Sharing Content Guidelines

In order to promote the countries we represent to the best of its ability, we produce content that is often shared with the international media for potential visitors to learn more about our beautiful country.

In the past, interesting content, press releases and news stories have been sent out by our team through our email newsletters and emailers, and as a result have been successfully shared and reproduced across the web. In more recent times, Google now penalises websites that share the same articles under the grounds of Duplicate Content.

But there is a way around this...

So what is Duplicate Content?

Quite simply, the republishing of identical text on more than one website.

Google wants to provide users with relevant information, quickly and effectively. If multiple sites had exactly the information, then this results in a list of sites all telling the user the same thing, which doesn’t help anyone wanting to find some variety in their searches. So in order to reduce the likelihood of this happening, Google will penalise any site that reproduces the article by delisting the page and reducing its own internal ranking of your site.

But there is a way around this!

Okay, how can we get around this and still share your releases?

Google appreciates that in some industries, destination marketing being one, that this isn’t a ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution, and a workaround has been developed. Canonical Tags is the preferred method and can be used along side the article, for those wishing to republish content on their sites.

So what are Canonical Tags?

A canonical tag is a piece of code that you insert into the header (or at very least before the article) on a page you are creating. This tells Google that the article originates from another source.

For example, if you wanted to reproduce our article 'K9 Unit Cracks down on poaching in Zambia's Lower Zambezi' then the canonical tag would be:

A useful website for generating the relevant canonical tag can be found here.

Is there a simple way?

If you are unable to add canonical tags, but still wish to share our content, Google’s secondary recommendation is adding a backlink to our website at the bottom of the article. Google will recognise this as a link to where the article is originally published and will not penalise your sites ranking.

Why should we do this?

We appreciate that this may seem an inconvenience. In order to give you some return exposure, we are now going to be crediting any blog or media outlet that shares our content. This means if you share our content and use a canonical tag pointing back to our original article, we will credit you at the bottom of the article and hyperlink back to your website. Known as backlinking, this is fantastic for both your own website and our website in terms of ranking. This will appear like: “This article can also be found on…”

We will also share your version of the release on our social media channels. Our social media channels have a growing number of followers in the thousands, and sharing your article could notably increase traffic to your site. All our releases sent to you will be found on our website for you to point to for the canonical tag. Please do contact us if you are republishing so you can benefit from the free exposure.

So there we have it. If you require any further information or would like to republish one of our releases, please do get in touch and we will assist you.

For more information about working with us on curated content please contact anisha@kamageo.com & emma@kamageo.com