Duplicate content on the same page - SEO ramifications?

Question

In certain situations, I've seen Responsive Design websites with duplicate content on the same page. The pages had duplicate HTML structure and content in some parts of it due to Responsive Design.

For example, a menu structure for mobile layouts, and then a separate menu structure that is only for tablet + desktop layouts.

So in these situations, where you have content duplicated on the same page, simply because a user was forced to separate their HTML structures to respond to different layouts, does this have any negative SEO ramifications?

Answer 1

Search engines index pages by URL, and duplicate content is content that's found at more than one URL - see this for more: What is Duplicate Content?

Search engines would only penalize content appearing more than once on the same page if it appears to be spammy or an attempt at keyword stuffing. Incorporating different menus and layout structures would not appear as either of these. So no, there wouldn't be negative SEO ramifications for this.