Duplicate content issue, across site domains (blogging)
-
Hi all,
I've just come to learn that a client has been cross-posting their blog posts to other blogs (on higher quality domains, in some cases). For example - this is the same post on 3 different blogs.
http://thebioethicsprogram.wordpress.com/2014/06/30/how-an-irb-could-have-legitimately-approved-the-facebook-experiment-and-why-that-may-be-a-good-thing/
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/billofhealth/2014/06/29/how-an-irb-could-have-legitimately-approved-the-facebook-experiment-and-why-that-may-be-a-good-thing/
http://www.thefacultylounge.org/2014/06/how-an-irb-could-have-legitimately-approved-the-facebook-experimentand-why-that-may-be-a-good-thing.html
And, sometimes a 4th time, on an NPR website.I'm assuming this is doing no one any favors and Harvard or NPR is going to earn the rank most every time. I'm going to encourage them to publish only fresh content on their real blog, would you agree? Can this actually harm the ranking of their blog and website - should we delete the old entries when migrating the blog? They are going to move their Wordpress Blog to hosting on their real domain soon:
http://www.bioethics.uniongraduatecollege.edu/news/The current set up is not adding any value to their domain. Thank you for any advice!
Ketan
-
Ketan,
I'm going to encourage them to publish only fresh content on their real blog, would you agree?
If you look at pretty much any of the blog posts on these forums you will see that more and more everything comes back to content. Original content. Original Content. Did I mention original content? EGOL shared a link with me and I'm sharing it again on another post but it's pertinent.
http://www.thesempost.com/google-rewrites-quality-rating-guide-seos-need-know/
Content used to be king and he wants his thrown back!
Can this actually harm the ranking of their blog and website - should we delete the old entries when migrating the blog?
Duplicate content is something that I am working a lot with right now. There is a difference between duplicate content and plagiarism. What needs to be determined is how the are using this content. Matt Cutts said that roughly 25% of the internet is duplicate content, and a lot of duplicate content is ok, for example if you were writing an analysis, or writing commentary on one of those blog posts then of course there is going to be some duplicate content. That sort of this would be ok.
If they are simply taking the article, and posting it, yet still giving credit, then no its not really doing anything except potentially giving your blog traffic. Take social bookmarking websites for example. Let's look at digg.com. A long time ago digg used to take the entire article and post it to their page and you could actually view everything within their website and everything was all gravy. Now, that doesn't work so well. Now, digg usually writes a little blurb, and provides a link.
Google will look at duplicate content, determine which ever is the best representation of the content, usually who wrote it first, who has the strongest domain etc, and gives the credit to them. The other thing too is that these websites, Havard, NPR, etc have in their favor is that they are prob indexed often enough to guarantee that they are going to get credit first.
As to the question about deleting them. I don't think you necessarily need to delete them, depending on how many articles exist, how much traffic they generate etc. There is a lot to look at. If nobody is looking at them, then sure, you can always do a 301 to one of your new blog posts later down the line. Or maybe your first posts are rewrites or analysis of the articles. Regardless I would provide a link on all of the pages letting people know where you got the information, that way nobody can say you were trying to steal the information.
My thought on this whole thing. If it makes you uncomfortable, it's gonna make Google feel uncomfortable.
Hope that helps! Good luck!
Matt Cutts on Duplicate content: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQZY7EmjbMA&feature=kp
Matt Cutts on Original content: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LsB19wTt0Q
-
Do they use canonical URLs on their website? Do the cross-posted blog posts have canonicals that point back to the originating site? If so, the duplicate content should not harm their website and their website should rank above the bigger players for their content (though not necessarily--Google works in mysterious ways).
In general, it is a good idea to keep your best, fresh content on your own website but sometimes it can be good to get the added exposure of a high-traffic website, assuming that it is clear where the content originated.
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 Content - Pricing Plan tables
Hey guys, We're faced with a problem that we want to solve. We're working on the designs for a few pages for a drag & drop email builder we're currently working on, and we will be having the same pricing table on several pages (much like Moz does). We're worried that Google will take this as duplicate content and not be very fond of it. Any ideas about how we could integrate the same flow without potentially harming ranking efforts? And NO, re-writing the content for each table is not an option. It would do nothing but confuse the heck out of our clients. 😄 Thanks everybody!
