Page optimization starts from SERP, which means from the title tags. This means that the importance of appropriate title tags is not to be overlooked. After all, this is the first thing that people see when they come across your website in search results. So, you need to make a good first impression. One of the things you have to think about here is the size of your title tags. 

Why Is Title Tag Length Important?

As far as Google is concerned, your title tag can be as long as you want it. However, if you want customers to click on your website when it comes up in their search results, you should put some effort into your titles.

Title Tag Size Mistakes

Common mistakes you can make when it comes to title tag size are making your title too long or too short. Finding the sweet spot when it comes to length is crucial if you want to have fully-optimized title tags. So, here are some tips for writing a tag of the right size and avoiding these mistakes.

Ideal Title Tag Length

Because the point of a title tag is to give users an insight into the page’s content, you want to be sure they can read the entire title. In other words, you should make sure the title is the right length. There is no exact rule, but you should try to limit the number of characters you use. 

• Minimum title tag length: 30 characters (200 pixels)
• Maximum title tag length: 60 characters (554 pixels)

If your title is too short, it generally shouldn’t be a big issue. However, it is a missed chance to make the most of the space and use your keyword in the title tag. So, don’t go overboard with shortening. The ideal length is generally between 50 and 60 characters. That way, the entire title is readable and you have enough space to summarize the page’s content.

However, talking about characters can be a bit of a guessing game. The reason for this is that Google doesn’t actually measure title tags in characters but in pixels. Because characters are different pixel widths, it’s hard to point out the exact number of characters to use. But some tips are using ‘’|’’ instead of ‘’-’’ and ‘’&’’ instead of ‘’and’’.

Title Tag Elements

Now that you know the recommended title tag site, we want to mention some of the elements you should include within these pixels. 

• Primary keyword
• One secondary keyword 
• Separator (such as ‘’’|’’)
• Company/brand name

Make it short, catchy, and relevant to the content of the page. And keep in mind that the title tag is not the same thing as your page’s H1.

How to Write the Perfect Title Tag

To make the most of your title tag and use it to your advantage, it’s important to know what constitutes the perfect title tag: 

• Uniqueness: Make sure each of the pages on your website has a unique title tag.
• Readability: Write titles that users can easily read and understand. Keep in mind that the title should be informative and tell the user what the page is about.
• Focus keywords: Add relevant keywords to the title, but avoid keyword stuffing.
• Optimal length: Keep the title 50-60 characters long.
• CTA: Use words such as ‘’buy’’, ‘’learn’’, ‘’hire’’, ‘’order’’ where applicable.

These are some general tips that will help you write an optimized title tag and make sure it has all the key components.

When faced with any type of duplicate content, search engines get confused about which version of the page (URL) to crawl, index and rank for a query in the SERPs. Despite both issues usually stemming from accidental technical errors and are not penalized, exact duplicates and near duplicates can cause a lot of damage if not handled appropriately.

To avoid flanking in search engine rankings and wasting your crawl budget and link equity, detecting and fixing these types of duplicate content issues as soon as possible is key to preventing any negative consequences and boosting your organic traffic by pointing it the right way.

Here’s how to swiftly find and resolve them.

Exact Duplicates vs Near Duplicates

The two main categories duplicate content typically falls into are pretty much self-explanatory. Exact duplicates are two URLs with identical content, while near duplicates are pages that are “nearly identical” – multiple versions of the same piece of content with minor differences. 

Contrary to popular belief, content doesn’t need to be an exact match to be perceived as duplicate — if it’s similar enough, it will be considered as such, even though some things may differ.

Duplicate Content Detection: Finding Exact & Near Duplicates

While both exact duplicate and near-duplicate content can cause search ranking and visibility issues, each must be approached and handled specifically.

Detecting Exact Duplicates

Pages that are exact duplicates (often due to plagiarism, syndicated and scraped content, or mirroring) are easy to identify by standard checksumming techniques. You can use free versions of various SEO audit tools such as Screaming Frog and Siteliner to crawl your website and detect any exact duplicate pages in real time. The number of searches or results available in the free mode is usually limited, but you can always sign up for the premium versions if needed.

