Duplicate pages – What they are and why you must avoid them.

Duplicate pages on your site

Google is interested in providing the best content to searchers. When you Google, you expect to see different results. You’d move on to another search engine if all 10 results turned out to be identical content, just with different domain names.

Google has a number of penalties designed to improve search results and put out of business anybody that tries to cheat to improve their ranking. They’re serious – they can get your web site removed from the search engine. One of their penalties is the Duplicate Content penalty.

Duplicate pages that link to your site

There was an internet marketer who devised a scheme to defeat Google. He learned that Google ranks his site ("PageRank") based partially on how many other sites link to his. Better placement on the Search Engine Results Pages (or "SERPs") means more visitors. He hatched a clever plan.

He set up many many bogus websites, each around a particular keyword or phrase. Next, he built a simple web page with links over to his sales site. Then he copied and pasted his HTML to each end every one of his fake sites all over the Net.

The Google bots noticed. His main page had large numbers of "inbound links" – and Google likes that sort of site. So Google started to display his main site in the top position for his keywords and phrases. They gave him tons of free clicks, and huge numbers of new customers. He thought he was real clever. Then the buzz spread around the web. Others copied him – with the same results.

Google was very upset and got to work. They updated their bots that run the Google Algorithm to find pages with identical layout, content, and design. And they banned not only the duplicate sites, but also the main sites that they linked in to.

What you can and should do is paraphrase, analyze, synthesize and present material found elsewhere on the web and in the physical world in your own voice. On this site, it is the interpretation and personal experience that I have added to the research that gives you value. Make that your rule

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