SEO Duplicate Content Myth - Don"t Be Afraid to Revisit Your Best Posts and Articles
If you are familiar with basic SEO (Search Engine Optimization) then you are no doubt familiar with the duplicate content penalty.
Some people get so spooked by this penalty that it keeps them from producing the content that their site needs to be effective.
It is important to understand what the duplicate content penalty is, and how it affects your site.
First, a little background information.
One of the big reasons for all of this, is that at one time it was common SEO practice to create multiple pages with the same content on them.
They would put the sites up on different domain names and then link back to their main page.
In the early days this produced great results for their sites, getting them good backlinks and more search engine hits.
In order to combat this practice in an effort to deliver more relevant results to its users, search engines developed rules for detecting and filtering duplicate content.
Getting hit with a duplicate content penalty can cause your site to not show up in search results at all...
A major concern for sure.
Nowadays the things that can get you in trouble with the search engines goes way beyond blatant copying of content from one site to another.
Now you can get penalized for things as innocent as having an alternate page formatted specifically for printing.
Even though the penalties can be severe, it is important to understand what is not duplicate content.
Just because you have covered a particular topic in a blog post from last year is no reason not to write about it again! Go ahead and write a new post or article covering the same material.
If it's an important topic to your audience I'm sure you can come up with some new information to share.
And don't forget to include a link in your new content to your original post.
Website visitors expect fresh content.
They may not even bother reading a post that they deem "too old.
" If your visitors want fresh content -- Give them fresh content.
As long as you are not simply copying and pasting your content, word for word from your old posts to your new ones you will not be duplicating content.
In fact it's just the opposite.
You will be increasing the amount of relevant, keyword rich content on your site and most importantly, keeping your visitors engaged, interested and satisfied.
Some people get so spooked by this penalty that it keeps them from producing the content that their site needs to be effective.
It is important to understand what the duplicate content penalty is, and how it affects your site.
First, a little background information.
One of the big reasons for all of this, is that at one time it was common SEO practice to create multiple pages with the same content on them.
They would put the sites up on different domain names and then link back to their main page.
In the early days this produced great results for their sites, getting them good backlinks and more search engine hits.
In order to combat this practice in an effort to deliver more relevant results to its users, search engines developed rules for detecting and filtering duplicate content.
Getting hit with a duplicate content penalty can cause your site to not show up in search results at all...
A major concern for sure.
Nowadays the things that can get you in trouble with the search engines goes way beyond blatant copying of content from one site to another.
Now you can get penalized for things as innocent as having an alternate page formatted specifically for printing.
Even though the penalties can be severe, it is important to understand what is not duplicate content.
Just because you have covered a particular topic in a blog post from last year is no reason not to write about it again! Go ahead and write a new post or article covering the same material.
If it's an important topic to your audience I'm sure you can come up with some new information to share.
And don't forget to include a link in your new content to your original post.
Website visitors expect fresh content.
They may not even bother reading a post that they deem "too old.
" If your visitors want fresh content -- Give them fresh content.
As long as you are not simply copying and pasting your content, word for word from your old posts to your new ones you will not be duplicating content.
In fact it's just the opposite.
You will be increasing the amount of relevant, keyword rich content on your site and most importantly, keeping your visitors engaged, interested and satisfied.
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