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Solving Duplicate Content And Multiple Site Issues

TopRank Marketing Editor
TopRank Marketing Editor
Online Marketing, Search Engine Strategies, SEO

More and more website owners are concerned that they might get penalized accidentally or overtly because of duplicate content.  For example, if you run mirror sites, will search engines ban you? If you have listings that are similar in nature, is that an issue?

What happens if you syndicate content through RSS? Will other sites be considered the “real” site and rob you of a rightful place in the search results? This Search Engine Strategies San Francisco session looks at the issues and explores solutions.

Moderator:
Adam Audette, President, AudetteMedia, Inc.

Speakers:

  • Shari Thurow, Founder & SEO Director, Omni Marketing Interactive
  • Kathleen Pitcher, Senior Manager, Acquisitions Marketing, Pogo.com/Electronic Arts, Inc.
  • Michael Gray, Owner, Atlas Web Service

Shari Thurow, Founder & SEO Director, Omni Marketing Interactive

What can happen with duplicate content?

It lowers the indexation count on Google, which means the best converting pages might not appear in search results.

Web pages from your shared-content partners’ sites may actually end up getting better search visibility.

What duplicate content does to a searcher, is they end up seeing duplicate pages over and over again which translates into a poor user experience.

How do you deal with duplicate content?

1.  Information architecture, site navigation and page interlinking

  • Are URLS linked to consistently?
  • Are the links labeled consistently?

2.  Robots.txt file

  • Are you preventing the web page from being spidered?

3.  Robots meta tag

  • If articles are shared across the network of sites, are you implementing noindex, no follow appropriately?

4.  Canonical tag

5.  Ensure redirects are good (301s)

6.  Use of webmaster tools

The idea behind all of this is consistently.  Don’t say one thing in webmaster tools and then submit a sitemap that says the opposite.  Be consistent with search engines and they will reward you.

Kathleen Pitcher, Senior Manager, Acquisitions Marketing, Pogo.com/Electronic Arts, Inc.

What does duplicate content look like?

There are two camps when it comes to duplicate content.  The first is the malicious, bad kind of duplicate content.  The second is the good kind that serves a purpose.

Good:

  • Find content on different URLs
  • Print
  • RSS
  • Blogs
  • Forums
  • Retail site with products in multiple categories

Bad:

  • Same content and multiplied across your site
  • Blatantly stealing content from other sites

What are the consequences?

There are no specific penalties, but you may notice your organic search visibility slipping.  I.E. – content could get filtered into their supplemental index.

Learning’s and best practices

1. Determine if you have duplicate content

2. Leverage resources

  • Talk to other departments
  • Consult with your agency
  • Research industry sites
  • Review webmaster forums
  • Talk to industry peers

3. Be proactive

  • Write unique page content
  • Identify authority pages
  • Be aware of engine updates
  • Manage syndicated content

4.  Manage syndicated content effectively

  • Allow ample time for your content to get indexed
  • Require links back
  • Require condensed versions
  • Use generic meta data

And don’t forget not to freak out, there are always solutions.

Michael Gray, Owner, Atlas Web Service

As opposed to the other presenters who shared how to fix duplicate content, Michael discussed how to make it work for you.

There are some circumstances duplicate content is a good thing if you use it as a weapon.  When you syndicate content, many will take it “in whole.”  Use this as an opportunity to gain links, especially if the sites picking up your content are more trusted and authoritative.  Try to set up arrangements with people in your space (blogs, magazines, etc.) so they will pick up your content.

How to potentially outrank someone for their own content:

  • Take content or a data feed that someone else has legally syndicated or allowed to be re-used
  • Place that content on a different domain
  • Build in-links with very keyword focused anchor text to the content
  • If you can build more trust than the original website, you may be considered the originator in the eyes of Google
  • This is a very common tactic in shady/aggressive affiliate industries

Why I love web scrapers

Most web scrapers are stupid.  They search for keywords and leave whatever links they find in posts in place.  You should use this as an advantage by linking to yourself with high value focused keyword anchor text in every post.

As long as you offset these low value links with high quality links this works to your advantage.  Always insert links back to the original website and/or original page.

