As an SEO consulting firm who has access to Site Auditor diagnostics reports thru a subscription, we are seeing that, when we run a website thru the aforementioned diagnostic tool, if the site shares certain content in two or more places (think on different pages or different blog posts within the site), the site receives a negative search engine optimization (SEO) warning for that. That’s because of the SEO implications of having “duplicate content.” When search engines, like Google and Bing, crawl a website and run into the exact same, or pretty identical, content blocks on more than one page of/post on your site, they may not end up indexing any of those pages (and therefore, won’t serve them up for relevant search terms) because they are confused about which page they should index related to certain topics to begin with. Or, if they do index pages/posts that have identical content, both pages or posts may rank poorly because of competing with each other, or search engines just feeling confused about when to serve them up.

You really need to think of search engines as entities that file and store information and who need your help to figure out where to file particular website pages or blog posts, i.e., what topic folder they should put them in. That’s where meta page and post titles come in, and really help search engines do their jobs!

When You Should Share The Same Content On Several Pages Of/Posts On Your Website:

• When it’s contact information, such as:
  • e-mail address
  • physical address
  • phone number
  • social media icons that link to your social media media profiles
• When it’s critical to website visitors’ health & safety, such as:
  • needing to wear a mask when visiting your physical location
  • needing to call 911 or call a doctor in case of a health emergency vs. making a health decision based on visiting your website
• When you need to include an important disclaimer, such as legal ones or ones required by a regulatory body:
  • before trying this, speak with your doctor
  • we are not medical or health professionals, or licensed xyz professionals
  • all users of our product/service may not experience the same results or results may vary

When You Shouldn’t Share The Same Content On Several Pages Of/Posts On Your Website:

• When you’re posting detailed content/information on a particular topic (including information about your products or services, or about your organization) that is more than a couple of sentences, and particularly when it’s several paragraphs or more.

Instead Of Sharing The Same Content On Several Pages Of Your Website:

• Use inner-page and inner-post links to link to a relevant blog post or page on your site from an appropriate page of your site (see what we did there?) The aforementioned supports SEO vs. hurts it the way that posting duplicate content can
• Use plug-ins, widgets, or other CMS (content management system aka website platform) capabilities that allow you to share snippets of blog posts or of content from other pages of your site. Think of it as allowing for previews of information housed in other site posts or pages without repeating/sharing the entire post or page content on a particular topic.

When All Else Fails:

If there are reasons why you must post the identical or almost-identical lengthy and/or detailed content in more than one place on your site — unfortunately, we couldn’t think of any examples for needing to do this at the time of writing this post — then, you can use what’s known as a “canonical tag” to help identify for search engines, which is the main/master version of the content.

Need Help Identifying If There Are Any Issues Related To Your Website That Are Negatively Impacting SEO And How Your Website Ranks In Google?

As SEO consultants, we can run a couple of different diagnostics reports to help you identify current issues with your website that may be harming how high up in search-engine results your website is found for relevant search terms known as keywords, in relevant geographies. We, can, then, help you interpret the implications of the issues and possibilities for resolving them.

Schedule a free, no-obligation about our SEO services today!