April 16th, 2010 by Nick

Web content is crucial to your business and company as a whole. The web is one of the most popular places for members of the public to learn information or find out facts about a company. Potential business companies will also use it to compare products and services, and competitors will scour to find out information about you.

Avoiding duplicate copy is essential for many reasons but is particular important in terms of search engine optimization. Duplicate copy is not welcomed too well by search engines and can result in negative effects for your website when people are running searches. There are a few reasons why websites with the same copy are sometimes not popular within search engines and unfortunately this can result in your web page not showing up as well within online searches.

A good search engine has a reputation for providing searchers with a useful and varied selection of web pages for their search. For this reason, web pages with the same copy may not always be included in the search results, as the search engine may only select one of the links. There is little you can do to ensure it is your copy that is selected, so is best to avoid duplication altogether.

Web pages with duplicate copy will also not rank very well within a search engine, so even if your company does show up, it may be on a much later page, resulting in less clicks and traffic.

There are several areas where it can be difficult to avoid duplicate SEO copy but it is worth putting in a little bit of extra time to combat this problem. If you have a website which requires you to include descriptions of products, items or services then it can sometimes be impossible to avoid duplicate copy, particularly if you are selling other branded products on your site. Where possible, try to re-write your copy of products or at least include an introduction and then detail the actual product descriptions later.

Site mirroring and plagiarism are also common culprits for duplication. There are many sites which offer details of specific industries or services in one place, and these companies may mirror content on your site as part of their web content. Plagiarism is also very common unfortunately amongst web sites, especially with the increasing number of news sections on websites. There are several SEO tools you can use such as Copyscape and Plagiarismchecker websites and these are invaluable in identifying where someone is stealing your content and passing it off as their own.

Of course, there will be some instances where duplication is avoidable. Any important news headlines or press releases about your industry or company will usually have to appear consistent across the board. There is little that can be done about this and in these instances it is completely understandable, however, avoiding duplicate copy in as many areas as possible will ensure you have effective search engine optimisation and a higher search ranking.

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