Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Technical SEO
    4. How much to change to avoid duplicate content?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    How much to change to avoid duplicate content?

    Technical SEO
    4
    7
    3327
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • ericmccarty
      ericmccarty last edited by

      Working on a site for a dentist.  They have a long list of services that they want us to flesh out with text.  They provided a bullet list of services, we're trying to get 1 to 2 paragraphs of text for each.

      Obviously, we're not going to write this off the top of our heads.  We're pulling text from other sources and trying to rework.

      The question is, how much rephrasing do we have to do to avoid a duplicate content penalty?  Do we make sure there are changes per paragraph, sentence, or phrase?

      Thanks!

      Eric

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • ericmccarty
        ericmccarty @Thos003 last edited by

        Thanks, Thomas.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • ericmccarty
          ericmccarty @Syed1 last edited by

          Very good, thanks Syed.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • ericmccarty
            ericmccarty @AdoptionHelp last edited by

            Perfect, Ryan. Rand touched on what I was really after with this video.  We don't care if these couple of particular pages are indexed.  We're trying to build a local search presence for this client, so we'll do that with the rest of the site.  I was just worried that the rest of the site would be penalized if there was some dupe content on a page or two.  His example of the children's hospital licensing content applied to our case.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • Thos003
              Thos003 last edited by

              If it doesn't pass copyscape.com then it won't get past the search engines. It's best to hire a content writer, or have the businesses write their own content. Either way, checking copyscape is always a good idea.

              ericmccarty 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • AdoptionHelp
                AdoptionHelp last edited by

                Check out this video: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-dealing-with-duplicate-content

                It will give you a much more thorough answer than just a percentage of uniqueness. But if you want that kind of answer I mostly hear guesses between 20% - 40% unique content.

                ericmccarty 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                • Syed1
                  Syed1 last edited by

                  Changes should be on deepest level - words/ phrases. Rephrasing alone is not enough if the words used are exactly same.

                  Also, to get most bang for SEO campaigns/ traffic, I'd try avoiding having content that is 're-written' from just 1 source. I would use many sources and sort of give a 'new take' on this newly merged comprehensive consolidated content piece.  As I mentioned in another post, this huge content piece with a "new take" leads to your article being considered original and unique, and it also adds to likelihood of it attractive a lot more links than just a re-written piece would.

                  ericmccarty 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • 1 / 1
                  • First post
                    Last post

                  Got a burning SEO question?

                  Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                  Start my free trial


                  Browse Questions

                  Explore more categories

                  • Moz Tools

                    Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

                  • SEO Tactics

                    Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

                  • Community

                    Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

                  • Digital Marketing

                    Chat about tactics outside of SEO

                  • Research & Trends

                    Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

                  • Support

                    Connect on product support and feature requests.

                  • See all categories

                  Related Questions

                  • SAIM_Marketing

                    Duplicate Content and Subdirectories

                    duplicate content subdirectory directories

                    Hi there and thank you in advance for your help! I'm seeking guidance on how to structure a resources directory (white papers, webinars, etc.) while avoiding duplicate content penalties. If you go to /resources on our site, there is filter function. If you filter for webinars, the URL becomes /resources/?type=webinar We didn't want that dynamic URL to be the primary URL for webinars, so we created a new page with the URL /resources/webinar that lists all of our webinars and includes a featured webinar up top. However, the same webinar titles now appear on the /resources page and the /resources/webinar page. Will that cause duplicate content issues? P.S. Not sure if it matters, but we also changed the URLs for the individual resource pages to include the resource type. For example, one of our webinar URLs is /resources/webinar/forecasting-your-revenue Thank you!

                    Technical SEO | | SAIM_Marketing
                    0
                  • znotes

                    Duplicate Content Issues with Pagination

                    Hi Moz Community, We're an eCommerce site so we have a lot of pagination issues but we were able to fix them using the rel=next and rel=prev tags. However, our pages have an option to view 60 items or 180 items at a time. This is now causing duplicate content problems when for example page 2 of the 180 item view is the same as page 4 of the 60 item view. (URL examples below) Wondering if we should just add a canonical tag going to the the main view all page to every page in the paginated series to get ride of this issue. https://www.example.com/gifts/for-the-couple?view=all&n=180&p=2 https://www.example.com/gifts/for-the-couple?view=all&n=60&p=4 Thoughts, ideas or suggestions are welcome. Thanks

                    Technical SEO | | znotes
                    0
                  • KarlBantleman

                    .com and .co.uk duplicate content

                    hi mozzers I have a client that has just released a .com version of their .co.uk website. They have basically re-skinned the .co.uk version with some US amends so all the content and title tags are the same. What you do recommend? Canonical tag to the .co.uk version? rewrite titles?

