The best way to ensure you are curating content responsibly is to just use an excerpt of the original article and display the original article link right in the summarized post. This is the standard default of MyCurator and is set when the option “Show original article link, not readable page?” is checked. It is also best to add some of your own content, such as comments, ideas and opinions to each curated post. Over time, as you react to articles you have curated, you should find that you are writing more of your own content. This may be lengthier comments and reactions. You may also find you are writing more original content as the curated content provides inspiration and ideas.
The benefits of this type of content curation are that you are establishing your own voice. It builds your authority with your readers. It is this type of curation that is also viewed well by Google, which will also help boost your SEO.
MyCurator also includes an option to display a ‘readable page’ of the full content extracted from the original web page. When you click the title of a post, the single post page displays the full ‘readable’ page text of the article with an attribution link at the top. The readable page provides a nice ‘Instapaper’ type of format well suited to iPads and without the clutter of many websites.
We include this feature mainly for those who just want to aggregate some news or trends for their community. Since it is a full copy of the content, it is best if used for limited audiences, such as clients of a business or a private blog.
In this case, you are really just providing a content aggregation service if you rely on the full text versus adding your own comments and opinions. The only curation is in deciding which articles to post. In a very focused niche, or where your clients or readers have no other options to find this type of information, you can be providing a valuable service.
On the other hand, posting the full readable page will not help your SEO and in fact may hurt it. It is pretty easy for Google to figure out that you have duplicate content – see the quote below. While you may get an early boost with regular content appearing on your site, it is usually very short lived. As the quote below points out, Google is good at finding the ‘original’ content and over time may remove your site from search rankings if they think your sole focus is adding content to ‘manipulate’ the rankings. Many articles have been written about duplicate content and its negative impact on your site’s ranking. If you are truly providing value for a niche community, then this shouldn’t matter, as your client base will probably not be search focused. If you are trying to build a website or blog and want to rank better on search, using the full content option is Not the way to go.
Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results. If your site suffers from duplicate content issues, and you don’t follow the advice listed above, we do a good job of choosing a version of the content to show in our search results.
However, if our review indicated that you engaged in deceptive practices and your site has been removed from our search results, review your site carefully. If your site has been removed from our search results, review our Webmaster Guidelines for more information. Once you’ve made your changes and are confident that your site no longer violates our guidelines, submit your site for reconsideration.
Another consideration is that you have to be careful using copyrighted material when you use this option. You may receive some copyright notice emails from some sources asking you to remove the full copy of their post if you are using it on a public site. Again, if you are selective on what you post, and are very focused on your niche, this will be less of a problem.
In conclusion, MyCurator has a very powerful feature in providing the Readable page of a web site. It is best used as a basis of building a curated post. It is available inside the editor and for your ease in reviewing articles by clicking on the title or quick tag while looking at training posts. Making use of the option to display it on your site should be carefully thought through, and in most cases, is not appropriate.
