When Should You Use Duplicate Content for SEO?
When the same content appears on multiple pages online it is called duplicate content. Google defines duplicate content as “substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar.” When a user searches for something, Google tries to return unique and distinct content. If there is duplicate content on several websites, Google will filter out the websites and try to show just one page with the information. Most of the time Google is fairly understanding of duplicate content, especially because much of the information floating around the Internet is duplicate content. Intent is everything, and search engines know San Diego SEO companies and other businesses use duplications for valid reasons, such as those given in the examples below.
Shared Content
Sometimes you find great content on another site and want to share it on your website, which ultimately helps bring traffic to your page as well as the site you sourced the original content from.
Duplicated Product Information
This usually happens on e-commerce sites because manufacturers often provide the same product information and images to several different sites selling their goods.
Printer and Normal Version
Some blogs might have printer versions and regular versions of their web pages, which may be counted as duplicate content.
Duplicate Information on Sorted Product Lists
Sometime e-commerce sites have the option of sorting product lists according to price, category, or even alphabetically. When these separate lists are generated, you can end up with multiple pages carrying the same content.
Duplicate content is very common on the Internet and is not the most effective online marketing strategy. According to Google, duplicate content is only problematic if it is considered to be spam. If the same content appears on several different websites, it will get ranked down or even banned if it is spam or if Google thinks an attempt to manipulate the system has been made. Therefore, it is important to take steps to ensure you give credit where it is due. Let Google know through various solutions such as canonicalization, which involves letting the search engine know which is the preferred page you want users to see. You can take care of this problem by using links to take users back to the website where the content originally appeared, or you can also avoid using duplicate content altogether.