The Duplicate Content Myth Put To Bed (Part 4 Of 7)

The Duplicate Content Myth Put To Bed

Will your site get penalized for having duplicate content?

At a recent search engine convention in the US, many Googler’s (that’s pretty much all of us) asked questions about content and sites with duplicate content. There are many myths surrounding this topic so below I set the record straight. Especially for some of the more frustrated people who don’t understand this concept.

So exactly what is duplicate content?

Duplicate content simply refers to large unlimited blocks of content that are similar to other chucks of information in either the index of your site or others. Most the time you will see this occur in forums, or blogs and it is unintentional. In some cases duplicated content is spread across one’s domain in order to trick search engine rankings and drive more traffic by using popular keywords, now referred to as “long-tail keywords“

What is non-duplicate content?

According to the algorithms used by major search engines such as Google, a good example of non-duplicate content would be the same article written in English and French. Also, a lot of marketers worry about the occasional partial snippets of text getting flagged as duplicate content, when it simply doesn’t matter.

This brings us back to the important question…Just why does Google care about duplicate content?

Well it all comes back to giving users varied information quickly! Users don’t want to be faced with pages and pages of the same original content. In fact think how annoyed you get when you type in a search term and the same old info comes up, over and over. It’s most annoying, and a waist of time to say the least.

How does Google deal with this content?

Google has a bad habit of picking and choosing which sites are the original when duplicate materials are found. If your site is relatively new and the article sites you are posting on have been around for a while, you could end up losing ranking or worse, getting blacklisted right off the SERP.

The Following is Quoted from Google:-

How can Webmasters proactively address duplicate content issues?

Block appropriately: Rather than letting our algorithms determine the “best” version of a document, you may wish to help guide us to your preferred version. For instance, if you don’t want us to index the printer versions of your site’s articles, disallow those directories or make use of regular expressions in your robots.txt file.

Use 301s: If you have restructured your site, use 301 redirects (”RedirectPermanent”) in your .htaccess file to smartly redirect users, the Googlebot, and other spiders.
Be consistent: Endeavor to keep your internal linking consistent; don’t link to /page/ and /page and /page/index.htm.

Use TLDs: To help us serve the most appropriate version of a document, use top level domains whenever possible to handle country-specific content. We’re more likely to know that .de indicates Germany-focused content, for instance, than /de or de.example.com.

Syndicate carefully: If you syndicate your content on other sites, make sure they include a link back to the original article on each syndicated article. Even with that, note that we’ll always show the (unblocked) version we think is most appropriate for users in each given search, which may or may not be the version you’d prefer.Use the preferred domain feature of webmaster tools: If other sites link to yours using both the www and non-www version of your URLs, you can let us know which way you prefer your site to be indexed.

Minimize boilerplate repetition: For instance, instead of including lengthy copyright text on the bottom of every page, include a very brief summary and then link to a page with more details.

Avoid publishing stubs: Users don’t like seeing “empty” pages, so avoid placeholders where possible. This means not publishing (or at least blocking) pages with zero reviews, no real estate listings, etc., so users (and bots) aren’t subjected to a zillion instances of “Below you’ll find a superb list of all the great rental opportunities in [insert cityname]…” with no actual listings.

Understand your CMS: Make sure you’re familiar with how content is displayed on your Web site, particularly if it includes a blog, a forum, or related system that often shows the same content in multiple formats.

Don’t worry be happy: Don’t fret too much about sites that scrape (misappropriate and republish) your content. Though annoying, it’s highly unlikely that such sites can negatively impact your site’s presence in Google. If you do spot a case that’s particularly frustrating, you are welcome to file a DMCA request to claim ownership of the content and have us deal with the rogue site.

In short, a general awareness of duplicate content issues and a few minutes of thoughtful preventative maintenance should help you to help us provide users with unique and relevant content.

quoted From: Google Webmaster Central Blog

Remember, repeat visitors are CRITICAL to your survival.The job of a search engine is to maintain the most accurate and useful search results possible. This will mean that you can’t take a bunch of private label articles, press releases or article directory content and use it to drive tons of traffic.It just won’t work. To make sure Google and other major search engines favour your site, you must avoid duplicate content at all costs.

Cheers

John S.
http://www.trafficsecretsreport.com