Duplicate content
-
Hi mozzers,
I've been doing some broken link building and it's been going quite well. I've made a high value page and asked webmasters to link to it to replace the 404s. My page was ranking on google, not well, you had to copy/paste a portion of the page for it showup. Sadly another webmaster has posted my exact post on their blog and now when you search for a portion of text, the copied page shows up on google instead of mine. He has give me the credit for it and linked to my page. Am I at risk of losing credit for my work and links as the copied page is ranking? Or will google figure it out as my page will have more links and the copied page links to me.
Thanks
-
It's definitely worth asking about that canonical link. If they are nice, they'll add it - and I've personally been lucky with that before. If they were "nice" enough to credit you for the blog post and link to the original source, then they should be fine with adding it.
-
To quote Google: "Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results. If your site suffers from duplicate content issues, and you don't follow the advice listed above, we do a good job of choosing a version of the content to show in our search results."
Having a backlink from the copied page to your site can help Google to determine that your page is the original source - however it's no guarantee (if his site has a better link profile it could well be that Google prefers the copied site). It would be better if the copy site would put a canonical url pointing to your page.
Dirk
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
-
Is it a good idea to create a blog that offers quality content but also passes PageRank to sponsors
I am a part of a business networking group that has lots of members who services home owners (a/c repair, plumber, home inspector, etc.). I am thinking of starting a blog to help home owners be better informed how to care for their homes. I would like to ask for sponsorship from the people in my group. I would also like to invite them to post on the blog as a way to improve their SEO. Would posting on this kind of blog hurt, help or not affect their SEO? Would this violate Google's policy of selling links that pass page rank as described here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en.
Link Building | | aj6130 -
Bad links or poor content?
Hi all I have a meeting with our seo company tomorrow.... Our sites have dropped considerably for our main keywords. My opinion is that the links that have been built for us have focused on too few anchor text and many "money making" keywords. Also to deep pages rather than the home page. They are saying it's poor content (I guess they would). We copyscape check all content before putting live. Has anyone any evidence I could present to them to back up my argument?
Link Building | | jj34340 -
Few questions regarding onsite content?
1. How important is having the keywords you are targeting on the page? Lets say you rank position 10 for 'Plumbing Services London' but you don't actually use the word 'London' at all in the page copy, what kind of effect could you expect if you added the word in the content? Bit of a silly question really, I know it would have some effect but how important is it really? 2. What kind of effect would adding a blog with lets say 500 words of great content twice a week have on rankings? If you anchor text linked out of the copy would this alone help with ranking or is the reason for adding a blog to just use it as link bait to pull in more links, thus rankings are only effected when the blog starts to gain links?
Link Building | | activitysuper0 -
When placing content on external sites, what are some best practices for back links?
Hi there, I am working on a content strategy that includes placing content (i.e. bylined articles, how-to's, guest blogs, etc.) on other web sites and embedding links back to our site. In some cases we're very limited to what we can do with our bank links (i.e. just a company url), and in other cases we are free to place multiple anchor links within the content. In cases where we have no limitations, what are some best practices for implementing back links? I understand it's important to link to deep pages (not just our home page), have diverse anchor text, and make the anchor links relevant to the surrounding content. Are there other things I should be thinking about in order to maximize the SEO value of such placements? For example, is it better to have just one anchor link per placement? Or should I aim to embed multiple anchor links within a single placement? Any advice would be much appreciated! Sincerely, Debra
Link Building | | Cherwell-Software0 -
Guest Blog Etiquette & Re-using "Expired" Content
Hi everyone, There's two parts to this Q, which is why the title's sort of split in half. We wrote a guest blog post that we were really proud of, which took a good few hours of work. It went live about a month ago, but I just happened to notice recently that it had disappeared off the person's website - I now get a 404 error and I can't find it either using a 'site:' search in Google or via the site's own search tool. I've tried getting in touch with the webmaster, but he's no longer responding to my emails. I really don't know if a) it disappeared by accident (for whatever reason), or b) they purposefully wanted to remove it and now they're avoiding me. My two Q's: Do you think it's cheeky to re-use the content, by giving it to someone else? Or would you say it goes against guest blogging etiquette? It seems a shame to waste it, for it to disappear. If I were to re-use it, would there be any implications regarding Panda, given the fact that it was content that was once live (i.e. effectively 'duplicate', once upon a time), even if the 'original' content is no longer indexed by Google? Would it even be considered a duplicate if published again now? Many thanks in advance!
Link Building | | Gmorgan0 -
We have written great content - how will people find it?
Hi We have allocated resources to write some great content (how to's, best practice, videos) etc which will benefit customers as they will find it a useful resource. We are using this not as a sales channel but as a trust and information resource to build a community It is currently located about 2 levels deep in our website, what are the best ways of getting people to find these articles on the web? I have placed some social sharing icons at the bottom of the page to Facebook and Twitter but are there other channels because at present the only way they will find this information as if they visit our website. Do we also need to be practive and distribute this content around the web perhaps as a guest writer? which raises duplicate content problems as it would also be on our website or is there a better approach?
Link Building | | ocelot0 -
Do you link out to good content?
I have noticed that there are a bunch of questions in the Q&A about people are concerned about allowing blog post comments or linking out in general. My question is: do you avoid linking out to other websites, even though they have good content? I am not talking about direct competitors here, but just linking to other websites in general.
Link Building | | ThomasHgenhaven0 -
Duplicate content when uploading articles on other websites
Hi, We regularly write articles on our website and then submit them to different websites with link backs or sometimes without link backs. If google crawls these websites and our website, will it penalise us for duplicate content? Does it make a difference if we put link back to our site or not? If Google sees it as duplicate content, what should we do as a solution? Thanks
Link Building | | Essentia0