As a SEO expert I am interested in everything that is happening in that industry. I am especially interested in the search engines’ algorithms and I am trying to find out what works and what doesn’t. Search engine optimization has always been tricky and we should be careful that we don’t push the wrong button. One of the things we need to be careful about is duplicate content. Although nothing is for sure when it comes to search engine optimization, I believe that duplicate content is one of the worst things one can do.

It has been proven a lot of times that search engines punish the websites that use duplicate content. Remember that saying that “content is king”? Well, this is true, especially if your content is fresh and unique.

You might be asking yourself why exactly you should avoid duplicate content and if the consequences are really that serious. Well, they are.

Once upon a time, I had a guy working on my website. Somehow it ended up with duplicate content. I had many links from authority websites and many clicks but still my website was ranking #9 instead of #1. That made me wonder why exactly is that happening. The only plausible explanation was duplicate content.

Now, #9 might not sound scary but remember that Google has severe penalties and who know what yours will be. Duplicate content leads to nothing good. In fact, if you have been penalized for duplicate content once and you remove all of it, the penalty won’t go away the same day. It will take some time before you get your positions back.

Also you should keep in mind that once you have been punished for having duplicate content on your website, you will be on Google’s watch list so to speak. That means that Google will watch your website for duplicate content and even if there is a tiny sign of it, you will probably get penalized again. And as we all know you should be careful because too many penalties can get you excluded from the search engines’ index which is the worst case scenario.

Overall, you should be very careful with duplicate content. For example, if you are writing articles, it is recommended that you check them before submitting them. One way to do that is use a tool called Copyscape. It will search the web and show you what phrases or sentences are copied (you might not have done it on purpose) so you can change them to make your content unique.

Duplicate content is not a joke. If there is anything certain when it comes to search engine algorithms, it is that duplicate content usually brings penalties. Try not to use other people’s content and get punished for it and you will be fine.

Avoiding duplicate content issues can be quite simple if you take some time and create your own search optimization checklist. That way you will also avoid missing some other important aspects of your SEO campaign.

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Wursti Works for Søgeoptimering checkliste ( Search Engine Checklist ) in Denmark .