Google and Duplicate Content

One of the biggest issues for web designers and SEO professions is that of duplicate content. What is duplicate content? Will it get your web site banned? Will it get your web site penalized?

The Official Google Webmaster Central Blog has posted much needed information about duplicate content. Adam Lasnik answers the following questions:

What is duplicate content?

What isn't duplicate content?

Why does Google care about duplicate content?

What does Google do about it?

How can Webmasters proactively address duplicate content issues?

The answers to this last question are particularly useful. Lasnik lists specific things web designers can do to address duplicate content, such as:

+ Use 301s permanent redirects.

+ Keep internal linking consistent, don't link to /page/ and /page and /page/index.htm.

+ If you syndicate your content on other sites, make sure they include a link back to the original article on each syndicated article.

+ Use the preferred domain feature of Google's webmaster tools. This allows you to tell Google whether they should link to www.yourdomain.com or yourdomain.com. otherwise Google might link to each individually and see the same page as being a duplicate of itself.

+ Minimize boilerplate repetition. If, for example, you must put a disclaimer at the bottom of each page, just include a short summary with a link to a separate page that has the complete disclaimer.

Plus five other suggestions. This is a blog post all web designers, SEOs, or anyone involved with web design should read, and have bookmarked.

Do It Yourself SEO

Have you been reading about the importance of the internet and search engine optimization in various trade publications? Do you feel your web site could use some work to improve its position in search results? But you don't have the cash to spend on a search engine expert???

Before you try to do SEO (Search Engine Optimization) yourself, I have some suggested reading for you. Ross Dunn has updated his Ten Minute Search optimization white paper. I highly recommend reading it before you attempt to do SEO on your web site. In particular focus on the things not to do, such as item #3. You'll be wasting your time if you spiff up your site, only to make common mistakes that will get it penalized, or worse yet... banned from Google. Once you have the DO NOT things firmly fixed in your mind, then start on making the changes that will improve your search visibility.

You'll find the Ten Minute Optimization paper at: http://www.searchengineguide.com/dunn/2006/1130_rd1.html

Counting Backlinks

Enter the following in the search box of any search engine to see the backlinks for any web site. Of course, replace "www.yoursite.com" with the appropriate URL.

MSN
link:http://www.yoursite.com

Google:
link:http://www.yoursite.com

Yahoo:
Yahoo now has a separate "search engine" for learning what information they have in their index about a specific site. It is called Site Explorer. Go to Site Explorer at the URL below and enter the URL for the web site in the search box. When the results page appears, click on the "In Links" link.

http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/

Yahoo's help page says this about Site Explorer:

" You can use Site Explorer to track the coverage and freshness of your site in the Yahoo! Search index. You can find out:

• Which pages from your site are indexed by Yahoo! .
• What links exist to your site's web pages.

If you "authenticate" a site by validating your access to a site, you can access more detailed information like:

• What subdomains from your site are known to Yahoo!
• What other information Yahoo! detects about your site, such as language."