Why it matters to check the content of your website
Changing servers is one of the hazards of running a website. During the process, it is common practice to check for duplicate content. This means using content checking tools…
Changing servers is one of the hazards of running a website. During the process, it is common practice to check for duplicate content. This means using content checking tools or plagiarism checkers to locate the pages with duplicate content. This is where the content audit comes in. It helps you avoid SEO problems as well as legal issues. In practice, it usually involves regular checks of the site's content, adding tags, reading the error reports in Google Search Console…
Where duplicate content comes from
Duplicate content often comes from the process of migrating a website, for example changing hosting provider: all the data is then transferred to another server. The reasons that lead the administrators of a website to migrate it can be many: the wish to change domain name, or upgrading the version of the content management system (CMS). If the old addresses remain accessible alongside the new ones, every page then exists twice.
Yet this change is a risky project. If the steps needed to carry it out are not followed, the good position in the results of search engines such as Google may be lost. Naturally, as soon as you modify pages that are already indexed, your rankings are inevitably affected. The real difficulty is knowing how to limit the damage.
Finally, one of the reasons for duplicate content is human beings. Web content is mostly written by people working in many fields. Their writing is usually meant to support the SEO of the pages for which they offer their services. Indeed, in this sector, SEO is very important, because it is what helps sites rank better. However, for lack of inspiration, these writers sometimes copy and paste other people's work.
The different kinds of duplicate content
Generally speaking, there are two types of duplicate content.
The first is external duplicate content. It occurs when an identical text is found, in part or in full, on various sites. To spot it, using content checking tools would be ideal, in other words a plagiarism checker or duplicate checker. Even a simple Google search can be enough.
Then there is internal duplicate content, when identical sentences are found many times on the same website. This internal duplication is commonly due to several URLs existing for the same page. That said, it can also come from the same product filed in several categories, and therefore reachable at several addresses. Crawling software can spot this type of error.
Finally, it is by knowing how to tell these two types of online plagiarism apart that you can detect duplicate content relevantly. Either way, however, the result remains the same: a loss of visibility.
Precautions to take to avoid duplicate content
When migrating a site, duplicate content is one of the mistakes not to make. To prevent it, you must make sure that each old URL is 301 redirected to its new address, and that the old pages do not remain accessible.
Canonical tags complement this work. Placed in the head of a page, they tell search engines which URL to index when several addresses display the same content. It is not a redirect: the visitor stays on the page they are viewing.
In addition, some default folders sometimes contain the same content. You will then need to pay attention to that content.
Furthermore, the site must not respond on both http and https, nor both with and without www: only one version should be accessible, the others being 301 redirected to it. For users, https also guarantees secure browsing.
Regular monitoring of the pages can also prevent duplicate content. Indeed, the error sometimes comes from the CMS (content management system) itself. On top of that, you should be strict with copywriting service providers about copying and pasting texts.
What to do to check for duplicate content
There are several tips and tools for checking duplicate content.
First, there is crawling software. It is an exploration tool that goes through all the pages of the site, as search engine robots do. It records the content and the URL of each page: this is how errors such as duplicate content are detected.
You should also know that Google filters duplicate content itself. Its Panda algorithm, launched in 2011 and part of the core algorithm since 2016, pushes sites with copied or low-quality content down the results. It is not a checking tool you can use, but one more reason to check your content.
On the other hand, the MozBar, a browser extension from Moz, displays the main tags of a page, including the meta description and the title, which helps to spot duplicates. Likewise, Kill Duplicate proves its usefulness by spotting plagiarism effectively.
Using Google Search Console is also recommended. Provided by Google, this free service helps you identify the problems found on your pages. In practice, to detect duplicate content, the webmaster is invited to consult the "Page indexing" report of this tool, which notably flags duplicate pages without a user-selected canonical.
Content can also be checked simply by using the search bar. In other words, administrators of a web page are advised to paste part of their text into the search bar of a search engine. Once the duplicate content has been checked, correcting the errors without delay is essential.
Other free tools such as Smallseotools, Plagium, Copyscape and others are also available online to check for duplicate content. To benefit from all the advantages offered by this type of tool, you can opt for the paid version.
