This week’s Ask An SEO question comes from New Delhi’s Abhinav, who writes:
“How do article aggregators outperform original sources?
Google has various guidelines for underperforming aggregator duplicates, and many say no duplicate content is shown on the web.
However the URL of the RSS aggregator site is indexed even though it is known to be 100% duplicate content.
Why does Google index them, knowing they’re duplicates and how they might outperform the original source? “
It’s frustrating when a site we think is “not worth it” ranks higher than ours.
I suspect that SEO professionals spend millions of hours every month trying to determine why a competitor’s site is outranking them for a particular query.
I’ve suggested in the past that if you spend more time worrying about what your competitors are doing than optimizing your own site, you’re doing it wrong.
But I also understand the frustration of watching another site outrank you when you feel your site is better and your optimization scheme is better.
may not be what you think
For over 23 years, I’ve been analyzing websites from an SEO perspective.
I’d be more than happy to provide an educated opinion on why one site ranks better than another.
But more than half the time, my guess was wrong.
Many variables are used to rank websites for specific queries.
While it’s sometimes obvious what puts one site above another, sometimes it’s impossible to pinpoint the exact reason for ranking using Google or Bing data.
We all know “I don’t know” is not an acceptable answer for most clients or bosses — at least not for long.
Trust me, when it comes to rankings, I’m the king of guesswork – even if I provide an educated guess in most cases, I’ll know exactly what causes a site to rank.
For example, the RSS site you describe may actually be a popular center in a particular industry.
This center there may be one Important Backlink Profileeven if they’re just aggregated content.
Remember, content aggregators are popular for a reason.
By definition, an aggregator uses duplicate content — in most cases, duplicate content that doesn’t come from an aggregator site.
Google knows this.
But that doesn’t mean that Google automatically classifies all content on aggregated sites as inferior.
In fact, most experienced SEO experts can tell the horror story of their site being overtaken by another site simply scraping its content.
Frustratingly, Google doesn’t always know where content comes from.
Schema and other tools can help Google conclude that your original content needs to rank — but sometimes, that’s not possible.
what to do
I advocate being a decent person when dealing with other webmasters – at least until they give me a reason to show my more aggressive alter ego.
Use your website to find information about the content of the website duplicate content And send them a note asking them to write it down.
Experience tells me they delete content about half the time.
Most of the people who run these sites may take shortcuts, but they often don’t think that their actions will have an impact on other sites.
Once they realize their transgression, many people correct it.
Another way to make sure your website ranks ahead of copycats is to work hard All SEO All aspects of your own website.
Better than sites that steal your content.
you may not know precise There is a reason a site ranks higher than you, but if you continue to create high-quality content, build high-quality links, make sure your technical SEO is up to date, and create an effective keyword and content strategy, you may end up with More than aggregated sites.
Be patient and have confidence in your SEO program.
SEO is a grind.
Embrace the grind and move on.
Good things will come.
More resources:
Ask about SEO is a weekly SEO advice column written by the industry’s top SEO experts handpicked by Search Engine Magazine. Have questions about SEO? fill out our form. You may see your answer in the next #AskanSEO post!
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