A How question

How does an SEO company handle duplicate content?

3 min read Cites 2 sources

By finding where the same or nearly the same content is reachable at more than one address, deciding which address should represent it, and making every signal on the site agree with that choice. The fix depends on the cause: a redirect when the duplicate does not need to exist, a canonical link when it does, merging when several weak pages compete, and a request to partners when your content is republished elsewhere. Google’s guide to canonicalization says some duplicate content on a site is normal and not a violation of its spam policies, but duplication still splits links and attention between addresses and leaves Google to choose which one to show.

Where duplication comes from

Four sources account for the cases a company looks for. The same page can answer at several addresses: HTTP and HTTPS, with and without www, with and without a trailing slash, or in different letter cases. Parameters from filters, sorting, session IDs, and tracking codes can create many addresses for nearly the same content. Near-duplicate pages, such as location pages built from one template with only the town name changed, compete with each other. And your content can appear on other sites, either because you syndicated it or because someone copied it.

Finding it

A crawl of the whole site shows how many addresses are reachable compared with how many distinct pages exist. Search Console adds Google’s view: the Page indexing report groups pages Google treats as duplicates, and URL Inspection shows which address Google selected as canonical, which may not be the one you intended.

Choosing the fix

A permanent redirect is the fix when an address does not need to exist, such as the HTTP or non-www version of a page. A canonical link suits addresses that must stay reachable, such as filtered or sorted views, and tells Google which version you prefer; Google treats it as a strong signal rather than an instruction, so the rest of the site has to agree with it. Merging is the fix for near-duplicates: combine the useful content into one page and redirect the others to it. Noindex keeps a page out of search but does not say which page represents the content, so it is not a substitute for a canonical link.

Google’s guide to specifying canonical URLs adds rules that some setups break. It advises against using robots.txt for canonicalization, because “Google may still index URLs that are disallowed in robots.txt without their content.” It warns against naming different canonical URLs for the same page through different methods, such as one in the sitemap and another in the canonical link. And it notes that Google prefers HTTPS pages over equivalent HTTP pages as canonical, unless there are problems such as an invalid certificate or insecure dependencies on the HTTPS page.

Copies on other sites

When you syndicate an article, ask the partner to add a canonical link pointing to your original, and publish yours first so it can be found and indexed before the copies. When a site copies your content without permission, the remedy runs through the site’s host and, where it applies, Google’s legal removal process for copyright, not through changes to your own pages.

What duplication costs

The cost is dilution rather than punishment. When several addresses carry the same content, links and signals are spread across them, crawling time goes to copies instead of new pages, and the address Google shows may not be the one you would choose. Consolidating to one address per page is what the company is trying to achieve.

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