According to the former head of Google’s spam team, Matt Cutts, “twenty-five to thirty percent of all content on the web is duplicate content.” That’s a shocking statistic!

Oftentimes, users aren’t aware of the duplicate content being pointed to their URLs because they’re on the same domain. Google works hard to filter those. However, major problems arise when duplicate content surfaces on different domains.

What are different domains? In layman’s terms, two completely different websites.

While some forms of duplicate content are unavoidable (re-published press releases and guest blogs), your website can avoid red flags when published properly.

Why is duplicate content bad?

Search engine ranking is a very competitive process. It’s a ranking war out there! With that, many people go to great lengths to get their website ranking at the top faster. Nothing short of plagiarism and stealing other website’s content.

Not only is this unethical, it will affect that ranking of your website, and possibly get it removed from Google’s index. Taking that risk is never worth it.

What kinds of duplicate content across different websites will get you in trouble?

There are a few you probably didn’t know about.

Product descriptions from manufacturer websites.
It’s always a good idea to reword product descriptions. Copy-pasted product descriptions aren’t indexed in search engines, making it a slim chance your products will display as a top search result.

Original content always wins. Not only will it define your brand, search engines will reward you for it.

Site disclaimers and legal notices on different domains.
There are countless disclaimers and legal notices on the internet. Because of this, it’s always best to have these notices written in a way that is specific to your niche.

What to do if you discover duplicate content?

If you discover any of your website content has been stolen and used on another website, your first step is to take screenshots of the duplicates in addition to your original source.

From there, reach out to the website owner and kindly ask for the duplicate content to be removed accompanied by the screenshots you’ve already taken. If an easy resolution can’t be reached, we highly recommend you check out iMPACT CRO expert, Christin Austin’s plan of attack.

Duplicate content can be a frustrating discovery when trying to get your website to rank higher in the best way possible. By consulting a professional web developer in your area, you can assure that the content you produce on your website is original and published appropriately.