Avoiding The Search Engine Duplicate Content Penalty

Let’s get back to the duplicate content problem with search engines that we talked about earlier. Most search engines have implemented duplicate content filters to remove duplicate or similar websites and web pages from their index. Periodically they will run their duplicate content filter and eliminate pages, and in some cases whole domains, from their index. If you are using canned affiliate pages or reprint articles on your website how can you avoid having your pages delisted?

Duplicate content is found all over the Internet but not all of it results in a penalty by the search engines. For instance, sites like yahoo.com, google.com, about.com, wikipedia.com and many others reprint duplicate information that can be found elsewhere without it being considered duplicate content. You can use the same methods they use to avoid a duplicate content penalty on your web pages.

The first thing you need to do is give your pages unique title, description and keyword meta tags. If you are copying a page make certain you edit these tags before you publish the page.

Another important modification you need to make is to rewrite some of the content or add new unique content to the page. Not just a few words or sentences but anywhere from 15% to 30% of the content should be rewritten or be new, unique content.

An easy way you can insert random content into website is to use a script that will insert random quotes or paragraphs into your web pages. Many such scripts are available but make sure you use one that uses php code so the content will be placed into your pages by the server. That way the search engines will see the content. Do not use a java script to add content. Java script is not read by search engine robots and the script will not be able to insert content that can be read by the bots.

You can also re-arrange the content on the page so it reads a little different. If you have a list of urls and snippets make sure you rearrange them into your own order. If you have a multi-paragraph article, rewrite parts of the article and change some of the paragraphs around. Try not to change the meaning or cohesiveness of the article but make changes that set your version apart from others.

If you notice new pages dropping out of the search engine indexes in 15 to 45 days after inclusion, you probably didn’t do enough to avoid the penalty and need to rework those pages. Once bumped out of the index you may find it will take some time to get the page re-indexed.

If you follow these suggestions you can rest comfortably that your web pages will most likely not have any duplicate content problems with the search engines. Will these methods work forever? Probably not. Search engines are constantly changing the rules and you have to keep on top of the changes they make. The best rule to follow is to make your website as unique as possible and provide information your visitors find useful.