Copied Content
So, a pretty straightforward title that tells you what today's blog post subject is all about.
Over the last couple of days, I have talked about Google's Search Quality guidelines.
https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/dianescorpio/blog/your-money...
https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/dianescorpio/blog/real-peopl...
Within these guidelines is a specific section that focuses entirely on copied content and why it should be given the lowest rating.
As you may know, I do offer feedback on a lot of websites, and if it's a relatively new site, I do check some of the blog posts to see if they are copied.
I do this by using the premium version of Grammarly.
To be honest, sometimes it's really obvious, even before I check it.
As a proofreader, I can recognize when a post is written in different styles throughout, which usually indicates that perhaps each paragraph has been taken from a different website.
You might think that copied content only refers to an entire article being taken from elsewhere.
But that's not true, Google checks to see whether several sources have been used.
As per the guidelines - "sometimes multiple pages are copied and then pasted together into a single page."
I sometimes wonder if I missed something in the training?
Is there an actual sentence that says, "feel free to copy anything you want; nobody will know."
Because, unfortunately, at a rough estimate, I would say that about a third of all new sites that I offer feedback on, do contain elements of copied material.
You really can't do this. Google is not interested in posts that contain any material already published elsewhere, and will not rank them high enough to be found by anybody.
And, of course, no visitors means no income.
Everything on your site has to be original and written in your own words.
Thank you for reading!
Recent Comments
64
Good morning Diane,
Thank you for your blog post, some interesting information.
That's amazing that 1/3 of blog posts have copied content, that's not good. I think a lot of people, as you say, think that they can get away with it! However, we know that's not the case.
Have a great day.
Roy
Hi Diane,
I am puzzled why people continue to copy material. Can you clarify that copying means copying and pasting material word for word? Or rewriting the material in one's own style?
By the way, I don't do either. I much rather approach writing from a fresh perspective using ideas as a guide.
Thanks.
Edwin
Hi - Google looks for not only exact match duplicate content but also articles where the content remains the same but words have been replaced by synonyms. They call this kind of content "copied with minimal alteration."
So true.
I do wonder though, if you hire a writer sometimes, besides using grammarly premium (no extra funds for that), how can you figure out if that is what they are doing?
I have recently changed writers, because I think that this is what the first one was doing.
Also, isn't that basically what AI writers are doing as well do you think?
You may check piece for plagiarism with Grammarly premium version. I would check all content prior publishing to see if it meets my niche and it delivers. You also need to let them know what you expect. I am not supportive of Ai writing except for possibly an outline and brainstorming.
Hi - yes, unfortunately, the cheaper writers often use copied content, which of course, will harm your site and not rank.
Because they charge a lower price, they attract more clients and often take on too much work, resulting in not spending the time producing the high-quality posts you need.
There are several free plagiarism checkers available if you do a quick search on Google.
Some AI writers are simply article spinners and just swap similar words. Others are more sophisticated, but at this time, using artificially generated content is still against Google's guidelines.
100%, and this is something that we pound into people through the training here. No dupe content, and if you are going to use a snippet of content, make sure it is under 5% of the overall post length (on the high side) and don't do this with frequency.
I think naturally want the "quickest path" and to them, that means not doing the work a lot of the time. That of course leads to copying, and will lead to imminent failure.
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Oh, I hear you. How do you define the difference between copied content and research based content? It gets down to a fine line, I think. I spend hours researching content and where do I find that content - mostly on other websites... so I may read the content and when a piece of information resonates with my logic, I may rewrite it in my own words with my own slant. So how do we find original content if we are not the professional doing the original research? Interesting right? Am I doing it wrong then? How does everyone else do it then? I never cut and paste ever - but I do research and rewrite and put my own comments as per how I understand it. I feel most of the "net" is regurgitated content and hence find so many websites repeating the same old, same old. It's a case of who gets it across the best... what do you think?
I do that too, I might "copy-paste" a text from another website first, but then I totally rewrite it in my own words, and then I delete the text I copy pasted
. Plus I get my information from websites that have my mother tongue as well. It is very hard for me to write an article totally on my own, I have never been good at that, not even in school. It would be impossible to do for me.
So no, not literally copie-paste and done, but use other words or turn sentences upside down, yes.
Especially in English, which is not my mother tongue. I can't have a website in Dutch either, as my niche would totally not benefit from it.
i do it that way also
i do that also