Syndicated Articles Do Not Help You With Your IT Marketing
In IT marketing, many people have found themselves on the wrong side of Google just because they tried to get things quick and easy using some tricks. One of the main tricks is the use of duplicate content. It seems that no one wants to spend time and money on original content anymore, and this is unfortunate because that only worked before the year 2011. There are those who say that Google has no duplicate content penalty, but it is also good to know that it discourages it. So, are syndicated articles considered duplicated content?
What is duplicate content?
Duplicate content, according to Google, is “substantial blocks of content within or across domains that either completely matches other content or are similar”. This means that it is a bad practice to duplicate content on the same domain (from your site) or different domains.
Duplicate content found on different domains can result from:
• Copying content from a website without any permission
• Content curation which is compiling content from the web
• Content scraping
• Syndicated content which is using content that has been published elsewhere
What happens when you use duplicate content?
Usually, when Google comes across duplicate content, it will only show one of them which seems to be the most appropriate. If it is discovered though that the duplicate content was directed at deceiving or manipulating the search engines, it is possible that your site will be banned such that it will no longer appear in the search results.
Duplicated vs. syndicated content
There are many success stories that you may have come across about people who have used syndicated content for their IT marketing. One thing you should always know is that syndicated content is duplicate content which makes the entire process so tricky. This is because without a comprehensive knowledge of safe content syndication, all that you have worked for to build your site could vanish into thin air.
Consider the fact that the Internet is supposed to give information that people are looking for, and it would be devastating to find that the majority of search results contain the same information. Google will not take syndicated content as duplicate content if you:
• Include a rel-canonical tag
This tag, which should always point back to the site of the original article, allows the search engine to interpret correctly that the article is a syndicated copy and who the original publisher is.
• Use NoIndex
The NoIndex tells the search engine only to allow the linking of the two articles but not to index the syndicated copy.
• Write a recap
A recap is a short introduction to the post including where it was published and a link to it.
• Balance and add value
It is a disaster to use syndicated articles entirely and especially without adding value.
It is clear that the use of syndicated articles is a dangerous game and even if you pass through the checkpoints of Google, your audience will not view you as a credible, trusted and a thought leader in your industry. In addition, because syndicated articles have to be tagged as NoIndex so Google will not classify them as duplicate content, they will not benefit your website in any way.
MSP SEO Factory understands that your IT marketing needs original, quality articles… and not content that is found on every other website which puts you at risk of getting dinged by Google. Learn more about us: http://mspseofactory.com/
