Can Google Penalize You For Posting Duplicate Social Media Content?

Quite a few social networks allow different methods of embedding content; journalists and online authors routinely embed Twitter and Instagram updates on their stories, and there are quite few plugins that provide similar functionality. Modern embedding from social networks presents a few advantages, one of them being automatic attribution, but there are questions about how this practice may impact search engine optimization.

Let's focus on a specific social network that does things a bit differently with regard to embedding. Quora, the premier question-and-answer social network, offers an option whereby an answer can be cross-posted to a WordPress blog. Since Quora content often ranks high on the Google search engine results page, doing this would make sense in terms of boosting SEO, but it may not always work as intended.

Since Quora is widely crawled and indexed by Google, there is always the potential of a website embedding answers could be penalized for duplicate content, but there is a way to avoid this. If a canonical tag is assigned to Quora, the original content is being reinforced, thus reducing the likelihood of a duplicate content penalty.

There are concerns about how many times a website can either cross-post from Quora or even paste content therefrom without incurring into penalties, and this is when content creators must be careful. The trick is to balance the amount of original content; by virtue of being a very popular social network, Quora offers more exposure, and it would stand to reason that authors will want to highlight content therein. The problem comes when a WordPress blog consists of nothing but Quora answers.

Whenever possible, websites should feature nothing but original content. This is a tenet of SEO, but you will then be competing against the likes of Quora. Let's say a law firm has a strong and engaging presence on Quora; in this case, authors would certainly benefit from cross-posting answers to WordPress blogs, but only if they make up less than 40% of the content. What a seasoned internet marketer will tell you is that a fresh take on a popular Quora answer will work even better as a blog post. For more information click here https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/gyaoww/copypastingcontentstraightfromquoratowebsite/.