Duplicate Content

Hi guys,

We are going to be developing ghoststories //co//uk in the next few weeks, the long term aim is to have user generated stories, but until we get to that point we are going to have many of the classic stories on the site.

Do you think this would be a bad idea as it is clearly duplicate content? i have read (i think) in some cases duplicate content is ok. In this case i cant see any way around it?

We are going to have around 60 unique pages of content on the site from launch, its just the duplicate stories that worry me. I welcome any advice .

Stacey

 

Can you not rewrite the classics in a news website type spin ? I.e. dress them us as news articles with quotes and excerpts and facts.

 

Google just updated their Terms of service to highlight "non-original" content , Although it says scraped content its basically meaning syndicated or copied content from other sources wont hold any value and potentially get you in hot water.

http://searchengineland.com/google-...ls-labels-low-quality-guest-blog-posts-200413

Duplicate content is an entirely different thing to what you are suggesting, its often misunderstood.

Like above suggested , rewrite it the best you can ( not spinning ) or don't do it at all .

 

Although, that seems to be best alternative to deal with duplicate content. But, rewriting content can be a very time consuming task especially if your site has lot of contents on it. If the person who has created this thread were to apply this alternative, he or she would have a very tough time trying to rewrite all those stories that will be published on his/her site.

 

How can't you see a way around it? Do you just mean you can't be bothered doing it

The obvious and easy way would be to hire a writer to rewrite all the classic stories.

Its not clear what sort of % of your total content the duplicate content would be to begin with... but from a search engines point of view why would they want to rank your site if it solely consists of content scraped from elsewhere?


If user generated content is your long term goal then you need to fake it till you make it.... hire writers / do it yourself. Get them accounts on your site and have them submit as many good quality, unique stories as you can. Nobody is going to submit content to a site that looks like a ghost town, so you have no real choice but to populate it with content yourself.

imo if you are intending to upload 60 unique stories and 100's of duplicate ones then its a recipe for disaster. You'll end up finding yourself filtered and/or penalised before you even get running properly... not a good idea at all. And if you're only going to upload 5-10 duplicates then why bother at all? Just do it properly. The duplicates are never going to rank for anything anyway.

 

No index the pages with non original content

 

This isn't a brilliant strategy, as Google will just look at your site as a whole if you get a manual review - they're not going to check which pages they do or don't want indexed. They even look at other sites you own (look up the Cash Lady site being whacked).

Far better to not have non original content on your site in the first place really.

 

Hey Stacey, your question is a hard one to answer. Usually duplicate content is a big no-no if your looking to get decent search engine results, however if you have a mixture of duplicate content (Stories which are published elsewhere) and unique content (Stories which are only published / published first on your website) you shouldn't have any problems. You may find that getting the duplicate content ranking on the first page of Google nearly impossible, however you'll find with the unique content you've got a much better chance of easily ranking on the first page.

I hope that your SEO plan includes a lot of long tail keywords, targeting specific stories instead of broad terms like 'online stories'. Don't worry about dupe content as long as your publishing unique content on your website as well, I would recommend having more unique content than duplicate content but as it's a new website, I understand that could be a complication but it's something to keep in mind, the ratio of unique:duplicate content

 

Now, google has made its bots so smart to point out each and everything about contents. According to the google guidelines, duplicate content would be problematic for your website even your website can be penalized by google bots due to duplicate content if you publish it excessively. You can not get SEO benefits on such website. Google bot are now also able to detect spin articles easily. So be careful about and always "remember Content is the King" that should be original, unique and informative. Thanks

 

Incorrect, if its not live yet there is no manual review and if he noindexes the content correctly he is safe from Panda concerns, googlebot will simply not index it, they are not making a decision, they are following a directive.

In addition, Panda is softer than it used to be, the OP didnt say what proportion the duplicate stories would be for the site overall. Not that Id encourage flirting with panda but its not the scary beast it used to be as its now incorporated into the core algo and continually updates each month. You can get out of a panda demotion pretty damn quick.

 

"Content is the King", it is old sentence, but still Content is the King. Now a days, google is not indexing duplicate content and backlinks on duplicate content would be problematic for your website.