Internet Marketing & Social Media Connections

To Duplicate Content or Not To Duplicate Content

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I have been planning an SEO campaign for a client and yesterday I Tweeted about spinning articles (I hand-spin them, which can take a LONG time to generate high quality spins).  Someone Tweeted me and mentioned that it’s been proven that duplicate content is a myth, so why would I bother spinning articles.

Good question. And I am very aware of the studies that have, thusfar, evidenced that duplicate content doesn’t kill your rankings. But here are my concerns:

1. I am still digging around to find out just how long-term any of these studies are because what if your site isn’t penalized right now but you find it is later down the road because of the duplicate content?

2. What if we see a Duplicate Content Google (or other SE) Slap eventually? We’ve seen Squidoo slaps and Social Media slaps and we see issues with not having the proper link mix applied to sites so whose to say that with Google and competing search engines (primarily Bing) focusing more and more on the user-experience, providing more relevant and less-spammy results, and competing to be “decision engines” (Bing’s claim) that we won’t see a Dup Content Slap at some point, even in the not so far future?  I don’t know that we will or we won’t but I certainly see it as a possibility.

I’ve learned much from my long-term work relationship with, and mentorship from, Michelle MacPhearson and one of the things I’ve taken away from her is to always be prepared for ANYTHING! Mix your links up, don’t rely on just one or two strategies, etc. – be prepared!

I currently continue to spin my personal articles as well as those of clients who I am working on SEO, link building, etc. strategies and campaigns for because I don’t want to wake up one day and find that one of my sites, or my client’s sites, have been penalized because I took a shortcut and wasn’t prepared for what ‘could’ happen with the use of duplicate content.  No one wants to lose rankings, I surely don’t; and I’m very dedicated to my clients so I’d die if they had spent a lot of time and money with me to find one day that all of our hard work, and their money, has seen a huge amount of waste because I decided to take a shortcut.

We’ve recently seen Google announce that they are now taking site load time into consideration when it comes to ranking to “improve the user experience” (really important words these days).

Here’s what Google says about duplicate content:

Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar.

in some cases, content is deliberately duplicated across domains in an attempt to manipulate search engine rankings or win more traffic. Deceptive practices like this can result in a poor user experience, when a visitor sees substantially the same content repeated within a set of search results.

In the rare cases in which Google perceives that duplicate content may be shown with intent to manipulate our rankings and deceive our users, we’ll also make appropriate adjustments in the indexing and ranking of the sites involved. As a result, the ranking of the site may suffer, or the site might be removed entirely from the Google index, in which case it will no longer appear in search results.

Mind you, there is more to the guidelines excerpted here; some of which would indicate that you ‘might’ be safe in many circumstances from dup content but “might” isn’t good enough for me.

Read the entire guidelines here

So while we can look at Google’s statements as a “myth”, at least for right now, can we be certain that, particularly with Google’s focus on “user experience” and competition with other SEs to be the most relevant and provide the best user experience that they won’t ever hold us responsible for duplicate content? Should we feel safe that many people are reporting no penalty for this content right now and go ahead and take shortcuts? Or should we be prepared for the chance that we’ll see a Dup Content Slap and continue with our efforts in not using duplicate content?

Now, let me not leave out the fact that duplicate content is often “filtered” vs. “penalized” (meaning a SE may filter out some of the results and only show one) but that’s not the primary focus of this conversation – the main focus here is:

• Will Google (or other engines) eventually penalize us for dup content spread around the web pointing back to our sites?
• Will they put the smack down on the lazy link building with duplicate content strategy to improve user experience and attempt to deliver the sites they deem as most relevant and appropriate for the user?

On Google’s Blog, they have a post that discusses a situation where people are trying to sucking people into scams (not all link building is meant to sucker people into a scam, it’s often just trying to keep up with, and ahead of, other competition even if the product is legit) but Google says: “If you come across many sites with duplicate content or common templates intended to direct users to the same product or scheme, please let us know with a spam report,” which would indicate that they don’t want duplicate content all over the web pointing back to the same thing.

Google’s Webmaster Quality Guidelines say:

It’s not safe to assume that just because a specific deceptive technique isn’t included on this page, Google approves of it. Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit.

It also states:

“The spam reports we receive are used to create scalable algorithms that recognize and block future spam attempts.”  (so I ask, could duplicate content spread for link building be a “future spam attempt” they try to recognize and block?

