Duplicate Content vs Content Syndication

Just a few days ago, I receive an email from a reader about the concern of duplicate content issue when using press release. I think this is one of the myth in SEO or in general marketing context.

What Is Duplicate Content?

First of all, we need to understand the definition of duplicate content and why it happens. When Google refers to duplicate content issue, they mean the same content that can be accessed via different URL in the same domain. For example, you have a page with unique that is about dog training, i.e. YourDomain.com/Dog-Training, this page can also be accessed via multiple URLs because of session id or you have created multiple page with different design for split testing purpose, such as via YourDomain.com/Dog-Training.html, YourDomain.com/Dog-Training1.html, then this could post a duplicate content issue.

If you submitted your very same post to the article directories, this is NOT a duplicate content issue but content syndication.  There are a lot of misunderstanding about content syndication versus duplicate content. Of of the most common way that you might see is that your blog posts were scrapped and posted on some other blogs via RSS. There are a lot of content scrapping software that are able to scrap content easily and get posted automatically to the blog to generate content. Most of them will provide a link back to the original source to acknowledge the author. 

Content Syndication 

This is the situation where you have the same piece of content showing up in multiple websites with different URLs and this is not considered as duplicate content. Similarly, you can also submit the same article to multiple article directories or using software like Article Marketing Robot for mass distribution of your article. This content syndication will result in multiple backlinks to your website and direct traffic to your site because you have increased the exposure of your website.

Another good example is press release. Most of the reputable press release sites will get a lot of syndication from other news agency and blogs, therefore resulting in massive exposure of the single press release. That’s one of the reason why press release can be extremely powerful to generate buzz for product launch and any kind of event. 

Unlimited Traffic And Backlinks? 

Now, hopefully you understand clearly the difference of duplicate content and content syndication. You might be wondering do you need just 1 piece of content to get unlimited traffic and backlinks since you can “syndicate to a tons of sites”? The answer is NO.Although technically you can submit your article to as many sites as possible, the chances for all those sites to get indexed by Google is slim. Please note that there is no penalty from Google and that’s just how Google will treat the excessive syndicated content as supplemental index database, as shown below:

Having said that, you still be able to gain the benefit of having direct traffic from the sites you submitted to. If you would like to gain the backlinks that are indexed by Google, you need to provide unique content.

I hope this post clears out the myth of duplicate content vs content syndication. As usual, leave me your comment below to share your thoughts on duplicate content, content syndication or any questions you have.

7 Tips on how to write optimized webpage titles

The HTML Title is the text within <title> tag that can be found on the head of the HTML code. As it is the key element that appears in search results, your web pages’ titles are very important for your SEO strategy for two main reasons:

1. Title relevancy is taken into account by the algorithms of Search Engines.
2. Good descriptive titles increase the click through rate.

Here are some tips in order to enhance your website’s visibility through title optimization:

1. Write short Titles

Google has a maximum title length of 64-70 characters. Do not make the title longer, because Google cuts down its display in the search results. 

2. Identify your Keywords

Indentify the keyphrases of your web page’s content. List down all possible words describing the content of your page. Step in the shoes of the user and list all the relevant search terms that he/she may formulate. The words used in your title will be displayed in search engine results as a clickable link. Therefore it should contain your page’s main keywords.

3. The important goes first

Start your title by adding the important keywords that you found during research. The words appearing first are considered to be more important.

4. Use targeted keywords

Choose specific keywords for your title in order to have more targeted traffic.

5. Be descriptive

Make sure that your title summarizes the content of your web page. In this way users will know what the topic of your page is, when it appears in the search results. This will help you decrease the bounce rate and increase the click through rate.

6. Create unique titles

Make sure you use unique titles for each web page. Duplicate titles might lead to duplicate content issues.

7. Avoid Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing or any other spam technique should be avoided. Even if you manage to rank first, an “over optimized” title will reduce your click through rate.

Don’t forget that you should always write webpage titles and content that is attractive to users! By trying to achieve high rankings, SEOs often forget that the most important factor of our success is the users’ “click” on our website link.