As an SEO consultant you should be fully aware that both searchers and search engines love unique, fresh, quality information. However it is not uncommon to come across sites that repeating content issues either created accidentally or deliberately. Duplicate content has become a huge topic of discussion and has gained it’s hazardous meaning thanks to new search engine filters.

Duplicate content using it’s general meaning relates to pages with identical or similar content either in the same domain or spread across external web pages. The information that is classed as duplicate does not have to be exact and could simply be appreciably similar.

There is so much talk flying around about what percentage of your page would need to be similar to another in order for it to fall into the duplicate content category and harm your site. However there is no distinct test and search engines would never base their decisions on a simple test of content percentage, in fact search engines do take into account other factors such as site authority, domain age, link popularity and many more.

Duplicate Content Types

Google have given us the following non harmful content types:-

• Discussion forums that can create a number of duplicate pages
• Store items shown or linked
• Printer only versions of web pages

The main types of harmful duplicate content are those types that have been put together in an attempt to manipulate search engines such as multiple landing pages with duplicate or even stolen content.

If you are creating or attempting to create unique content for your site and have no intentions of creating it deliberately, it is very unlikely you are going to be penalised. However it is imperative as an SEO consultant to make sure your knowledge of duplicate content is fully up to date, in order to avoid being penalised.

Why Search Engines Don’t Like Duplicate Content

As you will probably know, especially if you are an SEO consultant, all major search engines hate duplicate content. The reason for this is that search engines want to show the most relevant results and pages with identical content confuse them and therefore duplicate content filters had to be put in place.

The duplicate content filters work much like algorithms designed to compare one page against the other. If for instance Google comes across two very similar pages they will leave the most trusted one in the primary index and move the other to the supplemental index. Penalties are most likely to arise if you are copying hundreds of pages from different domains but you could also run a risk if your unique vs duplicate content ratio is too low.