The whole topic of duplicate content is discussed at length within Search Engine Optimization circles but becomes even more important within affiliate marketing.

Before we get started on this I am not talking about copyright infringement.

The search engines put a lot of effort into showing results with unique content and have to distinguish from multiple people discussing a topic in similar ways to people deliberately distributing the same topic multiple times to manipulate search engine rankings.

Duplicate content can fall into two categories: within a single domain or website and across multiple domains or websites.

Duplicate content within a single domain or website

Most cases here can be solved through correct configuration of the website. The two most common reasons for this are:

1. The website has inbound links that use the “www.” and others that don’t, for example www.help2seo.com and help2seo.com would both reach the same page. This will mean that the search engines can have the same page indexed twice. This is simple to solve with a permanent redirect (301)  which will change the unwanted domain to the wanted one, thus eliminating duplicates. Also Google Webmaster Tools allows you to set your preferred domain.
2. The second main one is when a page can be reached through more than one route and the URL [address] is built up by the route taken. This often is in the case of shopping and sites built using  Content Management Systems (CMS) tools. For example, a product page for an SEO Video Course could be advertised under the category SEO Tools and under a special offers category. This could result in the same page SEO-Video-Course.html being …./SEO-tools/SEO-Video-Course.html and …/Special-Offers/SEO-Video-Course.html.
   This can be solved with the canonical tag that tells the search engine the preferred page which would be in this case the SEO-tools category.

Duplicate content across multiple domains or websites

There can be a number of reasons for multiple domains showing the same content. The first is with content syndication. This is where a single source feeds information to other sites, often a model used by the news sites. This is not really a problem as the search engines can identify this and will show the most relevant which is often from the most authoritative site offering the content.

The second main reason is in affiliate marketing. Often vendors offering items to affiliates also provide descriptive information. Again the search engines will do everything they can to not display the same results from different sites and will lean towards what they think is the more authoritative site. The simple way around this one is to change or rewrite anything provided by an affiliate so that it is unique to your own perspective and views.

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To conclude you should always do everything in your power to change content provided by affiliate organisations so that it does not get detected as duplicate content. In fact you need to be different so remember whenever you have an affiliate programme you have a lot of affiliates and you need to stand out from the crowd. Pick a unique perspective of the content, product or service and target your rewrite at this, often this is referred to identifying a niche.

Illegal copying

If you believe another site has copied your content you need to take action very fast to stop your own version from being penalised. each search engine provides a means to report duplicate content.

Tags: affiliate marketing, articles, seo