The first session proper of the day, on how search engines handle duplicate content, is not the best ad for Danny’s new event.

Whilst the name of the show is SMX Advanced, after listening to the presentations by representatives of MSN, Ask, Yahoo! & Google, I’m wondering whether in the interests of trade descriptions, it shouldn’t be rebranded. Perhaps as SMX Same Old Stuff You’ve Heard Before. Peter Linsley from Ask even goes as far as admitting that a lot of what he is saying is SEO 101. Vanessa Fox from Google makes a good fist of keeping our interest by making the audience laugh with lots of references to Buffy The Vampire Slayer. But she still doesn’t really say anything new.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the issues surrounding duplicate content, I’ll summarise.

• Avoid having multiple versions of the same pages accessible to search engines (i.e. printer friendly pages etc…)
• If you use session IDs, allow search engine crawlers to avoid them
• If you’re using redirects, make sure that you use the right type (normally a 30 1, or permanent, redirect)
• Block duplicate content using methods such as meta robots tags or the robots.txt file
• Check that others aren’t duplicating your content on their own websites and ensure that those which do are contacted.

If you have any questions about this sort of duplicate content and how to avoid it, contact us and we’ll be happy to talk you through the issues – you don’t need to fly to Seattle to find out what to do.

Along with the really slow WiFi connection, and the technical problems that caused the session to start 15 minutes late, I’m wondering whether the notes that Danny is furiously scribbling aren’t along the lines of “Bugger!” As SEO Chick Julie said to me afterwards “Isn’t it ironic that the session on duplicate content was all essentially duplicate content“.

Who said that the Americans don’t understand irony?

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