My Content on a Competitor's Site!

Hello all,

I have encountered a fairly interesting issue with the site I work on and would welcome some advice.

My site is fairly content rich, but also has lots of offline content that will soon be added to the site. However, in years past, when my site was not thinking at all about SEO, much of this offline content was given to another site which has had it posted now for a long time. It was given with the idea that the site would drive traffic to my own site. This other site is a competitor (SEO-wise) with my site, although there are obviously good relations between the two.

However, the problem is that now that my site will be putting up this content as well, the SE's will see it as duplicate.

This other site does in fact drive traffic to my own site from links to my site at the bottom of some of the articles. But the majority of the articles do not even have links to my site.

Asking the other site to take the content down is possible, but is a difficult option because the site does in fact drive traffic and the decision may create tension between the two sites.

I am thinking that the best possibility is to have the other site put up links back to my site on every one of the pages. With these links will the SE's recognize that I'm not stealing this content?

Thanks for your help,
Dil

IMHO the best option would be that you don't put the same content up your site content. Even if it's YOUR content, written by you, in Google's eyes it belongs to the site which first published it. Putting it up on your site would mean a duplicate content penalty for your site and maybe/probably a "testing" period for the other site, which could result in lose of rankings and traffic.

Can you please explain this in more detail?

Thanks,
Dil

Some time ago one of my site's content was copied and pusblished on another site. My site went out of the SERPs for a few months because of that. It got back finally but I wish I shouldn't have gone through that.

If it's your content, and asking the competitor to remove it isn't an option, why not rewrite the content? Make enough changes that it won't appear to the spiders as duplicate content.

Sensai - my site has lots and lots of pages of content and is PR 6. Do you still think receiving such a big punishment is possible?

ribald - It's too much content.

The main site, the one who first published the content ?

No, I mean will my site still be punished even though:

1. There is lots and lots of content on my site that is unique.

2. My site has a PR6 and is not new.

Don't have a 100% secure answer for your question, all I can say is that my site was a PR5 when that happened.

Ask the other site to give you an author link at bottom of each existing article.

After those links are in place write new articles that are far superior to what exists on the other website.

Post them on your own site.

When the visitor lands on your site they will know that you are THE EXPERT for this topic.

Don't grieve over this. You are getting long term traffic as a reward for writing those articles. Put your energy into improving your own site.

Sounds like a job for GREP!

Posting more of the same (or duplicate content) does not add the the user experience. So what value is it to Google?

At best it will be ignored, at worst it will get you banned. Forget about the old articles and move on.