Can un-unique content damage my rankings?
-
Hi there,
I run a blog @ http://ablemagazine.co.uk
We produce our own editorial content for our print magazine. Which means I have a great bank of uniquely written content. I can usually afford to post 1-2 completely 100% unique articles a day. I've also been copy/pasting 2-3 articles from the BBC or The Guardian a day to keep up activity.
Should I continue doing what I'm doing?
Should I post exclusively unique articles?
Thanks
-
It's probably an "it depends" answer for the ratio, and that's if we actually had access to the algorithm. In the case above, the guy was (and still is) removed from the index.
Someone else may come in with studies they have done to give you more of an answer based on their experience in their niche, but there's not going to be one magic number that serves as a cutoff for every site.
-
So is the answer 'No one really knows'
Not copy/pasting stories is not always the solution. There is a ratio. As an experiment on my other site (which I didn't use) I set up a plugin on wordpress to automatically post from a RSS feed. Since installing that plugin about 2 months ago my traffic has went from 200 uniques a month to around 1200 uniques a month. (Not a massive amount of traffic but a increase none-the-less)
I'm just wondering what the ratio of unique/copy is acceptable?
-
You want to avoid copying and pasting stories, period. Last week, there was a thread in Google Webmaster Central Help about someone having his rankings and traffic disappear because of copied content. A summary of that thread is available at http://www.seroundtable.com/google-copycat-13172.html.
Relevant to your situation is this quote from a Google employee:
One thing that is very important to our algorithms is unique and compelling content. In general, it makes little sense for us to crawl and index content that is copied, rewritten, automatically translated or otherwise automatically processed -- we assume that our users would much rather want to find the original source. With that in mind, I would strongly recommend removing all such content -- should you have any -- and making sure that all of your content is of the highest quality possible, and really unique and compelling, in short: something that users will want to refer friends to.
-
If my front page of a blog is 100% unique but subsequent pages have copy/pasted stories - will that affect my ranking for my main page or just those subsequent pages?
-
I already only copyright 200 words (which is protected under fair use)
-
In addition to ranking problems, direct copying of copyrighted articles can open you up to legal repercussions. I second what Pashmina says -- quote only a small portion of the article, and add in commentary about why you feel this is important and why your readers should go view the entire article.
-
Yes, a direct copy of another website's content will have an adverse affect on your rankings.
If you find something interesting about an article on another website, perhaps you can make a post that only quotes a part of it and links to the original if your readers want to read the whole article. And also add your own commentary as to why you found the article worth sharing with your readers.
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
-
Write post in Moz. How can we apply to send a post, is this posible?
Hi, is posible to colaborate in MOZ post, i´m spanish i so probably i had to check muy post lots lots of times, but is it posible? Thanks
Content Development | | Agenciaseomadrid1 -
Use old content from Archive
Hello all, I just were looking on Archive.org and though what if i use the content from a really old website thats already been un-indexed. Could i just use this content on my new website and will it not be duplicate content? Thank you for your comment! Kind regards,
Content Development | | MennoO0 -
Duplicate Ttile and Duplicate Content
I'm a beginner of SEO. I have a few questions need to ask people to help. The MozPro's Crawl Diagnostics show I have a lot of duplicate titles and duplicate content. However, most duplicate titles are related to Pagination. What should I do? Also, for my duplicate content. B/c we are selling similar products,everything all most the same, only product's item number different. How can I avoid it?
Content Development | | alexsu09100 -
Duplicate listings content
I've been listing our business on various business and wedding directories most of which require a short description of the business. I've written up a "boilerplate" description which is fairly similar to one we have on the site. If I use this content on multiple listings sites will it cause me issues with google seeing it as duplicate content and finding it difficult to decide which pages to rank?Most of these sites are supplier directories so I don't expect people to site search them for our business they are much more likely to browse categories but will it affect organic results for our actual website? Should I be writing a different piece of copy for each listing which requires a company description to avoid any issues?
Content Development | | EdoubleD
Any help is greatly appreciated!!!0 -
I wrote this blog, now what can I do?
Morning Guys As part of a bigger SEO Project I am writing some blog posts. I am trying to use information we have based on shopping habits within our store. So I have written this first blog post: http://blog.uniquemagazines.co.uk/2013/03/top-10-womens-magazines-purchased-as.html What can I do with my blog now to get more exposure? I have submitted our blog to a couple of RSS directory lists. I also created a pintrest board, and announced the blog post on our facebook and twitter accounts. I am hoping to do 1 of these bigger posts per week, and this took me about 3-4 hours to research the stats and compile the information, so obviously the more I can get out of it the better. Also, I am hoping over a number of weeks I can identify what sort of content relates best to our customers/browsers. Thanks Paul
Content Development | | TheUniqueSEO0 -
Someone wants to syndicate my content but I'm afraid
I GOT THE FOLLOWING EMAIL: Hi, I visited your site and would like to connect regarding nSphere syndicating your content into our search platform. We are interested in syndicating your content into our network. There’s no cost for this, we ask you to place a module on your site that reads your content and syndicates it into our network of millions of users. You only need to place a simple JavaScript code on your site. I have the code, but I would like to speak or email with you first. This module acts as search tool for your users as well. Can you email me or send me your number and a good day/time to connect? Thank you in advance.
Content Development | | UnderRugSwept
Matthew Mantyla | nSphere
Director of Media Integration I'M AFRAID OF DUPLICATE CONTENT. SHOULD I JUST IGNORE THIS; IS IT SPAM; OR COULD THIS BE AN OPPORTUNITY? I'M THINKING I SHOULD BE SUSPICIOUS OF THE FACT THAT HE DIDN'T EVEN PROVIDE A URL.0 -
Duplicate content for manually setup blog and wordpress blog
We have a website where the ecommerce will not allow us to host blog. So we created our own manual blog page setup. Will this flag duplicate content on Google? http://www.homesupershops.com/blog and http://www.homesupershops.com/blog-july have same content. How come on a word press the same content on http://www.vizionseo.com/blog/ and http://www.vizionseo.com/blog/2011/05/how-can-your-business-rank-high-on-google-maps/ does not flag duplicate content?
Content Development | | VizionSEO990 -
Dupplicate Page Content
Hey Guys SEOMOZ is showing up Dupplicate Page Content, but this just comes up because we use Tags at all the blog posts. Should we better not use Tags? Thanks in advance...
Content Development | | Rapturecamps0