Duplicate content

ultimatehandyman · PR2 Joined: 15 Mar 2007 Posts: 205

This does not relate to phpbb, but relates to static pages on my site that I have created manually.

It is an SEO related question and so I figured I could ask it in here as I trust that I will get a genuine answer, if I posted it on other forums I would still get an answer but it may be wrong.

I have been approached by a site that has a fairly large online presence and they have been selling items online since 1995. They have asked me if they can use some of the "how to guides" from my site.

In the past I let a site do this and in return I got a link back to my site from each page. They used about 20 pages from my site and I do get a fair amount of traffic from them.

Is it a good idea for me to let them use content from my site or a bad idea?

Or is there a way that they could use the content from my site and make it look like it is on their site?

Thanks in advance

chez

dcz · Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2008 3:26 pm Post subject: Re: Duplicate content

Several things are to be looked at in such matter.
First, you don't want a site to use all or too much of you content, then, if the site asking for this is good and is likely to generate good traffic on yours, it can be interesting to do so if and only if it is clearly stated that the content is from your site, with a good href link to the page itself.

Search engine, at least Google, will "know" this way that the content originally belongs to you (many pages with the same article on many different domain all linked to the same page). This as well means that new articles should first be published on your site and not be shared before it is cached.

It's of course as well a matter of equilibrium, too much of your content on too many site could look like some kind of spam-indexing, but 20 articles does not seems too much to me, at least if the site asking for these is worth it.

I'm not sure that changing some part of the article would change much, but you could add something "special" (like an extra paragraph or two to elaborate on more details) to the article displayed on your site.

If you do so, make sure you track how well user are referred from the partner site, to make sure you're getting enough in exchange.

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ultimatehandyman · PR2 Joined: 15 Mar 2007 Posts: 205

Thanks dcz,

I have emailed the people back and will see what they think.

It would be good if they could use some pages as it will help us both out, their site seems pretty big Wink

Thanks

chez