Site full of free articles

Does it stand a chance?

[TheRookie]

Let's say a site is made up of hundreds of articles, with all of the articles legally taken from free content sites - obviously duplicate content. There are some original articles, but for the most part, it's duplicates. Does the site stand a chance in the SERPs?

[MHes]

Hi

If you have the highest pr and/or are deemed by google to be the authority site for that text you will rank. Age of site may be a factor, relevant links in and on page seo may all be factors.

I suspect if google sees duplicate content on all your pages it will drop the site before you have a chance to gain sufficient status. It will ignore the duplicate text leaving hardly any text indexed for ranking purposes.

Unless you can make your site the authority for that text, and this is unlikely, you will probably never rank. PR and the way it is ditributed to these pages is probably the only way they will achieve the status to knock the others off the serps.

Links Links and more links is the only effective way to get duplicate content ranking well.