If you read this blog regularly, you probably already know that duplicate content is a very bad idea and should be avoided at all costs. But why exactly? Here’s a quick explanation of the negative impact duplicate content can have on your site.
Poor results in Google rankings
The first thing to understand is that Google’s algorithm doesn’t like duplicate content at all. Have you had the bad idea of reproducing a text found elsewhere on the Internet? Expect not to get a good result at all in terms of ranking and not to receive any visitors via the search engines. It’s hard to know exactly how this will affect the rest of your site, but chances are that your entire site will be penalised, not just the page or pages that were plagiarised. It’s easy to imagine that Google’s algorithm will become increasingly severe depending on the number of problem pages. Google doesn’t like plagiarism at all, so you’ll be penalised in the same way as if you’d stolen video content and put it on your YouTube channel, passing it off as your own original content.
Caught red-handed in the jam pot…
Now, let’s imagine another scenario: you have a site with a certain notoriety, but one day you decide to take a little too much inspiration from an article published elsewhere. The original author of the article realises this and complains to Google, or even shouts it out loud in the comments section of your site. Do you think this would have a good impact on your brand image? Even if the original author doesn’t realise it, your readers may follow several blogs or sites and notice it quite easily. Given this, do you think your site will inspire their confidence? It’s obvious that those who copy and paste will never be taken seriously again. The least you can do when you want to reproduce the work of others is to be intellectually honest and cite your sources.
Shooting yourself in the foot
You list your products on several marketplaces in addition to your own site and you think you can reuse exactly the same texts? Here again, things aren’t quite so simple. Because a marketplace like Ebay or Amazon will always rank higher than your site, so in Google’s eyes it’s your own site that will seem to be the problem, even if it’s the original source of your texts. Your site can’t compete in terms of authority, so expect it to simply disappear. And even if it were to appear just after the Amazon results, again in terms of image it wouldn’t look very professional. The least you can do when you want to sell on several different channels is to always adapt to the specific audience you’re targeting.
In conclusion
As you can see, never reproduce other people’s content without their permission. And if you want to quote them or integrate their infographics or videos, the easiest way is to link to the original source.
