Sep | 28 | 2007

Addressing Duplicate Content: Part 1

Posted by Guru as Marketing and Search Optimization, SEO Features, Syndication

We all know the dangers of duplicate content and how search engines can penalize you for duplicate content. In my post entitled “Strike that Page from the Index” I discussed one of the ways to address duplicate content and avoid being penalized for it. There I mentioned how you can block some pages from being indexed by simply specifying those pages in your robots.txt file as disallowed pages. Aside from blocking those pages though there are more ways to avoid being penalized for duplicate content including:

1. Syndicating properly - When syndicating your work make sure that you ask the other sites to give you credit for your work by linking back to you. When linking ask them to link back to the URL of the original article instead of just your homepage.

2. Minimizing the use of canned text - Most sites make the mistake of putting repetitive canned text at the bottom of each page. The usual canned text include copyright text, terms, etc. Though they really are important what you can do is provide a very short summary or just single but descriptive phrase with a link to a page that contains the detailed content.

3. Not publishing pages without content - You should do this instead of just blocking these type of pages. What happens is that these pages will usually show repetitive content (including header, list of categories, your blogroll, etc.) but having no other content will just appear as duplicate pages. Furthermore if you have really unpopular pages that almost never get clicked on anyway (zero page views) it is best to overhaul that page or just junk it and not publish it anymore.

Source: Webmaster Central Blog (Deftly dealing with duplicate content)

Our Features

Design and Themes

Is Your Blog W3C Compliant?

Last night I checked my personal blog’s code hoping I can proudly display the W3C Validated Button. Since I use Blogger and do not really do anything to clean up the code (beyond adding Alt-tags to the images I embed) I wasn’t surprised at all to find that my blog contained lots of errors - [...]
Read on
More Design and Themes Features
Software and Widgets

Wordpress Plug-ins

If you blog using Wordpress and can’t do something that you want done like adding Sphere-related content at the end of your blog posts you might be surprised to find out that there are already plug-ins available that make it happen.
To find good Wordpress plug-ins all you need to do is search for “wordpress [...]
Read on
More Software and Widgets Features
Reviews

A Friend In Need

I’m helping out my friends from the UA&P - IShareHappiness Blog Team.
Whenever you feel pessimistic, angry, troubled, frustrated, and depressed – what have you – you need someone to talk to. Someone who could help you be more optimistic and help make you feel that there is hope. Sometimes it’s hard to talk to someone [...]
Read on
More Blog Reviews
Monetization

Making Money Through Consumer Generated Ads

As I mentioned in my previous post today I will be suggesting some ways you can still profit by joining programs such as Pay Per Post and yet ensure that your readers don’t get turned off.
In my opinion the only way to really do this is by making sure that your blog entries stay [...]
Read on
More Monetization Features
Marketing and Search Optimization

Building your blog brand step by step

Building your blog’s brand does not need to be difficult. However, when it comes to branding you should always remember to exert effort to be consistent with the image you wish to portray or you’ll end up with confused, turned-off, and/or skeptical readers. Branding inconsistencies will make it obvious that the image you’re putting up [...]
Read on
More Marketing and SEO Features
Blog Resources