Duplicate Page Content Question
-
This article was published on fastcompany.com on March 19th. http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/164/designing-facebook
It did not receive much traffic, so it was re-posted on Co.Design today (March 27th) where it has received significantly more traffic.
http://www.fastcodesign.com/1669366/facebook-agrees-the-secret-to-its-future-success-is-design
My question is if google will dock us for reprinting/reusing content on another site (even if it is a sister site within the same company). If they do frown on that, is there a proper way to attribute the content to the source material/site (fastcompany.com)?
-
That's a great way to find blog ideas and kudos to you for doing the hard work of guest posting
Syndication has its place... look at AP news for example.
Spinning is a whole other issue and is absolutely duplicate content and should be shamed.
-
Usually I write unique content based around the services I offer (or to answer a question posed to me on Twitter) and post that on guest blogs as unique content with a backlink to my site, I don't know why but the thought of taking one of my articles and posting the whole thing onto another site as it is (with no modification) seems wrong.
I know there are a lot of people out there who write a good post and then spin the content for other sites with a backlink but technically that should still be classified as duplicate content in a way, or should it?
-
Hey Ben
Yup, you can do that to help the search crawlers know where the original piece came from. Keep in mind that this will not necessarily keep the syndicated copy from ranking. For example, most of my B2Community posts rank better on their site than mine because of their DA. That's because the rel="canonical" is a suggestion, not a directive for noindex.
The only way to truly make sure that the stuff you syndicate will not outrank the original is to put in a meta robots "noindex" tag in the head of the content pages.
If your stuff is getting syndicated though.. there isn't much you can do. Personally, I get enough traffic from my syndicated stuff that it is more than worth it to ride their coattails. If you don't find syndication mutually beneficial you can always contact the site directly and request a noindex tag. Keep in mind this will probably mean they will drop syndicating your stuff altogether.
Hope that helps
-
Amie, is the attribution link just a normal link using rel="canonical" or is there something more to it?
-
Yes you can, you need to put the tag in the copy pointing to the original
-
Can you use canonical tags for things that are not part of your own website? Technically fastcompany.com and fastcodesign.com are different sites.
-
Great question You can always syndicate content... just be sure to provide an attribution link. For example, my company gets a lot of traffic via Business2Community because they syndicate our blog on a regular basis. I have attached their standard attribution link.
I know that duplicate content is scary but just follow these two rules:
1 - Give credit where it is due
2 - Make sure Google can spot an attribution link
Remember that content creators want you to share their stuff, and obviously you guys want to share your own stuff. Don't assume that Google is going to check to see the relationship, make it obvious. Just a simple "This piece was syndicated with permission from X" will do the trick. Be sure to link to the piece itself Of course, it's doubly nice if you use the direct link and a main link too
Hope that helps!
-
Yes they will see it as duplicate content.
Yes you can attribute credit to one version or the other, that is using a canonical tag
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Horrible ranking for hundreds of content pages
We have hundreds of pages of restaurant reviews (each is 100% original content) on our site (for example, here is a list of many of the content pages: https://www.rewards21.com/articles). The PA of almost every page is 1 (ouch). Doing even the most long-tail Google search doesn't bring up one of those pages (even if I include our company name in the search string). I'm certain we have lots of room to improve SEO, but not even seeing the pages come up for even the most long-tail search has me concerned... Our site used to be on Wordpress many months ago and many of these pages ranked fine..ever since switching away from Wordpress, we've not made any SEO progress. Am wondering if something major is "broken" with our site SEO...
On-Page Optimization | | r210 -
Duplicate Content for Event Pages
Hi Folks, I have event pages for specific training courses running on certain dates, the problem I have is that MOZ indicates that I have 1040 duplicate content issues because I'm serving pages like this https://purplegriffon.com/event/2521/mop-practitioner I'm not sure how best to go about resolving this as, of course, although each event is unique in terms of it's start date, the courses and locations could be identical. Will Google penalise us for these types of pages, or will they even index them? Should I add a canonical link to the head of the document pointing to the related course page such as https://purplegriffon.com/courses/project-management/mop-management-of-portfolios/mop-practitioner. Will this solve the issue? I'm a little stuck on what to do for the best. Any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks. Kind Regards Gareth Daine
On-Page Optimization | | PurpleGriffon0 -
I have a lot of internal duplicate content as intros to a series of articles, is this bad?
