Duplicate Content On Your Blog. The Right Way to Handle It.
Posted in Anatomy of a Blog, How To, SEO on March 4th, 2008 by DB
Let me start by explaining the problem. Google and it’s not so illustrious counterparts do not take duplicate content lightly. Content is perceived to be repetitive or duplicate in nature if more than 30% of it is similar to existing indexed content. If your website or blog happens to be the one that is hosting duplicate content, your website will be docked or banned entirely.
Duplicate content within the same blog. This is where it gets interesting. Technically it is not duplicate content but since the same content is pulled up when you view your Home page, Post, Category or Archives, the general perception is that search engines will flag your site as hosting duplicate content and your SERP’s will take a hit.
I tend to differ with this opinion. C’mon folks, there are hundreds of thousands of blogs created everyday. Search engines have been indexing blogs and can identify if a website is a blog and/or are using a blogging tool or platform. I find it very hard to believe that Search Engines are not smart enough to factor this into their algorithm and when they find duplicate content in the afore mentioned pages, they simply go ahead and dock you for it.
Does this mean that you go ahead and ignore the issue? Remember I am talking about the same content being displayed on different pages on the same blog. While I believe that Search Engines tend to forgive you in the above scenario, I also believe that we must and should make it simpler for the search engines and not leave anything to chance.
So what’s the best way to handle duplicate content? I have read and seen many plugins on the market that insert a “noindex” and sometimes a “nofollow” tag into the Archive or Category pages claiming that this will solve the problem. Yes, it does solve the problem but is it the right solution? By adding a “noindex” tag to my page I am effectively telling Google and Co to NOT index my page. Why would I want to do that? My goal should be to get the maximum number of pages indexed, get all my pages ranked and use up all the link juice and keywords I have.
Enough of the long rant, tell me the solution already!!! Ok Ok, no need to rush me here. The best way to handle duplicate content on a blog would be to handle it at the theme level. Your blog theme must be smart enough to NOT display the complete post in the Archive, Category or Home Page. Either only the post title or a short excerpt would suffice. The only place where you should see the complete content then would be the Post detail itself. This way I eliminate duplicate content on my blog, I will have all my pages indexed, I build PR on my Archive and Category pages and the world and my blog in particular is a better place.
Again seriously guys I wouldn’t worry about this too much. I really think we are over reacting to this whole duplicate content on the very SAME blog. We must be more worried about content being ripped off and hosted on a different website or blog altogether. Now that is a duplicate content scenario that is valid, troublesome and more relevant to focus upon. Why? Because in this scenario, Google and friends will whip out the red card, possibly flag your blog for copyright violation even if it is the other guy ripping off your content and before you know it, your site will disappear from the face of this cruel and unforgiving virtual world.
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