How to Get Rid of Duplicate Content in WordPress

Duplicate content example with two lattes.

It is often said that two are better than one. But in SEO, two webpages that appear too similar can cause double the trouble. This is what we call duplicate content.

What exactly is duplicate content? Google defines it in the following way:

Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar.

There are things that can cause duplicate content on your website. For example, you could have:

  1. Meta information duplicates
  2. Similar content across pages
  3. Boilerplate content on all pages
  4. Two different site versions
  5. A separate mobile site
  6. Trailing slashes on URLs
  7. CMS problems
  8. Parameterized pages
  9. Product description issues

These are all common issues for websites, and you can fix them. For a deeper dive (especially on what types of duplicate content cause problems for SEO), I recommend you read our guide on duplicate content.

Today, I’m going to dive into how to deal with the issue on a WordPress site specifically. But to start, this video overviews how to get rid of duplicate content on a website:

Now let’s focus on how to avoid duplicate content issues that fall into the category of duplicate meta information. And you’ll be able to do this easily with a WordPress SEO plugin.

A Quick Primer on Meta Info and Duplicate Content Issues

If you’re already well-versed on meta info and duplicate content issues, you can skip to the next section to learn about how you can fix it with a WordPress SEO plugin.

If you’re still here, let’s talk about the duplicate content issue.

Meta tags are on the code side of a webpage. They are meta information (or meta data) about a page, including the title and description. Meta data is one of the first pieces of code that a search engine encounters when it crawls a page.

Meta tags in HTML of the BruceClay.com homepage.
Page source view on a BruceClay.com article

The meta tags tell the search engine what the page is about. That’s why it’s so important that the titles and meta descriptions be accurate and unique within your website.

As smart as Google’s ranking algorithm is at figuring out the topic of a webpage, it still needs help with context. Because it can’t read like you or I can.

So the meta information, especially the meta title, is critical for communicating the topic of the page. This, in turn, helps Google understand that the webpage is a good match for a search query.

It’s a common SEO issue: meta tags on a site have duplicate or similar text. This can be especially true on large websites with hundreds or thousands of webpages.

And it can happen for a variety of reasons. Meta tags may not be a priority; automation software may be used due to too many webpages, and so on.

Regardless of the reason, the same or similar meta tags can cause duplicate content issues within a site. Again, this type of duplicate content is especially important to fix because meta tags are the first chance at communicating to the search engine what the page is about.

Will you suffer a Google penalty because of it? No. Google does not have a duplicate content penalty unless the duplicate content is deceptive.

From Google:

Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results.

This usually occurs when sites copy content from other sites and claim it as their own.

For duplicate content within a website, though, you can suffer some consequences. And that consequence is your webpages being filtered from the search results.

When faced with two pages whose contents appear too similar, Google picks the page that it believes to be the best for the query. And it leaves the other page out of the results.

But this may or may not be the page you want to show up in the search results &mdash, so you want to avoid filtering.

How to Get Rid of Duplicate Meta Data with a WordPress Plugin

Until now, it has not been easy for WordPress users to identify duplicate content issues right in WordPress. But with our WordPress SEO plugin, it’s simple to get this data.

1. Install the Bruce Clay SEO WP Plugin

If you’re not already a user of our WordPress SEO plugin, here’s how you can get started:

Get a free trial here. We offer an affordable monthly plan at $24.95 thereafter with access to all WordPress SEO functionality plus our SEOToolSet® if you want more analytics and reports.

Installation is quick and easy, and you have two options. One way is to download the Bruce Clay SEO plugin from the WordPress repository here.

Another way is to  install the plugin from within your WordPress site by going to WP admin > Plugins > Add New and searching for “Bruce Clay.”

2. Set Up and Sync the Plugin

This step will sync all published content on your website with the toolset. You’ll synchronize your content when you first set up the plugin, from the Settings tab.

Synchronize content in plugin settings.

