Question about copying content
-
Hi there,
I have had a question from a retailer asking if they can take all our content i.e. blog articles, product pages etc, what is best practice here in getting SEO value out of this?
Here a few ideas I was thinking of:
-
I was thinking they put canonical tags on all pages where they have copied our content?
-
They copy the content but leave all anchor text in place?
Please let me know your thoughts.
Kind Regards
-
-
Hi Adam,
Thanks for your reply.
I suppose what I could do is mention to them that if they are taking content from our website, they must have at the bottom of each page 'Text supplied by Company Name' the company name supplies a keyword that we target.
I have actually just noticed that there are many retailers out there who are copying our content from our product pages without me knowing, I noticed this by copying a pasting the first paragraph of a number of my product pages, however what is strange that these websites come above my product pages, is this something to worry about? is Google giving me full credit for these pages?
Kind Regards
-
I have had a question from a retailer asking if they can take all our content i.e. blog articles, product pages etc, what is best practice here in getting SEO value out of this?
Well firstly, there is no SEO benefit to either party here unless the retailer provides a link to your site. This can actually cause damage to the retailer's site with regards to duplicate content issues. Forget about canonical tags here, they are not designed to avoid duplicate content issues when copying someone else's content.
My advice would be to advise the retailer to create their own unique content rather than copying your content. They can provide links to product pages on your site but they should try to create unique descriptions for the products rather than copying your content.
With regard to other retailers copying your content, they do so at their own risk as Google could decide to penalise these sites (assuming they haven't already done so). It is best practice to create unique content rather than copying other people's content.
Hope this helps.
-
Hi Mat,
Thanks for your reply.
Yes, there is a lot of work that goes into the content for product pages, blog posts etc.
I think most of the content that they want is for our products they are going to be selling on their website, so they are in need of content for these pages, but not really sure on how to handle this best (SEO benefit)
I had recently stumbled upon retailer websites who have copied our content without actually asking us, however some of those websites have kept the anchor text, we are getting some benefit, right?
Kind Regards
-
Canonical might work. However I wouldn't let them have it. If the content is good then it has too much value.
Maybe instead you could suggest that you do a regular guest spot for them, including your link in the profile.
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
-
Blog content and panda?
If we want to create a blog to keep in front of our customers (via email and posting on social) and the posts will be around 300 - 1000 words like this site http://www.solopress.com/blog/ are we going to be asking for a panda slap as the issue would be the very little shares and traction after the first day or two. Also would panda only affect the blogs that are crap if we mix in a couple of really good posts or would it affect theses as well and possibly even the site? Any help would be appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Http to https question (SSL)
Hi, I recently made two big changes to a site - www.aerlawgroup.com (not smart, I know). First, I changed from Weebly to Wordpress (WP Engine hosting with CDN + Cloudflare - is that overkill?) and I added SSL (http to https). From a technical perspective, I think I made a better site: (1) blazing fast, (2) mobile responsive, (3) more secure. I'm seeing the rankings fluctuate quite a bit, especially on the important keywords. I added SSL to my other sites, and saw no rankings change (they actually all went up slightly). I'm wondering if anyone has had experience going to SSL and can give me feedback on something I might have overlooked. Again, it's strange that all the other sites responded positively, but the one listed above is going in the opposite direction. Maybe there are other problems, and the SSL is just a coincidence. Any feedback would be appreciated. I followed this guide: http://moz.com/blog/seo-tips-https-ssl - which helped tremendously (FYI).
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mrodriguez14400 -
Internal links question
I've read that Google frowns upon large numbers of internal links. We're building a site that helps users browse a list of shows via dozens of genres. If the genres are expose, say, as a pulldown menu as opposed to a list of static links, and selecting the pulldown option filters the list of shows, would those genres count against our internal links count?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheaterMania0 -
Duplicate Page Content - Shopify
Moz reports that there are 1,600+ pages on my site (Sportiqe.com) that qualify as Duplicate Page Content. The website sells licensed apparel, causing shirts to go into multiple categories (ie - LA Lakers shirts would be categorized in three areas: Men's Shirts, LA Lakers Shirts and NBA Shirts)It looks like "tags" are the primary cause behind the duplicate content issues: // Collection Tags_Example: : http://www.sportiqe.com/collections/la-clippers-shirts (Preferred URL): http://www.sportiqe.com/collections/la-clippers-shirts/la-clippers (URL w/ tag): http://sportiqe.com/collections/la-clippers-shirts/la-clippers (URL w/ tag, w/o the www.): http://sportiqe.com/collections/all-products/clippers (Different collection, w/ tag and same content)// Blog Tags_Example: : http://www.sportiqe.com/blogs/sportiqe/7902801-dispatch-is-back: http://www.sportiqe.com/blogs/sportiqe/tagged/elias-fundWould it make sense to do 301 redirects for the collection tags and use the Parameter Tool in Webmaster Tools to exclude blog post tags from their crawl? Or, is there a possible solution with the rel=cannonical tag?Appreciate any insight from fellow Shopify users and the Moz community.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | farmiloe0 -
How To Internationalize - Big Question
Hi all, Here is a big question. We have a long-established good content website with a .co.uk domain. The site is UK focussed. However, we are planning a new feature which will be UK and worldwide. So do we: 1. Keep it all on our .co.uk ? 2. Put the non-UK parts on a .com domain ? We don't have any content as such for a separate domain, and are not planning any. But, we are not sure if for example US users would be unimpressed with a UK domain. We could fudge it with "co.uk/us" etc. (Notice how we have not mentioned Google. Fed-up chasing big G the whole time. We just want to concentrate on our users and the service we provide to them. But G remains the elephant crapping in the corner of the room.) Also, we are asking this question before we let our developers and designers get to work. Basically we value Moz community opinions over and above theirs. Realise this is a big question, but you have big brains. Please chip in.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dexm100 -
Questions about 301 Redirects
I have about 10 - 15 URLs that are redirecting to http://www.domainname.comwww.domainname.com/. (which is an invalid URL)The website is on a Joomla platform. Does anyone know how I can fix this? I can't figure out where the problem is coming from.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnParker27920 -
Duplicate content on sub-domains?
I have 2 subdamains intented for 2 different countries (Colombia and Venezuela) ve.domain.com and co.domain.com. The site it's an e-commerce with over a million products available so they have the same page with the same content on both sub-domains....the only differences are the prices a payment options. Does google take that as duplicate content? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | daniel.alvarez0 -
Apache Mod Rewrite question
Hi everybody, I need to rewrite this url using mod rewrite, but I've got stuck. http://www.diamondgeezer.com/theultimate/search/index.php?sortprice=asc&followSearch=9673&q=eternity+rings I'd like it to show this one instead: http://www.diamondgeezer.com/eternity-rings I'm no expert on this stuff, so any help would be great! Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | neooptic0