A serious problem can arise when you have duplicate content issues; but due to improper website design/configuration or more specifically, poor mobile website set-up by your ‘web guy’, you won’t even be aware of how much damage your site is inflicting on your SEO & overall searchability.
A lot of people are aware of the fact that Google hates duplicate content and depending on the amount of it that your website has, will depend on the severity of the SEO ‘penalty’ that is applied to your website as it pertains to showing up in various search queries.
First off, if you are thinking about updating your website to incorporate mobile capabilities, please just do it; but in regards to duplicate content as it pertains to mobile websites, it can happen in a couple different ways.
As a point of note, when I’m speaking about mobile, I’m referring to tablets and smartphones – not feature phones.
Google did a great job of explaining this in a recent post but unfortunately a lot of website designers are so worried about the pretty, they don’t realize just how important SEO is and how ignoring it, or not doing it properly, will negatively affect any SEO efforts that you do going forward.
As this blog entry speaks directly to duplicate content issues in regards to mobile websites, I haven’t even taken the time to reflect on a duplicate issue that a large percentage of website owners don’t even know is hurting them as they don’t even realize that what their web designer has done is SEO 101… yet they claim to ‘know’ SEO… but that is another rant I could go on and on about – again!