On a site that I'm working on there is a series of posts with the same beginning to their titles. All of the titles start with Christ's Church ("Mormons"): And then about the first four paragraphs of all these posts is exactly the same, it is just explaining this series of posts. I'll link to a couple of examples so you know what I'm talking about. I know there are several other problems with these posts/site 🙂 but I am specifically curious about the partial duplicate title and the first few paragraphs being duplicate. http://www.mormonchurch.com/3259/christs-church-mormons-helping-out-a-friend http://www.mormonchurch.com/2969/christs-church-mormon-happiness-is-found-only-through-christ There are about 30 posts similar to these. Thank you, I look forward to your responses.
On-Page Optimization | | ThridHour1 -
Question About On Page Grades
New to the whole SEO game in some aspects and wanted to know about on page grades. Some of the pages I got ranks of F for are actually in the top 10 in Google. Could anyone help me to explain way these pages/tags are F's with those rankings?
On-Page Optimization | | BlackEnterprise0 -
Duplicate Page Title
I have a dating site, it's got a lot of duplicate page titles, most of them are the language buttons for the users to view the site in there language. but I think it's obvious that the buttons don't have anything to do with it. I'm thinking that page tittle is basically a description of what the site is. like for an example "online-dating" is this it? please tell me in terms for a dummy, how to fix it.
On-Page Optimization | | clickit2getwithit0 -
Break-up content into individual pages or keep on one page
I am working on a dental website. Under menu item "services" lists everything he does like.. Athletic Sports Guards
On-Page Optimization | | Czubmeister
An athletic sports guard is a resilient plastic appliance that is worn to protect the teeth and gum tissues by absorbing the forces generated by traumatic blows during sports or other activities. Digital X-Rays We use state of the art digital x-rays and digital cameras to help with an accurate diagnosis of any concerns. Digital Imaging On initial visits, and recall visits, we take a series of digital photographs to aid us in diagnosis as well as to give you a close-up view of your mouth and any oral conditions. Smile Makeovers
We offer a number of different options including bleaching, bonding, porcelain veeners, and in some cases, implants and/or orthodontic care is utilized in our smile makeover planning. Nitrous oxide for your Comfort Would it be better to break these services up into individual pages? I was thinking I would because then I could add more pictures and expand on the topic and try to get an "A" grade on each page. I'm not sure how I could rank a page if I have 35 services listed on the page. That would be an awfully big H1! Suggestions?0 -
How to avoid duplicate content on ecommerce pages?
I am currently building the site architecture for a very large ecommerce site. I am wondering how I should build it out if I have products that I want to include in multiple categories within my site. For example: Lets say I sell fitness equipment and I have categories for things such as: Treadmill, Exercise Bike, Stair Stepper, Weight Benches etc. But then I also have specific brand category pages such a: Precor, Life Fitness, Hammer, Body Solid So my question is how do I structure this so I am building this correctly? If I sell a Precor Treadmill I will want to include that product under the "Treadmill" category page as well as under the "Precor Equipment" category page. Can I get some advice for the best way to structure this? It's obviously something I want to avoid at all costs of doing improperly and having to fix later. Thank you Jake
On-Page Optimization | | PEnterprises0 -
Are duplicate titles an issue for pages I don't need ranking for?
A client has a load of duplicate page titles on their site. However, to cut a long story short, most of these pages are pointless and therefore we don't need ranking for them. As such, I'm not concerned whether any of the pages with duplicate content on them are ranked or not..... unless having duplicate page titles / content on these pages could mean that other pages on the site, like the homepage, don't rank as high because of this. Do I need to worry about duplicate titles on these pages, or can I ignore duplicate content on pages that I don't want to be ranked? Hope that makes sense!
On-Page Optimization | | RiceMedia0