subject: How to avoid duplicate content issues [print this page] How to avoid duplicate content issues How to avoid duplicate content issues
Duplicate content can pose a major dilemma to webmasters looking to increase their prominence across the major search engines. Duplicate content exists where a page of identical content can be access via multiple URLs on the same or an external website. This can often be the case with E-Commerce websites where it's possible to access the same page of content via multiple different access points on-site or where the webmaster has utilised manufacturer product descriptions across all their product pages. Duplicate content can also exist where users are given the option to sort products on the page each time a user chooses this option it generates a brand new URL which can conceivably be crawled by search engines.
It's important to avoid duplicate content where possible and the best way to avoid this is to have a set strategy in place before designing and uploading your website. One easy way to check for instances of duplicate content is to pick a section of content from a page and the paste this section into exact quotes and perform a search on Google. This will return instances of duplicate content that exist on-site or across sites.
The easiest way to remedy potential duplicate content issues is to either apply the canonical tag or utilise a 301 redirect. A 301 redirect is a server side redirect that is honoured by search engines. This redirect typically transfers upwards of 99% of authority from the original page on to the redirected to page. This form of redirect differs from the 302 redirect which is a temporary redirect this form of redirect does not transfer on any authority to the redirected to page. The canonical tag is a hint rather than a directive. Using the canonical tag webmasters can point search engines to the canonical version of a page where multiple versions of that page exist. All the webmaster needs to do is position the canonical tag on the duplicate pages on the site.
