Basically one of my old websites fell off the web a few years back, I have the content backed up and can easily restore it but a load of websites scrapped my content. The majority of the sites have a link back to the original page where the content was hosted. I'm just wondering whether it would hurt my future rankings if I put the content back up since its not original anymore, even though it came from my site originally
If you made it, it IS original. I turn any site that rips my material in to their host for plagiarism/theft. You juts have to make sure you have evidence to back up your claims. Internet Archive/wayback machine will probably be your good friend here.
you can put it back don't worry about duplicate issues since your the orig, second option is revise your content but the idea is there just change the words...
I think you should not put content back. Search engine will not know you are the original source. Try to write new contents for the same or similar title. Dont take the risk of getting penalized.
Thanks for the replies guys, even if I dont have a clear answer Think I'd rather not risk it, though I might mix in the old content every so often just slowly so I can monitor the results