For a few years now there has been an ongoing discussion whether duplicate content matters. It’s kind of a complex topic but I will try to boil it down and give you the most important pieces.
At the end of this post there are a few links so you can explore duplicate content in further depth.
99% of people don’t need to worry about duplicate content
The vast majority of people don’t need to worry about any sort of duplicate content penalty. If you have multiple links going to the same file or your content has been syndicated onto other blogs or networks you really don’t need to worry about being subject to a duplicate content penalty.
Google has become very good at detecting duplicate content and figuring out who is trying to abuse the system. 99% of people are not trying to abuse the system and will be just fine.
1% of people might need to be careful
If you are scraping other sites and republishing all of their content then you may have a more difficult time ranking in Google. In addition you may be in violation of copyright laws and upset a lot of people.
Furthermore, you’re not really adding any value to your website that didn’t exist elsewhere on the Internet. Because of this you are doing nothing to encourage return visitors.
(Read Why you need return visitors if you want long-term traffic)
{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
I was of the understanding that duplicate content was more of an issue for website owners since Google's rollout of the Mayday Update. Online stores, in particular, seemed to have been severely impacted by the update because many of them used the same product descriptions (as provided by the manufacturers) on their pages.
I always try and ensure that my content is totally unique. Where I do wish to use material that is commonly used elsewhere I always try and put my own spin on it or add my own opinions to the introduction.
Good thoughts. Thanks for sharing.
I experienced it once that a site I bougth had unchanged PLR written all over it. At the time I bought it was still ranking in Google, but now its not listed anymore. I get some traffic from Yahoo and Bing, but Google is missing.
I now started rewriting the articles one by one, so that the content becomes kind of unique again. Also thought about adding topic related newsfeeds to the page to mix it up even more.
Any ideas?
Honestly my first thought is to stop relying on search engines for your traffic. There are different things you can do to rank high but you are still at the mercy of the search engines.
Without knowing anything about your website I can't give you any specific advice on how to improve your rank. What is your website URL?
It does matter, but not in the way people think. It is also a good idea to try and link content with in your site to other articles as it will help with ranking,.
Good point here. In the first place, PLR's have died a long time ago if dupes are really a big issue with Google or any search engines. But as part of the 1%, I see to it that there are no dupes in my money sites
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For the longest time I always avoided having similar content to other sites, and made sure my own was as unique as I could get it to be but in recent times I've not had a problem with duplicate content, I've seen Google ranking the page just fine so like you said there is no issue for 99% of people.
Till then,
Jean
Hi Nick,
What about dupe content from PR sites like PR web and PRnewswire? I had used them both for about 8 months and had great rankings on my website. Then on Jul 27, my site began getting deindexed. From 12,000 pages to 600 and then all of a sudden last week, the pages indexed went up to 15,700 (on website grader).
But now my pages aren't ranked high at all, just can't be found.
Brian H.
Google is constantly changing its algorithm and your ranking change may or may not be connected to duplicate content. It could be any number of things.
I've written many articles for ezinearticles.com, helium.com and others. When doing a search for my work, I noticed that several of my articles have been reprinted on other sites around the net. One article in particular has been found on 10 different sites! Isn't this duplicate content? Does this ruin the value of my links in the resource box or doom my article to be lost in the netherland because of duplicate content? Comfused in Florida???
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My understanding of article marketing is that you want your article to be published on numerous different sites and each one of those has a back link to you. So I think it's a good thing. I don't think duplicate content really matters much and article marketing can be a good way to build back links.
Over the years I have written hundreds of articles and closely watched the results in terms of duplicate content penalties, as far as it is possible for anyone to do so. Based upon my own experience I am content that filtering is not carried out down to the level of 3 or 4 word phrases but almost certainly ends at the sentence level. So, providing you are re-writing articles down to this level, you should have no problem in escaping the duplicate filters. In actual fact, even if a couple of sentences are duplicated you ought to be okay.
I think There are many similar niche to write about, so you don't need to duplicate the same article, you can even write article on your own language about the same topic that someone else have written. There would be no problem doing that. Like, there are many articles available in different blogs about "List of Dofollow Blogs", and they are all written in different style and thus are considered as unique post.
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That's a good point. There are in infinite number of topics to write about within a given niche.
That's a good post.I follow this.I think Google’s tough new stance on duplicate and low value content means businesses will have to rethink their SEO strategies, according to an SEO expert.
Thanks
Raj……….!
This duplicate content thing is just annoying. I write articles that have typically taken a lot of work (so rewriting is equally time consuming) & whilst the concensus seems to be that it wont harm me to post it on other sites Id really like to know if it benefits me. If youve got a good article or press release surely the point is to get it out there as much as possible?
There seems to be a shakeup going on with Google and people with lots of duplicate content may find it harder to rank. Instead of writing articles and publishing them on lots of different websites instead try to build a website with unique content of your own, and interact with people and tried to help solve their problems. We