Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/143040
Tech Talk Duplicate Content: If You Fix It, They Will Come By David Limon, the owner of E-Commerce Signal david@davidlimon.com n the constant battle to add value to the World Wide Web, search engines are faced with the endless task of sifting through web pages filled with duplicate content in order to properly index and position high-quality pages. There are a few cases where duplicate content is purposely created with malicious intent but most duplicate content on the web today is generated by technical issues. For the record, malicious duplicate content is defined by Google as intentionally deceptive content designed by a website's publisher to increase traffic. It is considered as a form of spam and you can be penalized severely if intent is proven, so you want absolutely no part of this! In the case of technical issues creating duplicate content, a web page's link structure needs to be modified for technical reasons. When that happens, the following three links on the web would look like the same page to you and me but to search engines they are viewed as three separate pages: http://www.mysite.com/ranges/ http://www.mysite.com/ranges/?session_id=abc123 http://wwwmysite.com/ranges/?session_id=xyz789#specs I Left unfixed,visitors will link to all three versions of the page and search engines might index the wrong page, causing a domino effect of issues that begin with poor indexing, watered-down authority for each page, a drop in rank, and finally the ultimate price of decreased traffic to your site. Although this may not warrant penalties from Google, you can certainly see the negative impact it can create. There are many reasons duplicate content issues can occur but in this article we will address the most common causes, provide tips on how to identify problems on your site, and offer solutions for fixing duplicate content issues. Common Causes Content Provided by Others We all want our website to rank high in search engines and be seen as an authoritative site, so why not just add valuable original content instead of copying and pasting? In a rush? Limited resources? It may be quicker and easier to get your site up and running by "copy and pasting" others content to your site, but an abundance of copied content on your site could put you at risk of being dropped into the "malicious content" category. Aside 28 FEDA News & Views from search engines, another complication that could arise from using copied content is the sting of a lawsuit for accidentally using copyrighted material on your site. Though it is uncommon, it does happen. While I feel these are some of the greatest sources for acquiring content ideas in the foodservice industry, I also suspect they are the most commonly copied: • AutoQuotes • Factory descriptions • Factory specification sheets • Content provided by buying groups • "Borrowing" content from other foodservice sites The Solution: The obvious fix here is to add your own unique content.The benefits of adding your own far outweigh the negative impact of adding duplicate content to your website. Similar Products on Your Ecommerce Site When adding products to your ecommerce site, you can unintentionally add duplicate content by loading very similar items as multiple items. A great example of this would be loading a True GDM-23 with white, black, rosewood, and stainless steel exterior as four separate pages to your site. Even if the content were to be modified slightly, the content of all of these