3. Review the Activity Tab for Duplicate Titles and Descriptions

See which pages on your site pose duplicate content issues at the metadata level. Our WordPress SEO plugin runs a check when pages are published or synched.

(A sync happens when the page is published, the “analyze content” button is pressed, or when a sync is manually run from the Settings screen.)

It then reports on any potential duplicate content issues from the same meta information.

Activity tab in Bruce Clay SEO plugin.

4. Click on the Page or Post

Select a page or post and automatically bring it up in the WordPress editor so you can adjust the title or description.

Click the post title to edit content.

5. Make Changes to the Meta Info

If you are using Yoast SEO, you would adjust the title and description there. If you are using our title and description feature, you can adjust it there. (Note: If Yoast is active on your site, the Bruce Clay SEO plugin automatically hides these fields to prevent any confusion.)

Title and meta description editable in plugin.
Bruce Clay SEO WP plugin’s title and description editor

Yoast SEO title and description fields.
Yoast SEO plugin’s title and description editor

6. Mark as Done

Mark the alert as “done” in the Activity tab. The alert will go away immediately.

Alert marked as done in Activity tab.

You can read more on how the Bruce Clay SEO plugin helps you with:

Get rid of the duplicate content in your WordPress site starting today. Get your free trial of our WordPress SEO plugin now.

FAQ: How can I effectively manage duplicate content issues on my website?

Duplicate content issues can significantly impact your website’s search engine ranking and user experience. Effectively managing these issues requires a combination of technical expertise and strategic planning. This article offers valuable insights to help you tackle duplicate content and optimize your website for better performance.

Identifying Duplicate Content

Identifying duplicate content is the first step in managing the issue. Utilize tools such as website crawlers to analyze your site’s content and identify instances of duplication. Look for similar content across different pages, repetitive meta information, and boilerplate text that may negatively affect your SEO efforts.

Addressing Duplicate Content

Once identified, it’s crucial to address duplicate content promptly. Begin by creating unique and compelling meta titles and descriptions for each page. Update or rewrite repetitive content to provide valuable insights and engage your audience. Ensuring that each page offers distinct and valuable information enhances your site’s relevance and credibility.

Preventing Duplicate Content

Prevention is key to maintaining a website free of duplicate content. Implement best practices such as canonical tags to indicate the preferred version of a page to search engines. Regularly audit your site for redundant content and use redirects to consolidate similar pages. You enhance your site’s overall SEO performance by proactively preventing duplicate content.

User-Friendly Navigation

A well-structured website with intuitive navigation can also help prevent duplicate content issues. Ensure that your site’s URLs are clear and descriptive, making it easier for both users and search engines to understand the hierarchy of your content. Utilize breadcrumb navigation and internal linking to guide users through your site while maintaining a coherent content structure.

Regular Monitoring and Optimization

Managing duplicate content is an ongoing process. Regularly monitor your website for any new instances of duplication that may arise. Stay updated with the latest SEO guidelines and best practices to optimize your content strategy continuously. By staying vigilant and proactive, you can maintain a high-quality website that delivers value to both users and search engines.

Step-by-Step Procedure: How to Effectively Manage Duplicate Content Issues on Your Website

  1. Identify duplicate content using website crawling tools.
  2. Analyze similarities across pages and examine meta-information.
  3. Determine the scope and extent of the duplicate content issue.
  4. Prioritize pages with the highest impact on SEO and user experience.
  5. Create unique and informative meta titles and descriptions.
  6. Rewrite or update redundant content to offer distinct value.
  7. Utilize canonical tags to guide search engines to the preferred page.
  8. Implement 301 redirects to consolidate similar content.
  9. Audit your website’s navigation and URL structure.
  10. Optimize breadcrumb navigation for easy user navigation.
  11. Use internal linking to guide users through your content.
  12. Regularly monitor your website for new instances of duplication.
  13. Stay updated with evolving SEO guidelines and best practices.
  14. Continuously optimize your content strategy to prevent future issues.

