Duplicate Content Duplicate Content – Is There An Echo in Here?
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Yesterday we posted about content with purpose and it brought up a question about “Duplicate Content” and we figured that we better address this before we get into talking about actually posting content on different social media sites. A word of warning however, the following is 100% our opinion only and is based on what we have seen from our result.
1. Duplicate Content is More then Just the Body of the Content
Duplicate content is not just focused on the content body itself but it can be due to other page factors such as the page title and meta description. Basically Google has a goal and that is to offer the best search results they possible can and to achieve that they want to ensure that the results are not simply multiple copies of the same content. This is especially important for on your own blog when you have two articles that are on the same topic but are completely different.
If you put the same title and or description on both pages there is a huge chance that Google will actually consider one a duplication of the other. They figure that if the two pages are talking about the same thing then why should they display both pages.
So the first thing is always ensure your blog has a unique title and description for every page.
2. Do Not Post Content on Another Site and Then Link to the Same Content on Your Site
This may sound obvious but we see it often and what happens is people will create an article, then submit it to an article directory or even another blog and then link to the exact same article on their own blog.
This is pretty much a waste of time since Google is going to only use one version of the content. Instead make sure to always modify your content as much as possible before you link it back to the original content. Remember, you want to own multiple spots in the top 10 for your keyword and by modifying the content you can do that.
3. Using a Snippet of the Content and Linking to the Source Content?
In yesterday’s post i mentioned having content with purpose and part of that was to…
- Give part of the answer but leave them wanting more
- Give them the exact steps to get the rest of the story
What we meant by this was not just giving them part of the article (such as the first paragraph) and then telling them to read the rest of the article by clicking here. Yes you can use this strategy but what we actually mean by this is that you give them some of the answers to their problem but do not give them everything.
You want them to feel like they got value and learned something but if you tell them everything then they have no need to visit your site. On the other hand if you only give them a tiny little taste (like the first paragraph) then you more then likely have not been able to tell them enough to get them interested.
Give them enough to show you know what you are talking about, that you can relate to their situation and that you can help them with their problem… then give them a link to follow.
OK, we know this is not exactly a duplicate content issue but we felt it was something to address none the less 
4. Duplicate Content will NOT banish your site:
We blame Internet marketers for this rumor and the reason is they are putting the fear of God into people about duplicate content in order to sell what ever it is they have.
Duplicate content is not a great thing but it is not the evil enemy of Google either. You kind of got to use a little common sense here (yes we know it is not so common).
Think about news sites and popular blogs… they post other peoples content all the time and the reason is the content is worth while and something worth sharing. The issue is when 100% of your content is duplicate content and you are offering nothing new to your readers, then it can cause issues.
If you do post other peoples content on your blog then we recommend you make sure you have one unique post for every duplicate post. It is also wise to make sure your page title and description are different then what others have published.
Also, if you submit an article with an article distribution service, you are NOT in danger of punishing your site. What these services do is blast the same article out to 1000′s of article directories and the idea is to get loads of back links. The issue is this content is all duplicate content and Google pretty much has lost all respect for article directory links from 95% of the directories. Now that does not mean the links are worthless… but they just are not all that fantastic. Also since the content is duplicate, they will only show one or maybe two at the most of your articles in their results… which means very limited traffic.
What will not happen is Google will NOT punish your site or blog for this. If this was the case then all you would have to do is submit the same article to loads of sites and link to your competitors and you could eliminate them all.
5. How Unique Does the Content Need to Be?
This question always seems to come up and the simple answer is as much as possible. The bare minimum however, in our opinion, is to ensure that the title and description are 100% unique and then make sure the body of the content is at least 30% unique.
We have done tests and have seen that making the title and description unique has made the biggest impact. So if your really lazy 
then at least make your titles and descriptions unique.
Summary:
It basically comes down to the question of are you focused on just getting back links or are you focused on getting traffic!
When you are using article directories or social media sites like Squidoo and Hubpages, you want to ensure that all your submitted content ranks well in the search engines. By putting the same content on all the sites, sure you get back links but only one of the sites will appear in the rankings for that focused term. If you make sure there is unique content on each of those sites then you can potentially rank in the top 10 with each one!
So which one would you rather have… one search result and multiple back links or multiple search results and multiple rankings?
Any comments or questions?
Today’s Job and Writing Links The Freelancer’s Guide To Dealing With Non-Savvy Clients by Abhijeet Mukherjee: Be Upfront, Communicate, Go The Extra Mile, Avoid The Technical JargonDuplicate Content Duplicate Content – Is There An Echo in Here? By John Cow: The basics of avoiding the duplicate content penalties on Google When Should You Add a Newsletter to Your Blog? by Darren Rowse: He’s got me thinking about it.
