Using content from other sites without duplicate content penalties?
-
Hi there,
I am setting up a website, where i believe it would substantially benefit users experience if i setup a database of information on artists. I am torn because to feasibly do this correctly, i would have content that is built from multiple sources, but has no real unique content. It would have parts from Wikipedia, parts from other websites etc. All would be sourced of-course. My concern is that if i do this, am i risking in devaluing my website because of this. Is there a way i can handle this without taking a hit?
-
You are very welcome Boris.
-
Thanks Dana,
I am glad to hear that. That makes my idea feasible, and my users will benefit from this. Thanks again.
-
Interesting question Boris. There is a blogging tool out there called "Storify" (http://www.storify.com) that uses this concept to help bloggers write posts. I think the reason it works is that it makes it easy to pull things from sources all over the Web and weave them together into a unique story.
I think if you draw from other sites, it's perfectly okay, especially if you give citations to your sources and weave them together in a unique way. For example, if you are the only person who has put together a database on artists like the one you are subscribing, you are effectively compiling existing content in a new and unique way that could be very valuable to users.
I always like to include stories of my own experience. I have a small site I built that has a blog. One of the very first blog posts I wrote was simply a "Top 20 You Tube Videos" for music that was closely related to the overall topic of the Website. Although it includes 20 YouTube videos that I didn't make, this page gets the highest traffic and has the highest page authority of any of my internal pages. I
I think there's a big difference between copying other content and trying to pass it off as your own, versus compiling information, citing your sources and putting it all in one place in a way that your users find useful and interesting.
My only advice on top of that would be to spend some effort at weaving these things together in a way that is uniquely your own.
Hope that helps!
Dana
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
-
Duplicate Product Descriptions for Each Variant
Hi, I am setting up a Shopify e-commerce store and I have a questions about duplicate product descriptions. I have written unique product descriptions for all our products. Each product has at least 10 color options. I am thinking that it would look better if I created each color variant as a unique product. i.e. store.com/nice-shirt-blue, store.com/nice-shirt-red ect. Here is the kicker. Would I be penalized for using the same product descriptions for each product type?
Web Design | | Jon_B0 -
Duplicate Content? Designing new site, but all content got indexed on developer's sandbox
An ecommerce I'm helping is getting a complete redesign. Their developer had a sandbox version of their new site for design & testing. Several thousand products were loaded into the sandbox site. Then Google/Bing crawled and indexed the site (because developer didn't have a robots.txt), picking up and caching about 7,200 pages. There were even 2-3 orders placed on the sandbox site, so people were finding it. So what happens now?
Web Design | | trafficmotion
When the sandbox site is transferred to the final version on the proper domain, is there a duplicate content issue?
How can the developer fix this?0 -
Duplicate page title caused by Shopify CMS
Hi, We have an ecommerce site set up at devlinsonline.com.au using Shopify and the MOZ crawl is returning a huge number (hundreds!) of Duplicate Page Title errors. The issue seems to be the way that Shopify uses tagging to sort products. So, using the 'Riedel' collection as an example, the urls devlinsonline.com.au/collections/riedel-glasses/ devlinsonline.com.au/collections/riedel-glasses/decanters devlinsonline.com.au/collections/riedel-glasses/vinum all have the exact same page title. We are also having the same issue with the blog and other sections of our site. Is this something that is actually a serious issue or, perhaps, is Google's algorithm intelligent enough to recognise that this is part of Shopify's layout so it will not negatively affect our rankings and can, essentially, be ignored? Thanks.
Web Design | | SimonDevlin0 -
Site is losing traffic after relaunch
Hello, We've just relaunched this site in the last several days, and we're seeing some small (but stead) traffic decreases, as well as engagement decreases. We're aware that page speed (about 4 seconds from a non-cached browser) and some 404s are an issue, our team is currently working on both. But we're really looking for some constructive criticism here as to what we need to improve. Other issues to be aware of: lots of our social counts went back to 0s, as lots of URLs changed, and it wasn't possible to migrate comments from the old system, so those have gone back to 0 as well. We wonder if this might be affecting both users and search engines perception of the site. Your input would be greatly appreciated. Thanks,
Web Design | | FishAcct
Paul0 -
Development site accidentally crawled - Will this cause problems?
We are currently developing a new version of our website and to make it easy to access for all team members, we just set it up on a server accessible via a publicly accessible domain name (ie devsite.com). There has been no SEO and no links created to this site, or so I thought. Recently, I found out that Google somehow found its way to this development site and has been indexing the pages! I was a little alarmed, as there are no links to the domain and we'll soon be transitioning all the content over to our primary production domain. I immediately created a robots.txt file to disallow access to the entire development domain. My fear is that there may be some duplicate content penalty if Google sees that the content that is on our new site (once it goes live and is pushed to our REAL domain name) was previously indexed on our test domain. We're slated to launch in 2-3 weeks. Is there anything else I should do? Should I even be worried? I'm probably a bit paranoid, but given the amount of time and effort that has gone into this new site, I love any advice or thoughts. Thank You!
Web Design | | AndrewY0 -
What is value in site aggregation?
If one was to own 5 sites that were in a similar vertical and at some point decide that managing 5 sites was more of a pain than managing 1,2, or 3, is it possible to combine sites via 301 redirects and increase the overall DA, and for urls that are similar, PA? So, we have site Hairbrush.com, comb.info, trimmer.com, hairmud.org, and barber.net: Assuming that they have a DA of Hairbrush.com = 32 Comb.info = 36 Trimmer.com = 27 Hairmud.org = 21 Barber.net = 44 Is there any testing that has shown combining the first 4 would increase the Comb.info from DA of 36 to DA of 51, etc? Is there any testing regarding the same, but with Page Authority? Thanks PS Assume other variables are equal. I also realize this could look as if they were all ECommerce, but what if they were service or bricks and mortar?
Web Design | | RobertFisher0 -
Effect of Off-Site Images
I'm getting to start work with a new client, and I've run across something I've never had to deal with before, off-site images. The site I'll be working on is for an appliance retailer, both online and physical. The way they've had their site built (not something I was part of) a third party company maintains the product inventory side of things. They're sourcing from about 35 different manufacturers, and this third party has direct access to the product information streams. They push the weekly updated information to my clients site. What this means, though, is that the product images don't live on the client's site. They're hotlinked from the third party's inventory doohickey. I've never seen something quite like this before. Has anyone else? Any ideas as to what problems I may face when it comes to on-site SEO?
Web Design | | MRCSearch0 -
Which CMS Should Use?
I have a desinger working on a new webiste and he's suggesting that WP creates design limitations (He's doing quite a bit of HTML 5 I believe...I'm not sure) and obviosly has secruity concerns. He suggested TextPattern, which I've never heard of. Has anyone had any experience with it? Also, what CMS are you using (besides WP) that you really like and is SEO friendly? Thanks
Web Design | | LuminConsutling0