Three myths about duplicate content

This is cheap to get right at the start and expensive to retrofit. A few things about duplicate content that get repeated more often than they get checked.

Search engines are trying to answer a question, so the pages that answer questions clearly tend to do well. The failure mode is not doing it wrong, it is doing it once and assuming it stays done.

“It only matters for big sites”

Duplication splits signals rather than doubling them. Where this goes wrong is almost never a lack of knowledge. If two people in the business would answer this differently, that gap is the actual problem.

“We can deal with it after launch”

Sometimes true, usually expensive. That sounds obvious written down. It is still the thing most often skipped.

“Our platform handles it”

Canonicals or consolidation both solve it. That sounds obvious written down. It is still the thing most often skipped. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.

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
• Canonicals or consolidation both solve it — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If you want a second opinion on how yours is set up, ask.