1. Duplicate content can make Google think you are plagiarizing.
There’s more than one reason to “create before you consume”.
If you write a post that sounds just like a post someone else wrote,
with your own words sprinkled here and there for personalization, Google
is going to notice—just like school teachers notice that a paper sounds
just like the encyclopedia article on the topic.
2. Duplicate content can make Google think you are a content thief.
If you publish a post that is an exact duplicate of another, it
appears to search engines that one of them is stolen (especially if they
don’t link to each other). It might be that you are putting a copy of a
guest post you wrote on your own blog, but Google doesn’t know that. It
could just as easily be that
you copied a post you liked from another
blog and put it on your own blog. It’s called “content scraping” and it
happens all the time. (You can try out a plugin like Plagiarism
to automatically search for scraped copies of your blog’s content. If
you’ve discovered an instance of your own content being stolen, 3. Duplicate content confuses search engines about where to send readers.
Search engines are constantly trying to improve their search results
to include only the best and most relevant content for your search
terms. That means that something has to go—and that will be the
duplicate posts, those deemed irrelevant. And if Google looks at your
site as a whole and sees a lot of content duplicated on your site and
elsewhere? That will affect your site’s rankings.
4. Duplicate content confuses readers.
Even if you’re not worried about your search engine ranking,
re-posting an old post is still splitting your blog traffic, likes, and
shares between two posts. Not to mention that the related discussion
(which is always fabulous–I love reading comments!) is spread out all
throughout the archives (which might drive some of us detail people
downright crazy). Readers don’t know which post to pin or like–let alone
comment on. Duplicate content equals multiplied confusion.
4 Ways Bloggers Can Avoid Duplicate Content Penalties
1. Refresh an old post, don’t re-post from the archives.
It’s tempting—especially when writer’s block hits—to grab an old
post, dress it up with a new picture and better grammar, and hit publish
again. But that practice is littering your archives with duplicate
posts. And Google is going to spot that. Best practice is to edit the
old post, and re-share it again via social media and perhaps even your
email newsletter. (Watch for the next post filled with ideas and methods
for refreshing your archives.)
2. Guest post, don’t submit a previously published post.
Most guest post guidelines specify that you must submit a new,
original post—one that has never been published elsewhere, including
your own blog. That’s because a guest post that’s already been posted on
your own blog isn’t a guest post: it’s duplicate content. Write a guest
post that will give potential readers a taste of what they might find
on your blog, without giving them your blog posts themselves.
3. Use a different title and intro when linking to your guest post.
When you guest post for someone else, it’s common courtesy (and often
an understood agreement) that you’ll write a post on your own blog
linking to your guest post. It’s a way to bring your community to
theirs, and say thank you for the opportunity. However, you have the
potential to hurt your SEO and the site hosting the guest post if you
use the same title and beginning paragraphs of your guest post as an
introduction on your own blog. It takes a bit more time, but it’s worth
the effort to avoid duplicate content issues by creating a unique title
and crafting a custom introduction to your guest post. Close your
introduction with the words of the link itself in mind:
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