How duplicate content can hurt your SEO?

With the Internet getting more and more crowded with a lot of content, duplication is becoming a genuine problem. This could be accidental or wilful. In both cases, the problem needs to be faced and taken care of. Websites of small and large businesses alike have the chance of getting hurt from duplicate content. SEO rankings would be negatively affected. But how does it actually affect SEO? Can a duplicate file finder help in this regard? Well, let us find out.

What do we mean when we say duplicate content?

When portions of content on websites are totally identical or very similar, we call it duplicate content. Near-duplicate content is when the content has only a few differences. It is quite natural to have similar content, but when the similarity is uncanny, that is when the problem arises.

Now, we sometimes categories duplicate content

● When multiple pages on the same website have duplication, it is known as an internal duplicate content.

● External duplicate content refers to scenarios where the duplicate content is on different websites.

Is duplicate content bad for SEO?

When you search with a certain keyword on Google, you get a lot of webpages as results. Now, Google has very smart algorithms which filter out identical content. Now, Google does not penalise you for having duplicate content. But the webpage with the original content can be filtered out. The algorithm would not know which website had produced it originally. This is how duplicate content can hurt SEO rankings. However, it is possible to look for similar content through duplicate file finder.

How can you find duplicate content?

The bottom line is that you want your pages to perform well in SEO rankings. So, if you see that your web pages are declining in rankings, you should check if your content has been stolen. You can try checking out if someone has copied the exact text. Taking some lines from your webpage and searching them on Google (inside double quotes) will get the job done. If you are getting multiple results, it would mean that the same content is present on multiple pages. Someone has stolen your content.

You can even use a duplicate file finder, like the one from Copyleaks. This is a more efficient tool and would help you find if there are webpages where portions of your text can be found. 

What you should do?

Original content takes time and effort to produce and it is frustrating to see someone steal it all away. When someone scrapes your content and you report it, a reviewer at Google would review the page to determine if the page is compliant with Google's Webmaster Quality Guidelines. If a page gets flagged, the website would be ranked much lower or it would be removed from search results. Syndicated content is also another option, where you volunteer to share the content with another website. This makes your content more visible and helps you to build links back to your website.