Dramatically changing content and google penalties

[Jenni384]

What happens if you dramatically change your website copy, then change it again, and then again (and then leave it be)?

[crossdaz]

double post?

[crossdaz]

What happens if you dramatically change your website copy, then change it again, and then again (and then leave it be)?

Your site pages are ranked according to the relevance for search terms so your ranking will be effected one way or the other depending how more or less relevant they become.
Even if you do nothing you will be affected by what everyone around you is doing - so this is not always the best course of action.

What I tend to do is make changes gradually with a view to improving the overall quality, usability and relevance. Two things I always try to keep constant are the site title and page url - changing these alone tends to have the biggest impact in the short term.

[MASSEY]

It can cause a problem your particular rank for it could dip.

I have scrapped my content on sites that many times i have lost count, i never received any problems from it.

I think i recall you saying that you wanted to change content due to having similar content on another site , Duplicate content is more of an issue on the same website. If you have many pages on the same site with similar content it causes you bad problems.

:)

[Jenni384]

Thanks guys.

The issue is that we had our main website, then totally changed it.
Then we decided that we needed all of that content on a different domain.

We now have the same content on 2 domains.

I want to change the content on domain 1 similar to what it was originally, but this time I want it professionally copywritten.

The decision I'm trying to make is whether I put some 'holding' copy on our main site (to get round the duplicate content) until we get the professional copy, and then change it to that or whether we leave the duplicate content where it is until we get the replacement different copy.

I really don't know which would be better/worse.

[sirearl]

Thanks guys.

The issue is that we had our main website, then totally changed it.
Then we decided that we needed all of that content on a different domain.

We now have the same content on 2 domains.

I want to change the content on domain 1 similar to what it was originally, but this time I want it professionally copywritten.

The decision I'm trying to make is whether I put some 'holding' copy on our main site (to get round the duplicate content) until we get the professional copy, and then change it to that or whether we leave the duplicate content where it is until we get the replacement different copy.

I really don't know which would be better/worse.

carefull here jenni you should restore the original site to the state it was in when it had its best rankings.

Any changes should be done to the No2 site unless you have a pro SEO on the case.IMHO

Duplicate content comes in when 2 pages are around 80% similar so plenty of room for small changes to ovecome the problem.

Earl

[crossdaz]

I really don't know which would be better/worse.

Your problem is that the old will probably outrank the new for much the same content - to get round this you can change the content on the original which will make your new site the original (eventually);
Or, redirect the old site to the new - this is technically the best answer but also wipes-out the page rank of the old (which may or may not matter depending on your plans?);
Or, just change the content on the original (as you suggest) and then update it when you can.

It's important to point out that you will not get penalised - the search engines will just serve up 'what they think' is the most authoritative version of your content.

[sirearl]

Your problem is that the old will probably outrank the new for much the same content - to get round this you can change the content on the original which will make your new site the original (eventually);
Or, redirect the old site to the new - this is technically the best answer but also wipes-out the page rank of the old (which may or may not matter depending on your plans?);
Or, just change the content on the original (as you suggest) and then update it when you can.

It's important to point out that you will not get penalised - the search engines will just serve up 'what they think' is the most authoritative version of your content.

Won't work you are forgetting all them links the original site has built up.

Earl

[crossdaz]

Won't work you are forgetting all them links the original site has built up.

Earl

I'm gonna stick my neck out and hazard a guess that there isn't that many links.

If there are then the best thing to do is ask anyone who links to the old site if they can kindly link to your new site. A gambler would bet that the best links you have are from people who know you - so this isn't going to be difficult.

[OldWelshGuy]

Need some clarification here before sticking anything out (let alone my neck) :)

When we say 'changed content' are we talking about on page copy, or actual page url changes etc?

Lots of people say 'content' but mean that they ahve completely re-built a site from the ground up. the damage is most often caused by changing the hierachy and file names WAY more than the content on page.

So what has been changed?

[sirearl]

I'm gonna stick my neck out and hazard a guess that there isn't that many links.

If there are then the best thing to do is ask anyone who links to the old site if they can kindly link to your new site. A gambler would bet that the best links you have are from people who know you - so this isn't going to be difficult.

Jenni may be busy for a while though.:)

http://uk.search.yahoo.com/search?p=link:http://www.farrantfrost.co.uk/%20-site:farrantfrost.co.uk

Earl

[Jenni384]

Thanks folks, I really appreciate it. Going to take me a while to digest this.

When i say changed content, I mean text. Some associated links within the site (eg some links on ff.co.uk now point to abc.co.uk) but mostly I am just talking about the words on the site.