Further, change the anchor text, link and surrounding text of links inserted after your content (i.e. from something like Yoast’s RSS footer plugin) every 3-4 months so you’re getting different links to different parts of the website.

Takeaways:

  • Look for opportunities to syndicate your duplicate content, gain attention, trust and links
  • Refine your copy to target more keywords
  • Be on the lookout for people who may be reusing your content who aren’t helping you
  • Allow your blog and RSS feed to be syndicated with self-referencing and keyword focused links to commercial pages.

Comments

  1. Ken Horst says

    August 24, 2010 at 11:41 pm

    Great info, thanks Adam!

  2. Rammesh Perumal says

    August 25, 2010 at 3:16 am

    Great informative post. The info and ideas here if apply rightly will rank up easily. Thanks guys

  3. Rammesh Perumal says

    August 25, 2010 at 3:16 am

    Great informative post. The info and ideas here if apply rightly will rank up easily. Thanks guys

  4. sherry says

    August 25, 2010 at 5:16 pm

    A topic that comes up often, but also often misunderstood. Good info to have here. Thanks!

  5. Dustin says

    August 26, 2010 at 1:34 am

    I am glad you wrote this post because I have been wondering and asking exactly what duplicate content means and haven’t got many straight answers

  6. WebCreationUK SEO says

    August 26, 2010 at 9:59 am

    I am also worried about duplicate content, but as far as I know there is not a penalty for dup content, am I wrong?

    • leeodden says

      August 26, 2010 at 11:59 am

      Right, it’s not a penalty, it’s a matter of confusing the engines and causing pages not intended to rank well.

  7. Adam Dorian says

    August 26, 2010 at 4:33 pm

    Thanks for a great post Adam. I actually have a question. My blog site has recently noticed another completely different (and seemingly irrelevant site) reposting summaries of our posts with links back to us, but with no apparent purpose. Does anyone know why this site might be doing this? They aren’t completely copying our content, just basically making a rss feed for us on their site.

    • AdamSinger says

      August 26, 2010 at 10:45 pm

      So they’re linking back? I say, enjoy the link-love. In fact, I’m inclined to agree with Michael Gray. See more why you might actually want to consider *encouraging* others to reuse your blog content (with links, of course): http://bit.ly/48IS4s

  8. ConnorBringas says

    August 27, 2010 at 6:51 pm

    I’ve always thought that duplicate content isnt an issue. If it was im pretty sure major sites would be banned. For example if I just took this blog post and posted it all over the web..its called syndicated content correct? no site gets penalized for duplicated content

  9. Shillyvan says

    August 30, 2010 at 4:06 am

    Hi Adam,

    This post is really very informative. You have explained ever aspect to how to avoid duplicate content.

    Thanks for sharing.

  10. Stan Cole says

    August 30, 2010 at 11:13 am

    Google still has big problems with duplicate content though they said many times they can handle the issue. The truth is that they can’t and I noticed this on many on my blogs, when one day I rank with the homepage and next day with a category or even a tags page. The next day my homepage is again where it should be and it starts all over again..is so annoying and frustrating!

  11. iPhone Application Development says

    August 31, 2010 at 8:14 am

    You right Mr Stan Cole….Goggle have many issues but Duplicated Content is a big issue for Google.Many times Google try to solve the duplicate content problem but Google has fail to stop the Duplicated Content Problem.nnI must say: Google try work hard

  12. iPhone Application Development says

    August 31, 2010 at 8:14 am

    You right Mr Stan Cole….Goggle have many issues but Duplicated Content is a big issue for Google.Many times Google try to solve the duplicate content problem but Google has fail to stop the Duplicated Content Problem.nnI must say: Google try work hard

  13. Apple Roof Cleaning says

    October 3, 2010 at 8:54 pm

    With the advent of Blogging, Google seems to be less aggressive with the duplicate content stuff. All we see is the oldest content is returned first in a search, and the duplicates will be further back in the search results.

  14. Anonymous says

    January 5, 2012 at 4:37 am

    Web Design & SEO Services in London, UK – Infinitevizionz

            It is very interested post.

    ” http://www.infinitevizionz.co.uk ”

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