A short guide to duplicate content

Teams tend to reach for this after something has already gone wrong. Everything we would tell a client about duplicate content in the time it takes to drink a coffee.

Search engines are trying to answer a question, so the pages that answer questions clearly tend to do well. If two people in the business would answer this differently, that gap is the actual problem.

Why this earns attention

Duplication splits signals rather than doubling them. The teams that handle this well are rarely the ones with the biggest budgets. Most teams find the first pass takes an afternoon and the maintenance takes minutes a month.

How to approach it

Product variants are a common accidental source. In practice this is a scheduling problem more than a technical one. It is the sort of thing that looks like polish right up until it costs you an enquiry.

Warning signs

Canonicals or consolidation both solve it. In practice this is a scheduling problem more than a technical one. The practical test is whether someone new to the project could tell, in a minute, that it had been handled.

How to tell if yours is fine

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

Pick the one that would hurt most if it failed, and start there.