Search engines exist to provide users with the most relevant information quickly. That’s why it’s in the interests of Google and co. to filter out content which is duplicated elsewhere on the internet. The search engines will only display one instance of each piece of content, and will ignore other instances of that same content.
It’s important then that you a) only display original content that is not replicated elsewhere on the internet, or b) optimise your site so that it is chosen as the most authoritative source (if you do happen to publish content that is replicated elsewhere).
A point to note – the content doesn’t need to be identical for it to be excluded from Google. The search engines know when content has been altered slightly in an attempt to dupe them!
Also, if you publish various versions of the same content on your site (eg regular view, mobile view, text format, print version), then the search engines might penalise you – use the NOFOLLOW, NOINDEX metatag to ‘hide’ certain versions of content from the search engines, because this duplicate content could be seen as an attempt to manipulate the search engines.
If you do use syndicated content, then you need to be optimised for the search engines to make sure that you are ‘the one’ that appears in search results – most importantly, you need to have quality back links from other authoritative and thematically-similar websites.
The best bet is to create your own quality, unique content – but be aware that your content may be republished without your permission elsewhere on the web in an attempt to improve search engine results…this eventuality will be the subject of another post at a later time.
