Hello all, I am making a wordpress recipes blog. I have: 1) About 150 unique recipes. 2) A database of 17k duplicate recipes. My questions are: a) Should I use both? b) If you answered yes to (a), then how should I do it? Should I put them all on the site at the same time? Should I maybe put the unique recipes first - wait for a while - and then post the duplicates? I know that Google gives penalties for duplicate content, and I would HATE to get penalized, but at the same time, all those recipes in the database will add value to my site. Then again, if it will hurt my rankings, I just won't use them. Looking forward to your replies! Thanks!
Duplicate isn't going to benefit you from an seo standpoint, however, you should be concerned with your visitors. If it will improve the user experience, then I would include them. If these are from a database that 50 other sites already display, then your probably going to get seen as a MFA site that is throwing up a database and the unique content is going to get lost in a sea of duplicates. I think you should be much more selective in what you display on your site if you are looking for return visitors. You might group or tag your 150 unique recipes as "your site name exclusive" and really "advertise" the fact that you have unique content on your site - content that isn't going to found elsewhere.
I ensure nothing can be unique 100% after you publish your article. Someone will take it with credit link or without credit link . And of course unique is so good for any site and friendly for SEO and SE
Thank you very much for that reply! You mention that duplicate content is "not going to benefit me from an SEO standpoint". The question is - Would it hurt me? I will definitely come up with a way to "feature" and emphasize the exclusive recipes of the site. I just believe that (if there is nothing to lose SEOwise), those extra duplicate recipes should also be there since they would be helpful to the visitors. Also, do you have any comments in regards to the way that I should put those on the site? I basically started the site about 3 months ago, and I let it stand there with a blank script that turned out to have a security leak. Thus, I decided to take the whole site down, and use Wordpress instead. That means that the site will be almost brand new. Should I first upload the unique recipes to add credibility to it and get it indexed, and then upload the duplicates? Does it matter at all? Well, even though it won't be unique per se, it will count as unique in regards to SEO for the person who posted it first. I know that much
Duplicate will not help you much. Try to keep your content unique.That's the main idea that google promotes.
Yes it will hurt your seo! Create a blog separate from your domain and link to it from your optimized unique site with 150 unique articles
Create unique contents with keywords.... check this out ................ bpohq.com apparelshq.com seoaidhq.com these have unique keywords.
You can start with posting 150 unique recipes then you can add duplicate or rewrite the duplicates for originality
Definitely stick to the original content. The majority of your visitors will probably have seen the duplicate recipes on other sites, at least for whatever it is they're searching for. If however they find your site, and realize they haven't seen anything you have anywhere else, you'll stand out in their eyes and they'll probably bookmark you, tell friends, and come back later. You could definitely link to other recipes if you wanted, but keeping the content unique is definitely the way to go. As mentioned above, if you do use the old recipes, try changing the text and instructions a bit, perhaps make the food yourself and customize it to make it your own.
You can add a review/extra tips/etc to make the recipes unique. With 17,000 recipes you would have plenty to do! Realistically I would pick several recipes from different key categories, make reviews as stated, and build links to them. Then see how that goes and plan from there. I have a CCNA-related resource that took content from other websites that had the same thing for a couple years and I beat them in SERPs just because I added information on how the questions were solved and built a few links to the first page.
Thanks everyone for your replies! Really appreciate your help. I decided that I will post the unique recipes first and then try to rewrite a few more. Obviously, I'll have many less than what I would have if I used the whole DB, but I guess it's the best way to go. Wish me luck!
it's OK from a SEO perspective, Google will still credit you as the owner of the content, as long as you get indexed first, search engines may even give you extra points for it. to the OP: personally, i would publish only the 150 unique recipes, and i'll hire someone to rewrite the other 17 000 slowly, (500 to 1000 articles per month) recipe are small and easy to rewrite, you need unique content to build an authority site, slowly but surely, if you publish 17 000 duplicate articles, you are in the GREY ZONE, it will damage your SEO profile, and will be very difficult to fix in the future. good luck.
Quick question - what do you mean by "duplicate" recipes? Do you mean recipes that others have come up with before? If that's the case, then I seriously doubt the search engines will see that as duplicate content as long as you cast those recipes in your own words.
I basically mean that I bought a wordpress DB that's full of recipes that MFA sites use without changing them at all I guess I'll probably have to do some rewriting...
If you're going to rewrite them, then start by launching the site with the unique recipes you have now, and publish the rewrites as you have time to do so. You'll have a steady stream of new content that way.
Thanks Dan. That's probably what I am going to do. I just felt that I could use these recipes as they are (to start off with a fully loaded site) and then rewrite other recipes that will actually be handpicked for more unique content. I mean.. of course.. all unique content (or rewritten content) would be much better, but let's face it - I'll never manage to manually post that many recipes