Copying & Pasting the Moz Glossary onto my site.. is this white hat or black hat?
-
Hi,
I run a small business writing optimised content for small businesses in Melbourne.
I want to add a Glossary page to my website that lists all of the different words associated with website marketing and SEO.
I found the Moz glossary and I am wondering if it would be a bad idea to copy and paste the list straight into a page on my site. I'd prefer to not have to reword all of the descriptions as it will take me ages and I don't want to compromise the information in the descriptions.
Here is a link to the Glossary: http://moz.com/blog/smwc-and-other-essential-seo-jargon
Obviously I don't want to do the wrong thing ethically or from Google's perspective.
Any advice would be great.
-
well said
-
Hi Meaghan, happy to help! I was actually referring to Hutch 42's advice above, in this thread. (The anchor link to his response to your question is http://moz.com/community/q/copying-pasting-the-moz-glossary-onto-my-site-is-this-white-hat-or-black-hat#reply_270109.)
-
Thanks Christy.
Could you provide me with a link to Hutch42's advice as you mentioned? I Googled it but I got mixed results.
Meaghan
-
Hi there, thanks for your question. Yes, this would be a very bad idea. Duplicate content issues aside, copying content and passing it off as your own is plagiarism. This is unethical and violates copyright law. If you are interested in publishing someone else's work on your site, you are both legally and ethically obligated to obtain their permission to do so, and then properly attribute to work to the original creator if granted permission to republish it. Rather than going this route, however, your time would be better spent implementing Hutch42's advice. (That is, create your own authoritative content that will naturally earn links, show off your content creation skills, and rank in organic search engine results.) Best of luck!
Christy
-
So if I were to reword the sentences in my own words, would that still be ethical?
-
I mean, I guess you could borrow it. Better give Moz some link love though :)... and I wouldn't expect great rankings for that long term.
I would think it better to use their glossary as inspiration and then put your own spin on a version of it.
-
First of all, I did not once say I would not credit it as being written by Moz. In fact, I every time I mention Moz (and how awesome it is) I provide a link to the Moz website.
The reason I don't want to rewrite it is because I don't want to lose the accuracy in the descriptions.
Secondly, if I was intending on 'stealing' anything, why would I bother asking the Moz community about the ethics of using content written by Moz? I am obviously aware that copying and pasting is not ethic in nature but given that this is a glossary and Moz are the experts on technical terms, I thought there might be a way of working around this so that I can use the proper definitions without my visitors having to navigate away from my website.
So thanks for your friendly response.
-
So you are asking on Moz if you should steal content from Moz then not credit them to increase your search ranking, and then your concern is not if what you are doing is wrong (it is) but only if Google will penalize you for it? I believe that if you want content for your site you should make it or pay for it, not steal it, if you write optimized content then maybe people would expect copy on your site to be written by you.
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
-
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 -
Guest blog on my web site.
**I received this email from a lady who wishes to write articles and post them on my site under my news section . Ok, if its quality I dont mind hiring somebody to create a post. Her proposal is as follows and this is her email :-**Basically what I can offer is to write a couple of articles for your News section, something fun and interesting for your visitors which will hopefully drag some traffic your way. I could make them well suited to your site and I could include in each a link to a client of mine - one who wants to be exposed on a good site like yours - and for doing that I can offer you compensation of £33 for each client link - 1 per article. For example, one client is Watches of Switzerland, so I could write an article about ideal wedding gifts for a groom maybe, or something about a perfect Honeymoon destination like Switzerland, and slip a link in there. Other clients include Weddingsite and Lampcommerce - which could be included in something about making a matrimonial home. There are a few stipulations I would need to abide by, like - the article would need to be 500 words, it would need the link to be a 'do follow' link, it would need a picture or two, and it would need a couple of 'sacrifice links' (just links to Wikipedia or something to make it more Google friendly). Question. Is this what a guest article is ? and also is the format ok ? Sorry if this seems a dumb question but still learning guys . King regards to everyone Peter
Content Development | | weddingshoesandaccessories1 -
How to best host a blog - standalone or on the site?
HI We are redesiging our site currently - at the moment we have a low key blog on the site which is pretty well hidden (to be changed with redesign) but is hosted as brand.com/blog name. I have been advised it might be a good idea on relaunch to have the blog as a standalone blog linking back to our main site but also having a graphic on the site that promotes the blog. The blog does not currently have the same name as the website so would work as a standalone site but I understand it would not have any seo benefits from the original site. I have seen on previous posts here that the best practise is domain.com/blog but wondered if anyone thought different? Hope someone can point me in the right direction. Thanks, Penny
Content Development | | Pday0 -
Which is better for seo purposes? site/blog or site/community?
Hi Guys I was wondering if you could help on this one. We are in the process of setting up a wordpress blog for our website to aid our content marketing efforts, and was wondering what main url for this blog is going to be the best for seo purposes? So of the following 2 which one is going to be the better one? site.com/blog or site.com/community If anyone could get back to me on this I would appreciate it. Thanks David
Content Development | | DavidZA10 -
How to free articles sites work when they offer duplictae articles
Hi, i am trying to work out how these free article sites work. They allow people to put on their articles on their sites but these articles are on loads of different sites which means they are all duplicate content. I am finding it hard how google puts up with this and how the sites still continue to rank high in google when all their site is duplicate content. Can anyone please explain this to me.
Content Development | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Too many articles within ecommerce site?
So recently purchased an ecommerce site to work on with lots of potential. The site was effected by Penguin update and now I am trying to fix up some issues. One of the problems I think may be the articles that he had written within the site. The site is an ecommerce site but has lots of articles like how to's and tips. A lot of these articles are not very fluent but seems to be written for SEO. Should I just remove them entirely or should I just stuff them in the back somewhere.
Content Development | | William.Lau0 -
Integration of content on other sites
(by Google Traductor) Hello, we are able to make agreements with sites of good quality and reputation to integrate our classified ads for agropeuariosector on the websites of these companies. We fear that thesesites begin to index all this content and begin to compete with us in organic positioning. On the other hand this would generateduplicate content? That strategy will be applied in order to do so. Greetings and thanks!
Content Development | | romaro
Robert0 -
Blog content practices for e-commerce sites
What is the best practice in regards to content for e-commerce blogs on the same domain as the web-store (blog.storename.com)? What balance of content should be on the blog vs. the item & section pages or doesn't it matter?
Content Development | | MEldridge0