Google: duplicate content is not a negative ranking factor

What Is Duplicate Content?

Duplicate content is nội dung that’s similar or exact copies of nội dung on other websites or on different pages on the same website. Having large amounts of duplicate content on a website can negatively impact Google rankings.

Bạn đang xem: Google: duplicate content is not a negative ranking factor

In other words:

Duplicate nội dung is content that’s word-for-word the same as content that appears on another page.

But “Duplicate Content” also applies to nội dung that’s similar khổng lồ other content… even if it’s slightly rewritten.

How Does Duplicate Content Impact SEO?

In general, Google doesn’t want to rank pages with duplicate content.

In fact, Google states that:

“Google tries hard khổng lồ index & show pages with distinct information”.

So if you have pages on your site WITHOUT distinct information, it can hurt your tìm kiếm engine rankings.

Specifically, here are the three main issues that sites with lots of duplicate content run into lớn.

Less Organic Traffic: This is pretty straightforward. Google doesn’t want to rank pages that uses content that’s copied from other pages in Google’s index.

(Including pages on your own website)

For example, let’s say that you have sầu three pages on your site with similar content.

Google isn’t sure which page is the “original”. So all three pages will struggle to lớn rank.

Penalty (Extremely Rare): Google has said that duplicate content can lead lớn a penalty or complete deindexing of a website.

However, this is super rare. And it’s only done in cases where a site is purposely scraping or copying content from other sites.

So if you have a bunch of duplicate pages on your site, you probably don’t need khổng lồ worry about a “duplicate nội dung penalty.”

Fewer Indexed Pages: This is especially important for websites with lots of pages (like ecommerce sites).

Sometimes Google doesn’t just downrank duplicate nội dung. It actually refuses lớn index it.

So if you have sầu pages on your site that aren’t getting indexed, it could be because your crawl budget is wasted on duplicate nội dung.

Best Practices

Watch For Same Content on Different URLs

This is the most common reason that duplicate nội dung issues pop up.

For example, let’s say that you run an ecommerce site.

And you have a hàng hóa page that sells t-shirts.

If everything is setup right, every kích thước và color of that t-shirt will still be on the same URL.

But sometimes you’ll find that your site creates a new URL for every different version of your product… which results in THOUSANDS of duplicate content pages.

Another example:

If your site has a tìm kiếm function, those tìm kiếm result pages can get indexed too. Again, this can easily add 1,000+ pages khổng lồ your site. All of which contain duplicate nội dung.

Check Indexed Pages

One of the easiest ways lớn find duplicate content is to take a look at the number of pages from your site that are indexed in Google.

You can bởi this by searching for site:example.com in Google.

Or kiểm tra out your indexed pages in the Google Search Console.

Either way, this number should line up with the amount of pages that you manually created.

For example, zerovn.net has 112 pages indexed:

Which is the amount of pages that we made.

If that number was 16,000 or 160,000 we’d know that lots of pages were getting added automatically. And those pages would likely contain significant amounts of duplicate content.

Make Sure Your Site Redirects Correctly

Sometimes you don’t just have sầu multiple versions of the same page… but of the same SITE.

Although rare, I’ve sầu seen it happen in the wild many times.

This issue crops up when the “WWW” version of your trang web doesn’t redirect khổng lồ the “non-WWW” version.

(Or vice versa)

This can also happen if you switched your site over lớn HTTPS… & didn’t redirect the HTTP. site.

Xem thêm:

In short: all the different versions of your site should end up on the same place.

Use 301 Redirects

301 redirects are the easiest way khổng lồ fix duplicate nội dung issues on your site.

(Besides deleting pages altogether)

So if you found a bunch of duplicate content pages on your site, redirect them baông chồng lớn the original.

Once Googlebot stops by, it will process the redirect & ONLY index the original content.

(Which can help that original page start to lớn rank)

Keep An Eye Out For Similar Content

Duplicate content doesn’t ONLY mean content that’s copied word-for-word from somewhere else.

