Does Duplicate In-site Content Hurt SEO?
Example:
This post by Todd Coats titled “Trippin’ on Acid Park”:
http://blog.capstrat.com/articles/trippin-on-acid-park/
Also appears on all these URLS:
http://blog.capstrat.com/tags/acid/
http://blog.capstrat.com/tags/creative/
http://blog.capstrat.com/tags/legend/
http://blog.capstrat.com/tags/park/
http://blog.capstrat.com/tags/raleigh/
http://blog.capstrat.com/tags/reflector/
http://blog.capstrat.com/tags/simpson/
http://blog.capstrat.com/tags/vollis/
http://blog.capstrat.com/tags/whirligig/
http://blog.capstrat.com/authors/todd-coats/
All but 4 of those pages are exactly the same as the original page. Some pages are different from the original page in that they contain the other posts that share the same tag.
My questions are:
- Does it hurt us to have duplicate in-site content?
- Are we diluting our link value for any given post by posting the same content to multiple URLs?
- Or, are we getting a good bump because we have 3 to 4 times as many “pages” that are loaded with key words (albeit on pages with identical copy)?
Interesting Note:
A Google search for “acid park” reveals that Google only indexed 3 of the above links with a reference to those key words:
Another interesting note:
This page:
http://blog.capstrat.com/tags/raleigh/
Was indexed by Google, but a search for acid park does not return this page. Why?
Numbers
Our 1300+ page Web site has only a fraction of that number of actual posts. Posts often appear at 5 or 6 different URLs.
A little looking around revealed a couple of opinions:
Search Engine Guide says “Such duplication also leaves you open to splitting link value between multiple URLs. If someone links to a (page), they may link to any of the multiple versions, instead of a single primary version/URL. This can cause the search engines to give weight to the "wrong" URLs.”
SEO Book says “Interesting tactic by Google. If too many pages on the same site trip a duplicate content filter Google does not just filter through to find the best result, sometimes they filter out ALL the pages from that site.”
Thoughts from the experts?
All Articles
Web sites compete on a page by page basis-not by a site as a whole. Having duplicate content across the same site or multiple sites leads to competition against yourself and can also lead to being thrown out of the search engines as commented earlier. Tags should also be unique on the site as well and contain keywords that are reflective of the content on the page.
Posting identical content across a single site or across multiple sites absolutely hurts a web site(s) natural search engine rankings. When you post identical or duplicate content you are running the risk of being penalized or banned by the search engines as the search engines consider duplicate content a type of spam technique.
Though more importantly by posting duplicate content, you are forcing identical pages on your web site to compete against each other. You are saturating your search results.
SEO is a long term process which a web sites owner number one priority should be continually developing great and unique content for both the search engines and their users.
I'm in the "it'll cost you" category.
An option would be to only show linked titles as the result of a tag query. So a search for, or click on the "raleigh" tag would show a list of article titles with each being a link to its full article.
Post a comment
We look forward to hearing what you have to say. Before joining the conversation, please take a moment to review our comment policy.