The document discusses duplicate content in SEO, outlining its causes and consequences, such as hurting search rankings and the challenge of search engines determining which page to rank. It presents various solutions for managing duplicate content, including canonicalization, noindexing, redirects, and content rewrites, recommending that users assess specific situations before choosing a fix. Additional practical tips are provided for maintaining a healthy content structure and improving SEO performance.

1. A Technical Solution To
Content Duplication
Sophie Brannon
Absolute Digital Media
Head of SEO
@SophieBrannon

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3. Duplicate content refers to
content that is the same or
very similar across the same
domain or multiple

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Same Domain Duplicate
Content Can Include…

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URL Variations

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HTTP & HTTPS

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Boilerplate Content

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Cross-Domain
Duplicate Content Can
Include…

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Scraped Content

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Website
Migrations

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Competitors

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Duplicate content
won’t lead you into
a penalty

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But…

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It can significantly
hurt your search
rankings

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Search
engines won’t
always know
which page to
rank

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Search engines won’t
know how to split
authority

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And they won’t know which
version of a page to show for
a relevant search term

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If content duplication is so
bad, then why does it
happen?

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Up to 29% of the internet is
duplicate content

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And most of it is a
complete accident!

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URL variations are one of
the common causes of
content duplication

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URL variations include:
● Click tracking & analytics codes
● Session IDs
● Printer-friendly URLs

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But there are also lots of other
types of common content
duplication causes

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How To Fix Your Content
Duplication Issues

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There are a number of different
solutions to consider but
understanding the reason the
issue exists will help you to find
the best solution rather than a
blanket fix

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Canonicalisation

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Questions to consider...

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Are the pages exact
duplicates?

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Is one of the pages
generating more traffic /
has more visibility?

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Does the page offer
additional value that
may not translate to SEO
value?

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If you answered yes,
yes, yes….
Then canonicalisation
may be your best bet.

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No Index

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Questions to consider...

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Are your crawl stats
suggesting Google’s
wasting a lot of valuable
time crawling these
pages?

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Do you need these
pages showing in
Google search results?

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Does the page offer
valuable information to
users?

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If you answered yes, no,
yes, then you may want to
noindex if
canonicalisation isn’t an
option

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Redirects

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Questions to consider...

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Does the page need to
exist at all?

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If the answer is no, then
redirect it!

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Rewrites
Questions to ask....

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Can you target the page
with a new search
intent?

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Do you have the
resource to rewrite?

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If you answered yes to
both, then rewrites may
be the better option.

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Or should you just live
with it?

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If you can implement a
resolution, then that is
often better choice for
long-term SEO success

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Redirects
• HTTPS / HTTP domains
• Pages that are not valuable, are
outdated and irrelevant
• Non-www / www. versions

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Canonicalisation
● Exact duplicate pages that offer user value
and so need to remain
● Pages that cannot be rewritten

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Canonicalisation
● One page generates more traffic /
visibility than the other
● You can’t redirect because of technical
restrictions

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Content Rewrites
● You can target different key terms and
search intent within the copy
● You have the resource to implement

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NoIndex
● If you absolutely need to keep the page,
but it holds no SEO value.
● Bots are wasting valuable crawl budget &
301 redirects aren’t an option.

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Some other
considerations
for content
duplication

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Block crawling of
parameterized duplicate
content with the URL
Parameter Tool

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Keep your internal
linking consistent
/page/
/page
/page/index.html

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For country-
specific content,
Google advises the
use of CCTLD’s &
hreflang.

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Avoid the resource issues
with content automation
using OpenAI & GPT-3

64. Thank You
Follow me - @SophieBrannon

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Resources
https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2009/12/handling-legitimate-cross-domain
https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2009/10/reunifying-duplicate-content-on-your
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/crawl-url-parameters
https://twitter.com/BillieGeena/status/1428059594144817157
https://twitter.com/SophieBrannon/status/1427905326683148290