https://www.writomize.com/ The Google duplicate content penalty is the subject of one of the liveliest ongoing debates in search engine optimization circles. It has been doing the rounds for a long time now, and still manages to leave webmasters uneasy and confused despite frequent input and explanations from Google.
Today we’re going to examine the duplicate content penalty and try to separate the myths from the realities. This is not a black and white area though, as Google itself remains a little coy and vague on the subject.
First, let’s dispel the biggest myth about duplicate content before proceeding to the steps you can take to avoid getting into trouble.
Myth:
Google will penalize your website if you use duplicate content.
Reality:
This will be a very unsound practice by Google. A large proportion of the internet (estimated at 25% – 30%) is built on syndicated, and therefore “duplicate” content. Penalizing sites for republishing content is not in Google’s best interest, nor that of its users.
An easy example of the type of website that thrives on syndicated content is a news portal. To demonstrate this, search for the headline of any current news event in Google. You’re likely to find the same article on foxnews.com, huffingtonpost.com, usatoday.com, independent.co.uk and a host of other news portals, all ranking on the first page of Google.
While there may be some slight variations, you will undoubtedly find the article syndicated word for word on many top ranking sites. It therefore makes no sense that sites would be penalized for using duplicate or syndicated content.
In short, it is safe to say that there is no duplicate content penalty. Your site won’t be banned or deindexed for publishing syndicated content.
That’s not the end of the story though.
HOW DUPLICATE CONTENT CAN HURT YOU
Even though there doesn’t seem to be an official “penalty”, there are ways in which using duplicate content can hurt you. For example, your page may be omitted from the Google search results if there are too many similar ones, so that is a risk that you take with using duplicate content.
This is not, however, a penalty as such: it’s more of a consequence of using duplicate content. You see, Google wants to diversify their search results. I think you’ll agree that it is not in anyone’s interest for them to display a top 20 search results listing consisting of the exact same content on different websites.
In other words, you run the risk of your duplicated content being outranked by sites boasting the same content, but having more authority than yours in Google’s eyes.
So, this can be considered a “passive penalty”, if you really want to bring penalties into it. Your website is not actively penalized, but your content may simply not feature in the search results because there are already too many similar results.
THE TYPE OF DUPLICATE CONTENT THAT CAN HURT YOU
Google’s Matt Cutts stresses that spammy or keyword stuffed duplicate content can get you into trouble. Here is a recent quote from Cutts on this subject:
“The problem is that if you are automatically generating stuff that’s coming from nothing but an RSS feed, you’re not adding a lot of value. So that duplicate content might be a little more likely to be viewed as spam.”
This is all very subjective and Cutts is vague about how exactly they determine what content is spammy or of a low enough quality to warrant a penalty.
The bottom line is this: as long as the way in which you present the content provides value to the visitor, you shouldn’t have too much to be concerned about. If you rely on largely automated content from RSS feeds or content scrapers, you’re going to get little value in return as Google will be very likely to simply omit your page from their search results.
Ultimately, when you’re competing with thousands of sites doing the same thing with the same piece of content, what incentive are you giving Google to rank you higher than any of them?
WHAT ABOUT CONTENT ON YOUR OWN SITE?
https://sbnsports.live/featured/dunham-sports/ Mismanagement of content on your own site can lead to ranking problems. A particular culprit is the popular blogging platform, WordPress.
By default, WordPress will store the same piece of content under the Tag, Archive, Author and Category sections. This can confuse Google as to which piece of the content it should rank and can negatively affect the ranking of the content on your blog.
The best practice here is to use an SEO plugin like the All-in-One SEO Pack or WordPress SEO by Yoast. Specify noindex for the Tag, Date Archive and Author sections. You should also use snippets on your category pages instead of allowing the whole page to be repeated.
So, you should be much more concerned about duplicated content within your own website or domain than you should be about syndicating content from other sources.
QUICK TIPS FOR AVOIDING DUPLICATE CONTENT PROBLEMS
Here is a summary of just a few of Google’s own suggestions for preventing duplicate content problems:
– Use Google Webmaster Tools
Set your site up in Google Webmaster Tools and you’ll be able to specify how you want Google to index your site: with or without the www.
– Prevent unnecessary repetition
If you have the same big block of copyright or disclaimer information on every page, you may wish to move this to a separate “disclaimer” page and simply link to it from every page. This will mean less duplicate content on each of your pages.
