Duplicate content across external profiles

[hjduck3]

As a B2B business, a lot of our traffic comes from referrals, especially from profile listings and high quality directories.
I am currently updating all of our listings with content that is relevant and representative of our business. The easiest way to do this is by using one boilerplate/ presaved profile. This would be using duplicate content, would I run the risk of discrediting these backlinks to my website and suffering and Google penalties?

[KaneJamison]

Hey Harry,

For the top 5-10% of these pages (specifically the ones with the highest referral volume to your site or high domain authority), try and write some custom content to supplement your boilerplate stuff.

For the rest of them I wouldn't worry about the boilerplate content. Duplicate content on the pages would mean that it's unlikely that all of them would rank together, but I can't think of any reason that it would decrease the link value sent to you.

[Futura]

Hi Andre,

I am also agreed with you without any proof, as said - 
"any form of duplicate content is frowned upon and in theory, if a link exists on a page with content identical to another website, that link would be less valuable"

Let me work on some new project to see the differences, hope it is true as we are thinking.

Best,
Teginder

[AndreVanKets]

Strictly speaking, any form of duplicate content is frowned upon and in theory, if a link exists on a page with content identical to another website, that link would be less valuable.

If each of your descriptions in listings were unique to some extent, i'd guess the value of the link would be somewhat better.

I don't think you'd run a risk of getting penalties though as the dupe content doesn't originate on your site, (unless the description you plan on using is identical to content somewhere on your site)

I think the only negative to using the same description across multiple sites would be the value that passes with the link.

(I don't have any evidence for this though, just a theory)

Greg

[BlueprintMarketing]

In my opinion you might want to stick to a very good description it is the domain in which you are sharing your description on that gets any duplicate content issues for instance let's say I'm in yelp if I write "the example is outstanding and fun".

then the only thing that could occur is Google will give yelps competitors the credit for the content if they have a higher page rank or domain trust.

Essentially no you cannot hurt your own website by giving the same honest duplicate description of your companies practices or what you sell on quality directory websites.

B2B is a lot rougher considering the lack of traffic from organic I am right there with you.

Sincerely,

Thomas