Duplicate content in the online space means having the same content on two or more URLs. This could happen due to many reasons. When there is an identical content on many URLs it becomes difficult for Search Engines to decide which one is original. Search Engines gets confused as to which content to index and show on SERPs.
Types of Duplicate Content
Duplicate product forms: E-commerce websites often use manufacturer’s item descriptions to describe the products they sell. The problem is that those products are often sold to different e-commerce websites. Then, the same description appears on different websites and creates duplicate content.
Syndicated or copied content-: Many bloggers use content, quotes or comments from other websites to illustrate their articles.
Sorting and multi-pages’ list: Large e-commerce websites have filter and category options that generate unique URLs. Product pages can appear in different categories and be ordered differently depending on how the list is sorted. For instance, if you range 45 products by price or by alphabetical order, you will end up with two pages containing the same content, but with different URLs.
URL issues: Google considers URLs in www, http, https, .com and .com/index.html as different ones even if they point to identical pages and will evaluate them as duplicate content.
Session Ids: Session IDs issues refer to different session IDs stored in the same URL that are assigned to a visitor when he or she comes to the website.
Printer-friendly: Printable versions of content can lead to duplicate content issues when different versions of a page are indexed.
Managing Duplicate Content
There are a number of strategies we can incorporate to manage content duplication.
301 redirect Set Up
Use 301 redirects to direct Search Engines and visitors to the correct site.
404 Error Set Up
The easiest way to deal with duplicate content. If the content is of no value for the search or for visitors, it’s better to remove the content completely.
Internal Linking
We will check to ensure links within website link to the correct URLs.
Syndication Best Practices
If you syndicate your content on other sites you do not know which content Search Engines will think is most appropriate and will show on SERPs. We will help create syndication best practices to ensure TSI is the only content that will show up on SERPs.
Canonical SEO Strategy
A canonical SEO strategy clearly assigns target keyword(s) (and closely related derivations) to a single canonical page and sends clear signals to search engines and, perhaps more importantly, your human visitors, as to which page is the authority and the place they’re most likely to find the content for which they’re searching. We will pull together information on the website- page titles, meta descriptions, headline tags, on-page content and internal link anchors. From this information, we will recommend what pages have duplication issues how they should be resolved.
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