How to Not Scrap Content, but still Being a Hub
-
Hello Seomoz members. I'm relatively new to SEO, so please forgive me if my questions are a little basic.
One of the sites I manage is GoldSilver.com. We sell gold and silver coins and bars, but we also have a very important news aspect to our site.
For about 2-3 years now we have been a major hub as a gold and silver news aggregator. At 1.5 years ago (before we knew much about SEO), we switched from linking to the original news site to scraping their content and putting it on our site. The chief reason for this was users would click outbound to read an article, see an ad for a competitor, then buy elsewhere. We were trying to avoid this (a relatively stupid decision with hindsight).
We have realized that the Search Engines are penalizing us, which I don't blame them for, for having this scraped content on our site.
So I'm trying to figure out how to move forward from here. We would like to remain a hub for news related to Gold and Silver and not be penalized by SEs, but we also need to sell bullion and would like to avoid loosing clients to competitors through ads on the news articles.
One of the solutions we are thinking about is perhaps using an iFrame to display the original url, but within our experience. An example is how trap.it does this (see attached picture). This way we can still control the experience some what, but are still remaining a hub.
Thoughts?
Thank you,
nick
-
I honestly can't offer any short term suggestions. It's a big challenge to know what the best short term path is. Ultimately, you'll need to remove all the scraped content. Do that without replacing it and in the short term, you won't see any gains, though you may even see some short term losses as it's possible you're not being purely penalized.
-
Alan,
Thank you for your thoughts. I agree we need to change our strategy and move away from scraped content. Any technical work arounds we try to do (like iFrame) may work now, but ultimately we seem to just be delaying the inevitable.
Since that strategy will take a while to implement, what would you recommend for the shorter term?
-
Nick,
You're in a difficult situation, to say the least. iFrames were a safe bet a couple years ago, however Google has gotten better and better at discovering content contained in previously safe environments within the code. And they're just going to get better at it over time.
The only truly safe solution for a long term view is to change strategy drastically. Find quality news elsewhere, and have content writers create unique articles built on the core information contained in those. Become your own news site with a unique voice.
The expense is significant given you'll need full time writers, however with a couple entry level writers right out of college, or just a year or two into the content writing / journalism path, you've got a relatively low cost of entry. The key is picking really good talent.
I was able to replace an entire team of 12 poorly chosen writers with 3 very good writers, for example.
The other reality with that is needing to lose all the scraped content. It's got to go. You can't salvage it, or back-date newly written content around it, not in the volume you're dealing with. So you're going to have to earn ranking all over again, but through real, value added reasons.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Duplication content management across a subdir based multisite where subsites are projects of the main site and naturally adopt some ideas and goals from it
Hi, I have the following problem and would like which would be the best solution for it: I have a site codex21.gal that is actually part of a subdirectories based multisite (galike.net). It has a domain mapping setup, but it is hosted on a folder of galike.net multisite (galike.net/codex21). My main site (galike.net) works as a frame-brand for a series of projects aimed to promote the cultural & natural heritage of a region in NW Spain through creative projects focused on the entertainment, tourism and educational areas. The projects themselves will be a concretion (put into practice) of the general views of the brand, that acts more like a company brand. CodeX21 is one of those projects, it has its own logo, etc, and is actually like a child brand, yet more focused on a particular theme. I don't want to hide that it makes part of the GALIKE brand (in fact, I am planning to add the Galike logo to it, and a link to the main site on the menu). I will be making other projects, each of them with their own brand, hosted in subsites (subfolders) of galike.net multisites. Not all of them might have their own TLD mapped, some could simply be www.galike.net/projectname. The project codex21.gal subsite might become galike.net/codex21 if it would be better for SEO. Now, the problem is that my subsite codex21.gal re-states some principles, concepts and goals that have been defined (in other words) in the main site. Thus, there are some ideas (such as my particular vision on the possibilities of sustainable exploitation of that heritage, concepts I have developed myself as "narrative tourism" "geographical map as a non lineal story" and so on) that need to be present here and there on the subsite, since it is also philosophy of the project. BUT it seems that Google can penalise overlapping content in subdirectories based multisites, since they can seem a collection of doorways to access the same product (*) I have considered the possibility to substitute those overlapping ideas with links to the main page of the site, thought it seems unnatural from the user point of view to be brought off the page to read a piece of info that actually makes part of the project description (every other child project of Galike might have the same problem). I have considered also taking the subsite codex21 out of the network and host it as a single site in other server, but the problem of duplicated content might persist, and anyway, I should link it to my brand Galike somewhere, because that's kind of the "production house" of it. So which would be the best (white hat) strategy, from a SEO point of view, to arrange this brand-project philosophy overlapping? (*) “All the same IP address — that’s really not a problem for us. It’s really common for sites to be on the same IP address. That’s kind of the way the internet works. A lot of CDNs (content delivery networks) use the same IP address as well for different sites, and that’s also perfectly fine. I think the bigger issue that he might be running into is that all these sites are very similar. So, from our point of view, our algorithms might look at that and say “this is kind of a collection of doorway sites” — in that essentially they’re being funnelled toward the same product. The content on the sites is probably very similar. Then, from our point of view, what might happen is we will say we’ll pick one of these pages and index that and show that in the search results. That might be one variation that we could look at. In practice that wouldn’t be so problematic because one of these sites would be showing up in the search results. On the other hand, our algorithm might also be looking at this and saying this is clearly someone trying to overdo things with a collection of doorway sites and we’ll demote all of them. So what I recommend doing here is really trying to take a step back and focus on fewer sites and making those really strong, and really good and unique. So that they have unique content, unique products that they’re selling. So then you don’t have this collection of a lot of different sites that are essentially doing the same thing.” (John Mueller, Senior Webmaster Trend Analyst at Google. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=kQIyk-2-wRg&feature=emb_logo)
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | PabloCulebras0 -
Do content copycats (plagiarism) hurt original website rankings?
