Tip of the Day: Duplicate Content: Adjusting My Blog Settings
I am not sure why Google would have given me a PR4 for this blog only to take it away shortly after. Nothing on my site had changed in tha short period of time but Google still knocked me back to a PR2.
I watched a video this morning that was talking about duplicate content which led me to think perhaps my blog was being slapped for that exact reason. I am really good at watching a video and then forgetting where I found it, but I searched through my browser history and found that link again.
You can watch the duplicate content video at DailyBlogTips.
After watching the video I went and grabbed the Wordpress plugin Homepage Excerpts and installed it. I only had to upload it to my plugin folder and then activate it from my admin area and I was done.
Here is a quick summary:
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Having two or more pages that have very similar content is referred to as Duplicate content and can cause multiple headaches.
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Duplicate content doesn’t even have to be on the same site. Spreading an article around to a hundred different directories could also be considered duplicate content.
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I have found that it’s good advice to avoid duplicate content by making your content at least 35-30% unique and avoid being penalized.
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WordPress themes authors don’t always deal with the duplicate content issue so you have a problem right out of the box.
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Apart from the homepage, it is a good idea to check your categories and archive pages to see whether full posts are being displayed there or not
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Remember that your goal is to make sure that your posts or articles can accessed in full from only one location inside your site.
I have now installed the homepage excerpts plugin and my main page, categories and archives are now showing excerpts so I will wait for the next round from Google and see if they give me back my PR4.
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I use the all-in-one seo plugin…a simple tick box (3 actually) for no index on categories, archives, and tag archives.
I know first hand the consequences of distributing duplicate content. I had two squeeze pages that were almost identical. They disappeared from Google until I finally realized my error. It took almost three months for them to reappear. I’m amazed at how so many marketers still believe Google doesn’t penalizes sites that contain duplicate content.