Stop Over-Analyzing Scraped Duplicate Content

[Fern]

I'm starting to get to a point where I think people are talking to much about scrapers stealing their content.

Seriously, are scrapers (dup content) killing you?

Scenario:

1)Yes, they are killing your website because you don't know how to do on page optimization.
a) If a scraper with a backlink profile weaker than yours can really outrank you, then that's your fault. Blame yourself on that one.

I have a site that has THIN, THIN CONTENT. It ranks PERFECT. I have SPAM SITES and I have Quality Sites that PEOPLE LOVE.... yes, I mingle with darth vader with some properties. None of my sites have been hit by panda.

If you really think duplicate content is your problem, it means your site is an ugly ducking when it comes to optimization.

Wikipedia stays on top for it's content: "Ethanol fermentation, the production of ethanol for use in food, alcoholic beverage, fuel and industry"

Think long and hard

[Play_Bach]

> Once google sends a specific amount of traffic to a site, panda evaluation occurs.

@Tallon
Interesting hypothesis. Thanks.

[Swanson]

tedster, I appreciate your comments and yes I agree in part - I think my point was that sometimes it is best to not simply just do everything Google says in it's press updates or guidelines as if they are helping you and switch to thinking about yourself first and what options are available.

I have been (and still am in many cases) most of the types of member here "in-house SEOs, consultants, hands-on contractors, business owners, affiliate marketers, passionate hobbyists" - and I think it makes sense to have 2 parallel strategies no matter who you are.

You only have 2 options after all:

1) Make changes to your Panda hit site and hope the re-assessment algo is re-run soon and that you improve the domain wide penalty you have at that time.

2) Buy new domains with links/traffic/pagerank and experiment with strategies on those.

I say do both. And I don't believe it is a problem for small business owners to create new sites - it is common to have a seperate blog etc. anyway. Why not create a new site "powered by XYZ.com" which is a new "brand" of your existing site that acknowledges who you are and is developed totally for capturing web traffic from search engines - leaving your "brand" site to maintain loyal customers.

I just think times like these it is good and healthy to work on other things at the same time as well as trying to rectify problems with existing sites - as we all know there is no guarantee that sites will ever really recover.

[Fern]

Do not think that any changes you make are going to get your site ranking back instantly. Over a year ago, I had a site go through the 'sandbox' and lose all rankings/traffic. How long do you think it took for the site to start ranking again?

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3 MONTHS

My site took 3 months to get back to original rankings. Did I flip out? Yes, the first day, but I sucked it up and kept on building my site, making it more useful, and building quality links.

I do not believe that any changes that you make NOW are going to have any adverse affect on rankings anytime soon.

Why do I think that?:
Google has an algorithm. While I do believe some ranking changes can be made in a short time period (one week), I do not believe making changes to your website will get your rankings back instantly. Think about how sophisticated their algorithm is. Do you REALLY think that your site will be re-run through their algorithm in a short time (couple months)?

#Build navigation for users & for search engines.
#Build links to your deep pages.
#Make sure you're using h1's, and optimizing content
#Improve page load times - helps users and search engines


If you think my comments are rude, oh well. Do not give up. Keep working. If your sites are truly valuable, you will survive versus the scrapers, etc. My main message is to stop crying about scrapers killing your rankings, and start improving your site! Do not expect to see changes in your rankings anytime soon (and i'm talking months).

[tedster]

I hear you Swanson. Slavishly following Google's general suggestions is not a sane path - you've got to educate yourself about the issues and make an informed decision on what works for your situation.

For instance, right now we have another active thread about site speed [webmasterworld.com]. The Google Page Speed tool (or the Yahoo! YSlow tool) will automatically make "one size fits all" recommendations that could take incredible resources to deploy in some cases, and all for only minor gain.

[DanAbbamont]

1. It are mostly websites with good content that was copied and scraped over and over again that have been hit by Panda.

2. Junk sites have not been hit by Panda. That's why there's so much junk in the serps now.

The people who are complaining about Panda are in the long tail of those affected by the update. It actually did get rid of A LOT of garbage, but on sites like article directories who get traffic for obscene amounts of keywords.

As for scrapers, OP is right, except I think it's more common that content owners who get outranked need to step up their off site SEO. The strategy of autoblogging that works now is to steal content word for word from sources with weak link profiles and spam until yours is better.

[incrediBILL]

If you really think duplicate content is your problem, it means your site is an ugly ducking when it comes to optimization.

Alternatively, your site is one of the top and all the bottom feeding vermin assume they can get to the top by leveraging your assets against you, which does work when done effecrtively.

The solution is to stop scraping in the first place, it can be done, you need mad skills.

[Planet13]

@incrediBILL

The solution is to stop scraping in the first place...

do you mean, stop BEING scraped?