Duplicate content is not a complex subject as some would have you believe, it is simply defined by me as two (or more) pieces of the same content which appear on different pages on the Internet. In terms of internal duplicate content there are many reasons this can happen such as:

• Products in multiple categories on an eCommerce website
• Printer friendly or other format web pages
• Technical website issues such as URL parameters or session IDs

Why does this matter?

Duplicate content can confuse search engines in several ways;

• They don’t know which version of the content to show in the search results
• They need to decide if the duplicate content is accidental or malicious (trying to manipulate the search results)
• They don’t know whether to give search metrics (such as domain and page authority) to just one page or split it between the multiple versions

This can have two implications to web masters  1) as search engines will rarely show multiple versions of the same content in search results they are forced to decide which version of the content is ‘best’. This process could result in the version you consider best not be shown and the other versions of your content are essentially negated (their ‘power’ is not utilise). 2) if your duplicate content problem is large enough search engines could deem it worthy of a penalty or as Google put it in their webmaster post on the subject;

make appropriate adjustments in the indexing and ranking of the sites involved. As a result, the ranking of the site may suffer, or the site might be removed entirely from the Google index, in which case it will no longer appear in search results.

How do we solve these problem?

Luckily for you there are several ways for you to solve these problems but there are two which are particularly useful:

1. 301 redirects – a 301 redirect sends all visitors from one page to another so in this instance from the duplicate pages to the original. By dealing with duplicate content in this way you are only giving the search engines the option to rank the page you would like people to see and you also get the added benefit of having the combined ‘power’ of all the other pages pushed into one, thus giving you a better chance to rank well for the content.
2. Rel=”canonical” tag – this tag tells search engines that there is another page which is the original and therefore has the benefits of a 301 redirect but unlike the 301 redirect users can still access the page in question. This is ideal for content you want users to access such as print friendly versions of the page. These are easily implemented by putting the below tag (with the original URL inserted) in the HTML head of a page

<link href=”http://www.yourdomain.com/original-page/” rel=”canonical” />

Although these are the two most common ways to deal with duplicate content the ‘noindex, follow tag’, preferred domain tool in Google Webmaster Tools and parameter handling tool in Google Webmaster Tools are also viable.

I hope this helps with your issues and if you have any questions let us know!

Running Shoes | Running Clothing | Running Gear | Running Spikes | New Balance Running | Asics Running | Brooks Running …

When I see a title tag such as this I think two things;

1. Great! They have realised the potential of SEO and have done something about it
2. They must have done a little bit of reading and think SEO is all about listing the keywords you want to target in the title tag

These sites tend to have similar meta descriptions and meta keywords, i.e. stuffed with keywords, in fact this one does as outlined below:

Meta description – Running Shoes, Running Shoe, New Balance Running, Asics Running, Brooks Running, Running Gear, Running Trainers, Running Clothing, Saucony Running …

Meta keywords – Running Shoes | Running Clothing | Running Gear | Running Spikes | New Balance Running | Asics Running | Brooks Running …, ForRunnersByRunners.com

If this sets off a trigger in your SEO approach you’re probably wondering what am I doing wrong? How can this affect my site? And what would be a better approach? Let me try and answer these three questions for you…

What am I doing wrong?

From the title tag it would seem the website is attempting to target 7 keywords on the home page. For most websites this is way too many, we recommend a maximum of 2 per page. This is so you can do those 2 keyword justice and “spread the love” across your website!

With this approach you are ignoring your inner pages, for example I am sure this website has an internal page dedicated to Asics Running. Why not utilise that page to target that keyword? It would be much more relevant from a search engines point of view therefore your chance to rank highly is increased and as a bonus it also helps the user to land on the most relevant page without needing to click through multiple pages to find it.

How can this affect my site?

This approach can affect your site in many ways, for example

1. You are ignoring your inner website pages which means you are not making the most of your website
2. Your dropout rate for customers will be higher as they have to find the page they want once they have landed on your homepage
3. If you are also optimising the most relevant page you have internal pages competing for rankings
4. By targeting many keywords on one page it is likely you are not doing the full practise of on page SEO for all of those keywords

What would be a better approach?

Think of your website link a hierarchy diagram, you need to start with the most broad keywords for your homepage (in this example “Running gear”) and work your way through the website to the most niche keywords (in this example “Running spikes”).

I have laid out an example for the 7 keywords they attempted to target on the home page and assigned them to more relevant pages below:

Using this approach you need to utilise every page as you work your way ‘down’ the website. This approach therefore allows to target many more keywords and a secondary keyword for each of your original 7.

Overall benefits to this approach:

• You are utilising your full website
• You can target a secondary keyword
• Visitors land on the most revelant page
• Your on page optimisation can be much better
• Your website does not look as “spammy”

If you have this problem or you are looking to get started with on page optimisation I hope this post helped. If you have any questions post them below!