Avoid duplicating or recreating content that already exists on your own or another website. This is a best practice for managing your company’s website.
Your audience can become confused if they find overlapping or inconsistent information on the same subject, either on your own website or on another federal website. The best practice to ensure accurate and quality web content is to create it once – by the organization having the greatest expertise - and use it many times, through links. By focus your efforts on creating content related to your own mission – and using links to related content – you save time and resources. It normally takes much less effort to spend some time looking to see if content already exists than (re)creating it.
By linking to content that already exists, instead of duplicating the effort already invested by the organization with the most expertise, you can manage your content more efficiently and enhance the integrity of the information and services you provide to the public.
• Before creating new information on a particular topic, determine if that same – or comparable – information already exists on your own website or on another website, including on a cross-company portal.
• When multiple organizations have a stake in the same – or comparable – content, both within and across companies, you should consult with each other to find ways to share or coordinate content to mitigate duplication.
• There may be situations where it is valuable for the public to have information on a particular topic from different sources. In these situations, be sure to organize the links to that information so that they are complementary.
• If you identify content that is conflicting, contact the web content manager for that/those organizations so they can reconcile the content. Above all, we do not want to confuse the public.
Provided to you by Roberto Espinoza and Patricia Espinoza at: CPC Computer Consultants, Inc.
www.cpccci.com
www.cpcwebsolutions.com
www.cpcwebdevelopment.com