Content writing is one of the best examples of how the web has invaded our lives. There are, however, several myths regarding content creation that are known to exist. If you are a content writer India in one such agency, you should be able to bring out your expertise as per the necessity of your clients. For the good of your career and your clients’ businesses, you must know about busting the prevalent myths of duplicate content. Before we get into the details of duplicate content, let us first check out how you can create appealing write-ups.

Are you wondering what all you have to do for ensuring a good content? Worry not, for I have assimilated the answer for you.

To excel in your job, include the following features in your write-up.

• Original
• Engaging
• Interesting headlines
• Simple writing style

These practices can not only improve you as a content writer but also keep your clients’ sites updated. As search engines are known to rank sites that are updated and effective, your efforts can amp up the rankings of your clients’ websites on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).

Now, it is time to discuss duplicate content.

Knowing the Term ‘Duplicate Content’

Have you ever come across similar content on more than one website or URL? Well, at all probabilities you were not aware of the exact term, but that was duplicate content. When business owners hire a content writer India from a reputed agency, they expect him or her to know everything about content writing. Thus, you must know what happens when search engines find duplicate content.

When there are much duplicate contents on the Internet, popular search engines like, Google and Bing face problems in deciding, which content matches a search query more precisely. Now, search engines never want their users to have time-consuming searches. So, to ensure visitors have the best experience while searching on different topics, Google, Bing and the like do not usually show duplicate content pieces. Therefore, a search engine inevitably has to choose the website, which reportedly has the best and the most original content.

When you write content for a website, you naturally want to promote it effectively in the market. The content marketing professionals your agency has, are most probably always scared of ‘duplicate content penalty’. However, what this fear shows is that they have not read Google’s guidelines on duplicate content.

So, let me tell you what Google is saying about duplicate content.

Guidelines from Google on Duplicate Content

Google acknowledges treating similar or matching content within or across domains as duplicate. But, Google is not saying that duplicate content is essentially deceptive in nature. Forums meant for discussions, versions of web pages that are only for printers, stored items linked through various channels – all these are harmless duplicate content. Hence, a content writer India must not think that duplicate content is essentially malicious.

Google lists the methods by which you can address issues related to duplicate content and make sure that visitors can see the websites that have your content. They are as follows –

• Always strive to maintain a consistency in your internal linkings.
• Use top level domains, when you are dealing with the content of a specific country.
• Never stop short of syndicating the content you have written on other websites and then include a backlink to the website of your client. In this way, your content will come up, even if Google chooses to show another website as the result of a search query.
• Let Google understand the domain you prefer, with the help of Search Console.
• Try to avoid including lengthy content having copyright at the end of web pages. Instead, start the practice of including brief summaries and then the links to the sites having copyright content.
• Avoid leaving blank spaces on webpages or combine webpages in which you think there is similar content. For example, if you are writing about similar facilities in two tourist destinations, you can merge them into one.
• Be familiar with how the content will be displayed on the website you are writing for. Sometimes similar content is shown on different pages. For example, a blog is shown both on the archive page and the home page of the site.

Crawlers are not stopped from accessing pages that have duplicate content. Moreover, Google takes action only against those duplicate content that is manipulative or deceptive.

When business owners hire a content writer India from an agency and you are the lucky one, you must drive away the fear about duplicate content from your client and content marketing professionals.

Now, let me break the myths about duplicate content one by one. This can be very useful in making content marketing experts and clients understand that duplicate content is not really malicious.

The First Myth – Scrappers Can Hurt the Website you Are Writing for

You may have come across content writers, who constantly keep an eye on Google Webmaster Tools. As soon as he or she finds out a scrapper site is copying his or her post, the person immediately disavows any link to that website. This points to the only obvious fact – the writer is not familiar with the guidelines Google has for dealing with duplicate content or disavows.

Contrary to this, did you ever come across the analytics for a big and popular blog? Such websites get scrapped at least ten times just in the first hours of the day. You can try checking their trackbacks for validation. Do not assume that they have a team watching over Google Webmaster Tools and disavowing links all through the day! The websites do not feel threatened by scrappers and are not afraid of duplicate content.

