Implications of posting duplicate blog content on external domains?

[Visier]

I've had a few questions around the blog content on our site. Some of our vendors and partners have expressed interest in posting some of that content on their domains. What are the implications if we were to post copies of our blog posts on other domains? Should this be avoided or are there circumstances that this type of program would make sense?

[Ray-pp]

Hi Visier,

A cost-benefit analysis needs to be done with each individual external domain, to see if it's worth allowing them to publish your blog content.

At first, I would say no. Keep your content on your site and request that people do not simply duplicate it on their domain. This can hurt both of your SERPs and doesn't provide much value back to you.

However, certain situations may be a good idea. For example, the external domain sends you a lot of customers. I would suggest the following:

• Talk with each website about the content they would like to republish

• Suggest using your article as inspiration for a new article on their site, maybe even work with them to create a new unique piece of content

• Be sure to have your article mentioned in the new article, preferably with a natural content link back to your site/article

• If they insist on republishing the article then use a cross-domain canonical tag to indicate that your article is the original piece of content and deserves the authority / reduce the possibility of a dup content penalty.

In most situations, I would advise against republishing content exactly on another domain.

[Visier]

Thanks for the response Ray.

What would the negative implications be on re-purposing exact content on other domains? Obviously we decrease the value of the original posting driving organic traffic to our site, but will this have considerable impact on our page ranking and other SEO metrics?

[Ray-pp]

• Your putting your website at risk for being penalized by Google (Penguin!). Anytime duplicate content is associated with your domain, it is bad.
• Google may not understand that you're the original content creator and give authority to another domain
• You're increasing competition in the SERPs for your article's terms

My biggest concern is the penalty and devaluing your entire site authority.

[tbinga]

I'd like to think not ALL duplicate content is bad.

For example, in your situation the other party is posting content from your site that you already published.

As long as your site has been crawled and that page is already in the SERPs, and the new website puts a link to the original article on your website, I don't think there should be any issue.

If I go around and copy/paste other people's articles on my blog, are those people going to be penalized? Highly doubtful. If anything my website will be penalized because it's full of a bunch of duplicate content I just copy/pasted word-for-word.

I personally would re-work a new article or ask them to summarize your article, to be on the extra safe side. But that's just me.

[Ray-pp]

**I'd like to think not ALL duplicate content is bad. **

I agree. However, more often than not, it is bad. It's best to approach each situation with caution.

As long as your site has been crawled and that page is already in the SERPs, and the new website puts a link to the original article on your website, I don't think there should be any issue.

I don't feel that confident in this statement. In theory, yes the original article would get the attribution. However, in practice, that can not be the case. If the site posting the duplicate content has higher authority and traffic, they may get the attribution even though you published the content first. Google does a decent job in figuring this out, but it's an area they need to drastically improve upon.

I personally would re-work a new article or ask them to summarize your article, to be on the extra safe side. But that's just me.

Summaries are a good idea. Still, you can't beat new unique content. Use the article for inspiration and create a new article that takes a point the original article made even further. Definitely include a link back to the original article, if possible. This strategy would give you a better gain the simply posting or summarizing the original article with a link back.