Is Publishing Content from a Book to your Site Considered Duplicate Content?
-
It is a book we don't own, either. Would you need to somehow find the original and rel=canonical it? Or is this just all around bad to do? Thanks.
-
Are you the only one with permission to publish the content? If not, and there are others, you will need to canonical to where the publisher/owner of the content has the content up. If you are the only approved publisher on the web, you can make others canonical to you, but it'll be a battle.
-
We do have permission.
-
Why are you publishing the whole book if it's not yours? If you are going to do that, I'd noindex the content since it's not yours and you don't have permission to publish it from the owner. Or I assume you don't.
-
Does anyone else have anymore insight into this?
-
It's the full book.
-
The answer to your question depends on how much additional content you're adding around the content taken from the book. If you're simply taking quotes from the book and doing additional analysis, it's unlikely to be considered duplicate content. Here's a great Whiteboard Friday about this very topic: http://moz.com/blog/how-unique-does-content-need-to-be-to-perform-well-in-search-engines-whiteboard-friday
-
Okay, makes sense, thank you. But what if it is just some other random site that has also published the books content (there are many that have published parts of this book) and none are the owner. Who do you canonicalize to, do you just pick one at random? That wouldn't seem to accomplish what Google is after by using the rel=canonical tag.
-
You can easily check to see if it's duplicate content with tools like Copyscape to see if it's published elsewhere. If it IS published elsewhere and you decide to also publish it, then a rel=canonical would be appropriate.
You will also want to get permission to publish anything that don't own the rights to from whoever does own the rights. This is probably the publisher, and you should communicate with them to get permission. You will also want to cite your source so that people know where this content came from, and who wrote it.
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
-
Community Discussion - Should low-cost content providers be seen as viable options for content marketers?
Hello there, In the latest YouMoz post, "Case Study: How We Gained More than 100 Links for a Travel Website via Content Marketing," Tom McLoughlin recommends an idea for content creation that is sure to elicit strong opinions from all sides: "Websites like Fiverr and Upwork are fantastic resources for finding freelancers who do great work. It simply takes a bit of initial time to sift through and separate the wheat from the chaff. Once that’s done, give the freelancers a detailed brief and tell them exactly what you want." What's your opinion? Have you had good experiences using these sites? If so, what have you found as the keys to making the working relationship a success.
Content Development | | ronell-smith1 -
How do you rank a site in a very competitive market?
Do you focus on article submission, social media backlinks or what?
Content Development | | shauna70840 -
My Article on External Site
Good Morning, I was recently approached by an influencer in my industry who says that they noticed the quality of the content on my website's blog and they want to know if i would like to write an article for them to publish on their blog. The article will mention my products and how they would be helpful to the readers of this particular blog. I would like for some of you to take a look at the blog in question and tell me if you think this is a high quality blog that is worth me attempting to network with and possibly even obtain a link from. You can view the blog here: http://bit.ly/1JfmuRF I see nothing wrong with creating a brand new, high quality, relevant post and having it published on this blog - but i wanted to hear some of your opinions on these types of things. Thanks
Content Development | | Prime850 -
If we use content copied from another site ( assuming we have not plagerized), does it hurt our Google Rankings?
We have permission from another company to copy their content and use it on our site. This happens when we are describing a manufacturer's product and we copy pages from their site and add these pages to our site in order to describe the product we are selling. Is this considered duplicate content? Can this practice hurt us?
Content Development | | huskers0 -
What is the best way to get around duplicate content when you are advertising exactly the same content on two different sites?
I am currently trying to improve exposure for an online degrees website but the content for the degree program pages is exactly the same as the company's main website. What would you suggest for getting around the duplicate content issue as a lot of the curriculum content will obviously be the same for each module, etc? Thanks
Content Development | | BeattieGroup0 -
Multiple Domains pointing to one site?
Due to takeovers, different strategies and a certain amount of historical lack of control, we have a dozen sites covering many different specialist areas of our business. To make things easier to manage, we are thinking of merging website content, then repointing some of the domains to the new section within the larger website. The content on each site is all different, but the subject matter is sometimes the same.This will make content, design and management much easier. We propose to choose the best content, then repoint the underperforming domains. Is there an seo risk of having many domains pointing to one site?
Content Development | | GardenGamer0 -
Best strategy for content/articles. Individual pages or blog posts?
Hi all, Whilst adding content to one of my sites quite often I'm left deciding whether I should create an individual webpage for the content, or write it up as another blog post. More often I write it up as a static page so it fits in with the rest of my website more 'directly'. However I'm wondering if I'm missing out here as obviously I'm not taking advantage of the benefits of a blog, RSS, Tag Cloud, etc etc... Just wondering if others encounter the same quandary?
Content Development | | davebrown19750 -
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
Content Development | | craven220