SEO Blog Posts
28 July 2010
Posted in
SEO
We all know that when we are trying to rank for a specific keyword for our website, duplicate content can be a major pitfall in our efforts. It is because search engines are always striving to offer their searches new, relevant information that this usually occurs.
Did you never wonder why search engines don't normally pay heed to something already crawled before? Also, a person that is searching would find no benefit from countless results that contain the same content, would they? A big no is the only answer to that question.
How, though, do you find out whether a particular piece of content is regarded as duplicate or not? After all, you want to stay onside with the major search engines and now that you know duplicate content issues are frowned upon you don't really want to be caught out. Here are steps you can take to find out by using Google.
The first thing you should do is search for your site in Google using the URL. Doing this will enable you to view all the pages you have indexed by Google. Then proceed by clicking on each one of the links that comes up in this search. If a message comes up along the lines of "to see the most relevant results we have omitted entries that are similar", it means that Google deems some of the content on these omitted pages as duplicates.
What you can do then is click on the link that asks you if you would like to carry out the search again but this time with the omitted pages included. The pages that Google thinks are duplicates will then appear and therefore allowing you to rectify the matter in any way you see fit.
Granted, it is difficult to have a purely duplicate free website, but if you avoid things like reproducing articles from article directories or content you have deemed to be relevant from other websites, you should be OK.
