Duplicate Content issue: Amazon book review & company blog
-
Can my site be penalized for including a book review verbatim in my blog that I also post on Amazon? What are the steps I need to take? I have written a book review that I want to post on Amazon. I am also planning to create a blog post and include the exact text of the review within the post which I will then also promote on my social channels. What do I need to watch out for in terms of duplicate content? Is there a sequence I should follow? We have the rel=canonical tag on our site which is WordPress.
-
Thanks so much for the thorough answer, Paul. I was hoping I would get answers like these so I can go ahead. I appreciate your comments about ranking although, I am not sure I am concerned about that so much in this instance. I'll have to give it some thought.
-
Thank you, Martijn. Just the answer I was hoping to hear.
-
Agree with Martin - a single page like this won't be a problem as far as something like Panda penalising for dupe content.
However the challenge will be to get your page rank for the terms in the review ahead of the Amazon page (which is on such a strong domain that it will overpower your own page). To give your page the best chance, you'll want to publish your post that includes the review first, making sure you've hit all the on-page optimisation. It would also be good to have additional text to add to the review - an intro paragraph and summary for example. Then wait until it has been indexed in Google, while building at least a few links to your page - social mentions are great for this, as you mention.
Once your own post is indexed and ranking (do a search for a specific phrase from your review, for example) then you can post it on Amazon, This way, hopefully the search engines will have enough cues to recognise that your blog page was the first and definitive source for the review. Doesn't' always work but this gives you the best shot.
Nothing about canonicalisation on your blog page is going to help with this process. However, it certainly could be beneficial to have rel=author attribution from Google+ implemented on your blog.
Hope that helps answer the second part of your question?
Paul
-
Hi Gina,
No you won't get penalized for only copying the review about a book on your blog while it's also on Amazon. It's only one page so Google won't make this a huge problem for your site.
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
-
Social Media Causing Duplicate Content
Recently, I spent some time in the SEO MOZ Crawl Diagnostics, and found that I have 40 pages that are being listed as “duplicate content.” These are original blog posts, but I made the mistake of sharing on social media immediately after publishing each post. I recently found out that if you post on a blog and on social on the same day, Google indexes the social first, and then up to 2 weeks later indexes the actual blog post. When it does, it stamps the blog post as duplicate and the social media posting as the original. Any ideas on how I can rectify this? Any code I can put in each blog post to let Google know they’re the original? I’ve begun publicizing my blogs on social 14 days after I actually publish them to alleviate the issue going forward, but I’d like my 40 other blog posts to get the authority they deserve.
Social Media | | Jake20150 -
How to promote website/blog on FB, Twitter, Pinterest etc?
Kindly provide me the guide link for FB, Twitter, Pinterest and other important social media websites to learn how to promote website/blog on them
Social Media | | bondhoward0 -
Can you recommend improvements to my blog?
Hello, I have just revamped my blog. I am not expert blogger. Do you have any recommendations to improve it? What can I add? What would people use? What SEO improvements should I make? http://www.ditalia.com.au/blog Thanks. 🙂
Social Media | | infinart0 -
SEO wise - what is the impact of Avatar on a blog
Hi all, At the moment we are at the verge of building finally a blog. For SEO purpose I demanded that it would include social interactions with Google+, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and some more. Especially Google+ for the authorship part. But now they come asking me if they can work with Gravatar http://www.gravatar.com/support/what-is-gravatar/ - a Globally Recognized Avatar. I never worked with it before and can't find anything if it will negatively impact SEO on authorship - but I'm still not sure. Does the Gravatar interfer with Google+ authorship?
