Google is getting better at spotting and demoting affiliate content, because of this very reason: content is getting repeated and duplicated over and over at many affiliate sites that carry it. For that very fact, you should look into how content is created on your site, and try to ensure that you are not publishing duplicated content. In terms of the difference between affiliate content and duplicate content – the straight up answer is that there is none.
First things first: Duplicate content is your enemy
Whatever you do, copying content from someone else is a big no-no. You’re much better off re-writing, or coming up with an entirely original angle instead. Search engines value those things more than anything else because it creates more value for the reader and it differentiates your content from everyone else’s.
Duplicate content is kinda everywhere on the web. The same things you’ve read on Boredpanda may appear on Buzzfeed, and everyone is writing their own version of something that had gone viral. How do you avoid something like this when everyone else is writing about it?
The pro-tip: add your own opinion and more in-depth reporting. Find more sources. Quote them. And then add in your own understanding and breakdown of a certain report to stand out from the rest. Be vocal about it to get attention if you must.
Duplication in affiliate content
Here’s where duplication gets tricky. Affiliate content that uses a data feed to power pages are essentially repeated content with every other affiliate that runs the same data feed. If not done and formatted properly, it gets demoted by Google purely for being duplicated content. So how do you navigate across the sea of content if data feeds are making everyone a copy of one another?
Let’s try this: personalisation. First of all, visually, you don’t want to look like every other site that uses the same feed.
It still has the same text content, though. Inputting a sample into Google produces “about 584” results, all of which, or the majority of which we must suspect as I’m not going to go through them all to check it absolutely, are built around the same feed. This will arise as a problem since it boils down to the battle of SEO.
To counter this problem, you could substitute your own text for the original, or take your own photographs of the product. But again, this becomes a problem when or if your site is extremely big. It would not be feasible to continue doing this for every product.
So where does this leave us and how do we proceed?
We’ve learned that duplicate content is the enemy, but there are ways around it to make the topic of interest seem original – although it is time-consuming as heck.
We’ve also learned that affiliate content that is powered by data feeds can also run into the trouble of being duplicate in nature, since every affiliate to that program is going to use the same feed.
By adding original content and reviews to affiliate content, you might just stand out and win the SEO battle for a while. It’s time-consuming, but in order to get organic views from search, and also establish your own DNA and voice to the content you present to your audience, it may the most vital thing you should be doing.
