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
-
Using Button Links vs Sidebar Menu
I have a services page with a lot of rich text and a slideshow of images. Currently, I am using a column of buttons to various services, and am wondering if a sidebar menu would be more effective for Google to crawl and rank?
Web Design | | cinchmedia0 -
Services\Companies that expertise to improve WP site speed ?
Hi guys, I used few companies to improve my WP site speed but in general the results were not that good. I wanted to know if there's any recommendation for companies that expert on improving speed of WP sites ? I need companies that this is what they do and that's their expertise! Thanks in advanced
Web Design | | EdmondHong870 -
Any alternative techniques to display tabbed content without using Javascript / JSON and be SEO Friendly?
John Mueller's input in the EGWMH hangout suggests that Google MAY ignore expandable content served by Javascript. Are there any alternative techniques to display tabbed content without using Javascript / JSON and be SEO Friendly? I do however view these as good for website interactivity and UX - and see many examples of websites performing well and ranking highly whilst using these techniques - are there any Google friendly ways to serve content on a page so that search bots can recognise and choose to crawl / consume the content as legitimate fodder?
Web Design | | Fergclaw0 -
Joomla! Site Returning 12000+ Duplicate Content Errors! W Image
(I do award "Good Answer" and "thumbs up" to responses as earned) I have tried to ask this question previously (maybe not correctly). I have a client that I am doing the on and offsite optimization and the MOZ report is kicking back major errors. I have examples below. They all seem to relate directly to rokecwid and ECWID. Is there ANY solution to fix this? Is this hurting the rankings Since I didn't build the site, I am having to tell the website company what to do when I need changes made to code, etc... I am also not very proficient with Joomla! and my web engineer is one of those closet coders (the best kind to have) and doesn't communicate in a way that a "layman" could understand. He pointed out several issues with the HTML but I don't think that is related to this below. Can anyone tell me what to tell the web company that built this site to get rid of these errors? A very small sample of the urls w errors:
Web Design | | Atlanta-SMO
http://www.metroboltmi.com/shop-spareparts?
Itemid=218&option=com_rokecwid&view=ecwid&ecwid_category_id=3560097
1 14 1 http://www.metroboltmi.com/shop-spareparts?
Itemid=218&option=com_rokecwid&view=ecwid&ecwid_category_id=3560098
1 1 0 http://www.metroboltmi.com/shop-spareparts?
Itemid=218&option=com_rokecwid&view=ecwid&ecwid_category_id=3560099
1 14 1 http://www.metroboltmi.com/shop-spareparts?
Itemid=218&option=com_rokecwid&view=ecwid&ecwid_category_id=3560100
1 14 1 SEOMOZErrors_zps3a1ce2a2.png0 -
Does Google penalise for alot of advertising on your site?
I look after the search side of a decorating website on which we carry a large amount of advertising from external brands as that is our business model. Do you know if we would get penalised for having too much advertising - would it be deemed to affect the user experience? Many thanks for your help on this.
Web Design | | Pday0 -
Duplicate H1 tag IF it holds SAME text?
Hello people, I know that majority of SEO gurus (?) claim that H1 tag should only be used once per page. In the landing page design I'm working with, we actually need to repeat our core message stated in H1 & H2 - at the bottom of the page. Now the question is: Can that in any way cause any ranking penalty from big G? In my eyes that is not attempt to over optimize page as it contains SAME info as the H1 & H2 at the top of the page. Confusing, so I'm hope that some SEO gurus here will share some light on this. Thanks in advance!
Web Design | | RetroOnline0 -
Multiple Sites, multiple locations similar / duplicate content
I am working with a business that wants to rank in local searches around the country for the same service. So they have websites such as OURSITE-chicago.com and OURSITE-seattle.com -- All of these sites are selling the same services, but with small variations in each state due to different legal standards in the state. The current strategy is to put up similar "local" websites with all the same content. So the bottom line is that we have a few different sites with the same content. The business wants to go national and is planning a different website for each location. In my opinion the duplicate content is a real problem. Unfortunately the nature of the service makes it so that there aren't many ways to say the same thing on each site 50 times without duplicate content. Rewriting content for each state seems like a daunting task when you have 70+ pages per site. So, from an SEO standpoint we have considered: Using the canonocalization tag on all but the central site... I think this would hurt all of the websites SERPs because none will have unique content. Having a central site with directories OURSITE.com/chicago -- but this creates a problem because we need to link back to the relevant content in the main site and ALSO have the unique "Chicago" content easily accessable to Chicago users while having Seattle users able to access their Seattle data. The best way we thought to do this was using a frame with a universal menu and a unique state based menu... Also not a good option because of frames will also hurt SEO. Rewrite all the same content 50 times. You can see why none of these are desirable options. But I know that plenty of websites have "state maps" on their main site. Is there a way to accomplish this in a way that doesn't make our copywriter want to kill us?
Web Design | | SysAdmin190 -
Correct use for Robots.txt
I'm in the process of building a website and am experimenting with some new pages. I don't want search engines to begin crawling the site yet. I would like to add the Robot.txt on my pages that I don't want them to crawl. If I do this, can I remove it later and get them to crawl those pages?
Web Design | | EricVallee340