Duplicate Content – What is all the Fuss about?

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Just about everywhere we turn these days the topic of “duplicate content” just keeps popping up at us. With this topic getting so much attention, it does raise some important questions that we ought to be concerned about.

Why, suddenly is there so much focus on duplicate content by the search engines and what preventions must be taken to help avoid being penalized?

I believe that the main reason for all of the additional interest is due to the fact, that search engine technology has evolved so much in the last couple of years. Because of the advances in technology, duplicate content is now much easier for search engines to spot and flag. Other reasons such as content theft and blog scraping may have had an impact on the search engines movement for unique content.

The search engines overall goal is to give you the best quality and related search results for your search terms.

Because of this, I am pretty sure that search engines will continue to refine their methods of gathering, sorting and scoring web page content.

We are seeing many sites lose their rankings in the search engines and many of us are wondering if the lack of unique content is the common factor. As we look at this a little closer, the problem still remains of how much duplicate content is too much?

To answer the question, about how much is too much, there really doesn’t seem to be anything set in stone at this time. So, what is one supposed to do to avoid being flagged by the search engines for having duplicated content?

One of the first things that a writer should think about, is to write unique content and check it with tools that spot duplicate content. While some people suggest that a 40% change of text is enough not to get flagged, I tend to believe that you should strive for a much higher percentage, 90% or better.

The more unique your content is the better chances of it being given a higher value by the search engines and the results should be higher rankings in the search engines for your content.

As the push continues for quality page content, it should also step up the competition for better witting skills and the need for more resourceful content checking tools. I hope that some of the changes to come, will make it harder for those to cheat, steal and take unethical shortcuts.