Are you planning to redesign your website to get better
search engine rankings? One of the most common issues that you may have to
handle and find solutions is duplicate content. The commonly occurring issues
of duplicity in the content are bound to raise issues and cause fundamental
errors in your newly designed website. Given the woes that such content may
bring your way, it’s important to plan ahead and avoid the problems of not
uploading genuine and original content.
What is Duplicate
Content?
Duplicate content refers to blocks of text that have already
been published on the Internet. These blocks of textual or other material can
appear on more than a single domain or website. Google and most other search
engines are unhappy with the re-publishing of duplicate content and do not take
it too kindly. Because of this, digital marketing agencies and website
designers take good care to upload original content only. However, according to
Blake Davis from Digitrio, blocking Googlebot is a crucial
step when redesigning your company’s website that will make sure your new
content isn’t marked as duplicated information. There are some other means and
methods of blocking Google bots for this purpose as well.
What are its Causes
Behind Duplicate Content?
The causes attributed to the presence of duplicate content
are many. The most common reason behind this is the intentional copying of good
content from high search-engine ranking websites by other website owners. Its
seen that in order to cut costs, and also attain higher rankings, some website
owners duplicate content to escalate the visibility of their own websites. With
higher search engine rankings come a higher percentage of visitors and
prospective customers. This lure plays on the minds of most website developers
and owners who commission the publishing of duplicate content to gain more
profits.
However, as Google has very stringent stands about
originality, it penalizes duplicate content heavily. On the other hand, original
content is rewarded by Google. The websites having replicated or similar
content is made to slide down in their value by Google. They end up getting
lower search engine rankings. Sometimes, they may also be removed from the
indices managed by Google in entirety.
Working on the Internet
At certain times, duplicate content results in the unplanned
consequence of the way Internet works. With website owners developing the same
content for different platforms – desktop and mobile – it is common to find search engines get confused. They fail to
understand the similarities and may rate the content as ‘duplicate’. In
addition, these search engines also penalize website owners in a big way.
Given the heavy costs of coming into the bad books of search
engine giants like Google, it becomes important for site owners to maintain the
highest levels of care with respect to differentiating the content for their
different platforms. It’s essential for them to use the correct tags in order
to keep the content published on different platforms that are distinct from
each other. Without the right strategies in place, their efforts of sharing and
distributing content can turn out to be futile.
Practical Solutions for
Redesigning Websites Without Duplicate Content
One way in which content gets the
‘duplicate’ tag is when site owners commission the redesigning of their
websites or when their sites migrate from one address to another. In these
instances, the same published content is likely to appear in multiple places.
This, in turn, attracts penalties from Google and search engine rankings
plummet to reach their lowest ever positions. To avoid this, website owners may
want to utilize the 301-redirect command whenever they are redesigning or
migrating their website. This is helpful for redirecting users to new websites.
The act can be performed within the websites by giving the .htaccess command or
via the administrative console.
Yet another simple and effective means of handling duplicate
content lies in original content. Authentic and genuine content, which has not been copied or picked
from other existing websites, can be used for the purpose of developing new
website content. In addition, while linking the website with the content,
consistency should be maintained at all times to disallow any notion of duplicate
content. With the right website content creation tips and tricks in place, site
owners can be assured of getting the much-awaited nod from Google.
Way Forward with
Duplicate Content
If you’ve been struggling with the issues of duplicate
content then you may want to get in touch with your preferred digital marketing
agency to chalk the way forward fitfully. Expert content developers and website
redesigners will help you get the website of your dreams in little or no time
at all!
