Google treats Duplicate Content seriously. Many websites deliberately duplicate content to manipulate search engine rankings or to gain more traffic, but Google is clever, it keeps a check on all the sites for duplicate content and if it finds any duplicate content which is intended to manipulate search engine, Google takes proper measures to deal with it such as: it may lower the ranking of the site or it can even completely remove the website from its index(ban it).
But not every content duplication is for malicious purpose, sometime it is required to duplicate content for substantial reasons and sometimes the author or the administrator of the website remains unaware about the issue of duplicate content and experiences problems regarding search engine rankings.
What is Duplicate Content?
Duplicate Content is referred to the content across different or same domains that either completely match other content or is similar. In same domain the problem of duplicate content mostly occurs when two different URLs point to a same page, this problem can be resolved in multiple ways such as: using Canonical Link, Parameter Handling. This article is all about the issues relating to Article Syndication comprising of: Duplication of Content across Different Domains.
What is Article Syndication?
Mirroring an article on several websites is referred to as article syndication. Syndication of articles among different blogs results in content duplication. It has both its benefits and demerits.
Benefits of Article Syndication
- Get recognition by mirroring your article on a website will large number of readers.
- Increase in search engine rankings because of the link back from the website you mirrored your article on.
- Attracting more Visitors to your website.
Disadvantages of Article Syndication
- If you will mirror your article on a website with a greater rankings than yours, that other website will gain all the organic traffic of the post. Google will always show the version they think is most appropriate for users in each given search and usually it gives more preference to the website with greater rankings.
- You website can even get banned, entirely removed from the Google index, if Google finds any malicious attempt on your part.
Below are some points you should consider while syndicating your content on other website to save yourself from Duplicate Content Problems:
- Ensure that each site on which your content is syndicated includes a link back to the original article.
- Ask the administrator of the website where you mirrored the article to use the noindex meta tag to prevent search engines from indexing their version of the content.
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" />
There is a little possibility if any website administrator will allow to use the noindex meta tag, but however do include a link back to your original content in the mirrored post. Not using noindex meta tag will affect your organic traffic but a link back can save you from further problems such as association with spam, malicious intent, or getting banned from Google.
