Creating unique content in this fast-paced world is getting hard as more and more information is available online. Every website needs Unique content as it gains users’ interest. Every writer and SEO expert focuses on creating and delivering unique content for their audience.
The main concern faced by writers is the duplication of content. This single issue can negatively impact the website’s SEO, traffic, and ranking. Duplicate content is not appreciated by search engines. This article describes how duplicate content can affect your overall website and the way to create unique and original content.
What is Duplication?
Content showing up on different URLs is known as supplication of content. In easier words, the same content published on two different websites is a duplication of content. It can be the whole content or a block of text that completely or partially matches the other website.
The search engine must know which one to show in the search result. So, it ranks duplicate content lower and prefers the other content. This way, the website loses credibility. This type of content is difficult to interlink.
Here are two aspects of the duplication of the content to have better clarity:
- Two different websites publish the exact same content; this content can be visibly identifiable and difficult to control.
- The same content is published under two or more unique URLs of the same website; this duplication is easily controllable.
How it Affects the Content?
Duplicate content does not penalize the website completely, but it affects the website in the long term. Google or any other search engine uniquely indexes the content. This helps the search engine to return the most relevant result to the users.
When a user enters a query in the search bar, Google searches matches that query with its index and then shows the most applicable result. But if there are two or more URLs with the same content, Google will rank some other content even if the duplicated content is most relevant to the search query.
Why? Because search engines cannot decide which one is the original version, they rank all the duplicated content lower. This way, the website loses its relevancy to the search engine. Some negative impacts of losing relevancy are described below.
- Lower relevancy to the search engine causes lower traffic.
- The website authority is dropped.
- ROI (return on investment) is directly affected.
- Content seems unoriginal and users never trust the website.
- Duplicated content creates self-competition.
How Duplicated Content is Detected
Now the question is, how to determine if the content is duplicated? Google considered the following types of text to be copied or duplicated and did not rank them.
1. Visibly Same Text:
Text that is exactly copied from another site. This can be the whole text or a single block from the whole content.
2. Slightly Changed Text:
Any text just changed slightly to make it look like a different text is not ranked by Google. Adding synonyms or doing a simple reword makes it hard to detect, but it is definitely duplicated.
3. Copied from Dynamic Source:
Content copied from sites that change or update frequently is also a consideration for duplicated content. These sites may include news or job sites.
How to Create Unique Content?
So, how to avoid duplication? The answer is simple, by creating unique content. Unique, interesting content for the audience is hard to create, but it is always worth it. Original content will increase the number of users staying on the website, eventually increasing the traffic. Google thinks of such sites as authentic and keeps ranking them.
Here are some ways to create unique content.
- Make a Content Strategy
Defining a content strategy is the initial step to delivering unique and reliable information to the users. A content strategy includes planning, scheduling, maintaining, updating, and managing content. It helps to clearly understand the timeframe for delivering the content at the right time.
- Keyword Research
Planning includes gathering all the unique & effective ideas to write on. It involves searching your keywords in advance for a better workflow. With targeted keywords, writing for the potential audience is easier without the fear of duplication.
- Write Content Yourself
The best way to avoid duplication is to write the content by yourself. Writing content requires a lot of research. Always make sure to use multiple sources to get to the original information. Effective research is vital for crafting a perfect piece of text that is valuable for the audience.
After researching, create an outline and write the content by yourself. It is fine to take inspiration from other creators but never copy someone else’s work. Always write from your point of view to avoid duplication. Adding citations or references to the source should always be addressed. Write in a conversational or formal tone (according to your content requirement) to properly structure your writing.
- Use Online Tools
Online tools are very helpful in creating unique content. After writing the content, you can check for plagiarism to avoid duplication. If no duplicated information or text is detected, you are good to go. Otherwise, you have to paraphrase the content.
For paraphrasing the text, AI paraphrasing tool. It will help you to convert the duplicated text into a unique one. The paraphrase tool can generate multiple unique copies from the duplicated content. Select the best one according to your specific needs.
Never rely on the content creation tools that generate text with single commands. Search engines do not accept AI-generated content. Instead, use tools just for assistance.
- Add Canonical Tags
Sometimes, a website has to publish duplicate content for different devices or regions. Every device (desktop, tablet, mobile phone) has a different layout. Every region uses a different language. So, the same data is published under different URLs. Website owners can use canonical tags to help the search engine.
A canonical tag helps the users identify which data is relevant according to the user’s region, language, and device. 301 redirect is also used for this purpose; it redirects the user to the page without losing the traffic.
Conclusion
Content can make or break your overall website’s performance. Unique content is always valued by search engines and audiences. To rank higher and increase the traffic of the website, avoid using duplicated content. Make a strong strategy for writing unique text to gain authority and credibility for your website.
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