Ranking a website on the search engine involves innumerable conditions and regulations everyone must adhere to. Without that, not only will the site get ranked with the lowest score possible but it will also impact the traffic and online visibility. But not everyone wishes to go through the hurdles of conceptualizing something unique and creative, which is why there are so many duplicated contents present on the search engines. While at a glance, they might not seem threatening.
But if you take a look at the SEO performance and ranking, you will realize how duplicity can negatively impact these variables. In fact, in many cases, duplicated sites are charged with copyright issues, thereby forcing the site owner to take down the entire webpage from the hosting server. So, before you hire SEO services in Ahmedabad, know about the risks of uploading duplicated content on your website and how it will impact the SEO determinants.
How does a website get duplicated content?
Understanding the causes of duplicity in website content will help you find its origin at the earliest before your online business takes the hit. So, we have discussed here the four major ways in which website contents can be duplicated or at least, they appear to be a replica of another source.
- Often a single webpage has multiple URLs with the same domain and page names. The differences are mostly present in the extension of the URL, like a CSS styling element. No matter what the URL is, all of them will point to the same page, even though each URL can be treated as an individual entity.
- If a website has dual versions of http extension, meaning http and https, it often leads to duplicated content. Although both are used as communication channels to send data over the server network, they will point to the same page. HTTPS is the secured version of HTTP, which is why keeping both versions active simultaneously can lead to duplicated content.
- Another way the website can have duplicated content is when it can be accessed both via www. and without it. Websites without the www. will have a separate address from that of the versions with this extension. However, once a user enters one website, he or she will be redirected to the original webpage version and see the same content through both URLs.
- Using copied content from another existing source on the internet on your website is also a form of duplicating the content. It is basically termed plagiarized content since you are using exactly the same thing that is already present and verified on the search engine.
Why duplicated content is a major threat to SEO?
Hiring reliable and trustworthy SEO services in Ahmedabad won’t be of any help if you fail to assess the damage duplicated content can do to your website’s SEO. That being said, let’s have a quick look at the impacts of having duplicated website content on search engines.
Lower organic traffic
Let’s say you have got excellent discounts on a dress from an e-commerce store. You will choose that over a branded store selling the same dress. The brand will start losing its customers if most people follow your path and choose the online website to purchase the apparel. The same happens when you have duplicated content on your website. Users with the same search intent will automatically visit the website having the same content as yours but with higher domain authority and better SERPs. You will lose a significant portion of the forecasted organic traffic due to the other website shadowing yours completely.
Confused crawler and indexing algorithms
Every website is subjected to an extensive crawling and indexing algorithm specific to the search engines. Let’s say the program has already crawled and indexed a website having the same content as yours. Now, when it visits your website, the program is bound to get confused as to where it should index the page. Such confusion will result in inaccurate search engine page results, thereby reducing your online visibility and pushing the webpage back in the list.
Loss of brand reputation and credibility
Having duplicated content is a clear sign that your brand lacks authenticity and credibility. With the growing digital ecosystems, users have become more diligent and cautious about choosing their online business partners. So, if they find your content to be present somewhere else on the search engine, they will perceive your services or products in the wrong light. Over time, if this issue persists, your brand will lose its reputation and won’t be able to generate the expected leads.
Lowered SEO performance
When multiple web pages have the same content, there will be extremely fierce competition to get higher ranks in the search engine page results. As a result, your website will struggle to deliver exceptional SEO performance, leading to reduced visibility, lower organic traffic, and poor search engine page result ranks. It will also reduce the impact of backlinks and lower the domain authority by a significant percentage.
Legal and copyright issues
Search engines like Google have introduced strict regulations and protocols for duplicated webpage content. So, if your website does have such elements, you might face legal and copyright issues from the site owner or Google itself. Your website will be taken down from the server and won’t be visible anymore to the audience. In such cases, you need to start working on the website again from scratch, meaning a huge monetary compensation and a waste of time.
Conclusion
There shouldn’t be any delay in handling duplicated content on your website otherwise it might cost you your online audience and brand credibility. So, it’s better to collaborate with a reputed and skilled digital marketing company offering expert SEO services in Ahmedabad. These professionals have in-depth market awareness and are diligent in preparing unique and non-plagiarized content for the websites. Besides, they will also help resolve the duplicate content problems related to the URLs.
