What to ask your agency about duplicate content
Most teams know this matters. Fewer have decided who owns it. If you are briefing an agency or a freelancer on duplicate content, these questions are worth asking early.
Search work compounds slowly, which is why it gets abandoned about two months before it would have paid off. Write the reasoning down alongside the decision, because the reasoning is what changes first.
Questions worth asking
- Who will actually do this work, and have they done it before?
- How will we know afterwards whether it worked?
- What happens if it needs changing in a year?
- What are you assuming that we have not confirmed?
What a good answer sounds like
Duplication splits signals rather than doubling them. The cost of getting this wrong is rarely visible on the day it happens. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.
Canonicals or consolidation both solve it. The teams that handle this well are rarely the ones with the biggest budgets. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.
What this looks like day to day
Technical fixes remove obstacles; content earns the position. Both are needed and they are not interchangeable. 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
If you are not sure where your systems currently stand on this, it takes us about an hour to find out.