duplicate blog content and search engines

[buttster]

I know that search engines are suppose to penalize you if you use a lot of duplicate content on your blogs, such as using all affiliate rss feeds, but what if you use the picture only from the feed and add your own text or add more into the existing feed text. I would think that would help from being penalized. Words from the wise please!!!!!

[ronnie]

This is one of those grey area's that no one can say for sure unless they work for the SE's. I am no expert, but I would say you'd by fine if your creating your own text, long as it's more than just a couple sentences.

Course if you make up all your own text, you don't even have to worry about duplicate content.

[morningstar]

I think using other images as content is not bad for SEO, since SE crawlers doesn't read images and Scripts.

[RomaCash]

morrph(as I remember) - its a special app which customize blog content, so no dublicate content.

[walrus]

Originally Posted by RomaCash

morrph(as I remember) - its a special app which customize blog content, so no dublicate content.

I think people who follow this logic give the folks at the anti-spam departments with the SE's way too little credit. The morphing aps don't write whole new posts each time. They have a little thesaurus built into them and they take keywords and replace them with words they pull from that thesaurus. Morphing may have worked for a short time, it may still work but I'd bet money the people at google have already identified it and if they feel it's causing problems with their search results are looking at defeating it. If they haven't already. If and when they do, you can be pretty sure that they will attach some sort of penalty to the activity.

The other problem is that once the post does get morphed, it doesn't always make sense to the reader. Getting the SE traffic to your site is one thing. Keeping that surfer and building trust with him is a different problem and if he is reading your blog and runs across a couple of posts that just doesn't make sense to him....how long is he going to be with you.

If you spend much time here you've probably already heard this but build sites for your surfers and not the SE's. But hey, isnt that the same advice google gives.

[ronnie]

That's what I have always wondered. Can any software generate or re-generate readable content? Not just okay content, but content that looks like it was written by a human?

[papagmp]

I agree with Walrus - I provide all of my feeds in morphed and non-morphed format because different affiliates have different needs.

On my own blogs I do one of four things - depending on how I want the blog to perform and/or how much time I have to invest in the project:

1. 100% handwritten posts with unique images for each post.
2. A mix of hand written posts and posts for feeds where I edit the majority of the text on the incoming feed before I post it to my blog.
3. A 100% feed blog where I edit some of the text on most of the posts to help keyword targeting.
4. A 100% feed blog that I setup and forget.

So far - options 1 and 2 are reaping about the same results so my guess (based on a very small sample) is that re-writing a post is as effective (or at least nearly as effective) as writing one.

On the same note - if we were truly worried about duplicate content on our blogs, should we disable the rss feeds on out blogs?

[walrus]

Originally Posted by buttster

I know that search engines are suppose to penalize you if you use a lot of duplicate content on your blogs, such as using all affiliate rss feeds, but what if you use the picture only from the feed and add your own text or add more into the existing feed text. I would think that would help from being penalized. Words from the wise please!!!!!

If your just using the picture and you change the alt tags, your duplicate content is pretty minimal, I think. If you take what's there and add to it, then I would say it depends how much you add to it and I couldn't tell you how much it would take.

As far as RSS feeds and duplicate content...I have my own theory I'm testing.

[ronnie]

It seems for single posts, even if a provided or imported feed is used to post, by the nature of blogs, so many different theme's and set ups, duplicate content would be lower right off the bat, from blog to blog.

It would also depend the amount of the content. A paragraph in a single post on one blog should not be as much a duplication as the same content on another blog. The pages should not be as similar.

It would also depend on how much content is on the page from the blog itself, besides the posted content. Not counting code.

Now if you talking a page or so, there is more of the same "content", the overall page would be much more similar.

If any of that makes sense. Just my thoughts and guesses..

For people who just don't want to write or can not or have a hard time with it, and it's not just mass production, you could always re-write provided content.

[walrus]

Originally Posted by ronnie

It seems for single posts, even if a provided or imported feed is used to post, by the nature of blogs, so many different theme's and set ups, duplicate content would be lower right off the bat, from blog to blog.

I agree with all of your points except this one. I forget exactly what they are called but the places you can write and submit articles to have had duplicate content issues long before I ever heard of it with blogs. They have a some what similar make up to a blog as in a main content area and then sidebar area's.

[Simon]

Something I'm starting to play with are WordPress' conditional tags. With a bit of work, you could ensure that the sidebars are swapped for other ones based on what the surfer is viewing: main page, earlier chronological pages, a WP Page, a category or tag page, etc.

[T Pat]

I don't worry about getting dinged for duplicate content.
I won't share my reasoning on the board but if you buy me a beer in Vegas I'll spill
I'm working on a huge wordpress blog/splog , I'm more worried about the Search Engines dinging me for using wordpress than duplicate content

[ronnie]

What if your not going to Vegas?

Why would they ding you for using Wordpress?

[ronnie]

Originally Posted by Simon

Something I'm starting to play with are WordPress' conditional tags. With a bit of work, you could ensure that the sidebars are swapped for other ones based on what the surfer is viewing: main page, earlier chronological pages, a WP Page, a category or tag page, etc.

Very interesting, looks like WP is really coming around. Course sure it can do alot more than I know..

I almost always take my side bars out on single posts.

