The SEO Don’ts: Don’t Use Duplicate Content

Something that’s agreed upon by most of the SEO experts out there is the fact that content is king. All the top search engines want to provide their searchers with only the best results. It makes sense that the best websites will have the most informational, keyword rich (not stuffed), unique content out there. This means that every savvy online marketer should be investing the time and money into building up the content of their websites. One word of caution, though: avoid duplicate content at all costs.

It’s easy to get in the mindset that quantity over quality is better. In some ways, it’s true. After all, Google is not yet smart enough to detect if somebody is bsing their way through their articles they use for marketing. What Google can detect, though, is keyword stuffing and duplicate content. When Google senses a site is using duplicate content, whether throughout its own site, from others or from articles spread out over the internet-well, let’s just say Google’s not impressed. This greatly devalues the site by illustrating that it is not an authority on the subject because the information is duplicated.

Some website owners feel like their customers don’t need or want any more information. It sounds strange to say this, but that is irrelevant. It is not necessarily all about what the customers want (at least not in SEO practices.) It is instead about what Google wants. And Google wants information-lots and lots of unique information. Some products might be difficult to talk about for more than even a few sentences. Get creative. This is your chance to impress the search engines by making your site the site that is the most relevant, knowledgeable and appealing.

So if I have a website that sells salmon oil, instead of having a simple sales page and a simple FAQ page, think instead about all the content that can be created for this product. There could be blogs and articles written about the beneficial effects, where it comes from, how it is made, the history behind it and more. Whether my customers want to learn more about salmon oil or not, the information is there which will make the site look more credible to my customers and more importantly, to Google. So long as my pages and pages of content are unique and NOT duplicated, this should bode well for my SEO efforts.