An article published recently on newsfeed website Brafton states what most white-hat SEO professionals already know: duplicate content is harmful to SEO. The article states, essentially, that having duplicated content between two pages can affect page rank, as both pages are then labeled as spam. In some cases, pages buried in a website, such as products, often get away with this, but duplicated content on a category page, subcategory page, or blog? In this case, be prepared for your ranks to fall.

Search engine algorithms have come a long way since the 1990s, and Google, as well as Yahoo and Bing, are constantly refining and revising their algorithms. Google, in particular, does its best to filter out spam. Generally, spam on the search engines is seen as something that duplicates or repeats. Hence why keyword-saturated content from non-writers is now considered an outdated practice and web content or SEO copywriters are needed. Better content written by better writers typically means that the information on the page will be less likely to be labeled as spam.

Between pages, however, is where the issue of duplicated content comes into play. With an SEO team, no two pages of content, and this includes page content, meta descriptions, and title tags, should be identical. This can be difficult when writing content for identical websites but, with skilled writers, they should be able to craft however many new pages on content on one topic with originality.

Essentially, when considering your website, make sure that no content is duplicated, especially on the larger pages. Whether working with an SEO team or working on your own, make every effort possible so that the content on all pages is unique and original. Even with similar websites or similar keywords, the wording for all aspects of content should be different.