Detecting Near Duplicates

Identifying near-duplicates is a bit more tricky. Most tools, such as Screaming Frog, will look for exact duplicates by default, so you’ll probably need to enable near-duplicate checks manually. You can change the similarity threshold (usually set to 90% by default) if you want to find content with a lower percentage of similarity. Near duplicate content also requires performing a crawl analysis to populate it with usable data.

Another thing to keep in mind is that data is only pulled from indexable URLs, so if you have canonical URLs, those pages won’t be included in the reports, even if they are exact or near duplicates. 

Resolving Exact Duplicate & Near Duplicate Content Issues

The first step to fixing these types of duplicate content issues is to decide which version of the page you want to keep – opting for the better-performing one is considered best practice.

• 301 Redirects

You can kill the duplicate pages and still have them boost the SEO of the primary page you chose to keep by combining exact duplicates or near duplicates into a single URL with permanent 301 redirects, so they consolidate their link equity.

• Rel Cannonical

Another way to consolidate duplicate content is to place the rel=canonical attribute inside of the <head> HTML tag to mark the lower-performing exact or near duplicate content page. It’s a way to tell search engines that all its link juice and ranking power should be attributed to the original (higher-performing) page marked with a self-referential canonical tag. It’s similar to a 301 redirect, but easier to implement.

• De-Indexing URLs

You can remove URLs that you don’t want indexed altogether from your XML sitemap or modify the meta robots tags of the pages you wish to exclude from search results to “noindex, follow” manually. Another helpful short-term strategy is to mark duplicate URLs as passive in Google’s Search Console parameters. They will be ignored by crawlers and won’t show up in search, however, the URL that you are keeping around also won’t receive any SEO benefits from them

In this article, we’ll focus on the technicalities of what triggers duplicate content most frequently, as well as how to find and fix this common yet damaging issue quickly.

What is Duplicate Content?

Similar content that appears at multiple web locations (pages or URLs) is considered duplicate content. Consequently, search engines have difficulty deciding which version is more relevant to show users in search results for a given query and where to direct link metrics.

This issue can seriously hurt search ranking, and visibility due to diluted link equity wasting the crawl budget, so resolving it as soon as possible is crucial.

What Causes Duplicate Content Issues?

Although it seems like plagiarism, more often than not, duplicate content is created by accident and is usually the result of a technical error. The most common duplicate content triggers are as follows:

URL Variations

The leading causes of duplicate content are technical differences in URL parameters. For example, if a URL is accessible in both HTTP and HTTPS versions, has mixed upper and lowercase characters, both www and non-www variations live, or multiple, inconsistent endings, it can lead to the page being perceived as two separate by search engines.

Session IDs and Printer-Friendly Pages

Duplicate content can also be triggered by URL disparities in session IDs and print-only versions of webpages. When each website user gets assigned a unique session ID, it creates a new URL and, therefore, duplicate content. Printer-friendly pages can also trigger duplicate content issues as multiple page versions get indexed.

Copied or Scraped Content

Although intentionally plagiarized content exists and is self-explanatory, duplicate content isn’t necessarily always the result of malicious piracy intent. For example, when syndicating content, websites sometimes fail to link to the original article, causing search engines to end up with different versions of the same piece of content.

eCommerce sites often deal with scraped content issues as product information pages tend to contain generic manufacturer descriptions, with identical content copied and posted on multiple locations on the web.

How Much Duplicate Content is Acceptable?

Technically, an official limit for duplicate content does not exist, and according to Matt Cutts, around 25% – 30% of the internet consists of duplicate content. Nonetheless, you should still try to minimize duplicate content on your website to avoid having it negatively impact your SEO or ranking.

How to Find & Fix Duplicate Content Issues

Although Google won’t officially penalize it, duplicate content issues should still be caught in their tracks and resolved quickly to avoid unnecessary damage. It all boils down to finding duplicate pages, then deciding on the preferred version you want to keep to eliminate any duplication.

• Locate Duplicate Content

Identifying duplicate content is the first step to take. Start by running an SEO audit using keyword research tools such SEMrush, Moz, or Ahrefs to crawl your site. Check Google Search Console to find URL variations that may be causing duplicate content issues and Google Webmaster Tools to check links to your website. You can also use Google to search for a snippet of text from your website or a plagiarism checker tool like Copyscape, Duplichecker, etc., to perform a duplicate content check across the web.

