Intermingling Original Content With Syndicated Content... Pros? Cons?

[kamikaze Optimizer]

History: I have an article site that does very well on it's own. It has over 150,000 original articles in 21 clearly defined but general topic categories (Business & Finance, Entertainment, Politics, Technology...) We are currently posting 100+ original articles daily.

Proposition: I have been approached to syndicate non-original content on my site. I appreciate the fact that this is duplicate content and I expect it to perform as such in the SE’s, however I have the means to integrate it into our current system of “related content”, “tag clouds”, "Topic" (ancillary pages that by far out number the actual article pages) etc, etc. which in turn very well could enhance the rest of my site from an end user point of view.

Question: What are the Pro’s and Con’s? I would not want to risk what I already have, which is very good SE placement for my thousands of original articles and their respective ancillary pages. But I would like to present more onsite related content for the end user, and maybe benefit slightly from add SE traffic.

Your thoughts?

[tedster]

Can you put this new content in its own directory? I'm thinking that segregation might help mitigate any problems with the original content.

[kamikaze Optimizer]

Hi Ted: I "could", but it would only really benefit me if I integrated it.

Risks?

[tedster]

OK - so how much syndicated content are we talking about? In other words, what's the overall balance of your site going to look like if you do integrate these new pages?

[edited by: tedster at 3:59 am (utc) on April 17, 2009]

[kamikaze Optimizer]

It is big, I am thinking that it might match 50%

[tedster]

I think you're getting into a murky area - the sitewide factors that Google uses. They are in play, but they are not very publicly explained. Your current site is seen as all original (or mostly, at least - Google does make some wrong judgements in this area).

You might be risking your good name for that factor, and if so, you could see scrapers start to challenge some of your original pages.

Can you do a partial test, say 20% or so, and then see what happens over the next month or two?

[kamikaze Optimizer]

murky area

Enough said.

I am not in a position to risk what I have.

Thanks Ted.