The question that might arise in your mind is – why don’t the sites fear duplicate content? Let me explain to you why. The websites that are not bothered by scrappers know that the latter are harmless. As a content writer India, you too must be confident of this. Is it possible that a small blogging site in some part of the world, having no original content, can make Google confused? Thankfully, the answer is no! It is too irrelevant for Google and hence, it is the original site, which is going to come up on search engine result pages.

If you ask for my personal opinion, I can tell you that I do not bother about scrappers. Scrappers copy the exact words of the articles, as well as, all the links. As they copy links, you must be careful about internal linking. However, the links on the scrapped versions of articles generally do not pass authority.

But, let me make you aware of a very important fact. Sometimes, very rarely, though, you may see that Google has failed to differentiate between original and copied versions. In that case, the scrapped version can get a higher ranking than the original website. If this happens with the website you are writing for, you must pass the information to Google, with the help of the Scraper Report Tool.

Reporting about the higher rank of a scrapped site involves stating the addresses of the original version, the scrapped version, and the search result. Finally, on the part of the business owners who hire a content writer India, you have to confirm that you are not a spammer and submit the report.

Let us take a look at another tip on this fight against duplicate content. Take the help of Google Authorship to sign your content digitally. There are various uses of Google Authorship, other than having your picture appear in search results. It allows a writer to sign his or her name in every content. This is one of the best ways to get your name connected with the blog or the article you have written and posted. Once this is done, your name is going to be associated with the write-up, no matter how many times it is scrapped later on.

Also, duplicating a content is not the same as violating copyright. Other businesses can copy content from your client’s website and claim them to be their own. They might even copy the entire website. Unlike scrappers, people who indulge in plagiarism are going to sign their own name on your blogs or articles. As this is illegal, you must advise your client to take serious action against such plagiarism, with the help of lawyers.

The Second Myth – Republishing Guest Posts on the Site you are Working for can Harm it

You may engage in a lot of guest blogging for the website of your client. Naturally, the audiences who visit the site are not going to read all the guest posts at one go. Hence, as a content writer India, you may want to republish these guest posts on the website of your client.

If you do not want to repeat the guest posts, it can surely add more value to the website. But, republishing is not going to incur penalties. Contrarily, you can find blog sites that encourage you to repeat the guest posts from time-to-time, so that audiences do not miss them. They do not fear to duplicate the content because they know that Google is not going to be confused. It is not going to penalize a website with low rankings because of republishing guest posts. The only thing Google may ask you to do is, add a small HTML tag to the guest post.

Here, I am going to give you another tip on how you can republish a content, which has already been posted somewhere else. You can use the rel=”canonical” tag to serve the purpose. This can help Google in understanding where the blog or article had formerly appeared. Once you add this tag, you can republish your own content without any fear.

There is another way, in which you can republish an earlier post. As business owners hire a content writer India like you for the betterment of their websites, you must know about it. If the earlier content was a ‘how to’ article, you can republish it as an ‘how not to’ one. Both the posts will be on the same concept and you won’t need to research for the second post. Moreover, the posts are going to be original and similar at the same time.

The Third Myth – Ranking will be Affected if the Content is Not Original

Reposting content of approximately 1000 words can never harm the rank of a website. Many well-known websites engage in this practice and it never invites penalty from Google. Content, which is not original can hurt your ranking only if you do something severe like, copying the text from a home page and pasting it onto a press release. Acts like these can surely blacklist a website on a particular domain. Hence, a professional content writer India never engages in such activities, because he or she strives to uphold the credibility of the domain, in which he or she are working.

These are the three myths on duplicate content that make content marketers and business owners anxious. However, these issues, like many other issues, do not demand the unnecessary welcoming of panic or overreaction. Google scrutinizes websites on a regular basis. Hence, if they find that a content has been copied and reposted, they can realize where the original one had appeared earlier. When business owners hire a content writer India like you, they depend on you to take care of their business websites. Thus, to handle a site efficiently, you must shake off the myths of duplicate content.

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