Duplicate content is an obstacle that must be negotiated not only by first-time web developers, but by seasoned SEO professionals as well. The problem is that it occurs naturally on the majority of websites, and finding ways to tackle it can often raise concerns for site owners about the possibility of facing penalisation from the search engines. One of these concerns often centres on the prospect of content 'cloaking'. This, in layman's terms, is the process by which the end user is shown a different version of content to the search engine bots. SEO Consult decided they would attempt to allay some of these concerns by publishing a series of tips on how to avoid any issues Content Cloaking issues on their long-running SEO blog. Here are some of the finer points that the blog raised:
Traditionally, there are several ways in which content cloaking can occur; these can include detecting the User Agent Name of the search engine bots, detecting the IP address of the search engine bots, or detecting both. Using this information, the server is directed to show the search engine crawlers a different set of content to the user. At face-value, this may initially appear to be a cynical ploy, and implemented unethically, it can be; however, there are circumstances when showing different content to the search engines and to the user is necessary.
For example, as mentioned above, the issue of duplicate content is often encountered by site owners. Partially due to misinformation spread throughout the SEO community, and also due to the genuine potential it does create for damaging a websites ranking position in the search engines – its significance is often blown out of proportion. One way to approach the problem of duplicate content is to use a method that is technically a form of content cloaking. If you manage an ecommerce site and you sell clothing you might find the same product listed numerous times on different pages – perhaps by size/colour etc. If this issue is widespread, there is a risk that a site may face penalisation. To address this concern, an obvious tactic is to use the rel="canonical" Meta tag to nominate a sing page of content for the search engines to index. Technically, this will create occasions when the search engines are shown different content to the user, but because it is a strategy to help the search engines achieve more relevant results, the risk of punishment is extremely minimal.
There are multiple other circumstances in which similar issues can arise. For example, if the content on a website features a lot of Flash or JavaScript, then the search engines will not be able to index that because it is a format that is unspiderable. In this case you will want to provide Google with a version of your content that has all the Flash and JavaScript removed. Again, technically this is cloaking, but because it is conducted with positive intent, there can be no genuine reason for penalisation.
These are only a few of the points covered in the SEO blog, but the full version can be viewed at the SEO Consult website.