Google is the world’s preeminent search engine and by far the most popular and widely used across the globe.
When it comes to increasing your online awareness, its algorithms consider a number of factors in determining how to value your content and your webpages, and you certainly don’t want to get on the bad side of this industry leader.
That being said, duplicate content is not subject to the worst penalties, so why should you worry? The truth is that even without severe penalties from Google, duplicate content can still end up costing you in more ways than one…
What is duplicate content?
Duplicate content is, quite simply, content that appears on the internet in more than one place. Content can only be in one ‘place’, or specific URL, at any given time. If it exists on more than one web address it is classified as duplicate content.
When this occurs, search engines like Google generally struggle to decide which is the real, or more relevant, content to display. Simply copying content from another site or creating what Google calls ‘appreciably similar content’ may not lead to severe penalties from the search engine, but it is still a bad idea.
Even using the same content in multiple places within your own company can cause issues, though it is up to you whether you are happy to deal with the effects or not. Google Analytics can help you see if there are certain issues with your website, but it is best to create unique content each time and avoid any potential issues.
Why should you avoid duplicate content?
Duplicate content creates problems both for search engines and for you. For search engines like Google the main issues are:
- They don’t know which version or versions to include or exclude from their index
- They don’t know which version or versions to rank in the results pages (and may decide to rank none at all!)
- They don’t know how to direct any links
- As if that wasn’t bad enough, using duplicate content can also cause problems for you. These include:
- Diluting the effectiveness of each of the duplicates – so even if you duplicate your own work, it really isn’t worth it
- Not appearing in the results – the point of content is to drive traffic and engagement, which is hard to do if no one will actually see it
- Making your links less valuable – links are an important ranking factor for Google and other search engines, so by diluting these links you are further harming your position in the search engine results pages.
So, why should you create unique new content?
If you want to create the best strategy for SEO in Dubai to reach and maintain the highest ranking on Google, your site should only use unique and creative content. The downsides to using content that is duplicated are clear.
Since content is created to gain attention, customers and links, the fact that these benefits don’t exist with duplicate content should be enough to dampen any urges to ‘save’ on time and money by duplicating content for your webpages.
Creating new, unique content will definitely have a much bigger impact on the success and growth of your site, and will more than pay for itself in the end.
After all, if you want to stand out from the crowd, you’re going to have to find your own voice.