Duplicate Legal Content
-
Oftentimes lawyer websites will publish laws (codes, statutes, regulations, case law, etc). They add no value to the text, it's just copy pasted. Therefore, the same text/content may be on potentially hundreds of websites. Does google interpret this as duplicate content, or does it recognize government content as special?
I want to have the laws on my website as well, however I am debating whether to add no follow tags or not. Or I'm thinking about adding value to the content by breaking down the specific law. However, even then at least 50% of the content on the page will still be the law, and I'm not sure if that is enough to be considered duplicate content.
-
Thank you for the responses. I think I'm going to add value to the content and not worry so much about duplication. Thanks again!
-
Hi Nikhil, it's normal that you're worried about this kind of things, that's one of the consequences panda got into this market. It's good that you worry about it, there two different approaches to this: try to trick it or understand it and add some real value to that content. This issue is not only in your niche. Think about books, films and lyrics of songs. You can't change them, howeveryou can add something to make that content more useful for google to le t you rank for it.
I'm not a lawyer but I'll try to make an example. The first result will be the official result then you may write an article which takes that law and then add some bullet points of the main aspects of that law, then the related laws, adding bolds, commentaries and things like this. You won't be first but you'll start building your brand as the site giving real value added to that laws, something that some people may think you're valuable and google too.
Don't worry about duplication in this case, as I said before, lyrics sites got a lot of that content and they're not duplicates, try to open your page to more keywords than only the text of that specific law.
I hope that would be useful.
-
Hey There
I would say if you think the content will be useful for your visitors/customers then add it. If you are wanting to add the content to attract new browsers through the SERPs then you are out of luck. As you say the content is not unique, so you are unlikely to be attributed as the source/original author of the content.
I don't think (although someone will come along and put me in my place) you will be penalised for adding the content, you just won't receive any SERP boost for it.
But as I say, if it helps your customers, then go ahead and add it.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Duplicate Descriptions
Hi, Our Woo Commerce store has about 30 product tags, of which a separate page is created for each, therefore needing the usual titles and descriptions adding. I want to know if the pages will be penalised if I 90% duplicate the 150 word description for product tags that have areas of overlap. How important is this? Thanks.
Content Development | | Arnikabhupal0 -
Another website copying our blog content but credit us. Still bad?
Hi Moz community, A few businesses that we work with are asking if they can leverage our content such as blogs by basically copying it and post it on their site. They will give us credit for the content though. My concern is that going to cause duplicate content issue and hurt us with our SEO? We'd like to provide it to them in a way that would benefit us or at least doesn't hurt us. I can think of a few possible options... 1. Have them only copy part of the content and link back to our site with a link "Read the original article" or something similar 2. Have them implement rel=canonical back to our site 3. Have them just copy the whole thing (because it doesn't really hurt us?). In that case, do we have them link back to us or no? Is there anything I missed? What's the best option for us? Thank you for the help in advance!
Content Development | | aphoontrakul1 -
Is there a content ratio that google looks for?
What i mean by this is: If i have a 1000 page ecommerce site that has say 10 pages of good quality content (1% good content) and a competitive site that has 100 pages of good content (10% good content) and another that has 500 (50%). if they are all almost the same in every other way the 50% content site would win hands down. however this is not always possible to have so much good content on some types of site. The question is: Is there a min percentage to aim for? Also is there a similar min rate of content production to aim for. Is their a kind of tipping point to get past that google will think they are doing things right i should keep an eye on them!
Content Development | | mark_baird0 -
RSS feeds with dup content and titles
Hi, For my Buddypress site I use a tool to create sites with RSS feeds. Each site is for a different feed, but the number of dup tiles and content is running in the thousands. I've been trying to reduce the dups, but have begun to think there is more trouble from such content than benefit. Should I dump the content or ignore the errors flagged by SEOMOZ? Any ideas if thes RSS feed dups are hurting my BuddyPress site? Any suggestions in general about how to eliminate such dupe for a Buddypress Site, eg. the activity log. Larry
Content Development | | tishimself0 -
Duplicate content on forums?
I am creating a forum. I am concerned that when I create the forum, users will copy content from other places to post onto my forum. How negative/bad is this in terms of google eyes? I am concerned when people copy press releases and re-post it to the forum. Should I make a rule that all content must be typed and not copied? Or is a little copying okay?
Content Development | | sseibel0 -
Wordpress Duplicate Pages/ URL's - Help !
Hi guys, I have been running SEOMoz for just over a month and slowly cleaning up one of my Wordpress Blogs. While going through the crawl reports I have noticed that I have duplicate pages showing on the crawl. For example, the main post would be; www.xxxxx.com/blog/post-title Then I see another URL which would be; **www.xxxx.com/blog/page/59 ** When I click on either URL it goes back to the actual post title URL. What's with these page URL's ? Isn't these two URL's showing duplicate content to the search engines ? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Content Development | | dcc0 -
I have created 2 blogs for a client as they have 2 domains (1 for their core business, and 1 for a product). I want to use the same content on both blogs. What is the best way to set this up so there are no ranking or duplicate content issues?
We are pushing SEO for only one of the domains, therefore I would like one to be dominant. We will be sending the blog post via email to their database, therefore each blog needs to have the same content. Thank you!
Content Development | | MarketingResults0 -
Best way to avoid duplicate content issues here.
I am planning to write an article that refutes some claims made in another article. The original article is a 20 page pdf. What I plan to do is to take quotes from this PDF and then under each quote write my arguments for or against the quote. If I take direct quotes from the article, is Google likely to see this as duplicate content?
Content Development | | MarieHaynes0