How Duplicate Content Affects SEO for Brands with Multiple Locations
It is widely understood that search engines such as Google prioritize reputable, relevant, and current content when presenting search results to users. The importance of producing unique and original content has also been emphasized.
Despite this, duplicate content can arise in various ways, and not all of them are intentionally harmful or detrimental. It is a reality that affects businesses of all sizes, but it is particularly common among enterprise brands and those with multiple locations.
This article aims to explore the true impact of duplicate content on SEO and whether it adversely affects search rankings. Specifically, we will examine the definition of duplicate content, Google’s stance on it, and what you should be aware of to avoid any negative consequences that may harm your brand’s search visibility and ranking.
What does the term “Duplicate Content” mean?
Duplicate content is content that is identical to another passage of text that can be found elsewhere online. It should be noted that when discussing duplicate content in terms of SEO, it does not refer to content that is copied for malicious or illegal purposes such as plagiarism or scraping. Instead, duplicate content can arise naturally in several ways, such as when including a quote from another online source or when a manufacturer’s product description appears on various reseller websites.
How do we define content that is considered as duplicate?
Google’s developer documentation defines duplicate content as “substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content in the same language or are appreciably similar.” Google also identifies various types of duplicate content, including discussion forums that generate both regular desktop and stripped-down mobile pages, items in an online store linked to by multiple distinct URLs, and printer-only versions of web pages.
Duplicate content is a common issue that enterprise brands face on their local landing pages, Google Business Profiles, and other local listings. This may involve duplicate product or service descriptions, company mission statements and visions, taglines, promotions, and more, which can occur on a single domain or external websites.
Moreover, intentionally creating duplicate content through content syndication is a widely used media tactic to reach new audiences. For instance, newspapers often feature columns from the Associated Press (AP), and this does not diminish the credibility of the content. In fact, content syndication speaks to the quality and authority of the content, as it would not be published in newspapers or news websites across the country if it didn’t provide value.
If you’re a brand with multiple locations, you could employ content syndication to expand the reach of your blog posts to a larger audience by posting them on several of your locations’ blogs. You may also choose to republish your blog posts on platforms like Medium or LinkedIn to attract a new audience and increase visibility. Even though content syndication creates duplicate content, it’s a common practice and generally accepted. The crucial aspect is that Google needs to identify the original content creator.
Can having duplicate content negatively affect your SEO strategy?
Over time, there has been some confusion about whether duplicate content can harm a website’s SEO strategy. However, it is not true that Google will penalize a site for having duplicate content. Unless it triggers a manual review, Google will not take any manual action to suppress or remove your pages from its index if it detects duplicate content. Google only makes appropriate adjustments to the indexing and ranking of the sites involved in cases where it perceives that duplicate content is shown with intent to manipulate rankings and deceive users. As a result, the site’s ranking may decline, or it may be completely removed from the Google index, resulting in its absence from search results.
Although there are no penalties for duplicate content, it does not provide any benefit to your search engine rankings. In addition, it can cause problems if Google cannot determine the original article or page, potentially causing one of the duplicates to outrank the original. This can have a significant impact if a competitor’s page or a local page is ranking higher than the page you want to attract traffic to for a valuable keyword.
Therefore, it is crucial to inform Google when content is being republished and to identify which page contains the original content, regardless of whether it is on the same website or external.
What are some ways to assist Google in identifying duplicate content?
Ensuring that Google can distinguish the original content from duplicates is crucial. Scrapers who steal and republish content can make it difficult for Google to determine which version is the true original. This can lead to the search engine displaying lower-quality or less relevant content in search results, which is undesirable.
To address this issue, Google uses a process called canonicalization to identify the original source of content.
What is Canonicalization and its Role in SEO?
Google outlines its approach to using canonicalization by stating that it “will select a canonical version of a URL and crawl that version, while all other URLs will be regarded as duplicate URLs and crawled less frequently. If you fail to specify which URL is the canonical version, Google will make the decision on your behalf or might treat them equally, potentially resulting in undesired outcomes.”
Google cites several reasons why you should use canonicalization to establish which URL is the original, including:
Google provides a video that explains how and why Googlebot selects the canonical URL for duplicate content. The reasons for using canonicalization to indicate the original URL, according to Google, include:
– Identifying the URL you want users to see in search results
– Consolidating link signals for similar or duplicate pages
– Simplifying tracking metrics for a single product or topic
– Managing syndicated content
– Avoiding wasting crawling time on duplicate pages.
Using Canonical Links in Practice
“If you are uncertain about whether Google has already identified a canonical version of a page, you can use the URL Inspection Tool to check. Additionally, if you notice a specific page is underperforming, it may be worthwhile to check if Google has ignored your canonicalization instruction and selected a different page.
There are various methods to specify which page is the canonical version:
1. The rel=canonical link tag
Including a <link> tag in the HTML code of all duplicate pages that points to the canonical page enables you to redirect an unlimited number of pages back to the original. However, this approach only works for HTML pages, not PDFs, and can be challenging to apply across large websites or sites with frequently changing dynamic URLs.”
2. Using the rel=canonical HTTP header
The rel=canonical HTTP header method is an alternative to using the rel=canonical tag. It allows you to avoid increasing page size, as you would with the tag, and to map to an infinite number of pages. However, this method can be difficult to manage on sites with a large number of pages, especially those with frequently changing URLs.
3. Using the sitemap
Specifying canonical pages in the sitemap is a more straightforward approach for large and complex websites. However, with this method, Google still needs to determine which pages are duplicates of the canonical page. According to Google, this is a “less powerful signal to Googlebot than the rel=canonical mapping technique.”
4.301 Redirects:
If you want to get rid of a duplicate page, you can use a 301 redirect. It informs Googlebot that the redirected page is the preferred one.
Another tactic applies to AMP pages and has specific implementation guidelines.
Choose one method and consistently point to the same page to avoid confusing Google about which version is the preferred one.
