Content Swap With Other Sites: Is this really ok? | Bloggers Lair | Yakezie Forums

Andrea, I have received THREE emails from someone today on this topic and I suspect you got the same emails.  Frankly, I am getting a little annoyed at the hard sales tactic this person is pitching and the frequency of their emails.

There is nothing wrong with swapping content with legitimate bloggers.  However, I have a lot of red flags with the type of thing this particular person is doing.  Personally, I will gladly swap posts but if they are not willing to give me original content I get concerned about their motives. 

I have not looked into the duplicate content issue he spoke of, but personally I would err on the side of caution.  It is my experience that most PR6 blogs don't actively seek out PR2 blogs (like mine) or below to swap with unless they are part of a network like Yakezie… it doesn't pass the smell test for me.  Just my two cents. I am curious on the thoughts of others here.

MainstreamMom said:

I’ve heard that Google can ding people for duplicate content unless there
is some code on the back end to alert Google & other search engines about
who the original content creator is (like many sites do — those of which that syndicate articles… ex: Savings.com). 

I recently was given a proposal to swap articles weekly with a PR6 site. Being told that (and I quote) …

The duplicate content penalty is one of the bigger myths out there and
apparently it is holding people back from making the best use out of their
content they worked so hard to create.

 

What are your thoughts on swapping content?

 

Thanks!

-Andrea

Google knows when it indexes an article and I suspect is fully aware of where the original article was posted.

I believe I received the same email.  A simple "We're not interested.  Please remove us from your distribution list." was met with a quick "Sorry we can't help each other." and that was that.

From what I've read, the duplicate content theory is pretty much a myth.  The only time you will get penalized is if you post the same repetitive content under the same domain.  From what I can gather, if there was such a problem with content being shared, then content distribution networks wouldn't be around as they would damage the sites from which they get the content, as well as the sites that promote it.  Again, I can only infer from reading tons of information on the subject, since no one is in a position to say with 100% certainty, but I have read quite a bit about the fallacy of this way of thinking.

I would say swapping content is fine if you do it on a small scale with related websites, however reading between the lines it looks like they want to syndicate content which is slightly different. If i am correct they give out their articles to lots of websites who all publish them and link back to the original article.They get all the benefits and none of the drawbacks. If they were suppling you with original content for a link (guest posting) at least you would get traffic. With content syndication they still get a link, but Google would perceive their article as the original and that would rank ahead of yours. I wouldn't accept under those conditions

As for a duplicate content penalty. I think the confusion arises because Google will attempt to return only one version of duplicate content, so it is a filter rather than a penalty (no negative site consequences). There is nothing to worry about having duplicate content, but you should realize that there is a chance Google won't show it in the search results. So if a bigger site copies your content your site might not show at all which would be very similar to a penalty

Interesting topic, as I post the exact same content on my newspaper blog as I do on my private blog, and have had no problems. I suspect it is because it's a form of "syndication", though I don't know for sure.