[walrus]

Originally Posted by Simon

Something I'm starting to play with are WordPress' conditional tags. With a bit of work, you could ensure that the sidebars are swapped for other ones based on what the surfer is viewing: main page, earlier chronological pages, a WP Page, a category or tag page, etc.

I've been using conditional tags for awhile now. The old XXX Blog Maniac had separate hardlinks per category. The new one I've kind of gone hog wild with.

Originally Posted by T Pat

I don't worry about getting dinged for duplicate content.
I won't share my reasoning on the board but if you buy me a beer in Vegas I'll spill
I'm working on a huge wordpress blog/splog , I'm more worried about the Search Engines dinging me for using wordpress than duplicate content

We're going to have a lot of beers and do a lot of talking.

[tigermom]

Originally Posted by walrus

The other problem is that once the post does get morphed, it doesn't always make sense to the reader. Getting the SE traffic to your site is one thing. Keeping that surfer and building trust with him is a different problem and if he is reading your blog and runs across a couple of posts that just doesn't make sense to him....how long is he going to be with you.

You know, I have to say, some of those weird morphed posts can actually be better than the originals. They're weird, in a way that might just catch a reader's eye and make him re-read the sentence, and hang around for a bit longer. If he doesn't know this is machine-generated, he may think you're a very very creative writer

[T Pat]

Originally Posted by ronnie

What if your not going to Vegas?

Why would they ding you for using Wordpress?

ronnie your in my top ten list of webmasters I would like to spend time with in Vegas, make your reservations damnit

As far as my half baked wordpress theory Sparky planted the seed a couple years ago.
Think about this for a second would it not be easier for google to just devalue every adult wordpress blog than to devalue blogs with duplicate content
But like I posted I'm building a huge wordpress blog
kind of a don't put all of your eggs in one basket thing

[walrus]

Originally Posted by T Pat

ronnie your in my top ten list of webmasters I would like to spend time with in Vegas, make your reservations damnit

As far as my half baked wordpress theory Sparky planted the seed a couple years ago.
Think about this for a second would it not be easier for google to just devalue every adult wordpress blog than to devalue blogs with duplicate content
But like I posted I'm building a huge wordpress blog
kind of a don't put all of your eggs in one basket thing

Now I really feel the love....but it's an interesting theory. About 6 months ago, XXX Blog Maniac took a total shit as for as google was concerned, from about 3k a day to 300, for no obvious reason I could tell. It was like a light switch just off and somewhere near there I noticed my TBPR dropped from 4 to 3.

When it's a blog and something that drastic happens you've got to think WTF but there was really nothing to trace the drop to.

[Jeremy]

AFAIK there isn't really a duplicate content "penalty" per se.... just google will only show the page it thinks is most relevant.

[ronnie]

Originally Posted by T Pat

ronnie your in my top ten list of webmasters I would like to spend time with in Vegas, make your reservations damnit

As far as my half baked wordpress theory Sparky planted the seed a couple years ago.
Think about this for a second would it not be easier for google to just devalue every adult wordpress blog than to devalue blogs with duplicate content
But like I posted I'm building a huge wordpress blog
kind of a don't put all of your eggs in one basket thing

Same here Pat! Wish I had time to to go..

Why would G want to devalue all adult blogs? Just like anything, there are good and bad. Seems they could just devalue like anything else, based on content, lack of or, duplicate of.

I have to say, does seem like my WP blogs took a hit.

Why does it seem everything adult gets slammed?

[Useless]

Originally Posted by T Pat

I don't worry about getting dinged for duplicate content.
I won't share my reasoning on the board but if you buy me a beer in Vegas I'll spill

I wanted to chime in and state that I'm in absolute agreement with Pat on this. We discussed this face to face and pretty much had a "jinx - you owe me a coke" kind of moment since we have the exact same feelings about RSS feeds/duplicate content. Our reasoning is actually very obvious, but neither of us are here to teach a basic SEO class.

[walrus]

Originally Posted by Useless Warrior

I wanted to chime in and state that I'm in absolute agreement with Pat on this. We discussed this face to face and pretty much had a "jinx - you owe me a coke" kind of moment since we have the exact same feelings about RSS feeds/duplicate content. Our reasoning is actually very obvious, but neither of us are here to teach a basic SEO class.

Thats interesting, almost like throwing down a challenge and while I don't know your most intimate moment, I will say I'm not intimidated by the possibility of a duplicate content penalty, I just do believe it exists.

I do hope Pat and myself have a moment of two to discuss at XBiz. If your there it would just make the discussion a little livelier.

[Useless]

Originally Posted by walrus

Thats interesting, almost like throwing down a challenge and while I don't know your most intimate moment, I will say I'm not intimidated by the possibility of a duplicate content penalty, I just do believe it exists.

I wouldn't call it intimate.

I also believe that there is a possibility of a dupe content penalty, but what Pat and I are implying is that it would be very odd for people using RSS feeds to get hit with it.

[T Pat]

Originally Posted by Jeremy

AFAIK there isn't really a duplicate content "penalty" per se.... just google will only show the page it thinks is most relevant.

Jeremy and I see it the same
I'm not going to share my reasoning in an open forum, the last thing I need is more competition from the bathroom gangs