Introduction
Scope of content writing has increased to a great extent in recent years. But there is a need to understand that the content must be unique enough for posting on the internet and it must not be a duplicate content.
Term of duplicate content generally applies to the content that exists on internet at more than one place. Normally the content has a specific website address or URL that is known as its location. But in case of duplicate content, it appears at more than one websites. Whether you are a Dubai based company or you are working out of Dubai, your content must be unique. Even the digital agency who prepares content on the demand of their clients, they pay considerable attention to this phenomenon as duplicate content is not acceptable and can cost a lot to your online website, blog, brand and business in multiple ways.
Penalty for duplicate content
Actually no penalties are there for duplicate content that is displayed on websites. But people consider duplicate content as penalty for the reasons how Google handle it in first place. Actually duplicate content can cause many problems for search engines and site owners.
- Problem for search engines: Duplicate content can affect working of search engines in many ways. Firstly, it is not possible for search engines to decide which content version should be included or excluded from the indices. Secondly, they do not know which version should be ranked for query typed by the user.
- Problem for site owner: Duplicate content can create problems for any site owner whether your website is Dubai based or any other website in the world. Search engines want to provide best user experience so they are forced to choose between most authentic version of a content and do not show multiple copies of same content, resultantly reducing visibility of every duplicate. This way, as site owner even if you have put hard work in writing content but your content is duplicate, it may never be shown to readers.
How can you find duplicate content?
Mastering the field of content writing is not enough. After polishing your skills in this field, there is a need to understand that how to avoid duplicate content. For example, if you are a Dubai based website and you have prepared the content, it is not enough. You have to make your content unique and you can do this by using some tools otherwise it will be difficult to optimize your website for SEO in Dubai. Below is the list of few techniques and tools you can use to avoid duplicate content.
- CopyScape: This is a well known and well established content checker tool that frequently monitors the webs for the copy of your content. It automatically notifies you in case of finding some duplicate content. Siteliner is called the sister site of CopyScape and it is known for its advanced features. In addition to the CopyScape features, it can scan internal sites. It can find not only the broken links but also it creates the XML sitemaps.
It is quite easy to check your content through CopyScape. Just copy your website URL and paste it into the search bar. It will provide you with instant results. You can see that how many results are available that show your matching content.
- With the help of Google: Duplicate content can be checked with help of your desired search engine. You just have to copy approximately 32 words from your text and search it with Google or any other search engine. It will deliver all the matching results with your search query. This is an effective way of searching the duplicate web content. Digital agency who deals with SEO in Dubai, use this technique to properly optimize their content and make it unique.
How to solve the problem of Duplicate content
It is a matter of fact that most of the website owners do not try to create a duplicate content intentionally. Sometimes duplicate content is created unintentionally and it is said that up to 29% of the website content is actually a duplicate content. Not only in Dubai, but in the world, websites are facing issues of duplicate content. Now look at the ways that can prove handy in fixing the issue of Duplicate content.
- 301 redirect: The most comprehensive way to fix this issue is to create a 301 redirect. If one URL is auctioned as a canonical then 301 redirect can be used for sending traffic from many other URLs to your specified and preferred url so that users are always directed to right web page. It also helps in ending competition among many same pages which are otherwise competing with each other on your site.
- Meta robots no index/follow tag: This tag is recommended because no-index value guides a search engine to avoid indexing of a certain page. As a result, it removes the duplicate content. A Meta robot is a very good solution for dealing with duplicate content.
- ReI=canonical: This tag is quite similar to 301 redirect but there is no need of high technical SEO knowledge in reI. It guides the search engines that a certain page must be treated as it were a copy of some specific URL and all the content metrics, links and ranking powers must be credited to this specific URL.
- Site maps: Use of site maps is recommended for larger websites to avoid duplicate content. This map can display to Google that what are the most important pages on the site. A canonical URL is selected for each web page and then submitted in sitemap to Google Search console. It enables crawler to identify if there are any duplicate pages on the website.
Conclusion
In short, it is not enough to master the technique of content writing. There is a need to understand the ways how duplicate content can be avoided to enhance its ranking in search engines for SEO. Every digital agency should make sure content is not duplicating for SEO in Dubai as it can badly effect business growth.
