Google’s Penalty: Beware the Duplicate Content Filter

If you’ve been reading these past few tips, you’ve come to realize that Blogging in Action is a long-term blogging success blueprint. I truly believe that the days of the quick buck are over, so not only is long-term viability a better option for your new blog, it has ALWAYS been the more profitable option.

Blog marketing warning #11 (page 11 of the “Blogging Revealed”) is “Don’t include automated or duplicate content.” This deserves more explanation as it’s the exact kind of content that get-rich-quick blogging programs recommend that you use to build your blogs.

Google defines duplicate content as “substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar. Mostly, this is not deceptive in origin.”

Examples of non-deceptive duplicate content include your blog posts. WordPress will make your posts available in multiple ways: organized by date, organized by category, organized by tag, and so on. Google works hard to filter out this allowable duplicate content.

Deceptive duplicate content, however, is content that is included on a blog with the intent to manipulate the search rankings. For example, say you grab an article from a free article source and put your name on it — if you are doing it, so are hundreds of others.

To a user searching for specific terms, the end result would be to see essentially the same content repeated on a large number of domains, all ranked similarly on Google. To protect the user’s experience, Google has to determine which domain is the authority, meaning that it’s likely that only one out of hundreds of sites will rank for a particular piece of content.

But it doesn’t end there. Because Google now treats this content as a deceptive act to manipulate the search rankings, they will also make appropriate adjustments to the indexing and ranking of the sites involved. These adjustments can be a decrease in ranking (the infamous -60 penalty) or a complete removal from the search index. Ouch!

This is not so bad, really. Think about it from an author’s perspective. If you spend hours crafting a powerful blog post, it’s only fair that your blog rank highest for it. How would you feel if someone plagiarized your article AND ranked higher for it?

One common way to get penalized unintentionally is by changing your URL structure. For example, say you start a blog with Blogger and later decide to move your blog to a professional platform like WordPress. These platforms use different URL structures, so your new blog could very likely be penalized in the search rankings for duplicate content (different URL’s in the index now point to two sets of content). Just another reason to start out with a self-hosted WordPress blog — it’s future-proof.

On a legitimate blog with the intent of developing long-term readers, I don’t see any reason to use duplicate content. Your content should be from you, in your voice, and directed at your readers. That’s how you build a profitable following.

IMPORTANT: This does not mean that you can’t earn high rankings and money from auto-pilot blogs, which are a slightly different animal, provided you go about it the right way. I’ll be discussing auto-pilot blogs more in the near future.

Duplicate content and the inner workings of Google are complex topics, and I’d be happy to answer any specific questions you might have. To stay on the safe side, you can always follow the step-by-step Blogging in Action blueprint. It will never get you into trouble.

Tags: internet home business, home business

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Hi, this is Néstor Pabón I'm just a regular "Joe" who discovered internet marketing back in 2004, and by 2005 had replaced my day time job pay check, and doubled it by mid 2006. If you liked this article and would like me to share with you how I make my living online subscribe to my Newsletter for more tips and "insider" strategies.