The duplicate content debate is one that has been waged for a long period of time although, in reality, the debate is over specifics rather than the general fact that duplicate content is devalued by search engines. The use of the term duplicate content penalty often leads to confusion, however, because a page isn’t strictly penalised for the use of duplicate content. It won’t, though, gain the same SEO benefit as if the page used original content instead.

What Exactly Is Considered Duplicate Content?

A page is said to use duplicate content when a significant proportion of that page is duplicated from another indexed page. When this is found to have occurred, Google in particular, does not rank the page highly, if at all. When a page uses unique content they gain the full SEO advantage of offering fresh content containing keywords and offering genuine value to visitors.

Supplemental Search Results

When a person conducts a search on Google they are usually presented with a mass of results. By navigating to the end of those results there is also usually a link that states there are other pages that contain similar results and to click the link in order to view these results. If a page is indexed as being in those supplemental results then it obviously won’t gain the same kind of search engine traffic as the main results. This can cause a problem for your SEO efforts and may require either a rewriting of the page so that it is considered unique or the gaining of a number of quality inbound links.

Duplicate Content And SEO Link Building

Where duplicate content can cause problems for your own SEO efforts is in such practices as article marketing and other link building methods. Link building is a vital part of search engine optimisation and helps to improve search engine rankings. Article marketing is seen as a viable method of building links but when you submit a single article to numerous directories, and that article is subsequently picked up by other websites and online publications, only one of those pages will appear in the main index. This also means that only that your search engine optimisation campaign is only gaining the full benefit of that one link.

Submitting To Single Directories Or Single Sites

It is possible to help beat this by either submitting an article to only one directory – you will gain the benefit of the article as it appears within the directory and you will gain the traffic from any other websites that use that link. Alternatively, offer articles directly to the high profile websites that will benefit your search engine optimisation efforts.

Duplicate Content And Your Search Engine Optimisation Campaign

If you offer your own content to others, then you should try to ensure that your page is the one that is indexed and ranked first. This ensures that you get the benefit of the well written, search engine optimised content. You should also rest assured that once your page is indexed, even if others choose to copy it completely without or without a link to your page it will be your page that appears in the search results.

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