What Is The Truth About Duplicate Content?
Posted Under: Private Label Rights
People always seem to get hysterical about duplicate content on their websites and blogs.
It seems that before you even get the P in PLR out of your mouth, somebody hysterically points out that “Google hates duplicate content” and that “Your website is going to get banned if you use PLR in your content“.
When you stop to think about it, a plethora of sites build their content around the exact same content found on other websites or blogs.
For example; the Huffington Post is loaded with articles that are obtained from other news sources.
Yahoo’s home page is also a prime example of a notable website that uses articles obtained from other news sources.
Although you could successfully argue that your site is not the Huffington Post or Yahoo’s home page, let us use these two examples to understand the truth about duplicate content and the so called “duplicate content penalty”.
First and foremost, the truth about duplicate content is that in itself, duplicate content is not necessarily malevolent. In today’s real world, duplicate content can be nothing more than content syndication.
Regardless what they are promoting, internet marketers want to get their content syndicated in as many places as possible to increase exposure for their product or service.
If you write a “How To” ebook and want to promote it as quickly as possible. You would first write an article about it in your blog or website with the hope that social media or a high ranking website with more traffic than your site, would pick up and republish it.
If an established site like Yahoo or the Huffington Post republished your content, I’m sure you would not object to the additional flood of prospects you would receive from the so called “duplicate content”.
The truth about duplicate content in this instance is that the only penalty incurred, (if you could call it a penalty) would be that your post would probably show up in the search engine results page for the same query on Yahoo’s website, before the same post showed up on your site.
This is obviously because Yahoo’s domain most likely has a higher authority rank than your site.
In this situation your blog or website will not be de-indexed by Google because you decided to syndicate some content. In fact, your goal to promote your ebook in as many venues as possible was partially achieved by the syndication.
If you wanted to target different search queries, you could make your post “more original” by changing your content to reflect the keywords you are going after.
The truth about duplicate content is that people who intentionally create multiple URLs with the exact same content will eventually discover their sites de-indexed by Google.
If your website is Surffishing101.com and you have everything on your page duplicated on Surffishing101.com/1html, Surffishing101.com/home, Surffishing101.com/2html, etc. you can count on having serious problems with your search engine ranking.
Marketers who intentionally clone entire websites word for word, will also obviously have duplicate content issues. These rip off artists do not last long online.
The truth about duplicate content is that most people misunderstand what the search engines mean by “duplicate content”.
When we talk about using PLR for content on your site, it does not necessarily mean that your website will automatically be de-listed.
PLR content is intended to be used as a starting point to help you get off of the ground with your topic and to help fill in the gaps to your original content.
As long as you add your own flair to the purchased PLR content, and not just copy and paste it word for word to your site without any modification, you should have no concerns about using duplicate content on your website or blog.
The truth about duplicate content that you should take away from this is that:
- Your website or blog will not be banned from Google just because you and another person publish the same content.
- Most people misunderstand the term “duplicate content penalties” and apply the meaning to a broader range of things that it does not apply to.
- You should never use PLR “as is”. Even if the common erroneous understanding of “duplicate content penalties” were true; you will never have the exact same content as another person when you modify the PLR that you use in your posts.