Duplicate Legal Content
-
Oftentimes lawyer websites will publish laws (codes, statutes, regulations, case law, etc). They add no value to the text, it's just copy pasted. Therefore, the same text/content may be on potentially hundreds of websites. Does google interpret this as duplicate content, or does it recognize government content as special?
I want to have the laws on my website as well, however I am debating whether to add no follow tags or not. Or I'm thinking about adding value to the content by breaking down the specific law. However, even then at least 50% of the content on the page will still be the law, and I'm not sure if that is enough to be considered duplicate content.
-
Thank you for the responses. I think I'm going to add value to the content and not worry so much about duplication. Thanks again!
-
Hi Nikhil, it's normal that you're worried about this kind of things, that's one of the consequences panda got into this market. It's good that you worry about it, there two different approaches to this: try to trick it or understand it and add some real value to that content. This issue is not only in your niche. Think about books, films and lyrics of songs. You can't change them, howeveryou can add something to make that content more useful for google to le t you rank for it.
I'm not a lawyer but I'll try to make an example. The first result will be the official result then you may write an article which takes that law and then add some bullet points of the main aspects of that law, then the related laws, adding bolds, commentaries and things like this. You won't be first but you'll start building your brand as the site giving real value added to that laws, something that some people may think you're valuable and google too.
Don't worry about duplication in this case, as I said before, lyrics sites got a lot of that content and they're not duplicates, try to open your page to more keywords than only the text of that specific law.
I hope that would be useful.
-
Hey There
I would say if you think the content will be useful for your visitors/customers then add it. If you are wanting to add the content to attract new browsers through the SERPs then you are out of luck. As you say the content is not unique, so you are unlikely to be attributed as the source/original author of the content.
I don't think (although someone will come along and put me in my place) you will be penalised for adding the content, you just won't receive any SERP boost for it.
But as I say, if it helps your customers, then go ahead and add it.
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
-
Should cornerstone content have 3,500 words? Does Google discern words from the main text and from the references?
Is it true that cornerstone content should have at least 3,500 words? I've done some research and found that the recommended amount is between 2K-10k. Also, the content that we create/publish has a lot of references/citations at the end of each article. Does Google discern words from the main text and from the references? Meaning should I count references as part of the word count? Thanks for the help!
Content Development | | kvillalobos0 -
Product descriptions, when do they become classed as duplicate content, how different do they have to be?
I look after 3 sites which have a lot of crossover on products. We have 1000s of products and I've made it a requirement that we give each it's on description on each of the sites. This sounds like the right thing to but it's very hard for our content writers to write three different versions descriptions, especially when we have variations on the products so potentially writing unique product descriptions for 4-5 very similar products on three separate sites. We've worked very hard to create unique content deep through the site on all categories, subcategories and tag combinations and along with the other SEO work we've done over the last couple of years is producing great results. My question is now far do we have to go? I'm busy writing some product descriptions for a 3rd party site for some of our products, the easy thing to do is just copy and paste but I want Google to see the descriptions as unique. Whilst all SEO advice will say 'write unique descriptions' from a practical point of view this isn't especially useful as there doesn't really seem to be much guidance on how different they need to be. I gather we can't just move around the paragraphs or jumble up sentences a bit but it is easier to work from a description and change it than it is to start from a blank slate (our products range form being very interesting and unique, to quite everyday so sometimes tough to create varied unique content for). Does anyone know of any guidance or evidence of just how clever the Google algorithm is and how close content has to be before it becomes classed as the same or similar? Thanks Pete
Content Development | | PeterLeatherland0 -
Content building: Ratio of blog messages?
What is a good ratio for publishing blog messages on our company website? Which ratio is "Panda-friendly"?
Content Development | | wellnesswooz0 -
How Many Words on Page for Content When Optimizing a K.W.
I want to hired a writer to create content. When optimizing a keyword on a page, how many words (minimum) should I have on that content. Some writer use ''Word Count'' when fixing a price for text, before asking a writer, I need to specified ''How many word'' to included in the content. Thank you,
Content Development | | BigBlaze2050 -
Google + Content Strategies
Hello, We are currently promoting a website and are considering promoting content via google + We have technical issues that prevent us from promoting content via the company blog. Our question is how beneficial is it to write original articles and post them directly on a company google + page. Is it good to post articles on google + and write original content directly to the google + page? is a technical option to integrate the goole+ content to the website? Do you have any advice as far as the length of original google + articles or any other practical advice? Thanks! Guy
Content Development | | ciznerguy0 -
Need Legal Copywriting Services
I am looking for a legal copywriter to write 400 - 600 word articles for me on various legal based articles. In addition, I'm looking for other legit industry sectors. Do you know of the legit "quality" sources to locate copywriters? Let me know your thoughts. Thanks. Justin
Content Development | | JQC0 -
Prevent average users from copying content and pasting into their websites
Please do not respond with a "you can't stop them" comment, I understand this. Most of our pages have content that is duplicated across multiple domains. The recent Google algorithm update focused on penalizing pages that have duplicate content, and it could be one of the reasons that we have been seeing traffic loss. I'm looking for some type of javascsript/php code that will help minimize this issue.If could be code that does not allow you to copy and paste the code without turning of javascript or a dialog box pops up and says "this content is copyright protected, anyone copying this content is subject to legal action" I've found one script that might work http://www.ioncube.com/html_encoder.php My questions are still the same: 1 What is the best method to achieve my objective? 2 Will this additional code affect how the webbots see our site and or affect rankings? I know that anyone can figure out how to get the code, I am trying to mitigate by providing a warning about copyright infringement and making it more challenging to copy our content. Please do not respond with a "you can't stop them" comment, etc, I understand this. Thank you for your comments!
Content Development | | 4RealLocal0 -
Building Content on E-Commerce Store
Hey guys, In 2011 it seems more and more important to build great content on your website to help SERP rankings. With an E-Commerce store what is the best way to add content? Would using the blog and adding related blog articles related to the product work and internally linking the anchor text to the specific product page? Obviously it would be more beneficial to rank the specific product page so wouldn't this method take away from those efforts? Or do we bank on being able to channel the visitor from the blog to the product page? Thanks Jason
Content Development | | mediapoint0