Duplicate Content Matters

Your website absolutely needs uniquely written content. Too often business owners will copy bits and pieces of content from other websites – it’s easy, but it creates the problem of duplicate content.

What is duplicate content?

Copy that appears on the internet at more than one web address (URL).

“Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar. Mostly, this is not deceptive in origin.” -Google

Duplicate content matters because, although not technically a ranking penalty, the Search Engines will generally show only one version of the content in question – likely the first website to publish it. That means copying other content too closely can render your site invisible. Your guilty pages have been filtered out… so it may as well be a penalty.

Duplicating your own content…

Another problematic instance of duplicate content is repeating copy across all or several of your own webpages. Again, this causes a dilemma for the Search Engines. Which of these pages is most important? Which should be ranked?

This practice may render several of your pages invisible in the Search Engine results, dilutes the acquiring and value of links to your site’s pages, and is a missed opportunity for crafting more and better content across many pages. It’s just a bad idea.

Taking the time to write unique, professional, proofed, and SEO’d copy is worth the effort. It costs nothing… just time.