Author Login | Popular Articles | RSS Feeds | Sitemap

Home | Uncategorized


Duplicate Content - Friend Or Foe?

By:

The question of whether duplicate content can get you penalized in the search engines -- and how to avoid that if it can -- is a topic of hot debate these days.

Many webmasters live in fear, agonizing over questions like:

- What is duplicate content?

- Why do search engines care about duplicate content?

- Should they worry about duplicate content?

- What can they do to avoid a duplicate content penalty if there is one?

First, understand that there is no clear definition of duplicate content and it is not absolutely clear that there is any such thing as a duplicate content penalty. In general, however, the belief is that repetition of large blocks of the same content (such as an article or syndicated blog post) within either the same domain or across many different domains could trigger a penalty in search engines such as Google.

So why would search engines care about duplicate content?

If you think about how search engines work and how they make their income, the whole topic from their perspective becomes clear. Search engines live or die based on two things:

1. Do search engine users feel like they get the results they are looking for when they search?

2. Do the advertisers (and thus the search engine) make good revenue?

Suppose you publish an article on "How to write a good article." You submit it to all of the popular article directories and within a couple weeks it is published on 300 different websites.

If someone were to then go to Google and search for "how to write a good article," do you think they would feel like Google was producing good results if the first 300 were all links to your article, but just on 300 different sites?

Of course not. In fact, people would probably either complain or stop using Google. And as a side effect, advertisers would start making less revenue and would stop advertising. Then Google would not make money and before long they would have some serious problems.

So it becomes clear why Google, or any search engine, would not want to display many copies of essentially the same content for any given keyword search.

The logical conclusion is that search engines absolutely need to filter out as much duplicate content in the results as possible. If they filter out your website and display someone else's, even though the content is the same, it's going to look as if you were penalized for duplicate content. But actually, they are just trying to deliver the best results.

Many people believe that search engines should give precedence to the original source of the content. But how can Google or any search engine accurately determine which is the original of the content and which is the duplicate? While algorithms can likely make some logical conclusions, the truth is that it is not really possible to determine this every time.

Instead, search engines have to go by things like where the content seems to have first been published, which site is the biggest authority, etc.

This means that if you publish the same article on your site and on 100 sites that are all older and more established, it is likely that it may appear your site was republishing duplicate content, not the other way around.

There is an easy way to avoid this problem. Don't publish the same articles on your website that you submit to the article directories. You can publish variations, but be sure they are significantly enough different that they are unlikely to get your site filtered or penalized due to duplicate content.

Interestingly, this will also work for you in another way. If your articles are published on other sites which then all link to your site, and you don't duplicate any of the content, your site appears to actually be more of an authority site than the sites that are all sharing duplicate content.

And if your site is on the same theme and the article directories link to your website with keyword-rich anchor text, the incoming links will also seem to indicate to the search engines that your site is the authority on that theme. The sites publishing the duplicate content seem less authoritative.

In a similar way, if you syndicate your content, be sure to only syndicate the title and description paragraphs, not the whole article. That way, your site always has even more content on the topic, again making your site seem to be the authority.

This strategy can be far more effective than publishing the articles on your site. In fact, if you have been submitting articles for some time, you may even have seen this happening already.

As you can see, it's not really a question of whether there is a duplicate content penalty or not. Search engines must filter out duplicate content in order to present the best results to their users and maintain advertising revenue.

You can use this to your advantage by being sure that any duplicate content is on other websites that link to yours. Some of those sites will be filtered out of the search engine results and some won't. But they will all point to your site as the actual authority on your keyword-based theme. Do this, and any duplicate content will be your friend rather than your foe.

