Migrating blog posts to new site

[mtwelves]

I'm in the process of setting up a new site for a client, moving them over to WordPress from Joomla. They've got 50ish blog posts on their old site, but none of them have accumulated any external links. Is it worth it to copy them over to the new site for the sake of retaining all that content, or better just to start from scratch?

[WilliamKammer]

I don't think you or they would want to throw away the effort they already put in, assuming it's quality, unique content. 301 the old pages, and move the content over to the new site. That way, if there is any juice, it'll be transferred, but even if there isn't, people may find those posts useful, and this way you don't risk a duplicate content penalty.

[chrissmithps]

I don't think you will get a better answer than Williams I was going to say pretty much exactly the same.

[eyepaq]

"you don't risk a duplicate content penalty." - that's because there is no such thing as a duplicate content penalty.

[WilliamKammer]

Care to explain?

Tough to say there's no such thing, when there absolutely is. Here it is straight from the horse's mouth: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2604719?hl=en

Step #1 in removing a thin content manual action penalty according to Google: "Check for content on your site that duplicates content found elsewhere."

[eyepaq]

Tough to say there's no such thing, when there absolutely is. Here it is straight from the horse's mouth: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2604719?hl=en

** That’s for thin content not duplicate content – it’s a big difference.

But talking about “straight from the house’s mouth” : Demystifying the “duplicate content penalty” : http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.at/2008/09/demystifying-duplicate-content-penalty.html

Cheers mate.

[WilliamKammer]

Except, according to the page I linked, duplicate content is now one of four common factors when determining a thin content manual action. There isn't a big difference anymore, it's now the same category, at least as far manual actions.

[eyepaq]

You can spin it as you see fit

The bottom line is there is no such thing as a duplicate content penalty.

I don't want to start a debate on this one but when I see this type of comments it just makes me sad. The other day some "SEO expert" was giving advice on how to do page rank sculpting for example (it's 2014 last time I've checked) and the examples can go on on on.

We are side tracking here anyway - this is not the time and place for this - we are spamming mtwelves's post / question.

Sorry mtwelves.

Cheers !

[WilliamKammer]

Telling someone there's no such thing as a duplicate content penalty is misleading. While it may not officially be called a "duplicate content penalty," you can get penalized for duplicate content, and not protecting yourself from it opens you up.

So when someone suggests to clean up duplicate content, it's bad form to butt in and imply that there's no need, since no such penalty exists. That's all I was trying to say. Won't spam this thread anymore discussing it.