For years there has been an ongoing discussion about the effect of having duplicate content on your web site. The more extreme view has been it was a clear ranking killer, and that you would be “penalized” by the search engines if it was found on your site.
Yesterday The SEM Post cited Gary Illyes , a Google employee, as saying at a major conference that he stressed that duplicate content is not a penalty and that it is just a myth – it is actually a filter. Read the article here http://www.thesempost.com/duplicate-content-penalty/
Bottom line is you can use duplicate content where it makes sense without being concerned that it will hurt your rankings. You should also be aware it won’t help your rankings either.
I see a pretty big surge in posting good content from other sources coming up. Many businesses are always striving to add content, but don’t have the time or resources.
I see nothing wrong with the practice as long as the original author and site gets the credit, and it has real value to your visitors, who may not have been exposed to it in the past.
So how can you use this to add content? Well, many business have old blogs on other sites, or testimonials on other sites. You can copy and “re-purpose” those old blogs that you posted on e zines or a bunch of other sites we all may have used in the past. You should update them of course to reflect what every changes have happened in the world.
You can also post a recent blog or article that caught your eye, that your audience may not have seen, adding your own take, and comments as well.