Duplicate Content Issues Answered

How many times have you been warned about duplicate content? Sites that have exactly the same content may trigger a red flag from the search engines. Duplicate content is one of the many factors that the search engines abhor. But before you develop a deeper revulsion for duplicate content, let me tell you that there are cases where duplicate content becomes acceptable.

It is true. Duplicate content has somehow tolerable uses. So when is it legitimate to have duplicate content? This issue has given birth to a whole lot of similar issues tackling about the legitimacy of having sites with duplicate content. Here are some of the instances when duplicate content can somehow be considered as acceptable.

When Is Duplicate Content Tolerated?

• The same product listings on two different sites. If you want to include a product listing on two sites that you both own, the search engines may be able to tolerate the case.


• If a particular site has reprinted or copied a particular content from another site, this will be tolerated as long as the copying site has the right to do it with author credits.


• There are webmasters and website owners who would like to create two pages for the same item. One page would be the standard site page and the other one would be a printer friendly page. This would mean that the two pages would have the same content but it is acceptable.


• For reasons that you may not be able to explain, there are cases wherein there appears an odd duplicated page on your site. This usually happens to some sites and this is an honest error.


• Duplicate content may be a product of some errors on the site. By errors, I mean the unintentional ones.

Why Google Penalize Duplicate Content Sites

Other than these reasons, duplicate content can get your site penalized. Having sites with duplicate content is something to worry about. Google and the other search engines are always on the look out for tricks like duplicate content. They do this for three reasons:

• To prevent duplicate content sites on the internet. Online users will not benefit from browsing different sites with exactly the same content. Replicate sites have exactly the same content including titles and even codes.


• To avoid what others called scraping – a method used by others to duplicate a particular site. This arouses the issue of copyrights.


• To avoid impassive PLR articles for replicated sites.

It is important to create unique and relevant content to your website. Though there are instances where duplicate content may be tolerated, most of the time it is abhorred. To avoid being penalized and keep your website from being banned, exert some effort to provide your website the content it needs rather than copying from other sites!

Create a unique and relevant content for your website to avoid penalty from the search engines. Need help on site content? Please see our SEO Services or apply for a Free SEO Analysis.