Other explicit statements they make include:

–> Examples of link schemes can include: Links intended to manipulate PageRank (duplicate content that points to the same link could be plain evidence of this in my opinion)

–> Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.

–> Doorway pages

Doorway pages are typically large sets of poor-quality pages where each page is optimized for a specific keyword or phrase. In many cases, doorway pages are written to rank for a particular phrase and then funnel users to a single destination.

Whether deployed across many domains or established within one domain, doorway pages tend to frustrate users, and are in violation of our webmaster guidelines.

(So while “doorway pages” could even be considered as those pages with unique content built for the purpose of pointing people back to a primary domain…it seems it screams it much louder if that content is duplicate content.)

Google aim is to give our users the most valuable and relevant search results. Therefore, we frown on practices that are designed to manipulate search engines and deceive users by directing them to sites other than the ones they selected, and that provide content solely for the benefit of search engines. Google may take action on doorway sites and other sites making use of these deceptive practice, including removing these sites from the Google index.

If your site has been removed from our search results, review our webmaster guidelines for more information. Once you’ve made your changes and are confident that your site no longer violates our guidelines, submit your site for reconsideration.

Another site (which I’m not terribly familiar with so I can’t speak on their authority, legitimacy, etc.) makes a point similar to my thoughts:

“Distribution of Articles – If you publish an article, and it gets copied and put all over the Internet, this is good, right? Not necessarily for all the sites that feature the same article. This type of duplicate content can be tricky, because even though Yahoo and MSN determine the source of the original article and deems it most relevant in search results, other search engines like Google may not, according to some experts.

Wikipedia defines Malicious Duplicate Content as:

Malicious duplicate content refers to intentionally generated search spam in an effort to manipulate search results and gain more traffic. Users do not like to see the same content listed multiple times.

(The other type of duplicate content they define is “Non Malicious  duplicate content may include multiple views of the same page, such as normal HTML and a version for mobile devices, printer-only versions of a page, or store items that can be shown via multiple distinct URLs.”)

Wouldn’t duplicate articles posted around the web to increase rankings be considered “intentionally generated search spam in an effort to manipulate search results and gain more traffic”?

Now I realize that some of you may say “technically, spinning articles IS duplicate content, therefore deception, therefore intentionally generated search spam, therefore malicious, so it’s not as above-board as I seem to make it here”. Well, my response is that we all know competition is building links like crazy and we have to do what we have to do to rank and be successful with our sites so while spun articles may not be a freshly written article, that’s not really the point here.  The point is many of us are going to use articles, etc. to build links and the big question is whether or not we should be prepared for the Dup Content Slap or not.

Call me crazy, that’s not really debatable anyway! But I just feel more comfortable being prepared than being lazy and knowing that if search engines do put the slap down, it’s a beating I’ll avoid.  Sure, it takes me a lot longer to spin quality articles and if it’s campaign work for a client, it may cost them a little more to pay me for the time it takes but, again, I think they’d rather pay that cost and be sure they’re safe , now AND later, than pay me a bit less and take the risk that they could lose all the hard work we put in later.  I could outsource the spinning to someone a little cheaper, or hand it off to one of my team members that helps implement these campaigns, but anyone who has worked with me knows that I’m very particular about the quality of my work and at this time, I choose to continue to do that part myself as part of the strategy preparation.

Remember, the point here is not whether or not sites are currently being penalized for duplicate content; we can find several site studies that indicate they are successfully ranking with duplicate content (although I didn’t dig around to see if there are sites who have been penalized for this, there may be).  The question is since we’re seeing these studies report success with duplicate content, should we feel comfortable using it or should we stick a little closer within Google’s guidelines and try to avoid any future penalties duplicate content might bring.

And, again, my sights are set on the fact that Google and Bing are trying to deliver the best user experiences so whose to say what moves they’ll make? If Google has decided that how fast, or slow, your site loads will affect rank because it affects user experience and since Google deems duplicate content as affecting user experience, is it that far fetched to think they might slap dup content down at some point?

So, am I a dummy for not taking the short cuts in lieu of the “myth” or am I smart for being prepared?

Please share your thoughts.  I’d love to know what others think.  Do you use duplicate content or original content? Do you think there’s a chance that, even though we’re not seeing penalties right now (or at least a lot of people aren’t), that we’ll never see a penalty for it? Is it worth it to put in the extra work or better to take a short cut with duplicate content?

Social Media Maniac,
@areaK

photo credit: michperu

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