Forum Site: Content Value Post Panda

[JSOC]

I run a forum website built on Wordpress. We're about two years old. The theme of the site is a directory of attorneys, with each directory listing having its own blog account on our site. Through this platform, we receive 75-80 blog posts now every month of varying quality from our users.

QUESTION: A good number of the blogs published on our site are also published on the attorney's law firm site as well (they're syndicating on our site). Will this hurt our site in light of Panda? A lot of the syndicated content is very well written and insightful.

By contrast, Will non-syndicated but average to below average posts hurt our site?

The authors almost always link back to their firm site.

Would love some feedback on whether we should be happy about the syndicated content or whether we should potentially ban it?

[nwinternetmarketing]

You always want 100% unique content if you can get it. End of story.

[EGOL]

It's great news that you are getting 75 to 80 posts per week with a lot of it being very well written.

Will this hurt your site if the posts link back to a site where a verbatim copy exists?  In my opinion you have three risks.... 1) linking to websites that are being heavily manipulated - a bad neighborhood.... .... 2) seeing your copy of the post filtered from the search engines because of duplicate content... and ..... 3) seeing your site or a client site be punished by panda for content farming.

Here is what I would do...  1) Encourage all of your clients to post high quality original content.  Preach a strong sermon to them about the value.

2. Limit the number of links within your site that lead to low quality content or content that is heavily syndicated.

3. Develop a "library" on your site of very high quality, original, non-syndicated content and strongly encourage your clients to submit items for consideration.  Be strict with the rules.  However, any article accepted would be featured on your homepage, linked to from one of several highly visible category pages on your site that are featured in your persistent navigation.  Turn your content resource into a highly promoted asset.  Create a situation where clients will highly desire the premium attention.