Duplicate Content and What to Do With It

Duplicate content is content that appears in a search engine’s index or through page results more than once. Content can be duplicated either  intentionally or mistakenly.  The most common duplicate content mistake we have seen is when business owners design their website and in a rush to put up content cut and paste from other websites.  As a matter of fact it is said that 29% of pages have duplicate content.  Although by doing this you can finish your project of getting your website up the long-term damage to your website may be pronounced.  Specifically the search engines penalize duplicate content and sends a signal of poor creativity or downright plagiarism.  Your search engine rankings will suffer and your SEO campaign can be in jeopardy.

What the search engines do is when they crawl the vast amount of pages on the web, they determine whether the content is the same as something else out there.  It is the general consensus that the original content producer would be the person who hits the web first or the first article that is indexed first would not be considered duplicate content.

Although Google can penalize you for duplicate content there are ways to safely use material that is already out there on the web.  The best way is to give credit to the original producer of the material and put quotations around the material that you are using from the article.  It is not advisable to use the entire article as a quote but the common way of using the material is exemplifying or expounding on the premise of the article.  Also critiquing the determination of the article and using content from it is perfectly fine if you use the quotations.  The reason being is you will be using the material to further your original idea.

Also, try not to use material from your competitors.  Should Google crawl your page and decide at any time that you have duplicate content or attribute it to them, they will get all the credit and your business none.  There is not any benefit in producing this type of content as you will be losing time and effort to your fellow businesses in your niche.

The best advice anyone has ever given me in any walk of life is to be original and yourself.  This is what you should be attempting to do with your content.  Although you certainly should read what is already available for research, your goal is to write original content to communicate to your audience.  They will appreciate it more and you won’t ever have to worry about being penalized for a pure mistake.

If you are having trouble with duplicate content or need more original content produced for your business then Falcon Consulting & Marketing is the company for you.  We are a New York based digital marketing agency assisting businesses one client at a time.

https://falconconsultingandmarketing.com/duplicate-content-and-what-to-do-with-it/

Visit us at www.falconconsultingandmarketing.com