How Duplicate content can hurt your rankings in Google
I have seen quite a few new people coming in here lately and asking if they can post the same article they wrote on Street articles or another article directory on their website. I have even seen some members doing this without asking, thinking this is how you do things. I want to let all the new people know that doing this will cause you to lose any rankings you had in Google.
Google loves fresh new original content that people love to read and get engaged in. Basically this is the whole idea of writing articles on an article directory.
Someone Google's something and your article shows up, they click on it, read it and are wanting more information on the topic. This is where your 2 links at the bottom of the article come into play. You should be linking to relevant topics on your website so that when people land on your website they are provided with more information on your topic.
This could be a review of a product you are promoting or anything you want it to be.
If you are new and just starting out here I would recommend you start out by writing a few articles on SA or any article directory of your choice. After you have a few articles out there that's pointing to your website, focus 100% of your time establishing your foundation for your website. What I mean by this is, Get your website structure in place by filling out all the titles for your pages. After you do that start filling them in by writing content on them.
Try to write a new post on your website at least 3 times a week. It will take some time to get good rankings but with lots of dedication and new fresh content that is updated quite frequently you will get there.
Note: that whatever page you are linking to from the article needs to be at least 400 words and it can't be the same as the article or your article more than likely won't get approved. I hope this has helped you guys and if you have any questions or comments please leave them below.
Recent Comments
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Does this apply to videos shared from Youtube? I added some how-to videos to a site and after that I noticed that it dropped from 4th on page 1 to the bottom of page 2.
No you can add videos to your site and it shouldn't hurt your rankings. This is mostly for text based articles. As long as the sharing feature is enabled then this shouldn't affect your rankings.
Just wanted to add my 2¢ that being the recognised (Google Authorship linked) publisher of unique photos and links to your own videos may "help" you rank higher but using the same images or YouTube videos as other people doesn't "hurt" you. Rich.
Great post, simple straightforward approach to be adopted, well done. All Newbies well advised to read it.
Hudson.
Hopefully all the new people read this and understand it. Thanks for chiming in on this Hudson
Not only is this good advice about duplicate content, it's also great advice about how using the SA links is supposed to work!
Thanks Dom, I think this was a much needed post. I hope it helps everyone who reads it and they can use it as a guideline when getting started in this business.
Yeah, I'll link people to it when I can. The problem is people often read it when it is fresh then it gets lost in the crowd!
Yea I find that is what happens with a lot of good posts they are active for the first couple of days or the first week. After that it seems to get tossed to the side and forgotten.
I hope they do too Tommy I have seen people in chat asking if it is OK to copy the same article they have on SA to their website or vice versa. I thought I would just clear this up for everyone that's starting out here.
Good advice. How many articles do you is sufficient before starting to focus on your website? Currently I have five approved articles on SA with one pending. I also have four published hubs on Hubpages. That is a total of nine (soon to be ten) articles. Is that enough or should I write five to ten more? Thanks
I think 10 articles is plenty when you are just starting out. You should start writing content on your website and start focusing on building out the content of your site.
Ok I will do just that. The funny thing is that I just used the webmaster tools for Google, Yahoo and Bing earlier today. So this is the perfect time to expand my website content.
Thanks Scott
No problem Cory, I'm glad this has helped you out and if you need any more help let me know man and I will be glad to help you out.
Thanks Mike I feel like this was needed because I don't want the new people starting out on the wrong foot.
Thanks chip I think we all just need that push in the right direction sometime because I know starting out can be very rough.
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You pipped me to the post on this one - it is a topic that keeps coming up and I was going to write something about it. No need now because you have done a very thorough job.
Yea it has been happening to often and I have seen more than a few people doing this. I thought it was time to clear this up and let the new people know that this is not the way that you do things here. I'm glad you liked it Beverly