How do you fix duplicate content and boost your SEO?

1 Why does duplicate content matter?

Duplicate content matters because it can negatively affect your SEO in several ways. First, it can create competition among your own pages for the same keywords, which can reduce your chances of ranking well. Second, it can waste your crawl budget, which is the number of pages that search engines can crawl and index on your site. Third, it can affect your link equity, which is the value and authority that links pass to your pages. If you have multiple versions of the same content, the link value will be split among them, rather than concentrated on one canonical page.

2 How to identify duplicate content?

There are several tools and methods that you can use to identify duplicate content on your website or across the web. One of the most popular tools is Google Search Console, which can alert you of duplicate title tags and meta descriptions, as well as show you the coverage and index status of your pages. Another tool is Screaming Frog, which is a web crawler that can scan your site and detect duplicate content, as well as other technical issues. You can also use online plagiarism checkers, such as Copyscape or Siteliner, to compare your content with other sources and find potential duplicates.

3 How to prevent duplicate content?

To prevent duplicate content from affecting your SEO, it's important to create original and unique content for each page on your website, and avoid copying or repurposing content from other sources without proper attribution. However, sometimes duplicate content can be unavoidable or unintentional due to technical factors like URL parameters, session IDs, pagination, or www and non-www versions of your site. In such cases, you can employ strategies like using 301 redirects to point duplicate pages to the preferred version, canonical tags to tell search engines which version of a page is the original and should be indexed, noindex tags to prevent search engines from crawling and indexing duplicate pages, hreflang tags to indicate the language and regional variations of your content, and robots.txt to block search engines from accessing duplicate content.

4 How to fix duplicate content?

If you already have duplicate content on your website or across the web, you can take some steps to fix it and improve your SEO. The first step is to audit your site and identify the sources and extent of duplicate content, using the tools and methods mentioned above. The second step is to decide which version of the content you want to keep and which ones you want to remove or consolidate. The third step is to apply the appropriate solutions, such as redirects, canonical tags, noindex tags, hreflang tags, or robots.txt, depending on the type and location of duplicate content. The fourth step is to monitor your site and check if the duplicate content issues are resolved, using Google Search Console or other tools.

5 How to boost your SEO with unique content?

Creating unique and valuable content is one of the best ways to boost your SEO and attract more organic traffic. It can help you stand out from your competitors, increase your relevance and authority, and engage your audience. To create unique content that stands out, you should conduct keyword research and target long-tail and semantic keywords that match your audience's intent. Writing clear and compelling headlines, meta descriptions, and introductions can capture your audience's attention. Additionally, using different formats and media such as images, videos, infographics, or podcasts can enrich your content and appeal to different preferences. Providing useful and actionable information, tips, examples, or solutions that solve your audience's problems or answer their questions is also important. Adding your own voice, perspective, or opinion to your content and showing your personality and expertise will help make it unique. Lastly, updating and optimizing your content regularly to keep it fresh and relevant is key to preventing duplicate content which can harm SEO and user experience. By creating unique and valuable content, you can boost your SEO and grow your online presence.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?