ECommerce syndication & duplicate content

[erangalp]

We have an eCommerce website with original software products. We want to syndicate our content to partner and affiliate websites, but are worried about the effect of duplicate content all over the web.

Note that this is a relatively high profile project, where thousands of sites will be listing hundreds of our products, with the exact same name, description, tags, etc.

We read the wonderful and relevant post by Kate Morris on this topic (here: http://mz.cm/nXho02) and we realize the duplicate content is never the best option.

Some concrete questions we're trying to figure out:

1. Are we risking penalties of any sort?

2. We can potentially get tens of thousands of links from this concept, all with duplicate content around them, but from PR3-6 sites, some with lots of authority. What will affect our site more - the quantity of mediocre links (good) or the duplicate content around them (bad)?

3. Should we sacrifice SEO for a good business idea?

[EGOL]

3. Should we sacrifice SEO for a good business idea?

Note that this is a relatively high profile project, where thousands of sites will be listing hundreds of our products

I think that you just answered your own question.

Also, what is to prevent you from writing your own content for these products or developing very generous "help" information that everyone everywhere will link to.

You are in the driver's seat both ways if you are willing to do some work and play your cards intelligently.

You are the gurus for this product, right?

[erangalp]

I didn't really answer my own question, since I can't tell what the penalties are for the duplicate content, if any. Also, I couldn't really gather from your answer if you support this method or not. Is it a good idea or not to syndicate our content and create multiple duplicates of it all over the net?

[AndreVanKets]

1.) The only ones at risk are your affiliates. The content was indexed on your site first, If someone has the same content without linking back, they get the dupe content flag.

2.) There are many factors on what a "good" link is. In your case i wouldn't worry about the dupe content. They great thing with your business model is the amount of linking route domains and C class IP's which makes up for the low value link.

3.) This is NA, as long as you make sure these pages link back to you (original source), your partner sites will be fine. If not, they will get a knock and not you.

GREG

[erangalp]

Good points, Greg. From this it sounds like a viable business plan, I think we'll give it a go then. Much appreciated!