Copying & Pasting the Moz Glossary onto my site.. is this white hat or black hat?
-
Hi,
I run a small business writing optimised content for small businesses in Melbourne.
I want to add a Glossary page to my website that lists all of the different words associated with website marketing and SEO.
I found the Moz glossary and I am wondering if it would be a bad idea to copy and paste the list straight into a page on my site. I'd prefer to not have to reword all of the descriptions as it will take me ages and I don't want to compromise the information in the descriptions.
Here is a link to the Glossary: http://moz.com/blog/smwc-and-other-essential-seo-jargon
Obviously I don't want to do the wrong thing ethically or from Google's perspective.
Any advice would be great.
-
well said
-
Hi Meaghan, happy to help! I was actually referring to Hutch 42's advice above, in this thread. (The anchor link to his response to your question is http://moz.com/community/q/copying-pasting-the-moz-glossary-onto-my-site-is-this-white-hat-or-black-hat#reply_270109.)
-
Thanks Christy.
Could you provide me with a link to Hutch42's advice as you mentioned? I Googled it but I got mixed results.
Meaghan
-
Hi there, thanks for your question. Yes, this would be a very bad idea. Duplicate content issues aside, copying content and passing it off as your own is plagiarism. This is unethical and violates copyright law. If you are interested in publishing someone else's work on your site, you are both legally and ethically obligated to obtain their permission to do so, and then properly attribute to work to the original creator if granted permission to republish it. Rather than going this route, however, your time would be better spent implementing Hutch42's advice. (That is, create your own authoritative content that will naturally earn links, show off your content creation skills, and rank in organic search engine results.) Best of luck!
Christy
-
So if I were to reword the sentences in my own words, would that still be ethical?
-
I mean, I guess you could borrow it. Better give Moz some link love though :)... and I wouldn't expect great rankings for that long term.
I would think it better to use their glossary as inspiration and then put your own spin on a version of it.
-
First of all, I did not once say I would not credit it as being written by Moz. In fact, I every time I mention Moz (and how awesome it is) I provide a link to the Moz website.
The reason I don't want to rewrite it is because I don't want to lose the accuracy in the descriptions.
Secondly, if I was intending on 'stealing' anything, why would I bother asking the Moz community about the ethics of using content written by Moz? I am obviously aware that copying and pasting is not ethic in nature but given that this is a glossary and Moz are the experts on technical terms, I thought there might be a way of working around this so that I can use the proper definitions without my visitors having to navigate away from my website.
So thanks for your friendly response.
-
So you are asking on Moz if you should steal content from Moz then not credit them to increase your search ranking, and then your concern is not if what you are doing is wrong (it is) but only if Google will penalize you for it? I believe that if you want content for your site you should make it or pay for it, not steal it, if you write optimized content then maybe people would expect copy on your site to be written by you.
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
-
Another website copying our blog content but credit us. Still bad?
Hi Moz community, A few businesses that we work with are asking if they can leverage our content such as blogs by basically copying it and post it on their site. They will give us credit for the content though. My concern is that going to cause duplicate content issue and hurt us with our SEO? We'd like to provide it to them in a way that would benefit us or at least doesn't hurt us. I can think of a few possible options... 1. Have them only copy part of the content and link back to our site with a link "Read the original article" or something similar 2. Have them implement rel=canonical back to our site 3. Have them just copy the whole thing (because it doesn't really hurt us?). In that case, do we have them link back to us or no? Is there anything I missed? What's the best option for us? Thank you for the help in advance!
Content Development | | aphoontrakul1 -
Content Writing - it should be for the main corporate site, blog or for social media?
Hi There, I have my main site : example.com and a related blog https://blog.example.com/ My management does not believe frequent content posting on the example.com My Queries 1- Will it help boost ranking of **example.com **if we share frequent content on our blog https://blog.example.com/? How much impact it has? 2- Every body says content is the king, Ok fine, but when you are not allowed to share it on the main corporate site, then where to share it? Blog and social media sites? please help. 3- We are in a business where clients do not bother to go on sites and read, so in this scenario is it correct to say that you hav to create the content for search engine consumption even when your clients dont need it/or have not in the habit of reading it? Hope somebody will enligten me caught in catch 22. Regards Tanveer
Content Development | | Sequelmed1 -
How best to handle on-site blogs for multiple site views in Magento?
Hi, I'm working with a site on Magento with views for UK, US and FR websites. Currently they have a French WordPress Blog that is pulled into the French site view and an English one that appears on both the US and UK views. Of course the problem here is that the US and UK views are duplicating content so these needs sorting super-fast. The plan is to disconnect the US view from the current English blog and create a dedicated US onsite blog. However, should we continue to use WordPress or instead use an alternative blog module or plugin for Magento? Cost is an issue and running three separate blogs and the cost of plugging these into each site view. However, getting these right for SEO is the most important factor here. I'm also concerned about the mess of multiple plugins causing page speed issues etc... My instinct is to go with WordPress, but I'm keen to hear what others think or have experience of.
Content Development | | ExtraDigital0 -
I want to swop a site to an existing domain. i.e. it was http://A.com and now want it to be B.com...please help
The company I have started working for as two main websites. The main website (A) is out of date and not very functional but has the companies prime domain name. The other site (B) has their ecommerce engine. I'd like to make B the prime site i.e. take over A's domain name. Huge warning bells are going off regarding the SEO of this decision. Any advice or suggestions in how to go about this without destroying the company's SEO would be greatly valued.
Content Development | | SoutherlySwell0 -
URL structure on moving from old nukedit site to Drupal
I am currently rebuilding a site in Drupal. The old site was in Nukedit and all the urls end in .asp. Given the new urls will not end in .asp is there any point in matching the rest of the url or will using 301 redirects (to better seo'd pages) be sufficient to minimise any (temporary) ranking loss?
Content Development | | chunki0 -
Does this count as Copied Content ?
Hi, we are publishing news on our website blog. In the news we use excerpts from other websites but do mention the source like "according to XYZ news source" etc. Does it count as copied content as sometime copyscape shows alsmot 30% duplicated content due to inclusion of references from different sources in our news stories ? Regards, shahzad
Content Development | | shaz_lhr0 -
Second Blog on the Same Site? Best SEO Practice
I would like to start up another blog which has more of a "technical" topic coverage vs my regular blog, which appeals more to non-techie business folks. If the goal is to drive traffic ultimately to the main site, should I do this second blog on a different domain, a subdomain, or try to incorporate it as a separate-but-equal blog on the same domain as the currrent one? What would you do?
Content Development | | JMagary0 -
Site structure question
I'm doing a site that will have many many pages.
Content Development | | OxzenMedia
Now I have heard that you get more seo value if its a lower tear so for example: site.com/product rather than site.com/brand/subbrand/product Is this correct? Should I structure my site like this? site.com/product
site.com/brand points to site.com/product (so all products are on the sub root.) Does that make sense?0