Duplicate content

Imagine you've finally cracked the code to your favorite cake recipe. You share the recipe with your friend and he decides to bake the cake for his birthday. You proudly tell the party that it's your recipe, but he takes credit for it too. Now the birthday party is scratching their heads in confusion. Who came up with the recipe?

This is the same as duplicate content on the internet. It's when the same content is found on multiple landing pages and websites.

The problem with duplicate content is that search engines like Google can have a hard time deciding which version is the original or most valuable. If there are multiple identical recipes out there, the search engine may only show one version in their search results or even downrank both.

To avoid this, it's best to create original content that stands out. Think about adding your own personal flavor to the recipe or giving it a unique twist.

To understand how duplicate content can occur, it's important to distinguish between internal and external causes - which are either consciously or unconsciously copied.

Your website should only be accessible in one way:
If your website can be accessed both with and without "www" in the URL, there is a high probability of duplicate content.

You have multiple versions of the same product page:
If you have multiple versions of the same product pages that appear under different categories, duplicate content can occur. It's important to make sure your products have the same URL - no matter which categories they belong to and how many.

You have sorting and filtering on your products:
If your users can sort and filter your products on the website, it can create new pages with different URLs but with the same content. Therefore, it's important to have your web developer add a canonical tag to all duplicate pages to help search engines like Google understand that the content is original.

You have a printer-friendly version of your page with its own URL:
You should make sure that the printer-friendly page is not intercepted and displayed by Google, as the printer-friendly page has the same content as your original page.