Using the same text copy as another website for a higher search result?

Question

One of my superiors, (whom presumably doesn't understand much about SEO) thought that copying text from another website onto their website would cause their search results to come to the top of an SERP; My understanding is that it doesn't work like that. Last I checked it had to do with:

• Page titles
• Consistency of the website across pages
• Location of the entity and location of the searcher
• The Adwords that you purchase
• Number of incoming links
• How frequently it is updated with new content
• And somewhere waaay down there is the content of the page...

I've never heard of this duplicating of language, and it sounds to me more like a good way to get an even lower page rank on a SERP, since Google polices the internet both in an automated and unautomated fashion, am I correct?

Answer 1

I don't really understand what you mean with "duplicating LANGUAGE of another website", and i don't really understand why he wants their website to rank higher in the SERPS.

1. If you mean you want to duplicate their content, you should really not do this, unless it's a second website from your company and you cannonicalise everything.
2. If you mean you want to use their content - but translated in another language: as far as i know Google will recognize this, and understand similarities from different websites even in different languages. Content should always be original, unique and different from others on the internet.
3. If you want to use the same different languages they use on their website - this won't have any bad results. You just need to use your right hreflang-Tags on your website, and again don't forget to cannonicalise everything.

Still right now I think that's all not the answers you want to hear, and still I dont understand why your Superior wants another Website to rank higher. If you mean he wants his own to rank higher from duplicating stuff from other sites of the internet - you're gonna have a bad time.