Sep 28

Google Suggestion For Better Rankings: Have Your Content Scraped

Search Engine Optimization 8 Comments »

Misleading linkbait title aside, the real title of this video is “Can you benefit from content scraped from your website”. The premise is that if some content is copied automatically from your site, presumably this will include links back to you.

So when you prepare content make sure it includes a lot of intra-site links, and even links using your full URL. So instead of linking to /seo you should link to http://www.netpaths.net/seo to have links picked up on other sites. This is also important for your blog, which may likely be read in a 3rd party feed reader.

Im very impressed that Mr. Cutts took such a bold public stance on content scraping, and here are possible meanings:

  1. Google is tired of people including them in lawsuits over content scraping. Google is effectively saying there are some (possibly negligble) value to content scraping, so please don’t make us defend ourselves while you sue your competitor.
  2. Dulplicate content is such a big problem, Google is waving the white flag and giving up on trying to control blackhat spammers. They are effectively saying: go ahead and scrape, the legitimate sites will always win. Generally this is true, as the authoritative site being copied generally has a higher trust ranking than the copier.
  3. Google is trying to appease newspapers (and the AP specifically) and educate them about the web. Any large news event will have thousands of articles written about it, with the majority of the articles being repurposed content. Google is telling the major newspapers and news bureaus that they should not be afraid of having their good content distributed, as they get links back as a reward for sharing and this will help them build their online authority.

Matt Cutts is the webspam god of Google, and what he says goes. He is the head PR person that interacts with search engine optimization firms In person he is a very kind and fair man, someone you would enjoy sitting down to have a beer with and discuss gadgets, code and algorithms. It is essential to listen to everything he says if you want good search engine rankings, and even more important to read between the lines to understand how the search engine functions.