Hi all, Found some websites stolen our content and using the same sentences in their website pages. Does this content hurt our website rankings? Their DA is low, still we are worried about the damage about this plagiarism. Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Posting same content multiple blogs or multiple website - 2018
Submitting same content on multiple site or blog using original source Links. Its good or bad in term on Ranking and SEO. Can we post same content on multiple website with orginal post reference same like Press release site technique.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | HuptechWebseo0 -
Do we get de-indexed for changing some content and tags frequently? What is the scope in 2017?
Hi all, We are making some changes in our website content at some paragraphs and tags with our main keywords. I'm just wondering if this is going to make us de indexed from Google? Because we recently dropped in rankings when we added some new content; so I am worried whether there are any chances it will turn more risky when we try to make anymore changes like changing the content. There are actually many reasons a website gets de indexed from Google but we don't employ any such black hat techniques. Our website got a reputation with thousands of direct traffic and organic search. However I am curious to know what are the chances of getting de indexed as per the new trends at Google? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Whay are low-quality exact match domains still ranking well for our biggest term?
There are a number of low-quality “exact-match” domains that are ranking well for the term “locum tenens”. I don’t want to specifically mention any sites, but there are some with poor content and very few quality backlinks that are on page one. The only reason I can see for them ranking so well is the fact that “locum” and/or “tenens” are in the URL. It’s very frustrating because we have worked hard to do all the right things (regular blogging, high-quality content, quality backlinks, etc.) to build our domain authority and page authority so they are better than these sites, yet they still out-rank us. Our site is www.bartonassociates.com. Could it have something to do with the term “locum tenens”, which is a latin phrase? Is it possible that because it is a latin term that it somehow slipped through the cracks and avoided the update that was supposed to eliminate this? If so, what can we do to get some justice?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ba_seomoz0 -
If I redirect a penalized domain to a non-penalized domain, will the new domain still be penalized?
If I redirect a penalized domain to a non-penalized domain, will the new domain still be penalized?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MangoMan160 -
Content box (on page content) and titles Google over-optimization penalty?
We have a content box at the bottom of our website with a scroll bar and have posted a fair bit of content into this area (too much for on page) granted it is a combination of SEO content (with links to our pages) and informative but with the over optimization penalty coming around I am a little scared if this will result in a problem for us. I am thinking of adopting the process of this website HERE with the content behind a more information button that drops down, would this be better as it could be much more organised and we will be swopping out to more helpful information than the current 50/50 (SEO – helpful content) or will it be viewed the same and we might as well leave it as is and lower the amount of repetition and links in the content. Also we sell printed goods so our titles may be a bit over the top but they are bring us a lot of converting traffic but again I am worried about the new Google release this is an example of a typical title (only an example not our product page) Banner Printing | PVC Banners | Outdoor Banners | Backdrops | Vinyl Banners | Banner Signs Thank you for any help with these matters.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Showing pre-loaded content cloaking?
Hi everyone, another quick question. We have a number of different resources available for our users that load dynamically as the user scrolls down the page (like Facebook's Timeline) with the aim of improving page load time. Would it be considered cloaking if we had Google bot index a version of the page with all available content that would load for the user if he/she scrolled down to the bottom?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CuriosityMedia0