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I used to post ezines then link to them to my blog and I used to write the ezines with old posts from my blog.
Germzs last blog post..Tips to get more backlinks
I Am Blogging On Cricket And Usually The Content Is Almost Same So What Should I Do?And I Also Post Videos With The Same Title
Latest Cricket Newss last blog post..It will be a very tough series, says Kumble
What do you mean it is almost the same.. is it in your own words or are you posting word for word?
yeah , most people think that google might deindex their sites because of duplicate content
jack7s last blog post..Nintendo Announces WiiSpeak
Webmaster tools has a handy tool that will show you exactly which titles and meta tags are the same, so there is no doubt it factors into ranking.
Ah. With WordPress, all is good. Just have to use the_excerpt() instead of the_content() in the source files and whalla. No duplicated content.
=D
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as a tech blog most of other content and post will be simliar to other tech blog but to make a change i’ll change the title into keywords that google can get easily along with the content
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I have several blogs that are a little ‘spammy’ and I have to be careful on the articles I re-write as I have noticed a drop in SERP when google picks up on just similar content.
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John, thanks for continuing yesterday’s thoughts in point #3 above. I still have a problem getting my brain around it however. It seems there is a very fine line between ripping off the reader (“here’s my article – no, wait; just kidding. You have to read it at my site”), and providing the reader with so much info that they don’t need any more.
Seems like a “part 1, part 2″ strategy might be easiest to implement?
Thanks for taking the effort to write this original content article.
It is especially valuable since it is based upon your experience rather than repeating what you have read elsewhere.
Cheers,
Michaels last blog post..Yachts at Krios, Paros
I have been researching about “duplicate content”.. so timely, thanks! also, i have been trying to rehash my articles using google translator. it works!
but then i have to proofread them, which takes about 5 minutes of my time. Not bad..
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I agree not all duplicate content is bad , as long the content has usefull information for us and our readers i think it should be fine, just make sure that the content and the tittle is not really 100% the same,
I had a site that had mostly duplicate content (user submitted stories), but still ranked well for some competitive keywords.
I agree that duplicate content is not bad, to a certain extent. It is the people that use RSS feeds from other sites as content and the copy-and-pasters that give duplicate content a bad name.
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Hi there,
I enjoyed reading your posts.
Thank you
Good tips once agin John
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hey johncow, hope you don’t mind me unsubscribe from the email, have subscribed through google reader earlier, but had to do so to get the eboook..
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Hi John, whats your opinion of re-wrting an article… or duplicating an article (but with adding a new thing or removing) ?
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rewriting an article is fine and adding commentary to one is good too.. figure out how to make it unique.
Ok, two things. First is, I read somewhere that if you are going to post the same article on your blog and in article directories that you should first post to your blog and wait for the page to be indexed with Google. Then, to go ahead and post the duplicate content to the article directories so that your blog is thought to be the original source. What do you guys think?
And secondly, I’m a little foggy on the concept of posting other peoples articles on my blog. Obviously, you would want to give credit to the original author, but should you obtain permission from the author as well? Does it matter where the articles come from – are article directories AND blogs are acceptable sources for content. Sorry for the lengthy comment.
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The duplicate content debate is over hyped, and when I put on my lawyer head I think it is to scare people from copying content. The intellectual property rights of content are vey hard to maintain and most of the time impossible.
I have sites with 100% original content and other adsense based sites with around 80% duplicate content. I also have had sites with a 50/50 mixture and to be honest have seen little difference in my PR.
I do agree however that you should try and change the title and reframe from linking back to it. If I submit any of my better posts to article directories I always change the title but leave the body 100% the same and my site still is PR 3 and has about 10500 uniques a day.
If you want a blog to establish a loyal reader base I would stick to 100% unique content as duplicate content is obvious and can put some readers off.
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Thanks John for your great post, it came on time while researching about duplicate content..
All The Best,
Raffi
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Sorry . . .
A. some of the highest ranked sites on the web are article directories which are made up of 100% duplicate content
B. No one takes into account the readers. Having “spun” content all over the place will just make them think you don’t know anything more than what your first article says.
C. Google now uses latent indexing which determines the over all gist of a document. So article spinning is a waste of time unless each spin targets a different keyword niche.
Do yourselves a favor and get this free report:
Don’t Get Duped About Duplication
Use quotes, that’s what I do. Quote the original and comment on it. Somewhere below the article I provide a source link.
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