This article will guide you through the main reasons why duplicate content is a bad thing for your site, how to avoid it, and most importantly, how to fix it. What it is important to understand initially, is that the duplicate content that counts against you is your own. What other sites do with your content is often out of your control, just like who links to you for the most part Keeping that in mind.
How to determine if you have duplicate content.
When your content is duplicated you risk fragmentation of your rank, anchor text dilution, and lots of other negative effects. But how do you tell initially? Use the value factor. Ask yourself: Is there additional value to this content? Dont just reproduce content for no reason. Is this version of the page basically a new one, or just a slight rewrite of the previous? Make sure you are adding unique value. Am I sending the engines a bad signal? They can identify our duplicate content candidates from numerous signals. Similar to ranking, the most popular are identified, and marked.
How to manage duplicate content versions.
Every site could have potential versions of duplicate content. This is fine. The key...