Heres’ an issue that everyone faces as more resellers of products appear on the Internet - the issue of duplicate content.

Say you write great content for your website, but then you share that content with all your main affiliates or suppliers, for example, a hostel might give the same content they use on their home page to Hostel World or a tour company might do this for STA Travel, what will Google and other search engines think when they see the same content?

We know that duplicate content is frowned on and we know that those sites that have plagarised content are devalued by Google in the search results rankings even to the point of being banned for sometime. The risk is that by supplying the same copy to your partners you are in fact risking having your content considered as duplicate content and having your own site devalued.

For example, Hostel World, STA, eBookers and so on are always going to be considered more authoritative websites than your own - they have thousands of pages, thousands of links and are good quality sites. They probably have higher page rank than you too. So, when Google reads your content on their site it is highly likely that Google may interpret that content as theirs and penalise you for copying them. Now thats’ not on!

What about if some of these sites even pay for cost-per-click ads on your name. Well it is surely not a bad thing if you are say Base Backpackers and STA Travel are promoting your brand in the search results so as they sell more of your products is it? Perhaps it is. After all the sale always has a cost of commission. If you are coming up in the search engines number one for your brand you are hoping that you will secure the sale yourself - thereby paying back the investment you have made in web marketing and getting that amazing site. You don’t want to be giving away revenue for someone else trading on your name without actually doing anything for themselves.

These are interesting conundrums for the travel (and other industries). Perhaps it is time to turn against the hands that have fed us for so long, the STA Travels, the Hostel Worlds and so on. When it comes to the web you are all on an even footing and perhaps you are right to say no to large commissions and demand that these companies produce their own content about your product or even not trade on your name in the search engines.

Tags: Industry, search engines, SEO, Web design

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 at 11:38 am and is filed under Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.