reproducing content and still be seen as original

[shags38]

Hi,

I am still learning SEO - I currently am managing 7 sites and am increasing soon to about 40. Content being king in the eyes of Google means trying to come up with truck loads of original content and I really would like to have a couple of hours off each month.

So using other peoples articles, news releases etc (with permission - so no copyright issues) to what extent does the content have to vary to be seen as original, or not a direct copy, by the crawlers? 10%, 15%, more? Should the changes be throughout or specifically in the first few paras?

Does changing text format count as a change in text by the crawlers? i.e., a given text content ir reproduced word for word BUT a percentage of the text is changed to Bold, or italic or underline or a combination - also use of colours and " " etc, etc. Would the crawler notice that the html varies [B]bold[B] [U]underline[U] etc from the text file it is comparing it to?

If the above did indeed have the crawlers see the text differently it could save a lot of re-writing.

I look forward to any comments.

cheers,
Mike

[Melly]

Even using prewritten content I would recommend rewriting it completely to make it 100% unique. I have never used half unique content so I'm not sure how you would be penalized by Google but I wouldn't chance it.

[shags38]

Even using prewritten content I would recommend rewriting it completely to make it 100% unique. I have never used half unique content so I'm not sure how you would be penalized by Google but I wouldn't chance it.

Thanks for your comments Melly - much appreciated.

What about news releases from manufacturers ? - everyone uses them, that is what the manufacturers want, Gugle won't penalize for loading a press release and to my knowledge they don't penalize for having "copy" content on your site , other than not rating that content highly - the point is this - I use a press release but want it to be seen by the crawlers as being different to the same press release on thousands of other sites - is there a simple way to do this (referring to my original post) without re-writing the bulk of it which is rediculously counter-productive and would need permission from the manufacturer who released the press release to do so in any case. As much as content is King there surely is not a lot to be gained in loading press releases, news items and the like (unadulterated) to a site if gugul is not going to give that content good ratings - but most sites do - so what can be done to be different in the eyes of the spiders? LOL, finding the answer to that question is akin to finding the Holy Grail - as much as I may not find it I will continue to search (just like a crawler )

cheers,
Mike

---------- Post added at 05:38 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:34 PM ----------

Even using prewritten content I would recommend rewriting it completely to make it 100% unique. I have never used half unique content so I'm not sure how you would be penalized by Google but I wouldn't chance it.

yes - re-writing would make it 100% unique. Is there such a thing as "half unique"? I will start re scripting press releases as I play my favourite Beatles song "Paperback Re-writer" (kidding, OK)