In the world of search engine optimization (SEO), ensuring authentic content and removing duplicate data is key. The same applies for your content management system. Search Engine Land brought this interesting topic to our attention in their article, “5 ways to avoid duplicate content and indexing issues on your e-commerce site.”

It could be anything from some boilerplate text on your web site to a product description on your e-commerce web page borrowed from the original seller. Maybe it is a quote you copied from your favorite blog post or an authority in your niche. Unique content is important and most everyone struggles to keep it 100% authentic.

While Google doesn’t penalize sites for duplicate content, it does discourage it. Duplicate content is generally defined as substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar. When search bots crawl your site, they will ascertain that this content is present several times on your site and deem it duplicate content. However, search engine bots are sophisticated enough to understand that the intention behind this content duplication is not malicious.

Melody K. Smith

Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in taxonomies, metadata, and semantic enrichment to make your content findable.