Top SEO Tips

Duplicate Content

It is believed that Google has been making adjustments to their algorithms targeting duplicate content.  This has resulted in some clients having part of their sites designated “supplemental” in Google’s results.  We suggest you regularly review your site content both for internal duplication (e.g., a “printer-friendly” version of the same text) and external duplication (i.e., someone plagiarizing your content on their site).

Google has provided recommendations for identifying and dealing with duplicate content at http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2006/12/deftly-dealing-with-duplicate-content.html.  This primarily addresses unintentional duplication within your own site.

A good tool for identifying where on the web your content appears is www.copyscape.com.  This free service allows up to 20 searches each month.  They also offer Premium and Copysentry services at different rates.  You simply type in the url of the page you want checked and it will return a list of all sites that have the same content.  We suggest you schedule a regular search for sites that have duplicated your content.

If you find that someone has lifted entire pages or chunks of your site, you can file a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) complaint with Google at http://www.google.com/dmca.html.  We have found that sending a warning letter to the site asking them to remove duplicated content under threat of a DMCA complaint usually achieved the desired response. If that fails, then you can always file an actual complaint.