Would this be duplicate content or bad SEO?
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Hi Guys,
We have a blog for our e-commerce store. We have a full-time in-house writer producing content. As part of our process, we do content briefs, and as part of the brief we analyze competing pieces of content existing on the web. Most of the time, the sources are large publications (i.e HGTV, elledecor, apartmenttherapy, Housebeautiful, NY Times, etc.). The analysis is basically a summary/breakdown of the article, and is sometimes 2-3 paragraphs long for longer pieces of content.
The competing content analysis is used to create an outline of our article, and incorporates most important details/facts from competing pieces, but not all. Most of our articles run 1500-3000 words.
Here are the questions:
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Would it be considered duplicate content, or bad SEO practice, if we list sources/links we used at the bottom of our blog post, with the summary from our content brief?
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Could this be beneficial as far as SEO?
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If we do this, should be nofollow the links, or use regular dofollow links?
For example:
For your convenience, here are some articles we found helpful, along with brief summaries:
<summary>I want to use as much of the content that we have spent time on.
TIA</summary>
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Hello. My thoughts.
Question 1. I really don't think you're duplicating content by summarizing what someone else says. I would make sure the article is primarily your content and not just rehashed content because as soon as you add links you're giving some of your Page Rank away. It is not bad SEO practice to list sources and links at the bottom of the blog post, in this case I think it is a must. You must give credit to the original writer and ensure that your content writer isn't plagiarizing anything. Not preaching, just words of caution.
Question 2. Custom, relevant content is most beneficial for SEO. Appropriate links to other credible sites is good for SEO. Rehashing someone else's blog post probably isn't beneficial if that's the meat of the article.
Question 3. I try to not use nofollow links because there's someone on the other side of that link doing SEO. When that someone sees I've given them a followed link, they come check me out and that creates an opportunity for a link in return.
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