Are You Negating Your Blogging Efforts?

By Nicholas DeGraff, Pacific Business Centers

Staring at a blank document is an event that I experience multiple times a week in managing the blog for Pacific Business Centers.  It is a mixed moment – the intimidation of the blank page contrasted by the opportunity to create.   According to Technorati, there are well over 100 million blogs out on the web that my blog competes with for the attention of the masses.  What can I provide to be unique and interesting so that my blog drives traffic revenue?  Hasn’t it all been written before? 

Then the devil on my shoulder whispers … “It has been written before, probably better, why don’t you just post what is already there and save yourself some time?”  This is when I need to remind myself of the Duplicate Content Rule.

The “Duplicate Content Rule”

Haven’t heard of the Duplicate Content rule?  If you haven’t, you aren’t alone.  While it is a heated subject amongst search marketing professionals it is still an issue that isn’t as widely discussed in the blogosphere. 

The duplicate content rule is designed to weed out spam sites that pull content from around the web in order to artificially boost their rankings and sell ad space.  Simply put, the rule says that if a search engine finds the same content in two places, one version may be penalized by being removed from the search results. There’s no way to predict which version which will be left out.

The question of duplicate content has caused quite some debate amongst search marketing professionals.  Some prominent SEOs have come out and called the duplicate content rule a myth.  However, Google’s “spam cop”, Matt Cutts has confirmed that the search engines do indeed scan for duplicate content. He also indicated that the severity of the penalty can vary.  While this subject will continue to be debated, one thing is for sure, taking a risk with your site’s ability to rank in the search engines is not worth it.

Two major types of Duplicate Content

1. On Your Own Site The first type of duplicate content can be found on your own site.   When you post a blog article, this article is actually replicated in numerous pages that the search engine can find – post pages, archive pages, category pages, author archive pages, the list goes on and on.  According to Cutts, this is becoming less and less of a concern for website owners.  However, in my opinion it is worth the 10 minute effort to avoid any risk and to guide the search engines in the version of the page to display.  To take care of this problem, you or your webmaster can simply “disallow” the search engines from duplicate directories in your robots.txt file. 
2. Theft By Other SitesThe second type of duplicate content is actually from the theft of your content by other sites. – This type of duplicate content should be your biggest concern.  Both spam sites (and yes, even other OBCs) will pull your copyrighted content and post it onto their site.  In this case, the search engines may grant you or the other site credit in the search results – it’s not a gamble you should be willing to take! The good news is you can easily scan the internet to find the offenders.  Go to copyscape.org and enter in excerpts from your articles.  Copyscape will return results with any sites that are hijacking your content.  If you use a feed reader, such as Google reader, you can also set up your feed reader to scan for quotes from your articles to provide ongoing protection.

What do you do if you find Duplicates?

If another site is using your content as their own without your permission, the most direct approach is to contact that site and ask them to remove your copyrighted content.  This takes care of the problem 95% of the time.  From time to time, you may come across spam sites or stubborn website owners who refuse.  In this case, submit a spam complaint to the search engines and let them deal with the problem.

The Duplicate Content rule is the angel on your other shoulder, reminding you that confronting the blank screen and adding value into the online world is definitely worth the effort.  There is value in creating your own content. With your own content you are the only source of that information, and you are the only site that will get the value of the back links and traffic from that content.   Resist the urge to cut corners, and your site will reap the benefits!

Nick DeGraff works for Pacific Business Centers heading their online marketing.  Nick can be reached at Nick@PBCoffices.com

2 Responses to “Are You Negating Your Blogging Efforts?”

1. Mike Sullivan says:

   May 6, 2010 at 2:17 am

   Nick – I agree with all that you have said here. But I do have an exception to the duplicate content issue…

   There is someone in our industry who often uses the full text of articles from aBetterOffice on his site(s), but I’m willing to overlook it, mainly because he also references aBetterOffice, and links to it. This link is important as you know.

   I also know that because of the work I’ve done on my site, the search engines will always know that I’m the originator of this content, and his content is the duplicate. So, in the end, I’m not too worried about occasional duplicates in a scenario such as this.
2. Nick DeGraff says:

   May 12, 2010 at 4:52 pm

   Mike – very true, though you are braver than I am when it comes to search engines.

   Like every rule there are always exceptions. A backlink to the original content does help. (Provided it isn’t using a “no follow”)

   I think the thing that we can all agree on, is that nothing beats original and useful content as both a driver of traffic and a driver of backlinks.