Dealing with known duplicate content, Whats the best way to avoid penalties

[Alex997]

First post so please refrain from immediate flaming :)

I manage my wife's accountancy website and she pays for a general accountancy newsletter each month to get emailed out to her clients. There is a little customization but 90% of the content is shared with other UK based Accountancies who have signed up to the same service.

I have been converting the emails to html and putting the content on my wife's website for the last few years as newsletter archives.

Now with the release of Google's Panda I am very worried that this known duplicate content is bringing the SERPS down - some keyword search results have dropped a page, others though have stayed put (#2 is the highest ranking and that one has stayed - for now at least). I have confirmed the duplicate content with the online copyscape search tool.

So my question: is there a way to avoid google penalties for duplicate content? eg. put noindex/nofollow on all the newsletter pages? Or is it too late for that given the last few years are already in google's index?

Many thanks

Alex

[goodroi]

This depends on your overall website. If you have hundreds of pages with original content and you have 36 pages of duplicate content over the last three years I would not worry too much. If you have 5 pages of original content and 36 pages of duplicate I would worry much more. IMHO you want to make sure your website offers original value that can not be found elsewhere.

Here are some ways to handle the situation:

1) Block Google from accessing the duplicate content. You can use metatags, robots.txt, or even htaccess. I don't like this solution since it takes away from your site.

2) You can turn this duplicate content into semi-original content. Add a few paragraphs to the beginning of the newsletter to put this duplicate content into better context for your local customers. This adds some value to your website and dilutes the duplicate content issue.

3) Completely rewrite these newsletters to make them more relevant to your customers. Also add features that the original newsletter didn't have like local government FAQs or local business interviews. This assumes you have enough time & resources to invest in this every month.

4) Turn this into a link development opportunity. Using copyscape you can see other websites that are republishing this content. Offer them "free" content that you create and that just happens to contain a backlink to your site. Chances are that some of these websites will be so happy to have free content they will not object to the backlinks you embed in the content.

[Pjman]

@Alex997

No worries, I have been dealing with that same issue for about 10 years now.

goodroi makes a number of good points.

The best way to do it is:

1. Place a noindex,nofollow meta tag on every newsletter, after you send it out.

2. Hopefully they are all in the same directory. In about 3-4 check the index and see if any of those pages are still indexed. Once they clear the index, place a Disallow to that directory in your robots.txt file.

After that you shouldn't have to noindex new newsletters.

[Alex997]

Great information - thank you both.

[Marketing Guy]

It's also worth noting that ranking fluctuations (even up or down a page) are perfectly normal and not necessarily tied to any Google update / penalty / whatever.

And welcome to WebmasterWorld! :)

Scott