Unique Content vs Reprinting Articles

Hey guys,

Does anyone have any thoughts on the the differences between adding unique written content to your sites vs just adding articles written by others on the same topics your pages will cover?

It seems like such a waste of time spending countless hours crafting new content, when there is so much out there already that covers the excact topics I am writing on.

It I reprint other peoples articles (with permission and a link back to their site) will it be seen as duplicate content by google? Even when it will just be the text inserted into my page layouts etc?

Any thoughts on this?

Thanks

Hamo

Duplicate content will not rank as well. Why should your page with reprinted info rank higher then the original?

I am doing this and getting good ranks. But do not give out any live links.

Nope I have to disagree! It is easy to outrank the original. All this nonsense about duplicate content is making some seo's to believe that it is the reason for their non or bad rankings. That is BS! Whichever site has the best optimization will rank the highest and that includes the most and relevant backlinks. That is the facts!

Totally agree! How many times do we see merchants complaining here on SEO Chat and other forums that their affiliates are placing higher than them on the SERPs using almost the same content on the page (sometimes using the merchant's exact content)? It comes down to who has the best BLs and on-page SEO. You can use identical content to a major extent; it just cannot be a duplicate in totality. I have 50 U.S. state pages that are 80% indentical. They all place on the first page in the SERPs when each state is specifically searched for that keyphrase, e.g. new york keyphrase or california keyphrase. No duplication penalty is involved.

Duplicate content is not an issue at google !!

To feel OK just change something in the text, but even 90% similar websites can have great rankings !!.

Have to agree that duplicate content may not be a reason for not getting ranked in the top. I had this doubt previously.


But I see many affiliate site which are exactly similar to mine(another affiliate site), are ranking extremely well for very competitive keywords. All my trials of purchasing backlinks is not really enough to go up. Should put in more work & money probably.

There must be cases where a site with duplicate content deserves the #1 slot. Say for example your site is bluewidgets.com and you made the effort to find every single piece of information that has ever been written about blue widgets and published it on your site (avoiding copyright issues). If I were a searcher looking for 'blue widget' info I would be over the moon when I found your site, I don't care that it contains duplicate info what I care about is that it is the most complete blue widget resource in the world and tells me all I need to know.

Combine this with good SEO practice and a little original content that makes your unique and gives you an edge then why shouldn't you be number 1?

Of course, republishing what's already out there is just creating more useless spam and taking up spots in the SERPs that should go to content that actually provides something useful to the world.

I agree that you can reoptimize someone elses content, empower it with links and outrank the original. Still, you will always be in competition with all of those other versions of that content which are out there.

If you have original content and are the only copy of that document on the web, and you have optimized it properly then you are in competition with no one - the keywords and optimization of that content belong to you and you can rank for the keyword combinations and variants of that content at a much lower cost of power.

But, the most important part of unique, original content is that if it is very well written and of authoritative quality it can be a source of links. People will link to it freely and they will empower it for you.

You must use the resources of your site to power duplicate content..... but unique content will power your site. And that power will grow over time as more people link to you. Its a cumulative asset instead of a continuous expense. The difference is enormous.

Yes, if I could vote for you again I would. This happens to us all the time. Affiliates out ranking our sites using the exact same content.



I have a couple of real estate sites with 100% the same content probable about 18,000 plus pages. These sites are competing against each other and outrank each other all the time. Allthough the content are the same the page templates are different The top sides and footer are completely different. How ever if you have the exact same page under different URL's Google seems to be very good in finding these duplicates and only one of the URL's will count for ranking.

Sure is nice to get different views on a hotly debated subject other than that other place on the web. The folks over there are scared to death of duplicate content and it's talked about constantly! The more I think about it you guys are probably right. I have a few pages that I have used from some authority sites while providing them with the credit and link and outrank them.

We may not always be right, but we are never wrong.