Bad content versus “duplicate” content…and the winner is:
The difference between bad content and duplicate content is simple: One is bad writing, the other is stealing. Either you did it or your website design company did it and didn’t tell you.
I am not going to go into the whole moral reason behind why you shouldn’t take other people’s content, but I will say if you use duplicate content on your site either knowingly or unknowingly, your site runs a much higher risk of being penalized than a site that just has sucky content on it.
Now, most shops DON’T include content in their programs. You have to give them whatever you have or pay extra. But if your provider did include content, just ask them, hey, how did you come up with content for my site?
If you hear a lot of stuttering and um’s and let me check, then you know they are full of shit and your content is probably hot.
if you boosted content from somewhere else thinking you would never get found out, there are plenty of ways people safeguard their content and you may very well find out the hard way!
So, in the end, do yourself and your site a favor and just pay the juice and get quality content developed for your website please! It will be well worth it in the end I promise.
2 responses to “Contractor Website Tip #695: Which Is Worse, Duplicate Content or Bad Content?”
One thing we see regularly at HomeStars, which is worth pointing out, is companies that take reviews from our site and cut and paste them in their entirity and put them on a ‘testimonials’ page on their website. I regularly explain that is not only content theft, but also google will penalize your SEO for doing that.
If your review site has a website widget, like ours does as well as a number of others, use that. If the review site doesn’t, the next best protocol is to take a segment of the review and then link back to it – maybe with a ‘read more” link.
Hey Brian…great point, and you just brought up a great topic for a post. Who OWNS the review? I am sure in the TOS somewhere it states you can’t take the content, but then again, without the work, the review never get’s posted. That is a great topic to kick around! Thanks for stopping by and commenting!