Bruce Clay is founder and president of Bruce Clay Inc., a global digital marketing firm providing search engine optimization, pay-per-click, social media marketing, SEO-friendly web architecture, and SEO tools and education. Connect with him on LinkedIn or through the BruceClay.com website.

See Bruce's author page for links to connect on social media.

Comments (75)
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75 Replies to “How to Get Rid of Duplicate Content in WordPress”

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Great article! Your tips on tackling duplicate content in WordPress are spot on. Using canonical tags, implementing redirects, and controlling indexing with robots.txt and meta tags are essential strategies. Regularly auditing and updating internal linking structure is also crucial. Thanks for sharing these insights!

Thank you for the amazing article. I found some useful information in your blog, it was awesome to read.

This article is very good and useful, I will save it as a document for future work.

There are many reasons why a website does not rank, and one of them is having duplicate content on WordPress. Glad to get tips from this blog. It addresses all misconceptions on issues about duplicate content.

Thanks for helping me get rid of duplicate content in wordpress!

Great Informative post. Most of SEO person are using Copyscape tools and now this plugins. Thank you so much for sharing this content, Keep posting.

Sir do you teach word press too sir it requires no coding ?
Regards
Kumar nik

Robert Stefanski

Hi Kumar,

Sorry, we do not teach WordPress. We only have a plug-in that provides SEO data and analysis to assist in your SEO project. You may want to do a query for “WordPress training” if you’re interested in learning it.

Thanks for your question!

Knowledgeable post. You have mentioned all the valid points.

But for constant SEO, everyone needs an expert who will provide long-lasting SEO so that it gives constant results and traffic.

Hey, Thanks for providing the great tips

Keep posting…

For obtaining better website rank, avoid using duplicate content as it harms your website authority.

Although there’s no such thing as a direct penalty from Google for duplicate content, the existence of it shouldn’t be ignored, since unique content is appreciated by both search engines and users.

The awesome tips shared by you will definitely help a lot.

Thanks for this amazing list. I prefer Squarespace now its less complicated than WordPress. You have done a great job once more thanks a lot! It is very useful and informative.

This is truly awesome, I would apply this tactics. I am very sure I would start reaping from these tactics very soon. Thanks a lot

That’s an excellent blog! This will be really helpful in verifying my website twice. I appreciate you sharing this with us.

Amazing article thank you for sharing this information

Go to editor area of the specific page and remove the text duplicated?

Very useful post for me as i’m beginner in WordPress. Thank you for sharing.

Most of the SEO individuals remain using Copyscape tools and now such accessories. Thanks a lot for sharing this content, keep posting.

Hey, its good when your plugin alerts you for duplicate content, we can fix easily. Felt its really helpful. Thanks for sharing

That is a great blog! this will be a big help in double checking my website. Thank you for sharing this to us

Very informative for those students who are beginner’s in WordPress, Thank you for sharing.

Checking manually for plagiarism is very hard but installing your plugin makes work faster. Thanks for providing the plugin with the detailed guide.

Interesting, ever since May 25th, unique content seems to be what Google wants most. I’ll be giving your plug-in a try to see if it helps me deal with fixing some issues I’ve been working on.

Certainly, metadata duplication or content duplication should be FIXED ASAP to improve your website performance and overall, your SEO metrics. I don’t think Yoast or other plugin gives this warning, so it’s a good option to have this plugin installed. Thanks for explaining how it works.

Good information. Duplicate content is a big issue in SEO. Plug-in is helpful for that. Keep sharing articles like this.

very helpful and informative article.

Useful and quite interesting content. Thank you for providing this information.

That’s really wonderful plugin- bruce clay to identify duplicate content in website and thank you for guide to most helpful plugin installation.

Duplicate Meta descriptions or titles should be fixed for better user experience and performance of your website.

