If you are starting your content creation or have been doing it for quite a long time as part of your marketing campaign, it is important to be aware of content duplication and its impact on your website.
Duplicate content is a silent killer of any website’s search engine rankings, and your website is not exempted from this. You will be surprised that almost one-third of your web pages have repeat content. In fact, according to a study, 29% of websites face duplicate content issues.
In this blog, learn more about duplicate content, why it is a huge issue, and how it happens in the first place. Ultimately, we also provide some actionable ways to prevent content duplication on your website effectively.
What is Duplicate Content?
Duplicate content is substantive blocks of content across domains that completely match other content or are somehow similar. It usually appears in more than one location on the web, whether on a single website or across different sites.
This level of redundancy may confuse search engines like Google as they try to determine which pages are the most relevant for a specific query, potentially harming search rankings.
Why Duplicate Content is a Big Issue?
Duplicate content poses many problems for your website and your construction business. The following are some of the most common problems that may occur when content is duplicated:
1. Search engine penalties
Search engines such as Google aim to provide users with the best and most original content on any topic. So, whenever they detect copied or duplicate content, they immediately detect and raise flags that the content is not unique and relevant.
This can lead to some of the most common search engine penalties, such as removal from search results, lower rankings, and spam actions from Google itself. When you have so much duplicate content, it will easily dilute the value of your website.
2. It can hurt your rankings
As we stated earlier, duplicate content can lead to lower rankings. Search engines like Google have ranking systems designed to prioritize original and more relevant content. For instance, if your site has multiple pages that look similar, Google will do its best to determine which one is the original.
If Google cannot identify which is the original content, your rankings will suffer, and any of your web pages may not rank at all.
3. It can hurt your website’s crawling ability
Search engines are designed to crawl and index any content and look for the ones that deserve to show up in the search results. Having duplicate pages on your website will waste your crawl budget. A crawl budget is the amount of time and resources a search engine crawler dedicates to crawling sites before moving on to the next site.
In short, duplicate content can cause crawlers to review many different versions with the same content. If this is always the case, then it can lessen the number of your pages that will be crawled – potentially impacting your website’s visibility in search results.
4. Poor user experience
From a user perspective, encountering duplicate content on any of your web pages may look spammy and confusing. People are searching for original, high-quality information online that can provide value to them.
If people keep seeing repeating content on your website, they will look through other low-value web pages to find what they are looking for. This will result in higher bounce rates on your part, or worse, visitors, who can be your potential construction clients, will immediately leave your site to find more relevant and valuable content elsewhere.
So, always create original content tailored to every page of your website. This demonstrates authority and boosts user satisfaction.
5. Revenue Loss
When your website’s engagement rate is lower and its organic visibility has reduced, it will suffer from traffic loss and even revenue. Low rankings in the search results mean fewer visits and sales. Unsatisfied web visitors who bounce quickly will cut short any possibility of conversion.
Finally, duplicate content will cost you additional expenses in the long run if it is left unchecked.
But How Can Duplicate Content Be Created?
It is important to avoid duplicate content on your website. You can only effectively avoid it by understanding how duplicate content is created.
1. Plagiarism
Lazy writing is one of the main reasons why there is duplicate content. Some writers are sketchy in their writing tasks, and others engage in different levels of plagiarism, such as:
- Complete plagiarism: Copying an entire content article from someone else and publishing it.
- Partial plagiarism: Copying a part or a portion of an existing article, like a quote or paragraph, and combining it with new content.
- Mosaic plagiarism: Using synonyms and paraphrasing sentences to make the content look original.
2. Template pages have many fillers
Pages that use similar design templates can be flagged for duplicate content. This is because of the filler texts, such as feature lists, category pages, and product descriptions. This is usually unintentional on the part of the website owner. As for your construction website, ensure it contains only a few pre-filled texts.
Pay attention to these details so you may not leave duplicate information on your live page.
3. Content syndication
Content syndication is the process of re-publishing existing content on your website. It might be a great way to spread out your content and even raise brand awareness. However, content syndication may lead to duplicate content issues, especially without proper link canonicalization.
How to Avoid Duplicate Content on Your Construction Website?
Maintaining the uniqueness and integrity of content is a core pillar for any successful website. It impacts the overall user experience and guarantees optimal search engine performance.
As you delve into refining your website, here are five key strategies you have to keep in mind:
1. Identify duplicate content
The first step in removing and preventing duplicate content from your website is to identify all areas where it may exist. This can usually be done by running a crawl of your website using tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs. These tools will provide an overview of all the pages on your website alongside their duplicate content percentages.
Once you have identified these pages and their levels of duplicate content, you can take further steps to either rewrite or remove the content to make it original.
2. Use 301 redirects
Now, this is the part where you have to use 301 redirects to remove duplicate content completely. A 301 redirect is a type of redirect that tells search engines like Google that a certain page has been moved to a new location permanently.
By using 310 redirects, you can easily redirect any duplicate content to the original page, which helps eliminate duplicate content and boost your search engine rankings.
3. Use canonical tags
Different URLs on the same page can lead to issues such as duplication of content. So, this is where you need to add canonical tags. This tag is common for web pages since it adds parameter tracking to your website. Canonical tags are usually added to the URLs and will tell Google you want your original URL to rank higher than other URL variations.
In addition, the links and ranking power obtained by the duplicate pages can be moved to your preferred URL. This is how useful canonical tags are.
4. Prioritize creating original content
You must always ensure your content is original, unique, and relevant. When brainstorming for topics, always be careful about paraphrasing and quoting. You may often encounter the same topics and content from another website with the same niche as yours. This is why you must use multiple sources during research and brainstorming. Different sources can help you produce original content entirely different from others.
5. Monitor and audit all your website content
It is best to perform an SEO content analysis of all your content. Doing so can help you not only determine duplicate content but also identify other local SEO issues that need to be addressed.
To prevent duplicate content from becoming undiscoverable, you can use plagiarism checker tools to test its uniqueness. Another solution is to place texts in the Google search bar to spot duplicate content on your own website. This is a friendly beginner step that also allows you to know if anyone else has taken your content without your authorization.
ConstructionMarketing.io Helps You Publish Top-Quality, Original Content
As a website owner, you must know everything about your web content. This includes knowing and understanding the difference between original and duplicate content and the many implications both bring to your SEO efforts.
However, this does not mean that everything needs to be unique. If your goal is to rank better in search engines and brand yourself successfully, it is to your biggest advantage to create and publish mostly unique content. You may partner with us to ensure high-quality and original content without duplication for your website!
We are ConstructionMarketing.io, your construction marketing agency partner! With our top-notch SEO services, we can transform your website into a powerhouse of originality, ensuring it stands out in the competition. Our team of skilled content writers, editors, and SEO experts will fix duplicate content and create a cost-effective content calendar tailored to your needs.
Get in touch with us today. We would like to hear your biggest concerns.