If you are an internet marketer and your objective is to bring as much traffic as possible to your website and brand, then it is highly important that you understand what Google wants to see from you and what is encouraged for good SEO. In this case, that means learning about its very biggest ‘pet peeve’ and learning how to circumvent it.
In order to succeed online, getting to the top of Google is still widely considered to be one of the most important objectives for any website owner. That means creating a website and filling it with content, all in a way that is conducive to good SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and that is known to be what Google is looking for. It also means avoiding some of the biggest and most serious slip-ups that can immediately result in a website being penalized or even removed from the SERPs (search engine results pages) entirely.
So just what are these punishable crimes in the eyes of Google? Well, one of the very worst is the use of duplicate content. Using duplicate content is a very fast way to get on Google’s bad side and in this post, you’ll learn why that is and what you need to do to avoid getting penalized.
What is Duplicate Content?
Google’s objective as a search engine are built entirely around offering visitors the most enjoyable and useful experience on the net possible. Google wants to make sure that you can find what you are looking for, because if it can do that, then in theory, you are going to keep using the search engine.
But imagine a world where Google didn’t care about duplicate content – content that had been used previously on the web. In that case, one article might become the most successful because it was written well and with the best SEO. That one article might then get sold around the net and as a result, it could find itself appearing on multiple different sites.
Thus, the entire first page of the SERPs could end up being filled with the same article! Worse: if Google didn’t mind whether or not content was unique, then someone could easily just copy and paste the content from a successful site with no regard for copyright and instantly get to the same high position.
As you can see then, Google has a lot of incentive to reward originality and to punish the use of content that has already been added to the index.
Republishable Content
From the perspective of the webmaster or the writer, this is a negative thing because it means they can’t just keep reselling the same writing or republishing the same posts they bought.
However, there are examples of content that can be reused. For instance, if an article is old enough, then it may have even become de-indexed meaning it can be reused. Likewise, if the content is from a PDF that never got indexed by Google, if it was taken from an image, or if it has been fully rewritten, then it might be safe. But in all these scenarios, a site owner must be sure and that is where Copyscape can come in so handy.
