What is the best way to resolve duplicate content issue
-
Hi
I have a client whose site content has been scraped and used in numerous other sites. This is detrimental to ranking. One term we wish to rank for is nowhere.
My question is this: what's the quickest way to resolve a duplicate content issue when other sites have stolen your content?
I understand that maybe I should firstly contact these site owners and 'appeal to their better nature'. This will take time and they may not even comply.
I've also considered rewriting our content. Again this takes time.
Has anybody experienced this issue before? If so how did you come to a solution?
Thanks in advance.
-
No worries Alex
I mean, contacting the webmasters would technically be simpler, but the chances that you're going to get a response, never mind a take-down of your content, is going to be pretty slim. Hence I suggested the rewriting.
It's a pain in the arse and requires you to do more work because of someone's laziness, which if course isn't right. But hopefully, with the fresh content and the tags in place, you'll be given the full credit.
In addition, if any of the content come in the form of blog posts, or if you'd like to do this site-wide, implementing a rel=author tag and verifying Google authorship would again be a signal to Google that your content is original. Here are a couple of handy guides to help with the markup:
http://searchengineland.com/the-definitive-guide-to-google-authorship-markup-123218
http://www.vervesearch.com/blog/seo/how-to-implement-the-relauthor-tag-a-step-by-step-guide/
-
Hi Tom
That's a great help.
I just wanted to ensure there wasn't a simpler solution besides rewriting the content. I guess that is the easiest and will ensure canonical tag solution is implemented too.
Thanks.
-
Hi Alex
I think the best solution here and the one that you can control the most is to rewrite the content and then ensure that your new content is seen as the originator.
Rewriting the content will take time, but obviously ensures that the content is unique, removing the duplicate content issue.
If I were you, I would then use a rel=canonical tag solution, so that every page (and new page) has a canonical tag on it.
Among other things, this will tell Google that your site is the originator of this content. Any other versions of it on your site or across the web is being used purely for user experience and therefore should not be ranked over the original.
As you will be publishing the content first, it should be crawled first by the search engines as well. To ensure that it is, I would also share your pages on social media when they go live, as it helps to index the pages much quicker.
This way, the site scraping your content should (in theory) not be able to rank for the content - or at the very least will be seen by Google as the copier of the content, while you will be seen as the originator, due to being indexed first with the canonical tag.
You can read more on canonicals with this handy Moz guide.
Hope this helps.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Unsolved Duplicate Contents in Order Pages of Multiple Products
Hi, I have a website containing 30 software products. Each product has an order page. The problem is that the layout and content of these 30 order pages are very similar, except for the product name, for example: https://www.datanumen.com/access-repair-order/
On-Page Optimization | | ccw
https://www.datanumen.com/outlook-repair-order/
https://www.datanumen.com/word-repair-order/ Siteliner has reports these pages as duplicate contents. I am thinking of noindex these pages. However, in such a case, if a user search for "DataNumen Outlook Repair order page", then he will not be able to see the order page of our product, which drives the revenue go away. So, how to deal with such a case? Thank you.1 -
Facing issue with mobile device- Largest Contentful Paint
I'm facing a issue with our website. Our site is on WordPress, We are using Elementor Pro & Elementor Hello Theme for our website!
On-Page Optimization | | kacey.meier
The problem is, with desktop it's totally fine but but in Mobile Device it's showing Error. "Largest Contentful Paint" 2021-07-27_111351.png0 -
Magento - How to avoid duplicate content on products that span different sites.
We have 4 Magento store fronts that operate out of the same backend. Is there any way to safely have products that span multiple stores without getting a duplicate content penalty? thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | Shop-Sq0 -
Mass Duplicate Content
Hi guys Now that the full crawl is complete I've found the following: http://www.trespass.co.uk/mens-onslow-02022 http://www.trespass.co.uk/mens-moora-01816 http://www.trespass.co.uk/site/writeReview?ProductID=1816 http://www.trespass.co.uk/site/writeReview?ProductID=2022 The first 2 duplicate content is easily fixed by writing better product descriptions for each product (a lot of hours needed) but still an easy fix. The last 2 are review pages for each product which are all the same except for the main h1 text. My thinking is to add no index and no follow to all of these review pages? The site will be changing to magento very soon and theres still a lot of work to do. If anyone has any other suggestions or can spot any other issues, its appreciated. Kind regards Robert
On-Page Optimization | | yournetbiz1 -
Events in Wordpress Creating Duplicate Content Canonical Issues
Hi, I have a site which uses Event Manager Pro within Wordpress to create Events (as custom post types on my blog. I use it to advertise cookery classes. In a given month I might run one type of class 4 times. The event page I have made for each class is the same and I duplicate it 4 times and just change the dates to promote it. The problem is with over 10 different classes, which are then duplicated up to 4 times each per month. I get loads of duplicate content errors. How can I fix this without redirecting people away from the correct page for the date they are interested in? Is it best just to use a no follow for ALL events and rely on the other parts of my site for SEO? Thanks, T23
On-Page Optimization | | tekton230 -
How to avoid content duplication of my websites
Hello, We are having 4 domains abc.com, abc.in, abc.co.uk, abc.com.au with same content and same inner pages (abc.com/page1, abc.in/page1 etc.) targeting on different geographical areas. How can we avoid duplicate content issue in the home page as well as in the inner pages. Abc.com is the major site. Thank you.
On-Page Optimization | | semvibe0 -
Duplicate content issue with dynamically generated url
Hi, For those who have followed my previous question, I have a similar one regarding dynamically generated urls. From this page http://www.selectcaribbean.com/listing.html the user can make a selection according to various criteria. 6 results are presented and then the user can go to the next page. I know I should probably rewrite url's such as these: http://www.selectcaribbean.com/listing.html?pageNo=1&selType=&selCity=&selPrice=&selBeds=&selTrad=&selMod=&selOcean= but since all the results presented are basically generated on the fly for the convenience of the user, I am afraid google my consider this as an attempt to generate more pages as there are pages for each individual listing. What is my solution for this? Nofollow these pages? Block them thru robots txt?
On-Page Optimization | | multilang0 -
Keyword Ranking Issue..
Hello Guys, I have a small doubt in top ten rankings, i worked for one keyword "Domain Sales" in which my website was ranking in 5th position, but suddently i saw my website no rank in top 100 for the same keyword. Not able to track the what is the problem? Any help..
On-Page Optimization | | itajooba0