Duplicate Website Content - A way to harm your Rankings
Please note: This article was first published in January 2007. Since that time, Google has taken new measures to deal with duplicate website content. Click here to find out more.
One of the issues IceGiant’s team frequently needs
to address with new clients, is that of excessive duplicate web site
content.
While to a fair proportion of web designers in the past,
any old content was good enough to ‘bulk up’ a
site’s page count, this approach is now landing
an increasing number of webmasters and online business
owners in hot water with the major search engines.
So what exactly is classified as Duplicate Web Site Content?
Put quite simply, duplicate content is text which is
replicated in its entirety or in part elsewhere on the
Internet or even within the same web site.
The trouble is that this whole topic contains many grey
areas which have been known to cause confusion and be
open to misinterpretation. Reading through the following points should give you a
fair idea of which practices are likely to be penalised
by search engines and which you may safely employ without
search engines calling down the thunder on your site.
Just how much duplication is dangerous? Some
descriptions on my site are fairly close to others. Although there is no such thing as a right
and wrong percentage, the accepted level of unique content
which renders any given web page ‘unique’ in
a search engine’s eyes is around 70% to 75%; anything
less and you’re venturing into the realms of duplicate
web site content. However; before you unpack your calculator and begin
weighing up just exactly how much content you can safely
copy from other sources, ask yourself the following
question: “Will reproduced content really provide
the level of information my visitors expect?”
After all, your site’s visitors are its true judges.
You may well succeed with search engines yet fail miserably
with your human audience. Past experience shows that it is usually best to include
as much unique content as humanly possible when designing
and managing a commercial web site.
My web designer told me to supply him with
content for my new site. Is it ok to just reproduce
articles and editorial from trade press publications? This would not be a good idea. Quite apart
from the obvious copyright infringement implications,
it is quite likely that this type of content has already
been reproduced elsewhere, not least on the trade magazine’s
own web site. The watchwords in this case are “Authority Site” and “Credibility”.
Since the aim of the game these days is to build up
a reputation as an authority in your field, duplicate
web site content of this nature is likely not only to
get the page(s) in question tagged as duplicate, but
also to seriously harm the overall credibility of whatever
resources they are attached to.