Social Media | | Letty
I could find information about having to setup the author part in the Gravatar, but this doesn't give me the answer if this helps with Google+. If anybody has experience of can tell me / point me in the right direction it much appreciated. Or maybe having a better solutions than the Gravatar.0 -
Creating Viral Content
Hi, I’m currently building a brand new site in the fitness vertical. The site is brand new, no authority, and backlinks. My goal is to turn it into a high end authority website, with organic traffic, and into a brand. My other goal is it to be purely organic growth, content driven. All my backlinks are natural. I don’t want to plead with other webmasters to link to me, whether it would be for guest posting or other questionable SEO tactics. I understand that creating awesome content so people have a reason to visit and link to, is what I need, and it’s a long-term process. I guess the part, in which I’m seeking advice/suggestions on is how do I go about creating awesome content which people link to and share. I’m thinking of doing something like Movoto and bridging together the sites topic and current trends online. For instance content on comparing North Korea average diet and how it compares to the US. Or who’s the fittest character on Games of Thrones. It’s relevant to the site and is current related to a hot trends. However creating content which is designed to go viral can be quite costly and I don’t have unlimited pockets nor do most people. E.g. creating an awesome info graphic, collecting data, hiring a professional writer, getting professional images, etc. So you don’t really want to screw up. So how can you reduce the risk? How do I go about it from a risk adverse angle? I’m thinking I can find content which has been previously shared (had a pulse), repurpose the content (I remember Rand mentioned this in one of the white board Friday sessions, make it way better, use visuals, apps etc), then base some of my content decisions using this process. I guess other ways – look at places like Reddit, bridging topic with current rends (as mentioned before), find popular forum topics, etc. The goal of the content is: 1) Content which naturally attract high quality links to the site, so it lifts up the other pages which don’t attract many links (through authority). 2) Turn some of that viral traffic into long-term subscribers of the website, and repeat visitors. Increase total search presence naturally Any suggestions or insights into this question would be very much appreciated! Thanks, Matt
Social Media | | Mattcarter080 -
I am the only one at my company responsible for SEO
This includes onpage, blogging, social media, link building, content creation, reporting, etc Etc ETC!!! The company I work for has about 100 employess and we are an eCommerce company. I have recently taken over all the SEO duties, as the person before me left. In the past we relied heavily on link building but that seems to be losing steam with Panda and Penguin. Is it even possible in this day in age for one person to keep a company afloat in the competitve SEO world? If so, what should I devote most my time to?
Social Media | | joebuilder0 -
Social Media Approaches for a Pest Control Company
Hi Everyone, I am working with a pest control company that is looking to branch out into social media. Their primary goal is to connect with their existing customers to improve retention. The secondary goal is to potentially pick up new clients. With that said, I wanted to see if you all had some ideas on things that they could tweet/facebook about on a regular basis? Posting about bugs on a daily basis gets pretty boring. I know Rand has been talking a lot lately about not being so narrow, so maybe we should talk more about general home improvement? Any thoughts or ideas? Thanks! EDIT: I should clarify that this is a company that has maintenance plans. You don't call them only when you have a problem. You sign up with them, and they treat your property every 3 months, or whenever you call. Only about 2% of their customer base is one-off phone calls to fix 1 problem and never come back again. I don't think their existing customer base will have any issues with Liking them on Facebook or following them on Twitter. The initial plan is to incentivize them to do so, but once we get the like/follow, we want to continually be in front of them with interesting content, contests as Jay suggested, etc.
Social Media | | brianspatterson2 -
Best practices to add Facebook comments to wordpress blog?
Our website (noahsdad.com) has a very large and active Facebook group (http://facebook.com/noahsdadcom). Often there are more comments on the Facebook posting of a link, than on the blog post itself. I try to get people go and leave comments on the blog, but they don't get it. So I'd like to try to find a way to get Facebook comments to transfer to our site. I"m not sure the best way to do this....either via a plug in, or via these instructions https://developers.facebook.com/attachment/Comments_Best_Practices_FINAL.pdf/ I'd just like to get it going..and not mess up the comment's I have now. (Also not everyone has Facebook, so I'd like them to still be able to comment the 'old' way (name/email). Hoping someone can help point me in the right direction with this. Thanks.
Social Media | | NoahsDad0