Google’s Search Central group has launched a brand new video in its “search engine optimization Made Straightforward” collection. In it, Search Advocate Martin Splitt addresses frequent considerations about duplicate content material and offers sensible options for web site house owners.
Key Takeaways
Regardless of considerations within the search engine optimization group, Google insists that duplicate content material doesn’t hurt a web site’s perceived high quality.
Splitt states:
“Some individuals assume it influences the perceived high quality of a web site but it surely doesn’t. It does trigger some challenges for web site house owners although, as a result of it’s more durable to trace efficiency of pages with duplicates.”
Nevertheless, it will probably create a number of operational challenges that web site house owners ought to tackle:
- Issue in monitoring web page efficiency metrics
- Potential competitors between comparable content material items
- Slower crawling speeds, particularly at scale
Splitt provides:
“It’d make comparable content material compete with one another and it will probably trigger pages to take longer to get crawled if this occurs at a bigger scale. So it’s not nice and is one thing you may need to clear up, but it surely isn’t one thing that you must lose sleep over.”
Three Options
1. Implement Canonical Tags
Splitt recommends utilizing canonical tags in HTML or HTTP headers to point most popular URLs for duplicate content material.
Whereas Google treats these as recommendations fairly than directives, they assist information the search engine’s indexing selections.
Splitt clarifies:
“This tag is commonly used incorrectly by web site house owners so Google search can’t depend on it and treats it as a touch however may select a unique URL anyway.”
2. Handle Inner Hyperlinks and Redirects
When Google chooses totally different canonical URLs than specified, web site house owners ought to:
- Evaluation and replace inner hyperlinks to level to most popular canonical URLs
- Contemplate implementing 301 redirects for exterior hyperlinks
- Guarantee redirects are appropriately configured to keep up web site efficiency
3. Consolidate Comparable Content material
Probably the most strategic strategy includes combining comparable pages to:
- Enhance consumer expertise
- Streamline Search Console reporting
- Cut back web site muddle
Splitt explains:
“When you discover that you’ve a number of very comparable pages, even when Google doesn’t think about them duplicates, attempt to mix them. It makes info simpler to search out on your customers, will make reporting in Google Search Console simpler to work with, and can scale back muddle in your web site.”
Search Console Notices
Google Search Console could flag pages with varied duplicate content material notices:
- “Duplicate with out user-selected canonical”
- “Alternate web page with correct canonical tag”
- “Duplicate Google selected totally different canonical than consumer”
These notifications point out that Google has listed the content material, probably below totally different URLs than initially supposed.
Worldwide search engine optimization Issues
Splitt addresses duplicate content material in worldwide contexts, noting that comparable content material throughout a number of language variations is appropriate and dealt with appropriately by Google’s techniques.
He states:
“When you discover that you’ve a number of very comparable pages, even when Google doesn’t think about them duplicates, attempt to mix them. It makes info simpler to search out on your customers, will make reporting in Google Search Console simpler to work with, and can scale back muddle in your web site.”
Why This Issues
This steering represents Google’s present stance on duplicate content material and clarifies finest practices for content material group and URL construction optimization.
See the complete video beneath:
Featured Picture: AnnaKu/Shutterstock