                    Technical SEO | | KarlBantleman
                    0
                  • Ditigal_Taylor

                    Duplicate Content

                    We have a ton of duplicate content/title errors on our reports, many of them showing errors of: http://www.mysite.com/(page title) and http://mysite.com/(page title) Our site has been set up so that mysite.com 301 redirects to www.mysite.com (we did this a couple years ago). Is it possible that I set up my campaign the wrong way in SEOMoz? I'm thinking it must be a user error when I set up the campaign since we already have the 301 Redirect. Any advice is appreciated!

                    Technical SEO | | Ditigal_Taylor
                    0
                  • GeorgFranz

                    How to prevent duplicate content at a calendar page

                    Hi, I've a calender page which changes every day. The main url is
                    /calendar For every day, there is another url: /calendar/2012/09/12
                    /calendar/2012/09/13
                    /calendar/2012/09/14 So, if the 13th september arrives, the content of the page 
                    /calendar/2012/09/13
                    will be shown at
                    /calendar So, it's duplicate content. What to do in this situation? a) Redirect from /calendar to /calendar/2012/09/13 with 301? (but the redirect changes the day after to  /calendar/2012/09/14) b) Redirect from /calendar to /calendar/2012/09/13 with 302 (but I will loose the link juice of /calendar?) c) Add a canonical tag at /calendar (which leads to /calendar/2012/09/13) - but I will loose the power of /calendar (?) - and it will change every day... Any ideas or other suggestions? Best wishes, Georg.

                    Technical SEO | | GeorgFranz
                    0
                  • ocelot

                    Duplicate content problem from an index.php file

                    Hi One of my sites is flagging a duplicate content problem which is affecting the search rankings. The duplicate problem is caused by http://www.mydomain.com/index.php which has a page rank of 26 How can I sort the duplicate content problem, as the main page should just be http://www.mydomain.com which has a page rank of 42 and is the stronger page with stronger links etc Many Thanks

                    Technical SEO | | ocelot
                    0
                  • Yonnir

                    My .htaccess has changed, what do i do to avoid it again...?

                    Hello Today i notice that our site did not auto changed from without www to with, when i checked the .htaccess file i notice # in-front of each line and i know we did not insert it in there, after i removed it it worked fine. The only changes that we did recently was to a mobile version to the site but the call to autodirect is in a JS and not in the .htaccess, could it be the server..? is there any way that anything else might cause this...? The site is HTML and WP could it be because of that...? Thank's Simo

                    Technical SEO | | Yonnir
                    0
                  • kathiravan

                    How to resolve this Duplicate content?

                    Hi , There is page i get when i do proper menu navigation Caratlane.com>jewellery>rings>casualsrings> http://www.caratlane.com/jewellery/rings/casual-rings/leaves-dew-diamond-0-03-ct-peridot-1-ct-ring-18k-yellow-gold.html When i do a site search in my search box by my product code number "JR00219" The same page is appears with different url http://www.caratlane.com/leaves-dew-diamond-0-03-ct-peridot-1-ct-ring-18k-yellow-gold.html So there is a duplicate content. How can we resolve it. Regards, kathir caratlane.com

                    Technical SEO | | kathiravan
                    0

                  Get started with Moz Pro!

                  Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                  Start my free trial
                  Products
                  • Moz Pro
                  • Moz Local
                  • Moz API
                  • Moz Data
                  • STAT
                  • Product Updates
                  Moz Solutions
                  • SMB Solutions
                  • Agency Solutions
                  • Enterprise Solutions
                  • Digital Marketers
                  Free SEO Tools
                  • Domain Authority Checker
                  • Link Explorer
                  • Keyword Explorer
                  • Competitive Research
                  • Brand Authority Checker
                  • Local Citation Checker
                  • MozBar Extension
                  • MozCast
                  Resources
                  • Blog
                  • SEO Learning Center
                  • Help Hub
                  • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                  • How-to Guides
                  • Moz Academy
                  • API Docs
                  About Moz
                  • About
                  • Team
                  • Careers
                  • Contact
                  Why Moz
                  • Case Studies
                  • Testimonials
                  Get Involved
                  • Become an Affiliate
                  • MozCon
                  • Webinars
                  • Practical Marketer Series
                  • MozPod
                  Connect with us

                  Contact the Help team

                  Join our newsletter
                  Moz logo
                  © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                  • Accessibility
                  • Terms of Use
                  • Privacy

                  Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.