Duplicate Content Can Negatively Impact SEO Initiatives

Consult the experts and they will unanimously agree that well-written, quality content is the best way to increase its search engine optimization. Having said this, it is also important to point out that creating duplicate content can have the opposite effect. In other words duplicate content can negate all your search engine optimization efforts.

Keep in mind that search engines are primarily interested in unique documents and text, and when they find multiple instances of the same content, they are likely to select a single one and display that page in their results.

To explain this, consider the case when both the www and non-www versions of your pages are listed in a search engine. This is said to possibly trigger a duplicate content penalty and/or split page rank, which can negatively affect your search engine ranking.

This is what Internet marketing firm Ocean Blue Communications. has to say about having duplicate content or content that appears in numerous places on the web:

"If your web content appears in too many places on the web, greater chances are that the major search engines would penalize the pages for duplicate content. It goes without saying, all your search engine optimization efforts will not only go in vain but will have dramatically negative effect on your rankings and thus on your traffic and overall presence online."

This may seem to contradict the basic principles of viral marketing, something that is being taken up in a big way by companies which are looking to increase their online presence by ensuring their content goes viral and is linked in reputable places that can increase traffic. However you can achieve this when you create original and compelling content that is aimed at humans rather than search engines.

You should aim at creating content that appeals to readers. In fact if you post original, high quality content aimed at readers, it will have greater chances of being picked up and linked to sites like Digg or Reddit or being mentioned by users of social networking sites like Twitter - all of which can spread a company's message throughout the web.