Why Duplicate Content is Bad for SEO Health
Search engines have a limited amount of resources with which to crawl and understand a website. So when a bot, like Googlebot, is crawling a website to see what the pages are all about, the bot may choose not to waste their crawl budget crawling or indexing pages that look like multiple versions of the same page.
Search Engine Journal lists duplicate content as a factor that can “significantly reduce your site’s crawling potential.” When describing best practices for managing your URL inventory, Google explains that eliminating duplicate content allows bots to “focus crawling on unique content rather than unique URLs.” If search engines aren’t crawling, indexing, or showing your pages in the search results, this will inevitably affect your website’s ability to drive traffic.
[Read more…] about A 5-Step Process for Dealing with Duplicate Content