Synonyms: Identical content
DC stands for Duplicate Content, which refers to blocks of text or content that appear in more than one place on the web, either within the same website or across different sites. In SEO, duplicate content can be problematic because search engines like Google struggle to determine which version of the content is the original or most relevant for users. This can lead to ranking issues and even penalties in some cases.
Duplicate content can be:
- Internal: Content that appears multiple times on the same website (e.g., repeated product descriptions).
- External: Content that is copied or syndicated across multiple websites without proper attribution or canonical tags.
While duplicate content is not always penalized, it can dilute a website’s SEO efforts by splitting link equity between multiple versions of the same content, which reduces the chances of any single page ranking well.
To avoid DC issues, you can:
- Use canonical tags to point search engines to the preferred version of a page.
- Rewrite or consolidate similar content.
- Avoid copying content from other websites unless properly credited.