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I want to use some content that I sent out in a newsletter and post as a blog, but will this count as duplicate content?
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I want to use some content that I sent out in a newsletter a while ago - adding it as a blog to my website.
The newsletter exists on a http://myemail.constantcontact.com URL and is being indexed by Google.
Will this count as duplicate content?
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You've asked a great question, Wagada. The fact that the version of the content on Constant Contact's page has already been indexed does mean that you'll have a duplicate content challenge, but there are ways to address it.
The whole problem with duplicate content is not that it generates some kind of penalty, (it doesn't) it's just that search engines then have to decide which of the dupe pages they should point to in the search results.
The version you publish on your own site already has several things going for it, and you need to add additional signals to help the search engines prioritise your site's version. First, at least part of the rest of your site is probably already talking about the same topics, so there will be more relevance there than from the random topics on Constant Contact. Plus, if your newsletter is like most, it will be linking back to your site, giving the SEs another signal.
The biggest thing you can do to get your site's page considered as the canonical (primary) version is to get at least a few links pointing to it. Social media links can be very useful for this, especially from Google Plus, but a solid link or two from other sites will go a long way as well. Also, make sure your page does NOT link to the CC page - that way there's a clear authority signal that only travels one way.
For future reference, if you're going to publish newsletter content on your own site, there are a couple of steps to take in preparation.
- Publish the content on your own site a day or a couple of days in advance
- Use the Fetch and Render tool in GSC to help it get crawled and indexed before sending the newsletter (SEs take "first published" date into account when trying to ascertain which page to return in results.)
- Make sure it's strongly-linked internally - maybe even put a link to the newsletter content page on your homepage before sending the newsletter
- Get a few incoming links to the newly-published page before the newsletter goes out.
- Use the newly published page's address in the newsletter's preheader text link where it says "If not showing up well in your email, you can read this in your browser" so the dupe page actually links back to the page you want to be considered primary.
- Or best yet, do the above and also turn off the newsletter archive on Constant Contact altogether and make the prepublished page on your site the only version. This is the best, but obviously takes a bit more work and preparation to pre-publish. It also offers the massive benefit of delivering those newsletter viewers who do want to read in a browser to your own pages where you can induce further activity/conversions. Though it should be said that in the newsletters I've managed, very few people click the "view in browser" links anymore anyway.
Hope all that makes sense?
Paul
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While a good solution if it were possible, unfortunately ESPs like Constant Contact don't give you any way to alter the content of the of their pages. And canonical tags must be in the or they'll be ignored.
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Gaston is right, Great answer Gaston
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hello,
Yeap, it will be duplicate content.
Add a canonical tag from that myemail site to the blog post and issue resolved.Hope it helps.
Best luck.
GR.
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