I'm more than happy for existing links to point to the original site (I appear to have a few people to thank, cheers Earl that's an interesting search result!) as ff will be offering, say, general services, but abc is to promote a specific product which will be clearly indicated on ff anyway.

carefull here jenni you should restore the original site to the state it was in when it had its best rankings.

Thing is, we've not been doing ANY work on rankings. I couldn't tell you when it was at its best. The farrantfrost site has just been 'because we should' and it's just been there as a passive helper, we've not yet been 'putting it to work' for us.

The new site is going to be much more internet-based and rankings will be much more important there.

The impression I'm getting is that I may as well change the text on the ff site for now, til the new copy can get done and that avoids having duplicated content for too long. Changing the copy won't make that much difference. We put the site live probably early this year, then changed the copy to the ABC text say 2 months ago, now we want to change the copy broadly back to what it was before. Does that sound about right?

[Jenni384]

Thanks everyone.

I've reverted the farrantfrost domain back to how it was before we changed the text in April (God bless Wordpress!). Touch wood that's the right thing to do for now :)

[sirearl]

Thanks everyone.

I've reverted the farrantfrost domain back to how it was before we changed the text in April (God bless Wordpress!). Touch wood that's the right thing to do for now :)

I think it probably is ,never a good idea to dilute your main site for the sake of a new site,

Build the new site to stand on its own two feet then the 2 sites can give each other a bit of help.:)

Although there is no reason why your main site can not help the new site right away.

Earl

[Jenni384]

I think it probably is ,never a good idea to dilute your main site for the sake of a new site,

Build the new site to stand on its own two feet then the 2 sites can give each other a bit of help.:)

Although there is no reason why your main site can not help the new site right away.

Earl
Thanks Earl that's what I was hoping.

We want both sites to be strong, quite naturally both will link to each other, it's just getting it right til we're happy with both that was the question.

Thanks to everyone who responded :)

[seo next]

Use an image (screen shot) of the content in place of the actual content till you have the professionally written copy ready other wise you can get Dup. content penalty.

[sirearl]

Use an image (screen shot) of the content in place of the actual content till you have the professionally written copy ready other wise you can get Dup. content penalty.

There is no such thing as a duplicate penalty.

All that can happen is that a duplicated page will not be indexed by the engines.

Earl

[seo next]

There is no such thing as a duplicate penalty.

All that can happen is that a duplicated page will not be indexed by the engines.

Earl

Earl, pages have to be unique to an extend. What we have seen is that 30-40% uniqueness works fine.

If pages have duplicate content it goes into supplemental filter which is what i was talking about.. And as you said if a page is not indexed by google its kind of a penalty in itself. Google will trigger some thing in its algo for that site, set some flag to ensure that the page does not get indexed and even when you have original content you wont be sure if the flag will get removed right away...

Better not get into all this and just use an image (its anyways for a very short period of time and not a permanent solution as they have the content being written by a pro copy writer).

[sirearl]

Earl, pages have to be unique to an extend. What we have seen is that 30-40% uniqueness works fine.

If pages have duplicate content it goes into supplemental filter which is what i was talking about.. And as you said if a page is not indexed by google its kind of a penalty in itself. Google will trigger some thing in its algo for that site, set some flag to ensure that the page does not get indexed and even when you have original content you wont be sure if the flag will get removed right away...

Better not get into all this and just use an image (its anyways for a very short period of time and not a permanent solution as they have the content being written by a pro copy writer).

My experience is that less than 75% similar content is fine.

A penalty infers that the site will be black flagged which is not the case.

Earl

[sirearl]

Earl, pages have to be unique to an extend. What we have seen is that 30-40% uniqueness works fine.

If pages have duplicate content it goes into supplemental filter which is what i was talking about.. And as you said if a page is not indexed by google its kind of a penalty in itself. Google will trigger some thing in its algo for that site, set some flag to ensure that the page does not get indexed and even when you have original content you wont be sure if the flag will get removed right away...

Better not get into all this and just use an image (its anyways for a very short period of time and not a permanent solution as they have the content being written by a pro copy writer).

My experience is that less than 75% similar content is fine.

A penalty infers that the site will be black flagged and thereby lose some ranking ,which is not the case.

Earl

[seo next]

A penalty infers that the site will be black flagged and thereby lose some ranking ,which is not the case.

Earl

Earl, you yourself said the page will not get indexed, which means google will surely set some flag so that the page does not get indexed...
Let me know if i am missing anything here ...