Will Google punish you for copying (or “plagiarizing”) your own content?

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We’re all familiar with the famous quote, “good artists copy, great artists steal.” But what you may not know is that in the world of Content Marketing , some people steal from themselves.

And apparently, there is nothing wrong with that.

According to Google Search lawyer John Mueller, publishers turn leads into sales with overseas chinese in worldwide data who repurpose parts of their own content to create new, highly similar pieces will not be penalized by the platform.

Still, there are a couple of details you should keep in mind before using Ctrl C + Ctrl V" on your keyboard .

Shall we go see them?

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Google's take on using your own content again
During the Google Search Central SEO Office Hours Hangout on May 8, Mueller answered the following question:

“ Is Google okay with publishers plagiarizing their own content? For example, I wrote an affiliate article suggesting something for mom. Can I copy the content from that article to write more articles for a sister, wife, aunt, or grandmother?”

The first thing Mueller did was to make it clear that if you're repurposing your own content, that's not the same as "plagiarism," which means taking content from another website and publishing it as your own.

With that clarified, his official statement was:

“ From Google’s perspective, if you’re taking content from your own website and republishing it with some page elements changed, that’s essentially up to you .”

Should you post multiple variations of the same content?
Now you know you won’t be penalized. But is copying yourself the best practice for your content strategy? Well, it’s definitely not ideal .

High-quality, original, search engine-optimized content is critical to your SEO and influences how close you can get to the top of the SERPs.

When you repurpose content, you are not creating something unique and relevant to your audience.

Copying can save you time and money, but it also creates a lot of worthless pages that Google will associate with your brand.

And that's not something that will benefit your SEO plan in the long run. So don't expect every variation of content you publish to rank well.

Mueller reinforces this argument in the next section of his response:

“ My guess is that in many cases you won’t be providing much value by simply copying the existing article and changing some of the words in it.

From a strategic standpoint, it would probably be more appropriate to write something unique and compelling for those topics or produce an article that covers some of these different variations.

So that's something from a strategic standpoint that I would recommend.

But purely from a policy standpoint, I don't think there's anything specific in the way of you taking individual articles and then making a bunch of copies of that.

So, that's something where, from a purely practical standpoint, it's up to you. But my recommendation is really to do fewer articles and focus on making them really good .”

The case of doorway pages
Before we address the last part of Mueller’s response, let’s put a few things into context.

Doorway pages are pages created to rank for similar search queries . They have no real value and only serve to take the user to the same destination.

For example, let's say you want better results for your main page focused on tuxedo jackets. So you create 20 different pages targeting search phrases like:

Tuxedo jackets in Mexico City.
Tuxedo jackets in Guadalajara.
Tuxedo jackets in Querétaro.
Their sole purpose is to rank high, acting as gateways to your homepage. This, of course, is cheating and can lead to penalties.

And how does all this relate to the central theme of this post? Well, you can end up creating doorway pages by accident if you are heavily copying your own content.

So be careful and read Muller's final recommendation carefully:

“ [Creating doorway pages] is essentially taking one piece of content and creating a ton of variations with minor differences and that would be against our webmaster guidelines.

So that's something we need to be careful about, is creating tons of really subpar content, I would almost say junk pages for your website that don't provide any unique value to your website overall.

And instead of watering down your website content like that, I would recommend putting the focus on making the main content of your website much stronger.

[...] So if you're asking if Google is okay with [copying your own content], well, it's like you can do whatever you want on your website, but that doesn't mean Google is going to value it .”

What was the lesson learned?
Resist the temptation to Ctrl C + Ctrl V. It may be tempting to do this during a busy routine, but your audience deserves more.

With concerns about how Google would react to copied content, we can say that there are so many rules in SEO that it is only natural to produce content with an eye toward how Google will evaluate it.

That's why you should never forget that Google's main answer is always: what matters is how much value your page provides to visitors . And that will only happen if you have defined a smart content strategy for your site.