It has been hotly contested for years and it now appears that duplicate content is definitely a no go, especially after the recent Panda update by Google. Panda massively affected anything from small sites to major authority that did not post original content.
Many SEO’s had the view that duplicate content was okay, they would copy and paste content from others sites and use it to bulk up their own sites. They would get good rankings and make ranking and money. But what was the real value for the reader? The same piece of content could end up in the top 10 results two or three times.
Google’s Panda update gave a massive slap to site’s using duplicate content. This was meant as a quality control, because it encourages web masters to use completely unique content on their websites. Original content is better for people searching on Google, and therefore better for the search engine.
What Should I Change Now?
The clear message to anyone using Google to gain organic traffic is to use unique content on your site, not just because it will mean that your site isn’t negatively affected by the Panda update, but because it is better for your readers and Google will actually respond positively to sites using completely unique content.
If you were negatively affected by the update and you have duplicate content on your site, get rid of it and start adding lots of unique content, once Google has noticed that your site isn’t using duplicate content any more and instead you are using unique content, you will drastically improve your rankings and you will begin to see pre-Panda traffic figures again.
Whilst it was important pre-Panda to make sure that the content you bought was unique, now it is even more important. Now if you are ripped off by a writer who sells you duplicate content, you will not only lose money, but your website’s SEO strength could also be massively affected, therefore it is really important you make sure writers are reliable before hiring them and you should also use a service like Copyscape to make sure content hasn’t been copied.
What Should I Do With All This Duplicate Content?
Remove or reduce duplicate content. Replace it with high quality original articles and text content. Also use original content when submitting to article directories. This will give you a better change of article approval and develop more powerful backlinks.