Forum Moderators: not2easy
I'm a strong believer that content should be in one place only and not duplicated throughout the Web. Unlike books, content is accesable to everyone and does not need to be copied on other pages of the Web. Any good search engine will find it. That's not being preachy, its just good business. What Marcia said is right on the ball.
I get sick of finding the same republished articles, especially on Web promotion etc, all over the place. The practice has increased now people are realising that content may be the key to SE positioning. But it's not just content - its unique, targeted content.. and i choose both of those descriptors carefully.
That is why we are straight on to guys who copy our content and republish. Search Engines are getting better at finding duplicate content - that will continue for their own sake and ours.
Hence my modest advice. good luck!
That is a problem, chiyo. I was asked to write a newsletter piece that would become static content, then two more (static) - all on the same identical thing and just to give some info to site visitors. It's been sitting on my hard drive to put up on my own site for many months, and I can't figure out how to handle the duplication, or how to re-write the same identical information several different ways.
"I get sick of finding the same republished articles, especially on Web promotion etc, all over the place."
You said it, Chiyo :). I reckon repetition does the writer more harm than good. Nothing is as old (or nauseating) as something already digested.
Another thing that gets up my nose is the amount of purportedly original material rehashing ideas from the same angle, using the same arguments and - often - the same words as stories I've read elsewhere.
windiablo, it's a case of "If you have to use somebody else's copy, it generally means you have nothing to say."
It's better to keep one's mouth shut at such times.
The Web, more than any other medium, shows up the old saying, "Copying from one source is plagiarism, copying from many is research", for the specious, bone-headed bullsh*t it is.
Marcia, if you need to do it, try it from different angles or perspectives, as a user or as a provider, in the first or third person. Try a different style or set the article in a new context.
On the Web, nothing gets noticed more than copy that stands out from the ordinary. Dare to be different, don't apologize and, if others copy you, hunt them down and get creative :).
>>I'm a strong believer that content should be in one place only and not duplicated throughout the Web.<<
I agree completely. In the travel category, it gets awfully boring to encounter the same Lonely Planet, Fodor's, and Frommer's Budget Travel pages on different e-commerce site. Ditto for hotel booking engines: Most of them have exactly the same text on their hotel pages, and then there are the booking engines that supply their affiliates with free (and invariably shallow) "destination guides" to create the illusion that affiliate sites are really content sites.
