Duplicate Content and the Trouble with Shared SEO Articles
When it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), one of my biggest pet peeves is duplicate content. By duplicate content I mean when someone uses (read: steals) the content off of a webpage and republishes it on their own site. I remember once I did a search on Google for a chunk of text that appears on our homepage. Much to my dismay I found hundreds of websites that had copied our homepage text verbatim. Try checking for your original homepage text on a search engine sometime…you might find the same thing.
What got me thinking about this was an affiliate program I was looking at this morning that said that they offer a number of “SEO articles” for their affiliates. This is great if an affiliate needs content for PPC landing pages or something, but from an SEO standpoint, these articles are practically worthless.
Why?
To get the answer it is best to understand how a search engine like Google or Yahoo handles duplicate content. At the Search Engines Strategies conference a couple years back a panel with representatives from the major search engines explained that they all handle duplicate content in similar ways. Here’s how it works (at least a simplified version of how it works)…
Let’s say a search engine has crawled and indexed a bunch of new webpages. The search engine looks at all of the pages it has indexed and finds pages with similar (duplicate) content. Let’s say they find 15 pages that all have the exact same content on them - what happens next? Well, the engine looks at all 15 of the pages and, using whatever criteria they have, tries to decide which of the pages is the most relevant. If possible, the engine will basically try to decide which of the 15 pages looks like the original source of the content. Once one page has been selected at the “winner,” the other pages are either discounted or removed from the index altogether (saves space on the search engine’s end).
So what does this all mean for people who use “SEO articles” that are provided by an affiliate program?
It means that there is a pretty good chance that using the SEO articles will do nothing to help you rank well in the search engine and even maybe hurt your site. Sure, using the example above there might be one affiliate who is able to use the page effectively for SEO, but there is a pretty slim chance that that person will be you, especially if you have a new website.
So my point is this, if you are an affiliate who is using content given to you by your affiliate program, please know that as long as that content is available to all other affiliates, and is not exclusive to you, you will likely not get any SEO value out of that content.
Now don’t get me wrong – offering content to affiliates is a great value-add. And I know that affiliates really appreciate it – that is why we have landing page content for our affiliates to use. But that is how we market it – landing page content, designed for pay-per-click, not SEO.
I don’t think it is right to label and affiliate program’s shared content as SEO content, because unless it is modified by the affiliate, the content has little or no SEO value. And I especially don’t appreciate it much when new affiliates are misled (whether on purpose or not), and this seems to be a classic case of just that.
Alright, end of rant. Happy Halloween folks!
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Comments
I don't think they have the resources to do an actual comparison of the pages. They index millions of pages each day and to compare each and every page would most likely burn out their servers.
I think it's only done on a certain level and even if you have duplicate content on your site (and the SE finds out), it won't hurt you (nor give you any advance of course).
Just my 2 cents...
Posted by: KayBros | October 31, 2006 11:11 AM
Here is what I do to make som good content. I go to the free article websites and find some good articles about some topics. It's a good resource especially if you take your time and rewrite the content.
Posted by: Søkemotoroptimalisering | October 31, 2006 11:53 AM
Thanks for the insight KayBros.
The site comparison thing came straight from Matt Cutts from Google and Tim Meyer from Yahoo. They may have been dumbing down the process a bit, but that was the explanation that they gave for their duplicate content filtration.
I figure that all pages have to be compared with each other on some level to come up with search results, so I don't think it is too far fetched to imagine they can compare duplicate content. But I am no expert on the hardware it would take to pull off something like that.
Posted by: James Omdahl | October 31, 2006 12:14 PM
Good point Søke...so long as you aren't copy and pasting, and you are writing original researched content, you should be good. Just be good about not overdoing it. Maybe it won't get you in trouble with the search engines, but it is bad form.
On an unrelated note, is Søkemotoroptimalisering a translation of Search Engine Optimization in some language? If so, which one?
Posted by: James Omdahl | October 31, 2006 12:16 PM
Dear James,
First of all. What i meant was that i grab the idea from articles in the directories. I never use the same content and rewrite it. I like to write my Own.
Second: Yes it is, it's in norwegian. I hope it okay for you that i used it, otherwise you can remove it.
Posted by: Anghus | October 31, 2006 04:35 PM
Hey Anghus - good stuff. That is what I thought you were saying. I was just trying to add some more info to make sure others don't misinterpret it.
Feel free to use the Søkemotoroptimalisering as your name whenever you comment - I was just trying to expand my international optimization vocabulary :)
Thanks for commenting!
Posted by: James Omdahl | October 31, 2006 04:42 PM
I'm aware of the mess about duplicated content... but really, how do they judge which is the original source?
Lets say you start a brand new website and you publish a page of new content. A PR4 site comes along, finds the link to the new page from your home page and and and immediately steals your content.
What happens? The page on the PR4 web will probably get indexed faster, right?
Will that mean you are banished for you own original content?
Of course, I made an assumption here - that some site can get to PR4 with such content!
Did I miss out anything? Will this ever happen?
Posted by: Kian Ann | November 2, 2006 07:41 AM
Hey Kian, good question...and you are not going to like the answer.
Matt Cutts (Google) and Tim Meyer (Yahoo) both said that they try their best to pick the "right" page, but they admitted that it is pretty difficult to do.
What that means is there is a decent chance that, in the example above, your page could get dumped.
Pretty scary, huh? That’s why I turn beet red and steam shoots out of my ears when I find people stealing our content. :)
Posted by: James Omdahl | November 2, 2006 08:44 AM
As a copywriter, this practice makes me furious, too. After spending time researching and writing an article, then posting it on our Web site, finding it elsewhere, even rehashed, goes all over me!
Although those duplicate pages can be used for PPC purposes (as long as they're no-index, no follow), James is right--they're pretty much trash where SEO is concerned.
I guess knowing others are stealing our original content should flatter me--but it just makes me angry and negates all the hard work we do to promote our Web site. :(
Posted by: Penny Hagerman | November 3, 2006 09:55 AM