• Use Canonicalization or Redirects

Canonicalizing the lower-performing page to the higher-performing page is how you consolidate URL-based duplicate content issues for search engines. Use a 301 redirect to the correct canonical URL, the rel=canonical attribute to mark the duplicate content page, or the Google Search Console parameter handling tool to fix things.

• Create Unique & Original Content

Put your writing skills to work – edit, rewrite, or produce completely new original content and run it through a plagiarism checker to ensure it’s not duplicated. Avoid thin content and deliver nothing but unique, one-of-a-kind, and high-quality type of content to prevent duplicate content from occurring.

Keywords, which are an important part of LSI, have always been a part of the Google algorithm. However, long gone are the days when digital marketers obsessed over a single keyword and stuffed content with it in an effort to rank on top. Nowadays, the key to crafting amazing content is context.

SEO professionals use many tricks to aid this process, and one of those tricks is using latent semantic indexing (LSI) keywords – a method that remains highly underutilized and frowned upon in the SEO domain despite it being quite effective.

Today, we’re busting myths. What are LSI keywords and do they really matter in SEO?

What Are LSI Keywords?

Google has been talking about the importance of LSI keywords since 2015. However, they haven’t spent a lot of time explaining exactly what they are. Latent semantic indexing, or LSI for short, is one of those terms that differ in meaning depending on which industry you’re in. For those of us in SEO, it’s one of those metrics, like domain authority, that sounds good and jargon-y. However, understanding what it does can be a different story.

LSI keywords are conceptual search terms that search engines use to deeply understand the content of a webpage related to the main keyword you are targeting. They help support your content and add more context to make it easier for both users and search engines to know what your content is about. Based on several mathematical equations, search engines use LSI to group text and content into topic categories.

Are LSI Keywords Synonyms?

While some LSI keywords can be synonyms, not all synonyms are LSI keywords. LSI keywords aren’t synonyms in nature, but words that are often found together because they have the same context. The majority of LSI keywords are words and phrases that are closely related to your main keyword. So, semantically-related terms are not synonyms, but terms that are closely tied to your target keyword.

LSI Keywords Examples

To get a better grasp on LSI keywords, a synonym for the word “jacket”, for example, would be “coat”. However, LSI keywords for “jacket” would include words like winter, feather down, warm, padded, puffer, and so on. They further describe the target keyword and provide more context around it.

Do LSI Keywords Make a Difference?

You can find some dissenting opinions on whether or not LSI is worth your money or time. So, what’s the deal here?

Does Google Use LSI Keywords in Their Algorithm?

LSI is an old technology, which actually outdates the internet itself. But, does that mean that Google doesn’t consider LSI keywords? Just because Google isn’t using LSI technology doesn’t mean that it isn’t using them another way.

Today, Google uses a more advanced approach to understanding the relevance of a page – one that takes much more than seeing if a page has a specific set of related words into account. But, although they’re technically not “LSI Keywords”, adding related words and phrases to a page is still worth it. Keyword-focused content is still an important part of SEO practices.

Why are related Words and Phrases Important?

It’s likely that Google does pay close attention to the non-keyword terms on your page and use it to evaluate (and rank) your page. The search engine will “read” your content because it must figure out the topic of a page to answer people’s questions — which means that the words you choose do matter. They use this information to go beyond exact-query matching and deliver more relevant search results.

This means that adding related terms to the page you want to rank can improve your site’s SEO, whether you refer to them as LSI keywords or not.

The Importance of LSI Keywords in SEO

In the early days of SEO, Google and other search engines would figure out a page’s topic based on the keywords they found on the page. That’s why keyword density was so important back in the day. Google has since made improvements to its algorithm to factor in context so that it can better understand related keywords. 

Today, search engines are much smarter – the goal is to figure out a page’s overall topic and they rely on semantically-related terms to understand content at such a deep level. So, incorporating LSI keywords into your content boosts the contextuality of your content and thus, yields SEO benefits.

Benefits of Using LSI Keywords

Why do these help pages rank for relevant terms? Simple – because they help Google and other search engines understand the overall topic of a page. Google uses this information to rank relevant pages for relevant queries. So, sprinkling LSI keywords that are semantically related to your main topic and keyword throughout your text helps search engines understand your page and boost its ranking power.

