Duplicate content: the questions we get asked most
Every audit we run turns up some version of this. The questions about duplicate content that come up most often on our calls.
Search engines are trying to answer a question, so the pages that answer questions clearly tend to do well. Assume whoever inherits this will have half your context and none of your patience.
Do we need to care about this?
Duplication splits signals rather than doubling them. In practice this is a scheduling problem more than a technical one. Most teams find the first pass takes an afternoon and the maintenance takes minutes a month.
Can it wait until after launch?
Occasionally. More often the post-launch version costs several times the pre-launch one. It is worth being explicit about, because assumptions differ quietly.
How do we know it is working?
Canonicals or consolidation both solve it. The reasoning matters more than the rule, because the rule has exceptions. Write the reasoning down alongside the decision, because the reasoning is what changes first.
How to tell if yours is fine
Search work compounds slowly, which is why it gets abandoned about two months before it would have paid off. Three things worth confirming about duplicate content before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- Product variants are a common accidental source — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
Most of the value here comes from doing the first two things, not all of them.