Just like your teachers at school, search engines don’t like plagiarism, they like unique content.
Search engines have an advantage in that they can compare content and determine whether two pages are the same. When they find two pages that are the same they choose one and index that and effectively ignore the other.
When you think about it, it makes sense. Search engines want to know where to find content to show in results, why would they index two identical pages when they only need one to give a result?
There are instances where people deliberately copy content. Sometimes this is true plagiarism where you like the way someone else has written their content and decide to use it for yourself. Apart from the strong potential of being penalised by search engines and not having your content indexed, think about it - would you have cheated at school?
However, other websites can provide great inspiration for your website content, so don’t hesitate to look for ideas on other websites. Other websites can also be a great source of facts and statistics which you can use. Remember though to use this as a basis of your content and make it your own.
Unfortunately there are instances where you inadvertently end up with duplicate content.
Product Information
This can happen if you are a local supplier of product that a parent company produces. For example Acme have a website which has details of the widget you sell, so you go onto acme.com and copy exactly the content about your widget. Unfortunately for you the search engine can tell that the two pages are the same and pick one. Do you want to risk your relationship with your supplier if they find out that they haven’t been indexed and instead your copied content has been?
Directories
This is so easy to fall into where you complete the details for an online directory and you copy directly the content for your home page and put that into the business description of the listing. Unfortunately search engines can identify this as duplicate content and choose not to index your listing. This completely dilutes the power of your listing.
The Solution
You do not need to panic, you do not need to rewrite the whole content. The initial paragraph is the crucial part to rewrite and this does not need to be a major rewrite. You just need to restructure and reword some sentences.
From now on apply this litmus test to any content that you put online. Have you put it anywhere else online? Have you taken the content from another online source? If the answer to either of these is yes, make sure you alter it first to make sure your content is working for you.