If you find the original and a duplicate copy of any product or any concept, by using the same effort and investment, what will you go for? For the original, in most of the cases. Because the original has the real output of creativity and effort in it.
The same theory is applicable for the bulk of content available on the internet. Everyone is looking for some unique content and when they find any dull, unorganized content, they automatically get away from it. And, it must be noted that most copied contents are usually unorganized as its creator tried to hide the duplicity.
So, here we are discussing what duplicate content is and how it affects your search engine optimized content.
What is Duplicate Content?
If any piece of content becomes directly or indirectly similar to another piece of content then the latter can be called duplicate content.
It can be a whole piece of content or some blocks of it, copied directly or with some minor manipulations. Some similarities can definitely be found in multiple contents but, they should never be such look-alike that clear duplicity can be found in the later ones.
Based on duplication strategies and their identification, duplicate contents can be divided into two types that are –
Internal Duplicate Content
If duplicate contents are created on the same website through multiple internal URLs, then they are called internal duplicate contents. They must be in the same domain.
External Duplicate Content
If two different pages from different domains have similar content, then it is called external duplicate content.
Some unique types of external duplicate contents:
A. Scraped Content: When a piece of content in a website is duplicated from another website to get more optimized content that will get them good rankings in the search results, then it is called scraped content.
Scraped content can be easily identified in most cases because the branded terms remain almost the same in them.
If the search engines’ review system or human reviewers notice your content violating their policies or trying to manipulate their algorithms, your content can be ranked down or entirely removed from search results.
B. Syndicated Content: When any content that you have willingly shared in your blog, gets duplicated, then the latter is called syndicated content. Though it is beneficial for your content to get more traffic, it is certainly a form of external duplicate content.
How does duplicate content affect your SEO?
You will not face direct financial penalties or any legal action for duplicate contents. However, duplicate contents will bring you huge losses in the long run. Search engines run on computer programs and they don’t analyze contents with human intelligence. So, in most cases, the search engines show the duplicate contents before the original content, and the original content losses it’s rank in the search results.
You have invested much effort and time in creating original creative content for your website and you will certainly not like that someone snatches your ranking in search engines, your traffic, your revenue, etc. by just stealing your content without any penalty.
So, you should ethically avoid any type of direct or indirect involvement in any kind of duplicity as it is somehow injustice towards you or any other creator. At Seahawk Media, we always take immense care in producing absolutely original well researched, and well-optimized content. For the best services related to SEO and all over website parameters, feel free to contact us. Also, visit our blog page for great content on various web products.
