It is important to write original, high quality and unique content for your website aimed at driving customers to your website through organic search. Search engines reward those who create content that would be of value to a reader.

Why should we avoid duplicate content?

Search engines can struggle to determine which page is the original source; this can have a negative impact on page ranking as search engines don’t know which version(s) of the web page to rank in their search

Linking

Be consistent with internal linking; for example, ensure links consistently point to URLs with/without the trailing slash (/) depending on how the site is configured.

Reference content taken from an external website and provide a link if appropriate. Technically there is no such thing as a duplicate content penalty, however search engines will often devalue pages that don’t offer enough value-adding content.

Try to Minimise content that is similar in nature

Internal linking

Internal links are links that go from one page on a domain to a different page on the same domain.

Search engines follow these links and the effective use of internal linking allows engines to discover more site content which allows PageRank to pass on to deeper pages within the website.

A good internal linking structure prevents pages from becoming ‘orphaned’ – not linked to – and can help boost the overall performance of a website.

• Make sure all pages are accessible and linked to.
• Important pages should be linked to more often. These are typically linked to within the main navigation which helps search engines to establish information hierarchy.
• Use descriptive wording in the anchor text of internal links, this allows Google to establish context and relevance of linked-to web pages.

External linking

Seen as a sign of trustworthiness and a big ranking factor, external links point to a web page on a different domain than one the link exists on. A link from a website different to your own is also classed as an external link.