How bad does duplicate content affect your website?

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mqs1000

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Let's say I have a website and I want to rank for a bunch of long tail keywords for every industry. For example:

"long tail keyword plumber"
"long tail keyword lawyer"
"long tail keyword realtor"
etc.

And I wanted to do this for 50+ different industries. I want to create different pages on my website for this - each one with the URL and title of the page being "long tail keyword + industry." Can I use the same article for each page and just change the keywords on the page? For example "blah blah blah plumber." and just change it to "lawyer" for the lawyer page, etc.

Or does each and every page need to be totally unique? If so, does it need to pass copyscape? Or can I just change things up a little?
 
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totally unique. just pay someone to write the articles if necessary...in the end, it is always better to be as original as possible. think of your site like a book, you've got the overarching theme 'long tail keyword', with related chapters 'lawyer' 'plumber' etc. You can make these pages serve your overall goal by writing something unique on each one. My guess is that the LTKW is related to a geographical location. So you can make the pages unique by talking about thing like:
*history
*directions
*landmarks
*testimonials
*tips/tricks
*photos
*maps
*terrain
*demographics
*etc

Good luck...do the hard work...it is a pain, but the chances of success and reward are greater than if one takes the easy way (again, assuming you want to do more than churn-and-burn).
 
It will not benefit you to have duplicate content. You're better off using spun content, but also there is a lot of cheap BST content on this forum.
 
christianbed said:
totally unique. just pay someone to write the articles if necessary...in the end, it is always better to be as original as possible. think of your site like a book, you've got the overarching theme 'long tail keyword', with related chapters 'lawyer' 'plumber' etc. You can make these pages serve your overall goal by writing something unique on each one. My guess is that the LTKW is related to a geographical location. So you can make the pages unique by talking about thing like:
*history
*directions
*landmarks
*testimonials
*tips/tricks
*photos
*maps
*terrain
*demographics
*etc

Good luck...do the hard work...it is a pain, but the chances of success and reward are greater than if one takes the easy way (again, assuming you want to do more than churn-and-burn).
Click to expand...

What if I wanted to keep a section of the article that applies to the long tail keyword but change up the rest of the article that has to do with the industry? Like if 1 paragraph was the same on each page for the long tail keyword and the other 3 paragraphs were totally unique? Does it have to be completely copyscape unique?
 
Google webmasters will send you a alert telling you that you have duplicate content. However, you can create a super spintax article that will not get deemed as duplicate content.
 
If you want to keep the same paragraph, here's what I'd do, type it out in powerpoint, then copy it onto 50 different slides (one for each page you will use it on your site). Now go through each one and alter dimensions, colour, mess with the style a bit, etc. Now save them each as a .jpg or .png with a filename that is related to the page they will be on:
LTKW-lawyer, LTKW-doctor, etc. Now use them in different locations on each page, with related alt-tags, and you avoid the duplicate penalty, while getting the same info out there. ;-)
 
Nexusx2 said:
Google webmasters will send you a alert telling you that you have duplicate content. However, you can create a super spintax article that will not get deemed as duplicate content.
Click to expand...

Yea but then the article just sounds stupid. I want people to read it
 
Do I need to make the article around 500 words? I can't think of 500 words x 50 different pages each one unique all about the same subject lol
 
christianbed said:
If you want to keep the same paragraph, here's what I'd do, type it out in powerpoint, then copy it onto 50 different slides (one for each page you will use it on your site). Now go through each one and alter dimensions, colour, mess with the style a bit, etc. Now save them each as a .jpg or .png with a filename that is related to the page they will be on:
LTKW-lawyer, LTKW-doctor, etc. Now use them in different locations on each page, with related alt-tags, and you avoid the duplicate penalty, while getting the same info out there. ;-)
Click to expand...

Can Google detect that it's the same picture? Only reason I ask is because of the whole reverse image search thing so it might be able to detect pixels and all that
 
If you really want to get ranking on any of your keywords wither main OR longtail then forget about duplicate content... :)
 
mqs1000 said:
Can Google detect that it's the same picture? Only reason I ask is because of the whole reverse image search thing so it might be able to detect pixels and all that
Click to expand...
This is why I said alter the color, size, etc of each photo...use .jpg .png filetypes as well. Also, I don't think you need 500 words...250-400 should be ok. This is where testimonials, quotes, historical facts, etc come in.
 
It is very important and good to always invest in something. Dont look for shortcuts my friend because Google will cut you short one day.
Anyway, Cheers. but if you decide to do it!!! Remember the 11th commandment...Thou shall not be caught.

:beer:
 
mqs1000 said:
What if I wanted to keep a section of the article that applies to the long tail keyword but change up the rest of the article that has to do with the industry? Like if 1 paragraph was the same on each page for the long tail keyword and the other 3 paragraphs were totally unique? Does it have to be completely copyscape unique?
Click to expand...

I've done some testing with this.

1 out of 4 paragraphs is probably not so good.

1 out of 10 would probably be acceptable.

You need to remember that quite often newspapers around the world rely on the same media releases. When they are quoting people like the president of the USA or a celebrity, they are using a paragraph that is almost the same.

There is a fine line between duplicate content and just para phrasing. You should aim for less than 10% duplicate content in one story for this reason. It has worked well for me in the past.

If you are working on something important ALWAYS aim for fresh content. Someone on fiverr can re-write it and you know that you won't have an issue.
 
I've read several posts where people are complaining that the site that stole their content is out-ranking them. I thought everyone had agreed that Google no longer cares if content is duplicated?
 
I have many local business clients. I have some sites that have many duplicate content pages, I just change the Tags and titles to the keyword that im trying to rank for and have not had a problem. Thats just me.
 
str8thustler said:
I have many local business clients. I have some sites that have many duplicate content pages, I just change the Tags and titles to the keyword that im trying to rank for and have not had a problem. Thats just me.
Click to expand...

One Local SEO here believes in duplicate reviews cross-platforms.
 
I've wondered this, too. Like does it have to be 100% unique? Can it be, say, 50% or more unique? Sometimes I have spun stuff and it's maybe not unique enough to sell to a client, but it's sort of halfway original. I slap it on a blog, but I wonder if I'll get penalized.
 
While some may be able to get away with it, I'd rather not subject clients to the chance that they could get hit by a dupe content penalty.

Syndicated content is another matter, but again, the only way I'd go this route is for a 'rank and bank' site...syndicate content (or very little content at all!) and just sape it to death. OR, better yet, sape it directly, then 301 aged domains with decent DA and some backlinks to a buffer site. Costs a pretty penny to do it right, but if you're in the right industry and a client has some $ to throw around, this is the way to go imho.
 
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