The tricky problem of duplicate content and what Google says about it
Being a full-time online marketer means you have to keep a close eye on how Google ranks pages on the web…one very serious concern is the whole duplicate content problem. More importantly, how does duplicate content on your own site and other people’s sites affect your keyword rankings on Google and other search engines?
Now recently it seems that Google is much more open about how it ranks content. I say “seems” because with Google there have been years and years of mistrust as to how they treat content and webmasters. The whole Google “do as I say” attitude leaves a sour taste in the mouths of most webmasters. So much so, that many are more than fed up with Google’s attitude and completely ignore what Google and its experts say.
This is probably very emotionally rewarding, but is it the right path or attitude to take? Probably not!
Mainly because regardless of whether you love or hate Google, there is no denying that they are the King of online search and you have to follow their rules or leave a serious chunk of online income on the table. Now, for my top keyword content/pages, even losing a few places in the rankings can mean I lose hundreds of dollars in commissions daily, so anything that affects my rankings obviously gets my immediate attention.
So the whole tricky topic of duplicate content has caused me some concern and I’ve made it a continual mental note to find out as much as I can about it. I’m mostly concerned that my content will rank lower because search engines think it’s duplicate content and penalize it.
My situation is exacerbated by the fact that I am deep into article marketing: the same articles appear on hundreds, sometimes thousands of sites all over the web. Naturally, I am concerned that these articles will dilute or lower my ranking rather than achieve their purpose of ranking higher.
I try to vary the anchor text/keyword link in the resource boxes of these articles. I don’t use the same keyword phrase over and over again, as I’m almost 99% sure that Google has a “keyword usage” quota. , basically removing it from search results. I was there, I did that!
I even like to submit unique articles to certain popular sites so that only that site has the article, thus eliminating the whole problem of duplicate content. This also makes it a great SEO strategy, especially for beginning online marketers, it will take some time for your own site to get to a PR6 or PR7, but you can get your content and links on high authority PR7 or PR8 sites immediately. This will bring quality traffic and help your own site establish itself.
Another way to combat this problem is by doing a 301 redirect so that traffic and page rank will flow to the URL I want to rank for. You can also use your Google Webmaster Tool account to show which version of your site you want to rank or feature: with or without “www”.
The whole reason for doing any of this has to do with PageRank juice – you want to pass this ranking juice onto the appropriate page or content. This can increase your ranking, especially on Google.
Fortunately, there is the relatively new “canonical tag” that you can use to tell search engines that this is the page/content you want to be displayed or ranked for. Simply add this metalink tag to your content that you want to rank for or feature, like the example below:
There are many sides to this whole duplicate thing anyway, so I like to go straight to Google for my information. Experience has shown me that Google doesn’t always give you full money, but for the most part, you can follow what they say. Lately, over the last year or so, Google seems to have made a major policy change and is giving webmasters a lot more information about how they (Google) rank their index.
So if you’re concerned or interested in learning more about duplicate content and what Google is saying about it, try these helpful links. The first is a very informative video on the subject titled “Duplicate Content and Multiple Site Issues” hosted by Greg Grothaus, who works for Google.
Another great link is this Google Webmaster Support Answers page from Matt Cutts. It has a lot of useful information, including a video on the canonical link element. Is here:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394
In another post, Matt Cutts discusses the issue of content removal and advises webmasters not to worry about it. This is a slightly different matter, other webmasters and nameless may use software to scrape your site and place your content on their site. This has happened to me countless times, even when my content has been reduced to coded nonsense. Cutts says not to worry about this issue, as Google can usually tell the original source of the material. In fact, having links in this duplicate content can help your ranking in Google.
“There are some people who really hate scrapers and try to crack down on them and try to remove every single one of them or kick them out of their web host,” Cutts says. “I tend to be the type of person who doesn’t really care about it, because the vast, vast, vast majority of the time, it’s going to be you that shows up, not the scraper. If the guy is scraping and scraping the content he has a link to you, it’s linking to you, so at worst, it won’t hurt you, but in some weird cases, it might actually help a little.”
As a full-time online marketer, I’m not so easily won over, I mainly have pressing concerns about my unscrupulous competition using these scrapings and duplicate content to undermine one’s ranking on Google by triggering some keyword spam filter. If this actually happens, only Google knows for sure, but it’s just another indication, despite the very detailed and helpful information given above, duplicate content and the issues surrounding it will continue to present serious concerns for online merchants and consumers. webmasters in the future.
