Looking around the Internet at some websites and their approach to SEO, it becomes clear that some people think SEO is just a matter of copy and paste, or CTRL+C and CTRL+V (as web developers like to call it).
Some website owners, and even some SEO companies, think that adding any type of content to a website will help it in the search engines – and it doesn’t matter where this content comes from. For example, writing your own unique, original content on your website is time consuming – and not everyone is cut out to do it. Also, paying for someone to provide you with content can seem excessive; why should you pay for content when you can just get it for free?
This appears to be the approach of some website owners and SEO companies as we still see websites that actively copy content from other sources and paste it into their site. They do this because they are aware that new content, constantly updated, is important for SEO. Most people understand this concept these days. However they are not aware that simply copying content from other sources does not work for SEO, and in fact will have the opposite effect.
Think of it this way: Google makes money by people using it for searches. If Google simply offered up websites that all featured the exact same content when someone made a search, it wouldn’t be of much use to people, and no one would use it. Therefore, Google does not do this… it will not return duplicate results for queries.
If you make your website a duplicate of others, you’re giving Google reason to ignore it.
