Duplicate Content – Why It’s Bad And How To Avoid It

When it comes to content, there are a lot of reasons to get it done. Not only does it give you credibility with your prospects, something to talk about in your marketing and a way to educate your audience, but it’s also great for SEO. The issue is, that there’s an awful lot of content already out there on the big wide internet, so there’s a good chance that whatever you write will be at least a little similar to something else out there. Similar content generally isn’t a problem, but if you start creating duplicate content you’re going to run into trouble. 

What is Duplicate Content?

Duplicate content is exactly what it sounds like. It’s when the same piece of content has been posted across the internet multiple times. It could be a few sentences, a paragraph or even an entire article. It might have been copied intentionally (a really common way to cut corners when writing), or it might just be an innocent mistake. Either way, it’s not a good thing for your business. Duplicate content can come in a few different forms as well, including:

  • Content that’s been deliberately copied and pasted from another site.
  • Content that’s been pulled in from one of your own other sites, or even elsewhere on the same website.
  • Generic manufacturer’s product descriptions – these are a killer, since they’re almost always just copied and pasted by every reseller out there.
  • Content that’s been slapped together from a couple of different sources online. You might think that makes it ‘unique’ since the whole thing isn’t copied from one place, but believe me, it’s still duplicate content.

Why is it important to understand this? Because Google (and other search engines) are like school teachers. When they’re presented with two identical pieces of work they don’t know which is the original and which is the copy. So they penalise both. F’s all around.

What Does That Mean?

Having duplicate content on your website means that your site will be penalised, and you’ll see yourself sliding down the search results. Google’s whole job is to provide the best possible results to user queries, scouring the internet (all of it) for the highest quality answers that fit the search query. Duplicate content is deemed to have much lower value than original content, and so you’ll find your site turns up in search results less and less the more duplicate content is found.

There are a few reasons why this happens. The first is that Google (and most other search engines. In fact, every time I say Google just assume I mean all the search engines) won’t index duplicate content. It just doesn’t like it that much, it won’t put it into the database. So the content you’re posting, along with the page you’re posting it on, is now absolutely worthless. Those pages don’t appear in search engine results. At all.

SEO experts Moz say: “To provide the best search experience, search engines rarely show multiple versions of the same content, and thus are forced to choose which version is most likely to be the best result. This dilutes the visibility of each of the duplicates”.

Duplicate Content in 2024

Google has always been anti-duplicate content, and it’s not been shy about it. In fact, many of their algorithm updates over the years have been centred around encouraging unique content and discouraging plagiarism (the fancy word for copying). In 2008 one of the Google Webmasters released a statement that there are no ‘direct’ penalties for duplicate content, but there are a lot of knock-on effects that can cause damage to your SEO rankings. So it’s usually put under the banner of ‘bad for SEO’.

But earlier in 2024 Google launched another update, and this one reshaped the digital landscape, and means that avoiding duplicate content is more important than ever before. If duplicated content appears to be done in an effort to manipulate search results, then there will be penalties dished out. There’s even more focus on unique content, and duplicated content will dilute the visibility of your site and your pages as a whole.

As a side note, you can also run into some pretty heavy copyright issues if you’re duplicating content intentionally (AKA, stealing it). Copyright is automatically assigned to the original author, or to the party that it’s been handed over to (for example, if you use a copywriter to write your content, they will assign the copyright of the content to you once their bill is paid). If you steal content from someone else without their consent, they would be entirely within their right to sue you. And yes, it does happen.

How Do I Avoid Duplicate Content?

I mean, the simplest way is to make sure all of your content is unique! There are a bunch of different tools you can use out there that will scan your site for duplicate content, and then you can go through and ‘uniquify’ it. Even in places where duplicate content is expected, like product descriptions, quotes or printable versions of your content, it’s worth making the effort to make each version unique.

Your other option is to hire someone to write your content for you, who understands how to make unique content every time. That’s kinda my bag. As a copywriter, it’s my job to find new and interesting ways to put across ideas, make your content memorable and really help you stand out from the crowd. I can take you from being a copycat to the cat’s pyjamas, and make it a pretty painless process. Interested? Drop me an email, I’d be happy to chat.