If you are trying to drive traffic to your site via Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, a common mistake website owners make is to publish what’s called “duplicate content.”
Google defines it thus:
“Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar. Most of the time when we see this, it’s unintentional or at least not malicious in origin: forums that generate both regular and stripped-down mobile-targeted pages, store items shown (and — worse yet — linked) via multiple distinct URLs, and so on. In some cases, content is duplicated across domains in an attempt to manipulate search engine rankings or garner more traffic via popular or long-tail queries.”
The penalty for duplicate content is typically a loss of page ranking or having a page ignored/not indexed. If you’re trying to improve your page ranking in the search results, have a page of duplicate content will not help.
The Simple Solution?
1. Avoid duplicate content by writing and publishing original content.
2. If you are citing other people make sure your citation is part of an overall piece that you have written yourself.
3. Learn how to re-purpose your own content. For example, if you have an eBook that you use as a give away, take the content of the eBook and divide it into smaller articles or blog posts and reword things as you do so.
Issues that arise from duplicate content are easy to avoid. Plan out your content strategy including choosing your keywords and keyword phrases, and create fresh content. Duplicate content issues will not trouble you.