The Tricky Issue Of Duplicate Content & What Google Says About It

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Copyright (c) 2009 Titus Hoskins

Being a full-time online marketer means you have to keep a close watch on how Google is ranking pages on the web… one very serious concern is the whole issue of duplicate content. More importantly, how does having duplicate content on your own site and on other people’s sites, affect your keyword rankings in Google and the other search engines?

Now, recently it seems that Google is much more open about just how it ranks content. I say “seems” because with Google there are years and years of mistrust when it comes to how they treat content and webmasters. Google’s whole “do as I say” attitude leaves a bitter taste in most webmasters’ mouths. So much so, that many have had more than enough of Google’s attitude and ignore what Google and their pundits say altogether.

This is probably very emotionally fulfilling, but is it the right route or attitude to take? Probably not!

Mainly because, regardless of whether you love or hate Google, there’s no denying they are King of online search and you must play by their rules or leave a lot of serious online revenue on the table. Now, for my major keyword content/pages even a loss of just a few places in the rankings can mean I lose hundreds of dollars in daily commissions, so anything affecting my rankings obviously get my immediate attention.

So the whole tricky issue of duplicate content has caused me some concern and I have made an ongoing mental note to myself to find out everything I can about it. I am mainly worried about my content being ranked lower because the search engines think it is duplicate content and penalizes it.

My situation is compounded by the fact that I am heavily into article marketing – the same articles are featured on hundreds, some times thousands of sites across the web. Naturally, I am worried these articles will dilute or lower my rankings rather than accomplish their intended purpose of getting higher rankings.

I try to vary the anchor text/keyword link in the resource boxes of these articles. I don’t use the same keyword phrase over and over again, as I am nearly 99% positive Google has a “keyword use” quota – repeat the same keyword phrase too often and your highly linked content will be lowered around 50 or 60 places, basically taking it out of the search results. Been there, done that!

I even like submitting unique articles to certain popular sites so only that site has the article, thus eliminating the whole duplicate content issue. This also makes for a great SEO strategy, especially for beginning online marketers, your own site will take some time to get to a PR6 or PR7, but you can place your content and links on high PR7 or PR8 authority sites immediately. This will bring in quality traffic and help your own site get established.

Another way I combat this issue is by using a 301 re-direct so that traffic and pagerank flows to the URL I want ranked. You can also use your Google Webmaster Tool account to show which version of your site you want ranked or featured: with or without the www.

The whole reason for doing any of this has to do with PageRank juice – you want to pass along this ranking juice to the appropriate page or content. This can raise your rankings, especially in Google.

Thankfully, there is the relatively new “canonical tag” you can use to tell the search engines this is the page/content you want featured or ranked. Just add this meta link tag to your content which you want ranked or featured, as in the example given below:

link rel=”canonical” rel=”nofollow” onclick=”javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview(‘/outgoing/article_exit_link’);” href=”place your preferred link here”

Anyway, this whole duplicate issue has many faces and sides, so I like going directly to Google for my information. Experience has shown me that Google doesn’t always give you the full monty, but for the most part, you can follow what they say. Lately, over the last year or so, Google seems to have made a major policy change and are telling webmasters a lot more information on how they (Google) rank their index.

So if you’re concerned or interested in finding out more about duplicate content and what Google says about it try these helpful links. First one is a very informative video on the subject entitled “Duplicate Content & Multiple Site Issues” which is presented by Greg Grothaus who works for Google.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hSoXutuj0g

Another great link is this page from Google Webmasters Support Answers by Matt Cutts. It has a lot of helpful information, including a video on the Canonical Link Element. It’s located here:

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394

In yet another post, Matt Cutts discusses the related issue of content scraping and advises webmasters not to worry about it. This is a slightly different matter, other webmasters and unmentionables may use software to scrape your site and place your content on their site. This has happened to me, countless times, including when my content has been reduced to scrambled nonsense. Cutts says not to worry about this matter as Google can usually tell the original source of the material. In fact, having links in this duplicate content may just help your rankings in Google.

“There are some people who really hate scrapers and try to crack down on them and try to get every single one deleted or kicked off their web host,” says Cutts. “I tend to be the sort of person who doesn’t really worry about it, because the vast, vast, vast majority of the time, it’s going to be you that comes up, not the scraper. If the guy is scraping and scrapes the content that has a link to you, he’s linking to you, so worst case, it won’t hurt, but in some weird cases, it might actually help a little bit.”

As a full-time online marketer I am not so easily convinced, I mainly have pressing concerns about my unscrupulous competition using these scrapings and duplicate content to undermine one’s rankings in Google by triggering some keyword spam filter. Whether in fact this actually happens, only Google knows for sure, but it is just another indication, despite the very detailed and helpful information given above, duplicate content and the issues surrounding it, will still present serious concerns for online marketers and webmasters in the future.

Google Says: No More Page Rank sculpting Using NoFollow Tag! Revisited

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Another great swing in the pendulum! Google has made yet another shift in its algorithms, and this time it’s about Page Rank sculpting using nofollow tag. What is Page Rank sculpting? Page Rank sculpting is an enhanced SEO technique, by which the Webmaster’s and SEO’s can control how Page Rank flows within the side using nofollow tag. In simple words, you could extend more links to more important pages, without injuring a certain page’s rank—but gone are the days!

The leader of Google’s Web spam team says “no more Page Rank sculpting using nofollow”. This may be a big blow for SEO community out there, not only because a change has been made but because this change was made a year back and is being disclosed now.

Although a rough explanation by Matt Cutts was intended to clear it all when he said, “At first, we figured that site owners or people running tests would notice, but they didn’t. In retrospect, we’ve changed other, larger aspects of how we look at links and people didn’t notice that either, so perhaps that shouldn’t have been such a surprise.” This explanation sure is not a surprise as Cutts terms it, but an utter shock!

Let’s see how this new change can affect the Page Rank of your website. Consider you have a page with ten outgoing links and five of those links are nofollowed. For each link you get one point which means you have 10 Page Rank points in total. With PageRank sculpting, you were able to put nofollow on 5 out of 10 links by which the nofollowed links were not counted by Google and the remaining 5 links got 2 points each, making them rank higher.

Things have however changed now, a certain 10 links page may still have 10 points with 5 nofollow links…but now, the nofollow links will not be ignored by Google and the Page Rank will be segregated equally. Means, instead of 2 points, the regular links will get 1 point each and the nofollow links will get no points at all, though the nofollow links will consume their points but will not send them forward.

The question that arises at present is whether Page Rank sculpting using nofollow a bad plan or not? Well, Cutts sure has answered this by saying,

“I wouldn’t recommend it, because it isn’t the most effective way to utilize your Page Rank. In general, I would let PageRank flow freely within your site. The notion of “Page Rank sculpting” has always been a second- or third-order recommendation for us. I would recommend the first-order things to pay attention to are 1) making great content that will attract links in the first place, and 2) choosing a site architecture that makes your site usable/crawl able for humans and search engines alike.”

At this point I would suggest not to panic if you have utilized the nofollow tags on your website, and don’t go all removing them particularly if it’s applied on the paid links. After all, this changed occurred a year back, and if none of the SEO’s figured it out during this long period, then it certainly proves little harm. Although Google and all its policy makers should be condemned for hiding this aspect from its users and optimizers, because no matter how slight and insignificant the change is, it may still have affected many!

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