Adding related words and phrases also helps to ensure you don’t overload your content with keywords (aka keyword stuffing), and helps you provide a better search experience for users, which, in turn, translates into improvements in various ranking factors.

Best Practices: How to Find LSI Keywords and Use Them to Boost Your SEO

If you’re knowledgeable about a topic, you’ll naturally include related words and phrases in your content. But, sometimes it’s easy to miss out on important ones, especially with more complex topics.

With this in mind, here are some best LSI practices to help you get a groove on:

Use Common Sense

Before you look for automated help, use your own skills. Check your content to see if you’ve missed any obvious points closely related to the subject. For example, if the page is a biographical article about JFK and doesn’t mention his famous affair, it’s probably worth adding a section about that.

Google Autocomplete

Google’s instant search feature is one of the fastest and easiest ways to uncover terms related to your main keyword to sprinkle into your content. Simply type your target keyword into Google’s search box and you will get a range of predictions and ideas as to what you might type next. Look for the words that appear in bold as suggestions and choose the ones that are relevant to your topic.

Google Related Searches

This is similar to Google Autocomplete. But, instead of Google suggesting keywords as you search, they give you related terms at the bottom of the search results. Check out the listed terms to get more ideas for LSI keywords for your content.

Google Keyword Planner

Another convenient and effective way to find LSI keywords is using this tool. It generates results that present several keywords for related search terms, including search queries, phrases, and words. Some of these will be synonyms and variations of your keyword. But if you dig deep enough, you can gold-mine some sweet phrases.

Google Image Tags

This is a new feature inside of Google Images not many people talk about. Yet, it’s a goldmine for discovering related terms. Just pop your keyword into Google images and you’ll get a bunch of related terms above the image results.

„People Also Ask“ Section

Another amazingly effective yet free resource, the “People Also Ask” box in the search results page will provide you with tons more options to finding semantically-related words or phrases.

LSI Keyword Generators

Popular “LSI keyword” generators occasionally kick back some useful ideas. For example, LSI Graph is a free one that helps you quickly find all the terms related to your primary keyword. Simply type in your page’s main keyword and you’ll get a list of LSI terms to choose from.

The Bigger LSI Picture

LSI keywords don’t technically exist nor are they directly used by Google, but semantically-related words, phrases, and entities are, and they have the power to boost your SEO efforts and rankings.

Just make sure to use them sparingly and where it makes sense, instead of aimlessly sprinkling them whenever and wherever. 

Choose wisely!

The words “duplicate content penalty” strike fear in the hearts of many. Why you might ask? Because search engines like Google have a problem with duplicate content.Looking to learn what duplicate content is, and how it might be hurting your rankings? 

Let’s dive into duplicate content, why it’s bad for your website’s SEO, and how you can handle it. Or, even better, avoid it in the first place.

What Is Duplicate Content?

Taken narrowly, duplicate content refers to very similar or the exact same content on multiple pages within your own website or other websites. Taken broadly, duplicate content is content that adds little to no value for your visitors. It generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar.

In other words, two or more instances of the same content in multiple places on the internet are what you need to stay away from to avoid duplicate content and low rankings.

What Constitutes Duplicate Content?

There are two types of duplicate content:

• Internal duplicate content involves copies of the content that appear on your website. It’s when one domain creates duplicate content through multiple internal URLs (on the same website).
• External duplicate content, also known as cross-domain duplicates, occurs when two or more different domains have the same page copy indexed. In other words, those are copies of the content that appear outside the website where the original version is published.

What exactly is considered duplicate content? Both external and internal duplicate content can occur as exact or near-duplicates because duplicate content also applies to content that’s similar to other content – even if it’s slightly rewritten. So, near-duplicate content is usually a piece of content that has been placed on another page with slight changes or with a different boilerplate.

What Causes Duplicate Content?

Duplicate content can arise for a variety of reasons. For example, due to poor site architecture – when a site accidentally creates multiple copies of certain pages, resulting in identical content. If a spam site scrapes content from another website, that can also result in several versions of a page. There may also be times when site owners want to purposefully create matching content, so you need to be careful in these instances.

Why Does Duplicate Content Matter?

