SEO Plagiarism: How to Find and Prevent Duplicate Content

Content duplication, which can occur both internally and externally, can confuse search engines during website crawling. Internally, it happens when multiple pages within the same website share similar or identical content. Externally, it arises when content from one website is copied and reposted on others.

This confusion can adversely affect a website’s SEO ranking because search engines may struggle to determine the most authoritative version of the content. To help you avoid this, in this article, we’ll explain what duplicate content is, how you can spot it on your website, and ways to prevent it.

Ways to Identify Duplication in Your Content?

To avoid SEO penalties on duplicate content, it’s best to take precautionary measures both within your website and across all websites. Many duplicate content checkers can help you with this task:

Searchenginereports.net

Searchenginereports.net has various online utilities that go beyond what you’ll find to make your writing stand out. From the list, a plagiarism checker is one of the best services it offers. 

The plagiarism detector doesn’t just check billions of sources but highlights your article with risks such as potentially paraphrased sections, poor citations, and textual similarities. 

It works in multiple languages, so it can detect issues in different languages. This free plagiarism checker quickly check plagiarism and provides detailed reports and extensive database access to the full version.

PlagiarismRemover.net

PlagiarismRemover.net simplifies the process of content detection with its user-friendly services. Whether you want to check a URL or upload a file, you can do it hassle-free, saving you from the tedious copy/paste routine. 

This detector ensures accurate results promptly, avoiding unnecessary alerts for minor similarities. It utilizes advanced “deep search” technology to achieve this reliability.

Plagibot.com

Plagibot.com is another detection tool that spot the duplication of content. It helps the users spot their copied content and enables them to prevent any instance of duplication. 

The tool compares the posted content with texts available on the web and supports many languages, enhancing its plagiarism-checking capability. 

Users can check their entire content by uploading files in various formats, including Google Docs, PDFs, and Word documents. Plagibot.com offers real-time plagiarism detection services.

Check-Plagiarism.com

This AI-powered plagiarism checker uses advanced technology to accurately detect plagiarism throughout the entire content. Traditional plagiarism detectors only find exact matches of copied phrases. 

However, this plagiarism checker can check for plagiarism even when the content has been altered with synonyms. 

The free plagiarism checker can also identify accidental duplication, which can harm your credibility just as much.

How to Prevent Content Duplication?

Once you know what duplicate content is and how to find it, it is time to fix it. Here are some ways to do so:

 Write Unique Content

The best way to prevent duplication is to publish high-quality content that provides value to your audience. This helps to differentiate your website from others and reduces the chances of identical content. Invest your time in researching topics relevant to your niche and use your fresh perspectives on them.

This will help you to write in your own words without any fear. Only write the ideas in your own style and stop yourself from doing copy-paste work. And always source information from others by mentioning who wrote it or where it came from. 

This is what makes your content authentic and useful, with your own insights and opinions. If you have to incorporate details from a source, then rewrite the details using your language but retain the original message.

Create a 301 Redirect

When you have multiple pages with similar content, a 301 redirect can help you notify search engines about the main page where you want the users to direct.

For example, if you have shifted the domain of your online service to a new domain, then you must not leave it this way, as both pages will be considered duplicates, and search engines won’t be able to decide which one to rank. With 301 redirects, you’ll be able to direct the audience to the new page. 

This way, all the SEO value is transferred to the new page, making it more likely to rank higher in search results.

Add a Canonical Element

Another way to prevent SEO content duplication is by using a canonical tag, which is `rel=canonical`. This link informs search engines that the current webpage is a copy of another one, directing them to prioritize the specified original page in search results.

To use a canonical tag, add the “rel=canonical” attribute to the HTML head section of each duplicate page, including the URL of the original page within quotation marks.

This technique can also involve adding a link to the primary URL in the duplicate page’s header section. That way, search engines will know that the content on one page is just a copy of the primary URL’s content.

Use the Meta Robots No-Index Tag

The “noindex” tag, placed in a web page’s HTML header section, directs search engines to track the links but does not include the source itself in search results. It’s handy for dealing with replicated content issues, especially on pages where the content is the same but spread across different URLs.

This is a directive to the crawlers not to index a page or to remove it from the index in case it has already been indexed. Keep in mind that search engines take weeks or even months to identify the “noindex” on a previously-indexed site and remove it from their index!

Rewrite Your Content

If your content duplicates that of other sites, the best approach is to rewrite similar phrases. This makes your content unique and more valuable to your readers. When you paraphrase, use a keyword guide to ensure you’re still using the right keywords to improve your search engine ranking.

This strategy increases the likelihood that search engines will index your content because it remains relevant. But check the paraphrased version first to ensure the quality is still good.

Conclusion

When you work hard at optimizing your content, encountering duplicate content issues can be a pain. Although search engines have confirmed that they do not penalize websites for duplicate content, it does contribute negatively to SEO.

Now that you know what duplicate content is and how much of it isn’t intentional, use the tips to fix and prevent SEO duplicate content issues.