Different types of content issues may plague a site – from URL-based content issues down to physical duplicate content which are actually replicated from page to page without many alterations. As if that weren’t enough, you also have other WordPress-specific duplicate content issues to worry about, such as duplicate content on product pages as well as category pages. Identifying duplicate content issues is a very crucial part of your SEO audit.
What Is Duplicate Content?
Duplicate content is content which appears on the Internet in more than one location. That ‘one place’ is defined as a location with a unique website address (URL). Thus, if the same content shows at more than one web address, you’ve got duplicate content.
While not strictly a penalty, duplicate content may still sometimes impact search engine rankings. When there are a number of different pieces of, as Google calls it “appreciably similar” content, in more than one place on the location, it may be very difficult for search engines to decide which version is more pertinent to a given search query.
An automated duplicate content checker tool is quickly and easily able to help you determine where such content exists on your website, even if hidden in the site code. Such tools need to display each URL and meta description that contain duplicate content so that you are able to methodically perform the work of addressing these issues. The most obvious practice is to remove repeated content or add new, original copy as a replacement.
There are a number of other approaches which you might find valuable.
