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
-
Clarification on duplicate content
Hi, if I have a page that unintentionally ranks for a term that I want to create a page for - say "atlanta apartments" - should I still create a page specifically intended to rank for "atlanta apartments"? Will canonical tags be crucial in this case? Hoping to avoid creating duplicate content and instead create the correct content for a specific term.
Content Development | | smiller760 -
How to solve copyright content ?
My website fill of copy paste content , how can i solve this problem?
Content Development | | engmtamous0 -
Get duplicate content error in seomoz even after fixed canonical
http://www.webworld.no - We have been getting error Page Duplicate Content Errors. But we have fixed the canonical. Actually, we have list of portfolio and detailed page for each portfolio But We get error all portfolio pages are having duplicate content. But, i made canonical tag to direct to root page. Please help me to overcome this. Also, i see duplicae webworld.no & www.webworld.no. is there anything i need to fix in redirection? in server?
Content Development | | Webworld_Norway0 -
How to Get Rid of Duplicate Content Captured on Article Lists
We have a ton of articles and blog posts on our site. Currently, we display summary lists of articles that contain the first paragraph of the article in the summary list. However, in my reports, this is coming back as duplicate content with the full article itself. How do I fix this? Ex: article main page- http://www.robots.com/articles/10 First article on that page- http://www.robots.com/articles/viewing/grippers-for-robots (which shows up as duplicate content with the main artilce page). With our blogs, we have the most recent 5 blogs (in the same summary format) listed on our main blog page. We then have categories that people can sort by. But again, this is causing us duplicate content because those pages show the first paragraph of the blogs related to that category. Ex: blog main page- http://www.robots.com/blog. First blog listed on that page- http://www.robots.com/blog/viewing/robots-and-automation-bringing-jobs-back-to-the-united-states (which then shows as duplicate content with the main blog page). And then you can also select categories to see related topics: http://www.robots.com/blog/category/buying-a-robot which is showing as duplicate content also. Help! How can I prevent this? Thanks! JWanner
Content Development | | jwanner0 -
Can I delete an old blog post and be ok?
I wrote some blog posts on my wordpress blog a few years ago that I no longer want on my site. I have them "no index" and "no follow" but everytime I run a report on my site they still seem to pop up. If I just delete the posts will it result in a broken link for my site? Or is there another way I can go about it? Thanks guys
Content Development | | Caseman0 -
Title case or lower can URL folders
Is it best to have lower case URLs e.g mydomain.com/hotels-in-london/ or title case like mydomain.com/Hotels-In-London/ I noticed in the seomoz tools that it would report the above two URLs as duplicate if the site had two links using pointing to each URL
Content Development | | NeilTompkins0 -
Duplicate content across multiple e-commerce sites
Hi, This may have been discussed here before though I couldn't find a definitive answer, but I was wondering what the best practice for having multiple e-commerce sites with some of the same products on both is. If Site A has 200 products, and Site B has 300 products, and 50 overlap, do they absolutely have to have unique product descriptions? The descriptions have already been rewritten to be different from the manufacturer's description, but do they need to be changed again? Or should the 50 products only be listed on one site or the other? Sites like csnstores.com seem to have the same descriptions as the subsidiary sites that they have, but maybe they have different sidebars/footers/etc which make the content considered original?
Content Development | | nks20120