In fact, Google defines duplicate nội dung as:

So even if your content is technically different than what’s out there, you can still run into duplicate nội dung problems.

This isn’t an issue for most sites. Most sites have a few dozen pages. And they write chất lượng stuff for every page.

But there are cases where “similar” duplicate nội dung can crop up.

For example, let’s say you run a website that teaches people how lớn speak French.

And you serve the greater Boston area.

Well, you might have one services page optimized around the keyword: “Learn French Boston”.

And another page that’s trying lớn rank for “Learn French Cambridge”.

Sometimes the content will technically be different. For example, one page has a location listed for the Boston location. And the other page has the Cambridge address.

But for the most part, the content is super similar.

That’s technically duplicate content.

Is it a pain to write 100% unique content for every page on your site? Yup. But if you’re serious about ranking every page on your site, it’s a must.

Use the Canonical Tag

The rel=canonical tag tells tìm kiếm engines:

“Yes, we have sầu a bunch of pages with duplicate nội dung. But THIS page is the original. You can ignore the rest”.

Google has said that a canonical tag is better than blocking pages with duplicate nội dung.

(For example, blocking Googlebot using robots.txt or with a noindex tag in your web page HTML)

So if you find a bunch of pages on your site with duplicate nội dung you want to either:

Delete themRedirect themUse the canonical tag

Use a Tool

There are a handful of SEO tools that have features designed to spot duplicate content.

For example, Siteliner scans your website for pages that contain lots of duplicate nội dung.

Consolidate Pages

Like I mentioned, if you have lots of pages with straight up duplicate content, you probably want khổng lồ redirect them lớn one page.

(Or use the canonical tag)

But what if you have sầu pages with similar content?

Well, you can grind out unique nội dung for every page… OR consolidate them inkhổng lồ one mega page.

For example, let’s say that you have 3 blog posts on your site that are technically different… but the content is pretty much the same.

You can combine those 3 posts into lớn one amazing blog post that’s 100% chất lượng.

Because you removed some duplicate nội dung from your site, that page should rank better than the other 3 pages combined.

Noindex WordPress Tag or Category Pages

If you use WordPress you might have noticed that it automatically generates tag and category pages.

These pages are HUGE sources of duplicate nội dung.

So they’re useful lớn users, I recommkết thúc adding the “noindex” tag lớn these pages. That way, they can exist without tìm kiếm engines indexing them.

You can also set things in WordPress up so these pages don’t get generated at all.

Learn More

How does Google handle duplicate content?: A đoạn phim from Google’s Matt Cutts on how Google views duplicate nội dung.

Xem thêm: Cách Up Hình Instagram Bằng Máy Tính Win 10, 7, Cách Up Ảnh Lên Instagram Từ Máy Tính

The myth of the duplicate content penalty: This post outlines why most people don’t need to worry about a “duplicate nội dung penalty”.

6 Resources
Next xây dựng liên kết for SEO
Previous Robots.txt
Next xây dựng liên kết for SEO
More Topics
All Topics
6 ResourcesUser Experience Signals
5 ResourcesSEO Tools và Software
7 ResourcesAdvanced SEO Strategies
8 ResourcesSEO Fundamentals
4 ResourcesKeyword Research Strategies
8 ResourcesContent Optimization Strategies
5 Resourcesxây dựng liên kết for SEO
6 ResourcesUser Experience Signals
5 ResourcesSEO Tools và Software
7 ResourcesAdvanced SEO Strategies
8 ResourcesSEO Fundamentals
4 ResourcesKeyword Research Strategies
8 ResourcesContent Optimization Strategies
5 ResourcesLink Building for SEO
6 ResourcesUser Experience Signals
5 ResourcesSEO Tools và Software
7 ResourcesAdvanced SEO Strategies
Next-màn chơi SEO training and links building strategies