Use Post Excerpt on Homepage to Avoid Duplicate Content Issue

We all know that Google hates duplicate content. Now if you are wondering what is duplicate content, in SEO terms when a post is accessed via two different permalinks, it’s considered as duplicate content. For example, if you are showing complete post on Homepage, tags, category page and keep them indexed, you have created lots of duplicate content of your post.

Whenever I search for my latest content in Google, I see my homepage, and my post link appears in Google, and this made me think, should I keep my homepage as noindex, but again that will be a bad idea. Since Homepage helps you to pass on link juice and it’s the page with maximum backlinks. So keeping it noindex is not an option. You can check backlinks for your blog using this tool.

Matt explained, that you should consider showing Blog post excerpt instead of complete post on Homepage and provide a link to read the complete article. Though he also mentioned that if the homepage is regularly updated, Google bots will have an idea, that the main post is somewhere else and they will give more weightage to individual post instead of Homepage.

Watch this video to listen to Matt Cutts official advice on Showing partial or complete post on Homepage of your blog:

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My advice would be, if you show complete post on Homepage of your blog, you should consider showing post excerpt, and if you publish tons of posts every day, a magazine style template will be of great benefit for your blog SEO.

I also suggest you read: Blog design: Complete post or post excerpt.

Quick SEO tip: It’s better to keep your tags and categories pages as noindex and dofollow. You can read more about it here & here. 

Anyways, I would hear your opinion on the same. Do you show complete post or partial post on your Website/Blog homepage?

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Authored By
A Blogger, Author and a speaker! Harsh Agrawal is recognized as a leader in digital marketing and FinTech space. Fountainhead of ShoutMeLoud, and a Speaker at ASW, Hero Mindmine, Inorbit, IBM, India blockchain summit. Also, an award-winning blogger.

9 thoughts on “Use Post Excerpt on Homepage to Avoid Duplicate Content Issue”

  1. Vern Clinton

    I use a testimonial plugin that creates a slider on the home page and also a full separate page of testimonials using a shorcode.
    Each testimonial is duplicated. On the homepage it shows one at a time and on the testimonials page all together.

    Is this duplicate content?

  2. aswin

    Good one really useful you should keep this video in side bar or you should promote this article many people dont know this

    Nice share Harsh

  3. Harsh Agrawal

    Thanks for your comment Vijayraj.

  4. sureshpeters

    we can display it as teaser, it won’t effect the seo or duplication. its best practice everyone follows the same. and thanks harsh for sharing the video

  5. Navin@TechInfo Blog

    Thats exactly the same issue I’m thinking Harsh. Google bots are enough smart to see what’s duplicate and what’s not!. Thanks for sharing good video mt Matt. As usual I like the way you write. 🙂

  6. WpRack

    Anyways i always show excerpts on the homepage. But its really good that Matt explained not to use full content on the homepage. I see may sites posting full content for one of the post on homepage and remaining posts they would offer excerpts. Its better not to do that…

  7. Rajib Kumar

    I am confused.. Everything not clear for me.. Need a self research on it..

  8. Sahil BJ

    this video cleared my doubt about the same question.. Thanks to Matt

  9. ifham khan

    One of my blogger frnds told me not to use magazine template but i am dissapponted with because magazine template is really good for seo and also for the readers.

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