Article Source: http://www.articlesnatch.com

About the Author:
Discover Kevin Sinclair's system for making profits regardless of whether anyone joins your network marketing business.

| Print | Ezine Ready | |

Please Rate this Article

Recent UnCategorized Articles

  • Tips For Selling Your Stamp Collection By: Victor Epand - Stamp collectors will spend a huge amount of time collecting stamps and the majority actually spends their entire lives collecting. However, there are some collectors who collect stamps only to resell them, so here are some helpful tips for selling your stamps. Collectors spend a significant amount of time, effort, and money acquiring their stamps to build their collection, how ever many make a vital mistake. That mistake is not selling their stamps while before their death.
  • A Variety Of Stamps For The Avid Collector By: Victor Epand - Collectors have a wide variety of stamps to choose from since almost every country in the world issues stamps in number of different types and formats. Collectors may choose to create their collection to reflect their personal interests so that it shows their own unique identity. Some individuals collect commemorative stamps that are issued to remember a special event or individual, which are only available for a limited time.
  • Quickly Master The Techniques Of Reading Fast By: Francis Hesse - Being able to learn to read fast is an ability that not many possess though everyone would like to possess such abilities. In fact, speed reading is highly regarded in just about every area of life and even though speed reading does not necessarily transform into greater intelligence, it can lead to greater knowledge and becoming better informed which is something that slow readers are not capable of attaining.
    Tags: speed reading, learn speed reading, speed read, speed reading course, evelyn wood
  • Water Conservation Is Part Of Being Green By: Rachel Yoshida - During this time of the year, water conservation is one of the most important things that you can practice next to staying properly hydrated. More and more communities are putting up notices for the residents to conserve water due to lack of rain and there are a lot of things that you can do to take part in this.
    Tags: water damage restoration, water, smoke, fire, mold
  • How To Cook Pasta Right? By: Mary Anne Durkee - When one thinks of Italian cuisine, Pasta is what comes to mind first. Pasta cooked perfectly and with the right combination of ingredients can be an absolutely mouth watering dish- a real treat for your taste buds. It is light on the stomach and healthy too. It is a wonderful combination of flavors all packed into one. You would discover the authentic Italian taste one at a time as you relish spoon after spoon of this treat.
    Tags: pasta, cooking, italian recipes
  • Baking and Decorating the Perfect Cake - Tips to for Creating Exquisite Creations By: Josephine Gauttier - It can be hard not to be dazzled every time that you walk into a nice bakery. A beautifully decorated cake is one of the great joys of the culinary arts. Almost everyone gets excited at the sight of a beautiful cake. If you are interested in cake decoration and cake design, you will be happy to see that cake decorating can be fun as a hobby and it can also be seen as one of the high edible arts.
    Tags: cake decorating, bake cake, cake decorating tips, baking tips
  • You Can Make A Difference With Water Conservation By: Rachel Yoshida - At this time of the year, water conservation is one of the most important issues, especially in areas where droughts are commonplace. Even if you do not live in one of these areas, you can save a large amount of water and money every month by following these simple tips. One easy thing that you can do is take a Ziploc bag and fill it about halfway up with pebbles.
    Tags: water damage restoration, water, smoke, fire, mold
  • Water Damaged Flooring Issues Exposed By: Rachel Yoshida - It does not necessarily take a huge flood to cause a lot of inconvenience and damage in a home. When there are floods of only a few inches or less in a home, it can damage carpets, hardwood flooring, baseboards, the bottoms of doors, and furniture. It can soak into the floor and get into the sub flooring underneath floor coverings quickly. This is why a flooded home must be cleaned up and dried out as soon as possible.
    Tags: water damage restoration, water, smoke, fire, mold
  • The Global Market For Organic Foods By: Paul Hata - The market for organic foods is growing dramatically. It is estimated that organic sales of food products through supermarkets, mass merchandisers and natural supermarkets was $3.6 billion in 2006 in the U.S., double the figure in 2000. The Organic Trade Association estimates that the total organic food and beverage sales were $13.8 billion in 2006.
    Tags: organic food, organic food market, organic fruits, organic vegetables, free christian article
  • Top Causes Of Home Water Damage And Mold By: Rachel Yoshida - You might think that the plumbing in your home is in good working order, but you can not know this for sure unless you conduct regular inspections of anywhere water comes in and out of your house. There are probably more water sources in the home than you can recall in the home and they can all be a flooding hazard if they have problems unexpectedly.
    Tags: water damage restoration, water, smoke, fire, mold

Today's Hot Articles

Search Ebay

Still can't find what you are looking for? Search for it!


Submit Your link to the Open Link Directory Project

Copyright 2005-2008 MJE Sales, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Proud member of the ArticleCkr Search Network Search Network!
ArticleSnatch.com is free for both publishers and authors to use and is supported entirely from advertising revenue.
Use of our service is protected by our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.