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May 2021

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Is Duplicate Content Penalty a myth?

The debate regarding the penalty of duplicate content is age-old and confusing. Get the facts correct instead of beating around the bush. Give a quick read and find out about the myths surrounding duplicate content penalty.

What does duplicate content mean?

Before delving deeper into the discussion, one must understand what duplicate content refers to in the publishing world. Duplicate Content is content prepared with the help of one or different sources without the original content creator’s consent. Such an act of creating duplicate content is known as plagiarism.

In simple terms, if any content appears in more than one URL, the content is considered to be duplicated or plagiarized.

Myth vs. Reality Concerning Duplicate Content

Some debates and discussions are there concerning duplicate content that is misleading and mainly creates confusion in content creators’ minds, web publishers, and viewers. To put an end to this, check out some facts regarding duplicate content:

  • Myth:

Search engines like Google track down websites with copied content and penalize those for the content.

Reality: Search engines do not penalize websites for having similar content. It offers viewers the variety that they seek. Search engines try to determine the source site of the content and redirect the users to the original site. Pages with similar content are neither taken down nor penalized until and unless they manipulate the search result.

  • Myth:

Duplicate content does not affect the website ranking.

  • Reality:

Contrary to popular belief, a website with duplicate content does harm the website’s ranking. It damages the website’s SEO ranking and affects the organic traffic of the website. SEO can detect duplicate content on different sites using tools,

  • Myth:

Websites will compete against each other and cause harm to the website’s reputation.

  • Reality:

If any content appears twice on the search engine, it is not the end of the world. In many instances, websites and publishers have republished other website’s content, have Share backlinks, and more. Such acts are entirely harmless. Republishing blog articles are not considered as duplicate content.

  • Myth:

The issue of duplicate content or plagiarized content is a threat to the content creators that cannot be resolved.

  • Reality:

To protect the integrity of their work, content creator and the website can seek the help of the Copyright Act to protect their creation from plagiarism. Having copyright over content enables the website and the content creator the sole right over their content and limits unauthorized access to the content.

How to avoid duplicate content?

Since duplicate content can harm a web page it is essential to avoid it. Below are the steps to avoid the duplicate content issue on a web page:

  • The first step of avoiding duplicate content is focusing on creating original content rather than seeking information elsewhere. However, the problem is two-way. For restricting from copying the content, web pages make use of copyright.
  • If someone has copied the content of a page, the publisher may connect with the webmaster to report plagiarism. They can request the removal of the duplicate content and page. They may also ask for acknowledgment for the same.
  • There are ways in which outside sources of information can be used in one’s content. Firstly, acknowledge the source site. With proper citation, websites can use the content of others safely in their content.
  • The use of canonical tags is also helpful in dealing with the problem of duplicate content. These tags help the website declare to the search engines that a specific content belongs to them, even if it is there on the different versions of the same web page, available on the internet.
  • Redirects also effectively reduce the risks of duplicate content. Especially 301 Redirect that redirects the users to the source site instead of the copied one.
  • SEO unique content checker determines the uniqueness of the content. There is no denying that the poor and copied content of a website hurts the SEO ranking of the web page. Websites can run an SEO content checker test to determine the quality of the content published on their website. It will help them draw organic traffic to their site and also improve SEO ranking.

Whether punishable or not, plagiarized or duplicate content is no doubt unethical. It denies the original content creator the recognition they deserve. Hence copied content of all sorts is dealt with strictness. To reduce the risks of duplicate content websites, must send a signal to search engines to declare the uniqueness of the content. It is as important as checking for plagiarized content.

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