Will google penalize me for spining my own content?

Let's say I'm going after local seo. And I typed up a great article for city 1. Can I spin this article and change city 1 to city 2 without getting penalized?

Also is there a smarter alternative to doing this?

Thanks in advance.

Edit: related question- Is google smart enough to realize content like city1, city2, city3 and city4 keyword
is meant to be city1 keyword, city2 keyword, city3 keyword, city4 keyword

If they notice its spun OF COURSE they will hit you.

You might get hit with a thin content penalty if Google thinks your spun content's text was generated through an automated process, especially if it appears obfuscated.

Someone I did on-page SEO for on this forum had a local business that had multiple locations. Each city landing page had a similar structure (Google Maps location at the top, reviews after that, the main content targeting the city name), but what you would call the "main content" was completely different on each page.

What you can do is set your landing pages up like that by changing the "main content". Something that particular client did was use the same basic idea on each page to write the content (I wouldn't refer to this as "spinning" though). For example, if you have a car washing service based in 2 cities, you can write the content for each city like this:

• Moreno Valley, California: Calling our car washing service today will go a long way toward keeping your car nice and shiny.
• Riverside, California: Our company is on stand-by 24/7 via phone for all of your car washing needs to keep the cars in our city clean and dust-free.

Of course, you'll need to write everything better than that for your landing page, but you should get the idea.

Not if its spun well.

Zwielicht said:

You might get hit with a thin content penalty if Google thinks your spun content's text was generated through an automated process, especially if it appears obfuscated.

Someone I did on-page SEO for on this forum had a local business that had multiple locations. Each city landing page had a similar structure (Google Maps location at the top, reviews after that, the main content targeting the city name), but what you would call the "main content" was completely different on each page.

What you can do is set your landing pages up like that by changing the "main content". Something that particular client did was use the same basic idea on each page. For example, if you have a car washing service based in 2 cities, you can write the content for each city like this:

• Moreno Valley, California: Calling our car washing service today will go a long way toward keeping your car nice and shiny.
• Riverside, California: Our company is on stand-by 24/7 via phone for all of your car washing needs to keep the cars in our city clean and dust-free.

Of course, you'll need to write everything better than that for your landing page, but you should get the idea.

Click to expand...

Thanks a lot, this is a very helpful reply. All spun content has been checked to ensure it still makes sense.

From your experience how small can the "main content" be? Like how much can be reused on each page or? Also my content is currently in a blog format.

LuRkâ„¢;8289626 said:

Thanks a lot, this is a very helpful reply. All spun content has been checked to ensure it still makes sense.

From your experience how small can the "main content" be? Like how much can be reused on each page or? Also my content is currently in a blog format.

Click to expand...

Based on what my former client did, the main content took up the bulk of the page; 5/8 of the page was original content. Of course, don't take this as an exact measurement of how much original content you should have, just do your best to make each page look like it has unique content.

Do yourself a favor and do not take this risk if you are looking for a long-term business with Google.

Spun is always a Red Flag.

No mater whose content it is, duplicate content is duplicate content. If your content isn't unique enough, you'll get in trouble.

You better have unique and quality content for each page in order to win a chance at ranking.

I would never use spun content on my money site where people will actually read it.