Duplicate Content - An Ounce Of Prevention Is Worth A Pound Of Cure

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Duplicate content is a nasty thing. Slowly but surely it will sap your website of any ability to rank in Google, and that alone is enough to destroy your dreams of online domination. Where does most duplicate content come from? Generally the content comes from template-driven web design where duplicate URLs are created automatically.

Refer to a URL only once

If these URLs are created in muliple spots, you need to clean it up fast. The new Google does really want to carry multiple copies of the same version, so it’s better for everyone’s sake if you just present one final form to the SERPs. This alone can guarantee better results in the modern Google. If you make sure you present clean HTML that is original, it’s quite easy to rank for many terms.

Now I can’t tell you exactly how to clean up your website because every site has a different architecture, but I can point out some possible steps to take to prevent major problems.

For popular CMS scripts like VBulletin and Wordpress you should be able to find a module or plug-in to do the work for you.

Otherwise, follow these tips:

• Disallow any extra copies of URLs like print-friendly pages - also no-follow them or run them through a re-direct - I’ve included a simple explanation on how

So here’s the basic steps to take for your print-friendly pages:

1) Redirect the links to the print-friendly page. You can do no-follow, or use a re-direct. To redirect do the following:

• In robots.txt add the following link: Disallow: /my-out.php
• Upload my-out.php to your root directory
• Change all of your links to the following format:
My Redirected Link
• Disallow the print friendly versions in robots.txt - Disallow: /printfriendly.php

Here’s the code in my-out.php


< ?php
parse_str($_SERVER['QUERY_STRING'],$vars);
$url = $vars['url'];

?>


Put this together and you have now disallowed the duplicate content, and removed the link popularity you send to the pages by re-directing the links. This should help you clean up fast. If you implement this system up front, it can save you a great deal of frustration later.

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