Simply put – search engines don’t want to rank pages with duplicate content. Think about it from the perspective of Google and its users. If you get 3 or 4 different pages all hosting the same article when browsing, that’s pretty frustrating, right? 

The main objective of search engines is to provide users with high-quality search results. So, if they return multiple results with the same content, they are providing a less-than-optimal experience. And so are you. Search engines have issues with duplicate content for 3 main reasons:

•       It can be hard figuring out which page is the original
•       They don’t want to show content more than once in the search results.
•       They will have trouble consolidating link metrics – duplicate content can confuse them when trying to follow links or crawl and index URLs.

How Does Duplicate Content Affect Your SEO?

While not technically a penalty, duplicate content can still impact and hurt your search engine rankings. 

Low Ranking

Google filters identical content, which has the same impact as a penalty – a loss of rankings for your web pages. At the very least, search engines won’t know which page to suggest to users. As a result, all the pages search engines see as duplicates are at risk of being ranked lower.

Less Traffic

Duplicate content isn’t just a problem for search engines, though. If your users are searching for a particular page, it can be really frustrating if they can’t find what they’re looking for. When there are multiple pieces of “appreciably similar” content in more than one location, it can be difficult for search engines to decide which version is more relevant to a given search query. This can hurt the ranking of your webpage by leading to less organic traffic and fewer index pages.

Diluted Link Building

Duplicate content also dilutes the benefits of link building. Having the same content available on multiple URLs disperses potential link juice, instead of concentrating it in one place. The result? Your content doesn’t achieve the search visibility it otherwise would.

So, if you want your content to rank, it’s really important to ensure that each page is offering a decent amount of unique content and take care of your duplicate content issues.

How to Find & Fix Duplicate Content?

Duplicate content is a source of constant anxiety for many site owners. Read about it, and you’ll come away believing that your site is a ticking time bomb of duplicate content issues and a Google penalty merely days away. Thankfully, this isn’t true, but duplicate content can still cause SEO issues, so it’s useful to know how to avoid and fix them.

Regardless of whether duplicate content is accidental or the result of someone stealing chunks of text from your web pages, it must be addressed and handled correctly. Here’s how:

Avoid it

Your best defense against duplicate content? Knowing how to avoid creating it in the first place. 

Audit

It’s a good idea to regularly run website audits to check for any internal duplicate content on your website. If you find multiple pages, you can delete the extras or use the canonical tag, depending upon your needs.

Use 301s

In many cases, the best way to fix duplicate content is by implementing 301 redirects from the non-preferred versions of URLs (the duplicate) to the preferred versions (original content page), to smartly redirect users, Googlebot, and other spiders. 

When multiple pages with the potential to rank well are combined into a single one, they not only stop competing with one another but also create a stronger relevancy and popularity signal overall. This will positively impact the “correct” page’s ability to rank well.

Use Canonical URL tags

If you are purposely syndicating content or would like to have more than one version of particular content on your site – using a rel= ”canonical” tag lets Google know which page was the original and which one was purposefully duplicated. 

The canonical tag is a smart way to hold onto valuable duplicate content, but not allow it to interfere with the accuracy of search results. When you identify the original version, a search engine will always know which one to index. 

Syndicate carefully

If you syndicate your content on other websites, search engines will always show the version they think is most appropriate, which may or may not be the version you’d prefer. However, it’s helpful to make sure the syndicating website adds a link back to the original content and not a variation on the URL.

You can also ask those who use your syndicated material to use the no-index tag to prevent search engines from indexing their version of the content, although that way it won’t appear in the SERPs.

Create Unique Content

The best way to keep search engines from getting confused over duplicated content is simply to eliminate it by writing unique content. You may be tempted to create spun versions of content where only slight modifications are made, but that won’t always cut it. Is it a pain to write 100% unique content for every page on your site? Yup. But, if you’re serious about ranking every page on your site, it’s your best bet.

It’s You vs. Duplicate Content: Put your skills to work

Fixing duplicate content should be an essential part of your technical SEO. Getting unique content in front of more people is the ultimate goal and taking the right approach to duplicate content can help you achieve it.

Taking the steps to understand and avoid duplicate content can help you maximize your content exposure while maintaining a strong reputation with Google and your visitors.

It’s a win in our books!