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Would Using Reprint Rights Articles Hurt Rankings?

by yourreviewer
10 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I am helping a client build a website and so far he has about 90 odd unique high quality articles on his website.

Now he wants to use articles provided by Clickbank merchants to promote their products. So basically he wants to publish all the articles (just one merchant has about a 100 articles) on his website.

However he is worried about duplicate content penalty.

I told him that it may be a problem if he uses the same content twice or more in his site but since he is using content from another domain, he has nothing to worry about.

Apparently one of his SEO guys advised him not to use any PLR/reprint rights articles on the site due to the Panda update.

Personally speaking, I think there is no harm in using the content but since he is my client and I am no SEO expert, I wanted to double check with you guys.
#articles #clarification #reprint #rights
  • Profile picture of the author bretski
    Originally Posted by yourreviewer View Post


    However he is worried about duplicate content penalty.

    I told him that it may be a problem if he uses the same content twice or more in his site but since he is using content from another domain, he has nothing to worry about.

    Apparently one of his SEO guys advised him not to use any PLR/reprint rights articles on the site due to the Panda update.

    Personally speaking, I think there is no harm in using the content but since he is my client and I am no SEO expert, I wanted to double check with you guys.
    You're right... his "SEO guy" is wrong. If the content is decent and relative to his site there's no reason not to use this content, especially if he already has a bunch of unique content. I would probably still mix it up a bit and not just dump 100 plr articles on the site.
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  • Profile picture of the author RayWhittaker
    Firstly, Google does not penalize websites for running duplicate content. If they did, all the article directory sites would be blown out of the water.

    If you want the official Google word on this just go to... http://googlewebmastercentral.blogsp...t-penalty.html

    But secondly, running duplicate content is not going to help your client keep their position in Google.

    When it comes to duplicate content, Google makes every effort to determine where the content originated. They're getting pretty good at that too post panda. It will then promote that site and generally ignore the rest. I should be clear here since some people seem to think that is a penalty but it's not.

    Google is not going to promote every copy of duplicated content to page after page of the search results. They are not going to p*** off their users that way; nor should we expect them to. Google wants to see fresh original content. That's what they've always wanted, even prior to panda. The way to rank is to give them what they want. The easiest way to start losing position in the SERPS is to stop giving them what they want.

    So to answer your question, posting duplicate content in small doses may not do any harm but it certainly won't do any good.
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  • Profile picture of the author yourreviewer
    Bret and Ray, thanks for posting.

    Those were my thoughts exactly though I am not a SEO expert.

    I looked at the articles myself and I have to say, they are really high quality articles. So for me, it is all about the end user and I am usually not bothered about search engines.

    Having said that this is NOT my website and since I am working for my client, I want to do my absolute best to make sure that I give him proper advice.

    The overall goal of using this content is not to rank in search engines but provide value to the users.

    But what my client is afraid of is if the site would be slapped or the traffic would go down by using this content. I said nope while his SEO guy said Yes.

    Bret, to your point, I advised him to drip the content and not post all the articles immediately.

    Ray, you mention "So to answer your question, posting duplicate content in small doses may not do any harm but it certainly won't do any good."

    Is there a ratio that is recommended for websites like 80% unique content to 20% already published content?
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  • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
    Banned
    Originally Posted by yourreviewer View Post

    Personally speaking, I think there is no harm in using the content
    And you're right. There's no downside here. His existing original content will not be devalued by being mixed with some syndicated content (it's not "duplicate content").
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    • Profile picture of the author yourreviewer
      Originally Posted by Alexa Smith View Post

      And you're right. There's no downside here. His existing original content will not be devalued by being mixed with some syndicated content (it's not "duplicate content").
      Thanks for clarifying Alexa I feel better knowing what I advised my client was in fact the right advice.
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  • Profile picture of the author yourreviewer
    By the way, I just stumbled upon this article.

    Fat Pandas and Thin Content | SEOmoz

    The author mentions,

    "2. True Duplicates (Cross-site)

    Google is becoming increasingly aggressive about cross-site duplicates, which may differ by their wrapper but are otherwise the exact same pieces of content across more than one domain:

    Too many people assume that this is all an issue of legitimacy or legality – scrapers are bad, but syndication and authorized duplication are fine. Unfortunately, the algorithm doesn’t really care. The same content across multiple sites is SERP noise, and Google will try to filter it out."

