Jargon buster: What is duplicate content?

Duplicate content is content that’s repeated in large chunks on different URLs.

This can occur on different websites or within the same one.

Regardless, it should be avoided as it leads search engines to give these pages lower rankings, which in turn leads to reduced traffic.

There are several ways you can end up with duplicate content within your website.

You could have canonicalisation issues, you could be rendering the same content with various parameters appended to your URLs, or you could be replicating untranslated content onto different language versions of your website.

It’s a good idea to regularly conduct duplicate content audits on your website to identify any repetitions and fix them as soon as possible.

Be aware that if you have translated versions of your website, that isn’t classed as duplicate content – even if the meaning is the same.

Do you have any terms that you’d like us to cover in Jargon Buster? Let us know in the comments below!