Guide to Google ranking signals – Part 5: duplicate content and syndication
Last week we revealed the third instalment of our full information to Google rating alerts.
It targeting ‘content material freshness’ and the sensible methods you possibly can guarantee your webpages are recognised by Google as being related and up-to-date.
This week we proceed diving into on-web page content material elements, with duplicate content material and syndication.
What is duplicate content material?
Duplicate content material refers to a webpage’s content material that seems in multiple place on the web.
Let’s say you write an article on all of the animals found and named after Frank Zappa. Then another person copies and pastes your actual textual content into a brand new webpage on their very own website. Then you’re each going to have duplicate content material points. As properly as an enormous ‘falling out’ over a number of emails.
Duplicate content material isn’t essentially a nasty or improper factor, aside from within the above instance the place it’s simply straight up theft.
Google gained’t penalise duplicate content material. Instead it is going to determine which model of the duplicate publish ought to seem in search outcomes and ignore the opposite.
Chances are Google gained’t care which got here first, it’s extra more likely to care which website has the very best authority.
There is technically an in-constructed security internet right here. A excessive-profile website will theoretically by no means bask in outright stealing different smaller website’s articles. It’s simply not well worth the injury.
Conversely many giant websites are continually scraped of their content material to be republished elsewhere. Our personal SEW articles are ripped off greater than 10 occasions every by totally different scraper websites, however it by no means impacts our rankings as a result of these websites are of such poor high quality they’re ignored by Google.
However there are completely acceptable methods of coping with duplicate content material in a ‘white hat’ method.
How to handle duplicate content material
B) Obvious one to start out… don’t copy one other website’s content material with out asking permission first. It’s dangerous for you, the location you’re copying from and the reader too.
P) If you’re utilizing segments or quotes from one other webpage in reference to your article, then give them credit score and a hyperlink again to the unique supply.
A) If you have got duplicate content material by yourself website, arrange a 301 redirect so Google solely indexes your most popular web page.
A) Ensure that Google is simply indexing your most popular area, i.e. both with the www prefix or with out it: http://www.instance.com or http://instance.com. Google might deal with the www and non-www variations of your area as separate websites with separate pages, thus harming your visibility.
You can set your choice in Search Console.
H) You might expertise duplicate content material points when you use a separate cellular model of your website. Using a cellular responsive website as an alternative will clear up the issue.
S) Before you settle for posts from visitor writers, double-verify they haven’t been revealed elsewhere. Bloggers in all probability aren’t appearing unscrupulously if they’ve been beforehand revealed, they could simply not perceive that this could trigger search visibility issues.
However, when you have permission from the unique writer and website, there are ‘protected’ methods of publishing duplicate content material that may profit you, the writer, the unique web site and Google glad.
Content syndication
Content syndication is the time period used for the tactical republishing of your unique article on one other third-get together web site. It’s notably helpful when you’re a smaller writer or an up-and-coming author who needs a bigger viewers.
If content material syndication is carried out appropriately by the location republishing the content material, there ought to be no purpose why this can result in duplicate content material points.
Here are a number of search engine optimization pleasant strategies for content material syndication…
- rel=canonical tag
The most secure method to make sure there are not any duplicate content material issues is to make use of a rel=canonical tag on the republished article.
This will inform Google that the linked article is the unique and subsequently must be listed, and any rating advantages can be handed via.
- meta noindex tag
According to Eric Enge’s Whiteboard Friday video, this is identical precept because the canonical tag. The republishing website implements a meta noindex tag on the web page, instructing the search engine to take away the web page from its index.
- Clean hyperlink to unique article
You can even simply use a clear textual content hyperlink inside the article itself.
For instance: many of those content material syndication ideas initially appeared in what’s content material syndication an how do I get began?
This is an enough technique if in case you have restricted entry to the HTML of your article and may’t implement a rel=canonical tag.