How to verify duplicate content issues with a solutions: A descriptive guide

It's tempting to believe that SEO is only about link building. There are so many postings covering the newest updates on what links are good or bad that we forget about the significant improvements we can achieve by simply resolving errors on our site. Duplicate content is a major cause of lost visitors and rankings. Fortunately, you have ownership over your website, so you can correct it. Download ebooks to gain extensive knowledge about them.
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Table of Content:
What Exactly Is Duplicate Content?
Why is duplicate content important?
Detecting Duplicate Content
1) Webmaster Tools by Google
2) Frog Screaming
Getting Rid of Duplicate Content
Other approaches to dealing with redundant content

What Exactly Is Duplicate Content?
Duplicate content happens when search engines index more than a single version of a page. When there are numerous versions of a website indexed, search engines struggle to determine which page to display for just a suitable search query.

Source: Safalta

Search engines strive to deliver the greatest user experience possible, which implies they will rarely display duplicate material. Instead, users will be compelled to select the version they believe is best suited to that query.

Why is duplicate content important?
In terms of search engines:
Duplicate content can cause three major problems for search engines:

• They are unsure which version(s) to also include or remove from their indexes.
• They are unsure whether to consolidate the link metrics (trust, authority, anchor text, link equity, and so on) on a single page or maintain them separately across several editions.
• They are unsure as to which version(s) to prioritize for query results.

For site owners:
Site owners may incur ranking and traffic losses if duplicate material is present. These losses are frequently caused by two major issues:

• Search engines would rarely provide numerous versions of the same information to provide the greatest search experience, forcing them to determine which version would be most likely to produce the best result. This reduces the visibility of each copy.
• Because other sites must select amongst the duplicates, link equity might be further diluted. Instead of all incoming links directing to the same piece of content, they connect to several pieces, distributing link equity among some of the duplicates. Since inbound links are indeed a ranking component, this might affect a piece of content's search exposure.

Detecting Duplicate Content
Google Webmaster Tools & Screaming Frog are two tools you may use to identify duplicate content issues on your website.

1) Webmaster Tools by Google
You can simply locate pages with duplicate titles and meta descriptions using Google Webmaster Tools. Simply select "HTML Improvements" from the "Search Appearance" menu. By selecting one of these options, you may see which pages contain duplicated meta descriptions & page names.

2) Frog Screaming
You can use the screaming frog web crawler to crawl 500 pages for free. This tool allows you to conduct a variety of activities, like identifying duplicate content issues.

Meta Descriptions/Page Titles:
Duplicate page titles can be found by selecting the "Page Titles" or "Meta Description" tab and filtering for "Duplicate."

URLs:
You may also locate pages with several URL versions by selecting the "URL" tab and sorting by "Duplicate."

Getting Rid of Duplicate Content
Duplicate content is indeed a problem that can harm both organic traffic and web rankings, but it is readily remedied. The following are the three quickest approaches to address duplicated content issues:

1) Tag Canonical
You can inform search engines which version of a page you wish to return for relevant search queries by using the canonical tag. A web page's header contains the canonical tag. When you want to make different versions of a page accessible to users, the canonical tag is the ideal option. If you're utilizing the HubSpot COS, this will be handled automatically, eliminating the need for manual labor.

2) Redirect 301
All legacy pages will be redirected to a new URL through a 301 redirect. It instructs Google to transfer all link authority from all these pages towards the new URL and rank it for related search queries.
When there is no need for multiple variations of a page to be available, the 301 redirect is the ideal alternative.

3) Meta Descriptions
You can use meta tags to instruct search engines not to index a specific page. Meta tags are most useful when you want a page to be visible to the user but not indexed, such as terms and conditions. Duplicate material is a genuine issue for websites, but it can easily be solved by following the suggestions above. 

Other approaches to dealing with redundant content

• When linking inside a website, maintain consistency. For example, if a webmaster finds that www.example.com/ is the canonical version of a domain, then all internal links should point to http://www.example.co... rather than http://example.com/pa.. (notice the absence of www).
• When syndicating content, ensure that the syndicating website includes a link to the original content rather than a variant on the URL.
• To prevent content scrapers from taking SEO credit for your content, add a self-referential rel=canonical link to your current pages. It's a canonical attribute that points to the URL it is already on, to discourage the goal of discouraging scrapers.

Duplicate content happens when search engines index more than one version of a page. When there are numerous versions of a website indexed, search engines struggle to determine which page to show for a relevant search query.

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