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Can this be seen as duplicate content, and penalized?

by David C.
11 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Good morning WF:

I've hired an SEO guy, very intelligent, very well trained (Hubspot certified). We've been working together two months now.

Every week I provide him with two unique articles, with one link to my site www.mistermanpower.net, and he puts them up on several different article sites, and other sites that allow him to upload the content, on different domains.

Just this morning I was thinking though... could google view this as duplicate content? Could this actually be hurting my site?

Visits have had a gradual decline (overall and organic), but this was happening before I hired him as well... but there's definitely been no positive climb (overall - there are little bumps here and there).

What do you think? Duplicate content? Or safe tactic? Thanks!
#content #duplicate #penalized
  • Profile picture of the author nettiapina
    Well, that's definitely duplicate content. I would not engage in such an obvious link scheme myself, but I'm not quite sure how harmful it is exactly. However, you're giving a negative signal to Google.

    Are you posting the same content to your own blog too? If you are, that's a problem. The duplicates may be compromising the SERP positions of your money site.
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  • Profile picture of the author blogginglife
    Hi,

    The article is unique when posted on 1 site. When it is posted on more than 1 site as same content, then it is not unique anymore and is duplicate content.

    In the past, people used to add same article on so many directories. After many search engine updates it is treated as duplicate content.

    Instead, you can add high quality articles on your main site and write small and relevant articles and tell your SEO to add these articles on article directory to gain some traffic by adding a link back within those articles.

    For Example your Niche is Nutrition and your article (on main site) is on Healthy Diet:

    You can write 1 small article on "healthy diet benefits" and get it posted on EzineArticles.com with a link back to your main article.

    Then you can write another article on "3 steps to select right diet" and get it posted on the same article directory or on GoArticles.com with a link back to your article (on main site).
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      Originally Posted by blogginglife View Post

      Hi,

      The article is unique when posted on 1 site. When it is posted on more than 1 site as same content, then it is not unique anymore and is duplicate content.

      In the past, people used to add same article on so many directories. After many search engine updates it is treated as duplicate content.

      Instead, you can add high quality articles on your main site and write small and relevant articles and tell your SEO to add these articles on article directory to gain some traffic by adding a link back within those articles.

      For Example your Niche is Nutrition and your article (on main site) is on Healthy Diet:

      You can write 1 small article on "healthy diet benefits" and get it posted on EzineArticles.com with a link back to your main article.

      Then you can write another article on "3 steps to select right diet" and get it posted on the same article directory or on GoArticles.com with a link back to your article (on main site).

      This is the kind of low quality link building I was talking about. Stay far away from article directories.
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  • Profile picture of the author InitialEffort
    Yes, Google may penalize you for duplicate content. Once Google sees a duplicate content, it will try to check the original source and may take the traffic away from its intended target.
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      It is not duplicate content. It is syndicated content.

      Duplicate content is the same content showing up on the same site over and over again.

      Your site will not be penalized for it, but if the same content is on your site too, Google may choose one of the articles on one of these other sites as the most authoritative and relegate the rest to the supplemental SERPs.

      Unless he is using privately owned sites or quality sites that he has connections with, it sounds like what he is doing is extremely low quality link building. My guess is he is using junk like EzineArticles and Squidoo and calling that SEO.

      I would be more worried about attracting a Penguin penalty down the road than anything else.
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      • Profile picture of the author nettiapina
        Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

        It is not duplicate content. It is syndicated content.

        Duplicate content is the same content showing up on the same site over and over again.
        This is a very good point and distinction that I, for one, didn't make. Nothing to add to that, so I'm just going to quote it.

        Originally Posted by David C.

        My apologies, it's on one url, and then he bookmarks it on different sites...
        Ah, ok. Well, that's got nothing to do with duplicate or even syndicated content. That's just social bookmarking, another form of low quality link building. I would not bother.
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        Links in signature will not help your SEO. Not on this site, and not on any other forum.
        Who told me this? An ex Google web spam engineer.

        What's your excuse?
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    • Profile picture of the author David C.
      My apologies, it's on one url, and then he bookmarks it on different sites...
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      • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
        Originally Posted by David C. View Post

        My apologies, it's on one url, and then he bookmarks it on different sites...
        Bookmarking is useless for anything other than getting something indexed a little faster. More junk links really.

        I hope you are not paying much for this service. I'm pretty sure you could get the same quality of work at Fiverr.com, and it would only cost you $5.
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  • Profile picture of the author rmacklyn
    Posting to one site is genuine. And if at all you want the articles to be submitted to another sites as well, submit the same to a good article site and rest of the articles sites where ever you submit, just give the source link there with. Anywhere you give a source link, there is no chance of duplicacy.
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  • Profile picture of the author wally247
    I wouldn't worry about duplicate content. Matt Cutts has said over and over that there really isn't any "penalty" for this unless you really do it in a terrible way.

    That being said, these are about the worst links you can build. I can't imagine article directory links are going to help you rank at all and are likely to get you some penalties regardless of duplicate content or not.

    In my opinion the only way that writing articles for SEO is viable now and in the future is to write insanely helpful articles and get other legitimate blogs to link to you because of them.

    But that's my opinion.
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  • Profile picture of the author nettiapina
    To OP: I'd try to see if the SEO guy is doing something else that's more effective. If this is just one of the tricks the overall service might still be worth your money.

    Good SEO agencies do a huge variety of stuff. It's not too uncommon that a long todo list has point or two that are like the SEO equivalent of homeopathy. "Balanced link profile" seems to be a common belief in these circles.
    Signature
    Links in signature will not help your SEO. Not on this site, and not on any other forum.
    Who told me this? An ex Google web spam engineer.

    What's your excuse?
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