Avoid duplication
To run into troubles with search engine robots is very easy. Search engine robots become smarter and smarter. They try their best to sort "seeds from weeds". Sometimes they kick your web site off from their database and you don't realize why.
In this issue we will talk about one reason why your web site can be penalized. It is duplication.
When a search engine robot sees two (or more) documents with similar content on your server, it will consider you as a spammer and your web site can be penalized.
There are two common reasons of duplication:
- First one is quite innocent. For example, before holidays or your special marketing action you have decided to temporarily change the first page of your web site. You have created a new index.html page with different content (for example, you have added a greeting to your visitors with your old content) and upload the new page on your server. But you have decided to save your old file on the server because after the holidays you are going to use the old file. You just renamed your old file to index1.html or index_old.html. Your visitors can't see your old file, but spiders (search engine robots) can! Imagine a spider is visiting your web site and seeing two documents (index.html and index_old.html) with almost the same content! "Ah", the spider thinks, "you are a spammer, sir!" and kicks you off of their database.
- Sometimes web site owners want to have similar pages for different groups of visitors. For example, you are a fundraising company who collects empty ink cartridges from schools, libraries and businesses. You create 3 separate "welcome" pages - one for schools, one for libraries and another one for businesses. You keep the content same, just use the word "schools" on one page, "libraries" on another and "businesses" on the 3rd one. Good intentions, on first glance. You want to personalize your "welcome" page for each type of organization you work with. And you even don't suspect that your good intentions might be considered as spam by spiders.
Solutions from duplications:
- Don't keep your old file on the server. Clean them. (Those clients who hired NumaTek Web Design to design or re-design their web sites don't need to worry about it. Your sites are clean and innocent like a baby. Sometimes our clients ask us to keep their old files on the server. But even in this case nothing is threatening you to be penalized. We use the special technology to make your old files invisible for spiders).
- Write original text for each page. Avoid duplication.
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