Very nice article. I like how this article is short and direct and lists what to do step by step with pictures included in each step. What a great post. Thank you!

thank you for sharing this valuable and informative content. this content really helps me a lot on how to get rid of duplicate content on WordPress . and provides the information about how we can change meta title and meta descriptions.

Cool plug-in, surely give this one a try

The content should be well written and not duplicate your points are really helpful. Thank you for sharing the wonderful article Bruce.

Thanks for sharing really helpful.

Yoast SEO is awesome and pleasant article, there’s another method for disposing of copy content in WordPress Go to the Permalinks page, eliminate Page Slug, and snap OK. Erase any pages that have copied content or alter the URLs assuming the substance and the format of the copied URL is something similar.

Thank you so much for sharing about this plugin. I’ll check.

I will be guided by the fact that the information may be useful for beginners and professional “dummies” trying to understand the topic “How to Get Rid of Duplicate Content in WordPress”.

Duplicate content is a significant issue these days!! Thank you for sharing.

Kind regards,
Farhad Malegam

Google does not like duplicate content in SEO.

I definitely enjoying every little bit of it Mr Bruce ,
I am an SEO myself although a beginner and this is helpful.
Thank you

Thanks for sharing this. Would this still be up to date? Are there other options you may suggest?

Robert Stefanski

Hi Lucas,

Thanks for your comment! The information in this post is up to date. In addition to using our WordPress SEO Plugin, you can dive deeper into avoiding duplicate content with this article: https://www.bruceclay.com/seo/duplicate-content/

Hope this helps!

Thanku so much for sharing this amazing plugin with us.

Great, this post is quite awesome and I have bookmarked this page for my future reference. Keep posting like this with the latest info.

Hey, This content is useful for SEO users. Thanks, for sharing this blog.

This post is actually very valuable for me. I learned a lot from this post about how to check duplicate content in WordPress and remove it properly. Thanks for sharing such a wonderful article. Keep it up! Thanks

To be honest, I was not aware of those plug-ins you have mentioned above.

I was dealing with duplicates through some other.

Thank You so much for sharing this.

Nice Blog, will surely try this plugin.

Thanks for sharing, its a really useful plugin…..

Doesn’t Yoast SEO do this for free?

Just Amazing, I’ll Definitely use this plugin :)

Great content about deleting duplicate content in wordpress. I would surely want to give a try and use your plugin once.

this article really helps me a lot also now I changed the meta description with the unique word but the only issue I am facing is basically I manage a cricket blogging website and I try to write unique content with my best efforts but still, my pages are not ranked on google.

Great article, will surely try this plugin.

I will surely recommend this blog to my brother who is a food blogger. It will help him. keep posting such great content.

Thank you for sharing this valuable information. Need to try this plugin once.

Didn’t know that you guys offer SEO plugin too, If this plugin has the same features like Yoast and rank math then why you guys not offering a free version,

Paula Allen

Richa: Our plugin is powered by a live connection to the SEOToolSet, running real-time analyses of Google results as you use it. You can try it for free with the 7-day trial to see how it works.

I have just started blogging and its a really helpful blog for me thank you for sharing this informative article.

Great Informative post. Most of SEO person are using Copyscape tools and now this plugins. Thank you so much for sharing this content, Keep posting.

Yoast SEO is the best and nice article, there’s one more way to get rid of duplicate content in WordPress Go to the Permalinks page, remove Page Slug, and click OK. Delete any pages that have duplicated content or edit the URLs if the content and the layout of the duplicated URL is the same.

Nice Article, But We use copyscape SEO tools to check duplicate content for a website.

I use all in one seo to good effect.

Should I consider migrating away from all in one to your plugin?

Question Is both must be installed or one or the other?

Good to see the plug-in works along with Yoast (if someone already has their meta tags in Yoast) :-)

Steve

Doesn’t Yoast SEO do this for free?

Paula Allen

Hi Steve – No, Yoast doesn’t have a system to alert you of duplicated content. This is one of the many ways that our plugin works like an enhancement, not a replacement, of Yoast.

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