When you are keeping a track of your analytics data you might perchance notice a major drop in the traffic stats of your site and won’t get a clue about why such a thing would happen. You get a major hint of this happening when you usually start to interlink your posts. While doing this you will definitely get a hint that the reason why this is happening is internal. Though this is not very detrimental for your WordPress site, you still should check what 'Google' is now concentrating on.

If ever you’ve been associated with any kind of SEO you must be aware that anything even remotely related to having duplicity in your content is among the most dangerous things. The solution to this is to trace whatever duplicate content you have on your WordPress website.

There are some easy ways to keep your site safe from an overboard of duplicate material. Let's talk about some simple and secure ways to do just that.

Screaming Frog SEO Spider

This process may seem a little advanced as you will have to crawl your WordPress website just in the fashion Google crawls its own. This is in fact one of the best methods of tracing where the trouble is coming from. Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a specific tool that has been designed to do just that and it is available free of cost. This tool may seem a little complex to use for beginners. However, the working method will become easy and understandable once you get the hang of it.

To make the best use of this free tool all you have to do is to thoroughly comprehend the steps that you need to follow in order to curb duplication of content. The best part of this tool is that it can be used for purposes other than just filtering duplicate content. However, here we will focus on how to filter repetitive content.

  1. The first step that you need to follow is that you should take the URL of your own website and add it to your software. Only after this, you should let the software run. The disadvantage is that doing this might take a long time, especially if the website that you have is too big. But in the long run, you will realize that this process only serves to work in your interest. After the initial work is done you will be able to filter whatever it is that you wish to filter.
  2. The second step is that you will need to filter the page of 'titles tab' by duplicate. The process that is involved in doing this is not very intricate. You have to first run this filter. As a result of running it, if your content has little or no content that is duplicate then no such result will be displayed. On the other hand, if your website has lots of duplicate content in it then you will be shown a detailed result highlighting all the duplicate material. This is useful proof of the fact that your website has a lot of such harmful content that is duplicated.
  3. The third step is that you must analyze and make a thorough study of what exactly is causing the duplication of content in your site. There are several ways to get this done. You can use the Screaming Frog tool to do this whereas you can also export your file to any application like Microsoft Excel. By doing this you can thoroughly analyze what exactly you need to do in order to come to a solution for such an issue. In most cases, it is seen that it is commented that generate such duplicate content in your site. This may sound weird but it is a hard fact. If this is actually the case then you might be able to see that those pages that have comments in them are usually flagged by Google as these pages naturally just vanish from the results of various searches. If this is the scenario then all that you can do is just fix whatever is causing the problem. There's nothing else that you could possibly do.

There are some more actions that you need to take in order to solve this problem. These steps are as follows:

Understand the comments

If duplication is the case then you might see that every other comment on your website is generated after a variable that has the name '?replytocom'. It is not essential that you understand what the exact function of this variable is. To put it simply we can say that every single comment that you might be having on the posts on your site can easily make another copy of the post on which that comment was done. This sort of problem falls under the category of pagination problem. This is very harmful to your website as the very moment Google crawls into your own website, the fact that your website has similar content repeated everywhere becomes easily visible.

Goes without saying that it is for the best of reasons that you should not keep such a defective blog on your site.

There are some simple methods to solve this problem and have a blog devoid of repetitive content.

Identifying the cause of duplication is definitely important, but what is even more important is knowing what exactly you will have to do in order to solve such a problem if you face it. It is possible to solve whatever problem the pagination issue gives rise to.

There are but two simple ways to handle this variable so that it does not appear on your site. While the first one is simply the results aren't always that long-lasting and effective. On the other hand, the second method involves a process that ensures that the result you get is completely effective, though it can be a little complicated. It may also be useful for you to know from beforehand that the second method is the most reliable and trusted.

For beginners, it is advised that you try the simple method as it is easy to work on. While running your blog on the site with WordPress you must have some very important plugins installed on your WordPress site. One such SEO plugin that is generally used by pros is WP SEO by Yoast. Once you have this plugin installed on your site you just need to click your mouse on the Permalinks that is an option on the dashboard of this plugin. If you do so, you will have to do the simple task of only checking the tiny box that has "Remove? repytocom variables" written beside it. The disadvantage of this seemingly simple process is that you might not see the expected results after using this plugin, but regardless of that, if the problem persists with the comments of your post, you should surely check this little box. After doing all this you just need to run the URL of your website with the help of Screaming Frog and check if your problem has actually been solved.

There is another slightly more complicated option that you can take up in order to solve rectify the problem of repetitive comments.

If after trying out the first method there is still the issue of lots of duplicate content then you have tried out the other complex method.

This involves the Google Webmaster Tools that are needed to execute this method. All you need is free access to this plugin and after this, you just have to select your personal website. After doing this you go under the configuration option where you have several URL parameters to choose from. Over here we will be able to see a long list that includes lots of parameters that have been crawled by none other than Google. Apart from this here we get an exclusive chance to instruct Google on what exactly Google would do when any specific parameter is having an adverse effect on our WordPress website. This is indeed a very cool option.

For the recurring 'replytocom' all you have to do is go to the 'edit' option and then make the following advisable changes.

After doing the above-mentioned changes you will have to click on the save option and then your problem will be entirely solved!

The other thing that you could try doing.

If you have ever tried the first suggested method while engaging the plugin, you must have also tried Webmaster Tools which tells Google what should be done with the particular parameter. However if after a few days you see that the duplicate content is recurring then there is still another thing that you could try doing.

Robots.txt

Robots.txt is the next best plugin to avoid content duplication.

If the situation is such that the file doesn't really exist on your website then you don't have much to worry about. All you have to do is make any txt file. After that, you can simply upload this on any root of the domain that you have. This is hardly as complicated as it may sound. All that you have to do is try out the method.

After creating this particular file all you need to do is just add a specific command line that is attached to this file. However, if you have this file already, then you just need to add a final line that says: 'Disallow: *?replytocom' This will definitely take sort all the possible issues.

Another vital method

The other vital method that you can take up in order to avoid all sorts of problems that duplication may give rise to is by closely monitoring all your data. There are three basic and simple tips that you must keep in mind in order to make sure that your WordPress website is fully Google-friendly.

  1. When you are working on your page then you should be extremely careful about the settings that are being used on the plugin of Yoast WordPress. You should never forget to make a careful review of the tab that reads 'Titles and Metas' and then also make sure that you check the option of 'no index, follow'. This should be positively done for all the suspicious things that you think can be considered plagiarism. An example of this is the tab named 'Other' which must be checked as 'no index'. As a result of this, you will be sure that the 'Author Archives' of your site is never seen as duplicate content even when Google is crawling your own site. The most important thing in this regard is that your website should be impressive for the users as well as for all the search engines.
  2. Apart from this, you must give your Google analytics a careful look. This should be done two times in one week. To do this you should go to the tab that says Traffic Sources and after that, you should go to Search Engine Optimization, and over here you will have to keep a careful eye on anything that is related to 'Impressions'. There is yet another tool that can be used to keep a track of your personal keywords rankings. You can use this to help you see whether the position of your search engines is stable or if it is witnessing any kind of drops. When you see that that is happening you should know that you must take the necessary actions.
  3. You should make it a point of using Screaming Frog in order to crawl into your own website. This is an important step as through this you can check what changes you are making on the site and if these changes are having the desired impact.