On-Page Optimization | | andy.bigbangthemes0 -
Thoughts on archiving content on an event site?
I have a few sites that are used exclusively to promote live events (ex. tradeshows, conference, etc). In most cases these sites content fewer than 100 pages and include information for the upcoming event with links to register. Some time after the event has ended, we would redesign the site and start promoting next years event...essentially starting over with a new site (same domain). We understand the value that many of these past event pages have for users who are looking for info from the past event and we're looking for advice on how best to archive this content to preserve for SEO. We tend to use concise urls for pages on these sites. Ex. www.event.com/agenda or www.event.com/speakers. What are your thoughts on archiving the content from these pages so we can reuse the url with content for the new event? My first thought is to put these pages into an archive, like www.event.com/2015/speakers. Is there a better way to do this to preserve the SEO value of this content?
On-Page Optimization | | accessintel0 -
Products description from third party vendor creating duplicate content issues?
Hi, I am running my client's e-store. The store sells different products from various vendors. Vendors provide us product descriptions. The problem is that these vendors also give these description to display their products on other similar sites and hence creating duplicate content issue. Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | Kashif-Amin0 -
Help! A site has copied my blog!
My site tanked on July 21 and I have been working so hard to bring it back up but nothing is working. Today I looked at "Links to Your Site" on Google Webmasters and I see a copy of my site on another URL. mysite.eemovies.org/mycategory/mypost The domain name is eemovies.org and then all my stuff is wrapped around it and all my content is there! How do I stop this?!
On-Page Optimization | | 2bloggers0 -
Duplicate Page Content for Product Pages
Hello, We have one website which URL is http://www.bannerbuzz.com & we have many product pages which having duplicate page content issue in SEOMOZ which are below. http://www.bannerbuzz.com/backlit-banners-1.html
On-Page Optimization | | CommercePundit
http://www.bannerbuzz.com/backlit-banners-10.html
http://www.bannerbuzz.com/backlit-banners-11.html
http://www.bannerbuzz.com/backlit-banners-12.html
http://www.bannerbuzz.com/backlit-banners-13.html We haven't any content on these pages, still getting duplicate page content errors for all pages in SEOMOZ. Please help me how can i fix this issue. Thanks,0 -
Duplicate Content for Spanish & English Product
Hi There, Our company provides training courses and I am looking to provide the Spanish version of a course that we already provide in English. As it is an e-commerce site, our landing page for the English version gives the full description of the course and all related details. Once the course is purchased, a flash based course launches within a player window and the student begins the course. For the Spanish version of the course, my target customers are English speaking supervisors purchasing the course for their Spanish speaking workers. So the landing page will still be in English (just like the English version of the course) with the same basic description, with the only content differences on that page being the inclusion of the fact that this course is in Spanish and a few details around that. The majority of the content on these two separate landing pages will be exactly the same, as the description for the overall course is the same, just that it's presented in a different language, so it needs to be 2 separate products. My fear is that Google will read this as duplicate content and I will be penalized for it. Is this a possibility or will Google know why I set it up this way and not penalize me? If that is a possibility, how should I go about doing this correctly? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | NiallTom0 -
User experience regarding dulpicate content and managing this content with google.
Hi long title i know! We are moving on to magento and have chosen to allocate a specific colour to each category using corresponding tabbed navigation for user experience.All products within each of the coloured tabs then inherit the repective colour, giving the products a category identiy within the store. This layout has had a positive feedback from our "testers" As a lot of our products are seasonal and can be represented in different categories there is a significant amount of duplicate content. ATM i see our options as being: Alter the site structure so that the category is not shown in the url, therefore eliminating our duplicate products. The downside of this is that the colour co-ordination of the categories would not work at product level as its the category path that assigns the colour. create canonical links for every duplicate, can this be damaging? keep the duplicates and do nothing let google decide the most important version of a product. any guidance would be appreciated!
On-Page Optimization | | LadyApollo0 -
What should I do with my blog?
I have a website: http://www.celynnenphotography.co.uk I also have a blog which I put there because I thought the URL would be useful: http://cheshireweddingphotographyblog.co.uk/ Should I: Move my blog within my website's url? (i.e: http://www.celynnenphotography.co.uk/blog ) Make a NEW blog within the website's URL? or leave it as it is? My interest is raising the SEO of my website. Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | IoanSaid0