by Duplicate content is a buzzword in the world of online search engine optimization, to explain the content that appears on more than one website. It is sometimes known as redundant content. The duplicate content may be just small parts of the whole content on or off websites and is either similar or exactly identical. There is more than one type of duplicate content – one is the most common type, the other is known as unrelated content. The purpose of this article is to talk about the types of duplicate content.
Type I – When a page or site has deceptive or unrelated texts on it, this is identified as duplicate content. In Wikipedia, it is described as duplicated content having the same title, same contents and similar themes. For example, if two sites offer the same price and same information, then these are considered to be the same content. In SEO terms, this is called “duplicate content”. This is very hard to manipulate search engines with, and so this is considered to be a “no-brainer”.
Type II – This is when deceptive practices or false claims are made about the same content. This is also recognized as duplicate content, but not necessarily on the same level as type I. For example, if you write an article about building sheds and then provide links to articles that teach you how to build a shed yourself, then this is considered duplicate content. However, this can still be categorized as related content.
Type III – This is where the issue of noindex tags comes into play. If you have a lot of duplicate content on your website, it may be because of using the noindex tag too often. This is an SEO ranking strategy which try to get your site’s link position affected, but it can actually be very damaging to your ranking. Google wants to make sure that follow and noindex tags are used appropriately. If search engines see that you are trying to manipulate search engine rankings through the use of index tags, then this will have a negative impact on your ranking.
While you want to use the noindex tag sparingly, you also don’t want to remove it entirely from your site. Google and other major search engines do recognize a few instances when removing the noindex tag from a page can actually improve your rankings. They look at whether or not the surrounding content is unique and not misleading. For instance, if you have duplicate content on the same page or on completely different pages, they may decide that it is best to remove the noindex tag for the entire page so that it matches the other content on that page.
Now that we have discussed the three types of duplicate content issues which are considered to be deceptive, you also need to understand that there are times when nofollow is actually necessary. For example, when you create a sitemap, you have the option of creating a noindex tag on every page within your site. This is the case even if you don’t have a sitemap. Google and other search engines tend to give the noindex tag more importance than the nofollow one when it comes to search results, because the noindex tag ensures that the pages within your site will be indexed as well.
Nofollow can also be used with sitemaps, however. This technique can be a little tricky. When you include a nofollow tag on your sitemap, Google and other search engines will consider the page as a subpage of your site. If it looks like the exact same page as another page within your site, Google will consider the nofollow tag to be unnecessary, because it does not change the fact that the page is part of your site. This is why it is important to include follow with your sitemap. You will be assured that no duplication issues will be caused by this technique.
Duplicate content isn’t just a problem for your website’s ranking in search results. This issue may even hurt your business. If Google will see that your website has duplicate content, it may take more time for your website to appear in search results. This means, of course, that you will be able to lose sales just because of this issue. Thus, you need to keep your website’s content as original as possible, and this includes the index and sitemap tags.
