How to Avoid and Detect Duplicate Content on your Website

Google and other search engines are intelligent and can tell when content on your site is not original. They’re also really good at picking up when multiple pages on the same website or across different websites are all carrying the same content. This is called duplicate content, and it is a common SEO problem. Google Search Console describes Duplicate content as “substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar.” Google’s definition of duplicate content is phrased intentionally inclusive even if it isn’t the whole page or if you only make slight tweaks or changes in an attempt to avoid an exact match. When the same content appears on multiple pages, it can confuse search engines and users. Google doesn’t want to show multiple pages of the same content in their search results, so the search engine will pick a priority page and filter the other pages with duplicate content. Unfortunately, only one of the duplicate pages will typically appear for users. Therefore, it’s essential to avoid or minimize similar content if you want to rank high in the search engine results.