For years and years, businesses had it drilled into them that their web content needed to be unique. Sending indie companies into a real headspin, we were told that to stand out, your site needed to be fresh, engaging, witty and, above all, a one-off. But now, Matt Cutts  - Google’s head of search spam - has posted a special video about publishing duplicate content online. In the YouTube piece, he chats about the repercussions and what it means for our search engine results.

Amazingly, Matt admitted that 25-30% of all web content is duplicate material. Yep, almost a third! Astounding, isn’t it? However, almost as amazingly, Matt also used the video to say that producing duplicate content actually doesn’t matter all that much. In fact, it doesn’t matter a jot. Unbeknown to many, Google doesn’t treat duplicate content as spam material. Instead, Google gathers together all pages with the same content and groups them into clusters. It will then show you, the browser, the best of those results.

However, while this is worth noting, always remember that while they don’t deem duplicate content to be spam, Google will only ever display one of these pages in its search results. And you don’t want that either, do you? It’s also an idea to remember that Matt said that Google can reserve the right to penalise sites that excessively use duplicate content, so always keep it to an absolute minimum. Of course, customers do tend to like fresh and breezy content, so it’s always worth staying true to your brand regardless.

So, what does this mean for you and your business? If you’re unsure, that’s where our friendly faces at Freelance SEO can come in. Here at Freelance SEO, we are specialist search engine optimisation consultants. Although that’s not as complicated as it sounds, we can promise you results - big time. In fact, if your business doesn’t reach page one of the Google rankings with our help, then we will give you all of your money back – and that’s a promise!

We can offer a huge range of affordable SEO contracts, starting at just £125 per month. You don’t need to pay mega bucks to get the right advice, and that’s why we are here. If you’re interested in seeing what we can do for you, or finding out how this article affects you business, then why not drop us a call? We’re around from 8am until 8pm whenever you dial 07557 749088. Not only are we always happy to chat, but we’re always full of ideas.