Duplicate Content concerns

[Nivik23]

I'm the IT guy for a manufacturer. We're trying to expand our online representation by building buisness relationships with online distributors. These distributors want us to provide them with content of our products to put on their sites.

So far I've just told them to grab the content from our site. But I'm concerned that if the distributors just copy & paste our sites content, that will eventually hurt our sites organic listing.

Can anyone recommend a course of action in which we can provide content to our distributors without having to worry about taking a hit for duplication?

How duplicate is considered duplicate? How concerned should I be about duplication?

NiV23

[David Wallace]

Yeah I wouldn't let them copy your content word for word. You could either encourage them to write their own or provide new content especially for distributors to use that is based on your own, but not your own.

[Marcia]

online distributors

Are these distributors or affiliates? And do they have shopping carts/payments through their sites or send the customer on to you to purchase?

[Robert_Charlton]

Originally Posted by Nivik23

Can anyone recommend a course of action in which we can provide content to our distributors without having to worry about taking a hit for duplication?

I have a very strict no duplication approach.

Distributor duplication happens so often that I routinely ask new clients whether they have distributors, up there with how many domains they have and whether they've used any Transylvanian SEO companies.

If the amount of material is manageable, I have clients create a data set for distributors and affiliates that is different from what they use on the site, and I recommend they put a clause into their distribution contracts forbidding use of content from the site.

Exception I've come across is with pdfs of product brochures, which are often very expensive to produce... and which aren't likely to rank anyway.

[traian]

Originally Posted by Robert_Charlton

... whether they've used any Transylvanian SEO companies.

What do you mean by that? Vampire SEO companies?

[Robert_Charlton]

Originally Posted by traian

What do you mean by that? Vampire SEO companies?

Just joking about where some of these companies that get websites in trouble seem to be located.

[Marcia]

Vampire SEO companies?

Good definition, given the old Hollywood movies about Transylvania. Some SEO companies have been known to "suck the blood" of client sites, siphoning off PR and link popularity with hidden links and doorway pages.

Concept-wise, it's likely to refer to SEO firms operating with less than above-board methodologies.

Cute analogy

[Nivik23]

Originally Posted by Marcia

Are these distributors or affiliates? And do they have shopping carts/payments through their sites or send the customer on to you to purchase?

They are distributors. Some of them have the capability to sell directly online. Others just have the content up to create leads that they handle. We don't sell direct. Only though our dealership/distributors.

Thanks for all the comments. Will start putting together a distributor content package of some sorts.

The one thing that does piss me off, is some company grabbed ALL our sites content and put it up on their site and no one in the office has any clue who this company is.

NiV23

[Robert_Charlton]

Originally Posted by Nivik23

The one thing that does piss me off, is some company grabbed ALL our sites content and put it up on their site and no one in the office has any clue who this company is.

Two ways to check this. First, go to www.copyscape.com and check your site page by page.

If this doesn't reveal who's "borrowed" your material, and occasionally Copyscape will miss things, search for text strings from your site likely to be unique. Search, say, five-word strings on Google both with and without quotes.

Don't be timid about asking the company that used your material to take it down. I wouldn't mention SEO or Google. If it's a "friendly" site, just say something about you've gotten legal advice that allowing this use would put the copyright of your entire site in jeopardy and maybe mumble something about the DMCA. The new content package should make it easier for them to cooperate.

[ewc21]

Originally Posted by Nivik23

So far I've just told them to grab the content from our site. But I'm concerned that if the distributors just copy & paste our sites content, that will eventually hurt our sites organic listing.

Can anyone recommend a course of action in which we can provide content to our distributors without having to worry about taking a hit for duplication?

How duplicate is considered duplicate? How concerned should I be about duplication?

NiV23

While I won't allow these distributors to copy content exactly as they appear on your website it is less likely that duplicate entries will ever be penalized (in that case your distribution partners).

You can let them copy the thought of the message and rephrase it on their own. If ever they do quite good in content development and keyword selection, they might even land better rankings than yours.

We have encountered a site that copied our content plus our web design layout.. What I remembered doing was to trace their web host and notify them of the misbehavior.

[traian]

duplicate content is a big problem nowadays. The latest page drop form google index caused by the duplicate or similar content.
You should really take care of your affiliation program, so that you won't provide the same content to more than 3,4 affiliates. This is easy to say but is very, very hard to accomplish with ecommerce sites.

What solution did you think off?

Traian

[Nivik23]

Two ways to check this. First, go to www.copyscape.com and check your site page by page.

CopyScape found one of the other URL's that we have pointing to our website and listed that as a copy. We have 13 different domain names for our website, currently they are all pointing to the same site. Is this a problem?

It also did find that one company who copied our content on CopyScape, I did call them yesterday and they are actually a dealer of ours. I think the reason that no one in the office knew who they were is because they haven't actually sold anything in 2 years.

As far as the solution I'm going with, I'm going to make a distributor content package. Our distributors can either use that copy & paste or they can modify it in such a way as it remains accurate and does not copy our sites content. If they want to tweak things so they they rank higher in natural listings then that's up to them. We're a small company and don't have the resources to develop a new distributor content package for every 3-4 distributors.

NiV23

[pleeker]

Originally Posted by Nivik23

CopyScape found one of the other URL's that we have pointing to our website and listed that as a copy. We have 13 different domain names for our website, currently they are all pointing to the same site. Is this a problem?

What you want to do is have one "main" domain, and then have the other 12 all redirect to it.

So if someone types in www.yourdomain.com, they hit the main site and the address bar displays www.yourdomain.com.

But, if someone types in www.domain8.com, it redirects them to www.yourdomain.com, and www.yourdomain.com is what shows in the address bar.

You don't want the same content viewable at all 13 different domains. Pick one and have the others redirect to it.

[Robert_Charlton]

Originally Posted by ewc21

You can let them copy the thought of the message and rephrase it on their own.

This never works. "Rephrase" generally turns into "copy and paste" with a few words changed. Copyscape picks this up a mile away. I assume Google does too.

Originally Posted by traian

...so that you won't provide the same content to more than 3,4 affiliates.

Completely unnecessary, in my opinion. If affiliates are so lazy that they copy each other, that's their problem. You just want to make sure that they don't copy you. One set of distributor content, as NiV23 is doing, should be quite sufficient to accomplish that.

Originally Posted by NiV23

We have 13 different domain names for our website, currently they are all pointing to the same site. Is this a problem?

"Pointing" is such an inexact word that it's not clear what you're actually doing, but yes, it probably is a problem.

As pleeker suggests, 12 of the domains need to be directed to a main domain. Make sure that you're using 301 permanent redirects when you do this. These are server side redirects, and you'll need someone who knows how to use mod_rewrite (if you're hosted on Apache) to do them.

Also, at the same time, you should get rid of one other possible duplication issue... and have your main url default either to a www version, or a non-www version, but not to both.

[ewc21]

I would agree that does not work much Rob, especially that people most of the time hurry up to post their content without taking good quality content consideration because they may think content already can be found elsewhere.

Yup, avoid referencing two different URLs (www and non-www) in a site because as mentioned they are two different URLs and will be treated differently by search engines.

I can give one example of pleeker's explanation with this site, Search Engine Watch... once you type in www.searchenginewatch.com it just redirects to searchenginewatch.com.