What Do I Need To Look Out For?

Duplicate content is a pretty complex subject so I thought I’d send you some handy duplicate content tid-bits. Hopefully these may help clear up any possible confusion you have regarding how duplicate content is viewed through the eye’s of the Search Engines…

Code vs Text Ratio & Duplicate Content

Do the Search Engines consider the code of your page when looking for duplicate content? For example, if your code is huge and the unique HTML elements on each new page are small and few, will these pages be flagged as duplicate? Fortunately we have discovered that this is not a concern to the Search Engines. In an interview with Vanessa Fox from Google’s Webmaster Central she clearly mentioned that Google only looks at the content on your page and is not really interested in the code.

Navigation Elements vs Unique Content Ratio for Duplicate Content

Navigational and page layout elements (also known as boiler plate text) usually need to be present on every page of your website. After all, your visitors really do need a way to navigate your site easily. So if your site has a large navigation bar, plenty of header & footer items with just a small area left for content can this result in your pages being picked up as duplicates? According to seomoz.org Google (and Yahoo! and MSN) have been around for long enough to be familiar with website layout and so they do recognize that permanent elements on sites are perfectly normal. They state that the Search Engine’s simply pay attention to the “unique” areas of your pages and usually ignore the rest.

Licensed Duplicate Content & Meta Tags

If you’ve obtained licensed content from another online source and want to make it available to your visitors but avoid duplicate content problems what should you do? Simply use the following meta tag in your page html header:

<meta name = “robots” content=”noindex, follow” />

This will instruct the Search engine bot’s to ignore the page but will allow your visitors to view the page and link to it plus the links on the page itself will also still carry value.

Duplicate Issues vs Duplicate Penalties & Ownership

With all the talk about hard-hitting duplicate content penalties vs. lighter duplicate content indexing “issues” where do we stand? How do we know if we’ve been heavily penalized for duplicate content or have simply just had our content de-index or moved to the supplemental index? Penalties are usually only imposed on a domain if a fair amount of abuse has taken place. It does happen though, even on big name domains. *Penalties* only really happen if hundreds or thousands of your pages contain content from other domains and if your domain has little to no unique content of its own. Lack of unique content is particularly hazardous for new sites or sites that have recently changed ownership. At the end of the day the best thing you can do is just make every possible attempt to provide your own original content to your visitors. As a result you should stay clear of any severe penalties or supplemental index issues.

The issue of duplicate content remains a relatively grey area and is still widely debated. Either way you stand on the matter, it’s definitely something to be aware of and do your best to prevent.

The Above article was generously provided by Michael & Steven Grzywacz, creators of DupeFreePro. A 100% free duplicate content and LSI check tool. For more information about duplicate content see the Stompernet videos here.

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