and which should rank highest in the SERPs. As a result, all of the pages where duplicate content appears may have their rankings lowered.
Duplicate content is also bad news for link building. When you publish a groundbreaking new blog piece or article, you want all of the inbound links you’re generating to point back to the same URL. This concentrates all of the link juice you’re receiving and maximizes your potential to rank for target keywords.
But if your new content appears at multiple URLs, those inbound links you’re generating from your amazing content probably won’t all point to the same page. Dividing link equity between duplicate pages instead of concentrating it on a single page reduces the overall search visibility of the content, leading to reduced organic traffic and lower ROI.
Duplicate content confuses search engines and dilutes your link equity, leading to poor organic traffic acquisition – that’s why it’s important for marketers to proactively address duplicate content issues.
Here are five strategies for addressing duplicate content issues on your website:
As a leading SaaS SEO agency, Directive leverages our years of experience in website and search optimization to help our B2B SaaS clients manage duplicate content without negatively impacting organic search performance.
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Book an intro call to discuss duplicate content management strategies with a member of our team, or Join Society and gain free access to exclusive content and free SEO advice from our community of marketing experts.
Video is the ultimate tool for engaging and influencing buyers throughout their self-research journey. Read to uncover which ones are the most impactful at each stage.
To make sure you’re showing up with value, you need a cohesive content and SEO strategy that’s aligned with your buyer’s lifecycle and intent. Let’s break it down.