    Is the mention "Google is becoming increasingly aggressive about cross-site duplicates" more about being filtered out from the search results than any kind of penalty. And if that is what he is referring to, that was the case anyways before Panda.

    Am I missing anything here?
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    • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
      Originally Posted by yourreviewer View Post

      By the way, I just stumbled upon this article.

      Fat Pandas and Thin Content | SEOmoz

      The author mentions,

      "2. True Duplicates (Cross-site)

      Google is becoming increasingly aggressive about cross-site duplicates, which may differ by their wrapper but are otherwise the exact same pieces of content across more than one domain:

      Too many people assume that this is all an issue of legitimacy or legality - scrapers are bad, but syndication and authorized duplication are fine. Unfortunately, the algorithm doesn't really care. The same content across multiple sites is SERP noise, and Google will try to filter it out."

      Is the mention "Google is becoming increasingly aggressive about cross-site duplicates" more about being filtered out from the search results than any kind of penalty. And if that is what he is referring to, that was the case anyways before Panda.

      Am I missing anything here?
      A couple of points here...

      > Remember, Google ranks pages, not sites. Adding an article (or even 100) provided by a vendor to enhance the user experience won't hurt the rankings for other pages on the site.

      > Even if a page does trigger a duplicate content filter, the original source is not guaranteed the highest ranking. Relevance is becoming a bigger factor. And by relevance, I'm not talking about just a matching key word.

      For example, if you are in the UK, pages on a .co.uk site might rank higher than a .com, simply by virtue of common geography.

      So, to answer the OP, you are both right. Adding the vendor's articles won't hurt the site's overall rankings. But the vendor article pages themselves may or may not rank all that well against other pages with the same article syndicated.

      Since you say the additional articles are meant to enhance the user experience, I'd advise going ahead and dripping them in over time. Especially if you can do as the article linked above suggests and wrap the syndicated article in some original commentary.
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    • Profile picture of the author RayWhittaker
      Originally Posted by yourreviewer View Post

      Is the mention "Google is becoming increasingly aggressive about cross-site duplicates" more about being filtered out from the search results than any kind of penalty. And if that is what he is referring to, that was the case anyways before Panda.

      Am I missing anything here?
      No, that's about the gist of it. The difference is post panda, Google is has apparently got better at it from what I understand.

      Originally Posted by yourreviewer View Post

      Ray, you mention "So to answer your question, posting duplicate content in small doses may not do any harm but it certainly won't do any good."

      Is there a ratio that is recommended for websites like 80% unique content to 20% already published content?
      No, I don't believe any recommendation like that would be useful. It's not that duplicate content is going to hurt the rankings of a web site. What tends to happen is duplicate content replaces the original content that might have been posted. You can't stand still in this game any more than any other. If your client stopped posting original content, they would find themselves slipping in the search position due to competition providing what they aren't.

      As most have said in this thread, posting a mixture of original and duplicate content should be perfectly acceptable.

      I can't say this for certain but I think it doesn't matter how much duplicate content is posted as long as they keep posting original stuff. My point is the duplicate stuff won't do anything to increase, or even maintain, position.
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  • Profile picture of the author Celeste Green
    Mmmm from an SEO standpoint it's always better to have original content on your site. I wouldn't be as concerned if he was using these with some outside article marketing to generate some traffic & backlinks, though it's still better to reword them.

    I'd suggest a happy medium to you client - use some of the PLR as content for a blog, so that there is a constant stream of articles which will benefit visitors, but make that more of guest posts or the occasional article. Try to make most of the content added to his site original; it's worth the extra effort.
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  • Profile picture of the author yourreviewer
    Awesome guys. John and Ray, thank you so much for your insightful comments. This is REALLY very very useful for me.

    My recommendation to the client is to alwaus focus on user experience and make sure that the visitors get the maximum value and with the reprint rights content, we are hoping to just do that.
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