Press Releases and Duplicate Content on Event Related Site
-
I have a site that lists events. I ask those submitting events to submit original content if possible, but frequently they submit press releases which are already published elsewhere. I rewrite some of the press releases, but do not have time to rewrite every press release that comes my way. I want my users to get a comprehensive list of events, but I don't want get a penalty for duplicate content. What is the best solution?
-
Syndication tag can be used if you are not worried about your pages in Google news.
You may also use "noindex" or "canonical" if you want to play a very safe game. But as you know, your pages won't be indexed.
If you mention the content source at prominent places, you will be O.K.
Example:
In title you may say as "....event by ........."
In the body, you may say as "...thanks to .........."
As long as the overall percentage of duplicate content in your site is in very reasonable level and you link back to content source, you won't find any problem.
Google clarified that content duplication alone will not lead to negative impact.
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/06/duplicate-content-due-to-scrapers.html
-
Thanks Devin,
That seems pretty reasonable and in tune with what I was thinking myself. Unfortunately I think if I want to provide users with a complete list of events I will have to probably include some press release material. A couple of further related questions might be:
- Should I be trying to prevent search bots from crawling pages if the content is not original (by using noindex tag and/or use of robots.txt file)?
- I wonder if the
syndication-source
tag might be more relevant than the canonical tag?
http://support.google.com/news/publisher/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=191283
-
Hi Andy,
A non-technical solution would be to have an email template and send it to whoever submits a press release. Something like...
"Dear so and so,
_Thank you very much for your submission to my site. I would be delighted to include your event in my listings. Unfortunately I am very wary of featuring a press release that has been published ad verbatim on other websites. I would really appreciate if you could alter your submission to include _whatever specifications you need .
Once I receive this I will publish your event immediately. "
Alternatively, you could use the rel=canonical tag targeting the original page the press release was published on. This would prevent you being done for duplicate content. However, your page will be less likely to appear for searches conducted for that event. I'd imagine you'd prefer your own pages to appear in the SERPs so this probably isn't ideal. I've never had to deal with this kind of problem myself so I'd be very interested to hear what others have to say.
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
-
Breaking a Big Website into Multiple Unrelated Sites
I have a big cluttered website that I want to simplify. There is content for patients, researchers, therapists who are looking for grants, etc.. Would it be a bad ideas to turn these into 3 or more, completely different sites with each focused on their specific demographic? Or should I just figure out how to organize the one site better? Thanks for your help!!!
Content Development | | bosleypalmer0 -
Could this be an issue with duplicate content?
Hi everyone, I am working with a business consultant in the HVAC industry and doing SEO for 8 of his clients (all HVAC businesses from around the US and Canada). Each website is essentially a mirror of the business consultant's website with really the same information-- it applies perfectly well to each individual website, but it IS nearly, if not, identical. I'm getting ready to implement a blog on the original HVAC page and have been considering using the same content (customized to reflect each business-- but still the same information) for blogs for my other 8 clients. My questions are: 1. Is the mirroring of the website a duplicate content problem? Example if you're interested: http://www.mcair.com (original) and http://www.jpsheating.ca/ (client). 2. Is using the same blog across 8 different website (customized for each client but the same basic information) a duplicate content issue? For example-- a blog about getting your air ducts cleaned... the information is going to be the same (and relevant) with each business and each business could benefit from sharing that information with their customers. Thanks so much for your help and explanation
Content Development | | KaitlinNS0 -
Copying & Pasting the Moz Glossary onto my site.. is this white hat or black hat?
Hi, I run a small business writing optimised content for small businesses in Melbourne. I want to add a Glossary page to my website that lists all of the different words associated with website marketing and SEO. I found the Moz glossary and I am wondering if it would be a bad idea to copy and paste the list straight into a page on my site. I'd prefer to not have to reword all of the descriptions as it will take me ages and I don't want to compromise the information in the descriptions. Here is a link to the Glossary: http://moz.com/blog/smwc-and-other-essential-seo-jargon Obviously I don't want to do the wrong thing ethically or from Google's perspective. Any advice would be great.
Content Development | | StoryScout0 -
Should i 301 redirect my blog to the respective site or just 404 all the blog pages?
Hi guys, We plan to close down our blog, which is a subdomain to our anchor site. I need advice on how to keep the link juice and its SEO value. Is it better to 301 redirect the blog to the homepage of our site, or just 404 all the pages of the blog? Thanks
Content Development | | dimicos0 -
Duplicate external links?
I have been guest posting at a variety of reputable blogs in my niche. I generally write once or twice a month and have a bio link with a link to my blog. I'm wondering if multiple links from the same domain (but different pages) helps, or if there are some diminishing returns here. Should I only be writing one post for them? Of course, there are other non-SEO benefits too, because these are reputable sites. But I'm wondering how this helps my SEO? Thanks in advance!
Content Development | | JodiFTM0 -
Prevent average users from copying content and pasting into their websites
Please do not respond with a "you can't stop them" comment, I understand this. Most of our pages have content that is duplicated across multiple domains. The recent Google algorithm update focused on penalizing pages that have duplicate content, and it could be one of the reasons that we have been seeing traffic loss. I'm looking for some type of javascsript/php code that will help minimize this issue.If could be code that does not allow you to copy and paste the code without turning of javascript or a dialog box pops up and says "this content is copyright protected, anyone copying this content is subject to legal action" I've found one script that might work http://www.ioncube.com/html_encoder.php My questions are still the same: 1 What is the best method to achieve my objective? 2 Will this additional code affect how the webbots see our site and or affect rankings? I know that anyone can figure out how to get the code, I am trying to mitigate by providing a warning about copyright infringement and making it more challenging to copy our content. Please do not respond with a "you can't stop them" comment, etc, I understand this. Thank you for your comments!
Content Development | | 4RealLocal0 -
Duplicate Pages Different Content
Will duplicate pages different content hurt rankings/seo E-commerce Site is plugin style with WYSIWYG editor allowing for full customization, all pages are setup with basic default content. Ive created custom pages with content/keywords to begin seo on them I have two pages www.domain.com/sports/hockey and www.domain.com/nhl-tickets The first url is default, with a single H1tag, + Default Meta+Title tags, the second is the content rich page, and structured properly, both of which show up on the site, should I block the first url from displaying at all? The reason I am asking is because ive also setup breadcrumb links, which makes all of these category url's accessible on the site, I cannot edit breadcrumb links, we can either have them there or remove them. Thank you Very Much!!
Content Development | | TP_Marketing0 -
Metrics to measure the quality of content?
When trying to decide what is low quality content, page views & bounce rate are the main indicators I use for pages already on site. But, how do you measure the quality of content that you are trying to produce? Is it entirely subjective?
Content Development | | nicole.healthline0