Copying contents from a blog site (External) to a company blogsite (internal)

[teconsite]

Hi,

I have a client that has several external blogs

www.blogsite1.info

www.blogsite2.info

and he also has the www.companywebsite.com

the main domain of course is the comapnywebsite.com. They are doing some thing wrong, because instead of generating contents inside the main domain, the create contents in the blogsites and send links to the blogsites to see those contents. So they are inviting their users to EXIT the website...

So, I told him, If you want to generate contents, please keep a blog INSIDE your domain www.companywebsite.com/blog, but keep the other ones, cause they are generating links (they are .info domains, that is not good, but they are nice keyword match domains)

Now, he told me he was thinking on copy and paste the contents from the external blogsites to the internal website. I warned him about generating duplicate content.

But.... is it really a problem? They are not in the same domain... Could google give a penalty because of that to the main domain?

Thanks!

[TomRayner]

Hi there

The important question here is: Can you get penalised for duplicate content if that content originates from a different domain.

The answer is: yes, absolutely.  I would definitely recommend that you avoid this.  You need to produce high quality and unique content for each blog, but in particular your main domain.

[teconsite]

Thanks again Tom!

[Chris.Menke]

I'm not so sure the main site would be "penalized" because of duplicate content--I think more likely the content just wouldn't count for anything and the pages that contain it won't rank for anything.  That's not to say I would recommend moving forward in that direction.

[peterthistle]

I'd want to step back a bit and strategize, set some objectives before proceeding. Determine what outcomes are expected, and while you're at it keep in mind how changes could improve user experience.

Maybe end up consolidating if it makes sense as a way to improve rankings, possibly retire some of them by moving the content over to the main site and 301 redirecting everything.

All depends on what we're specifically talking about of course, how well do all the domains rank now (including main), what content is housed where, how does it all inter-relate logically, how much traffic does each currently get, quality of that traffic in conversion terms, consider any trends: are any of them moving up or down lately, what inter-site referral volumes are happening, all that.

To the dup content point: absolutely do not simply copy from one place to another. Hire a writer if necessary to add value by at least offering a different point of view on the material if there is any similar content in more than one place.