Self Taught SEO | Search Engine Optimization Blog

Duplicate content is one of the best marketing tools when used right.  There is a lot of hype around duplicate content.  Yes, duplicate content can be harmful if you aren’t careful, but so could a handgun.  To make duplicate content work for you, you must learn how to be the preferred content in the search engines.

Let’s dispel some myths about duplicate content.

Your website will be penalized or banned for internal duplicate content
False.  This is really true and false, but it depends on the size of the duplicate content — if more than 20% of your website is duplicate content then it may pose a problem.  Internal duplicate content (content which is within your control and exist on your website) has the potential of causing penalization, however this has to be an onslaught of duplicate content or reckless canonicalization.  A few internal pages with duplicate content will have little to no effect on your rankings.  You should try your best to avoid internal duplicate content, but don’t be overly concerned with duplicate content if it’s less than 20% of your overall websites.

Copying a single PLR article on  your website will cause your website to get banned
False.  External duplicate content does not cause banment of your website, however the page that has the duplicate content can be filtered and thus not given much weight, which ultimately will result in the page being placed in the supplemental index.  Large pockets of duplicate content can devalue your overall website.

Using templates will cause duplicate content issues
False.  If you change the content, page titles, and meta data then you will have much less to worry about in terms of duplicate content.

Duplicate content cannot grow my business or website traffic
False.  If done correctly, duplicate content can drive mass amounts of targeted traffic to your website.  Press releases, articles, RSS feeds, news, and blogs are all forms of duplicate content (syndication) which have proven to be successful marketing methods.

I will lose all value by syndicating content, because there is no way for search engines to know I am the original creator
False.  If you take the needed precautions then you should be credited the originator of the syndicated content.  It’s a risk so sometimes you’ll lose out, but it’s a risk worth taking!

Making Duplicate Content Work

There are ways to make duplicate content work for you and get the most effect from the use and publication of duplicate content.  The first thing you should do is reduce your internal duplicate content as much as possible.  Internal duplicate content is given the most weight when evaluating duplicate content intake because internal duplication is within the website owner control and too much internal duplication looks spammy and manipulative.

Next you should syndicate about 20% of your content, i.e. syndicate no more than 2 posts every 10 blog posts written.  This will keep you under the duplication radar and give your website a good balance of syndicated/unique content.  Syndicating content allows you to spread the word quicker and expands your reach.

You next need to find authoritative publication resources where you can syndicate your content.  Here are at least 10 to start with:

1. EzineArticles
2. Buzzle
3. Associated Content
4. WordPress.com
5. Squidoo
6. HubPages
7. Scribd
8. LiveJournal
9. Blogger
10. Ning

It’s not enough to just submit your content to these resources — relevancy and targeting is what will get you deserving results.  You need to create a profile which is relevant and targets your niche.  Include a headshot photo and website logo to enhance your profile.   Include an about me description.  Add your first article.

When writing your article ensure that you have done keyword research and analysis to target the most efficient keywords.  You should not target any more than 5 keywords (or 1 keyword every 200-300 words).  If possible include an in-content article photo with each publication.  Optimize the image with keywords for the alt text and image name.  Make sure the article title contains target keywords,  if possible include an H1 or H2 head tag which include target keywords, and the article body should repeat the keywords at least once every 200-300 words.  This will make certain your article is well optimized.

If you want to ensure that you protect yourself  against any potential duplicate content issues then I’d advise rewriting the article so that it is unique from the original article found on your website.  To do so, rewrite the article title, rewrite the first paragraph of the article entirely, rewrite the first sentence of every paragraph thereafter, and rewrite the very last paragraph in its entirety.  Then check the article via copyscape with the article published on your website.  This will ensure you have a unique article for syndication and reduce the risk of duplicate content issues on your own domain.

If you choose not to rewrite the article then your next course of action is to make certain from each article you syndicate include a link back to the original article found on your website.  This will help search engines determine the original article and give proper credit.

After submitting your article, you should build your social map.  Join groups which relate to your niche.  Add friends who share your same interest.  Participate in discussions and leave commetns.  Share content on a regular basis.

This type of process will help you take advantage of duplicate content so you can grow your business and website.  Duplicate content has the potential to be advantageous if done correctly.  Duplicate content is not something which can be avoided 100% and the search engines know this, that is why they are not as cruel to ban or penalize a website for duplicate content unless mass duplication exist, but if less than 20% of your website’s content is duplicated then it is more than likely that search engines will overlook the duplicates without any penalization or banment.  However, filteration will always occur within the search result pages because search engines do not want to show the same listing in top 10 listings, this is why you link back to the original from the duplicates so proper credit is given, but in many cases the domain which the duplicate content is found on will be too authoritative to deny credit or rank so there a risk exist.

If you include duplicate content onto your website pages, then the strategy is to find content resources which are less valued than your domain.  This will essentially give you a better chance of ranking for the duplicate content over its originator.  However, most PLR’s require that you add a link back to the original article, which may hurt your chance of ranking for the content!  But with the proper use of the “nofollow” attribute anything is possible.  Be creative!

Like hundreds of other people, I anticipated that Google would eventually come out with their own operating system to compete with Microsoft OS.  Google finally officially announced Google Chrome OS.  This news is no surprise, but I am surprised by the brazen attitude of Google, such as this statement

we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

As large as Google is they should understand a bit more about technology and security.  Every operating system will need to deal with security updates and if not, then it’s not an operating system, its a dummy terminal, with the OS hosted elsewhere.  As Google seems to want it, the entire OS will be web-based, so you spend very little time on the OS itself and most of your time on the Internet.  Now the truth is, most people use the Internet 90% of the time when on the computer so this wouldn’t be a far cry from reality, but for your OS to rely on the Internet to function may be a bit much, because I would think this puts limits on your control and customization.

Here’s another comment made from Google

We hear a lot from our users and their message is clear — computers need to get better. People want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up. They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them.

Now, if a person’s biggest complaint is waiting the 1-2 minutes for a computer to boot up and browser to load then these are some impatient bastards.  Sure, it will be nice to not have to wait and if I have to sacrifice the control and customization of an OS because I’ve rather have instant access then “no thanks”, becuase I like having an OS where I can control and customize with all stored on my local hard-drive, not stored elsewhere — where if a failure happens I have no recourse.  I think it’s senseless for Google to think a computer will have no boot time or load time and you still call it an operating system.  I’d love to see them pull this off with a true operating system.

The last “eat your words” comment Google made is

Even more importantly, they don’t want to spend hours configuring their computers to work with every new piece of hardware, or have to worry about constant software updates.

Are you serious?  So you’re telling me that you are going to create the perfect OS where I’ll never have to configure or install firmware again!  Even when the latest technology comes out!  Right!  I think seriously, Microsoft has the best handle on plug-n-play technology

Google you have a lot of things to figure out!  Right now I am watching you eat your words because I am not convinced and not a believer.  I honestly do not think you can pull it off in the way where an OS is completely hands-off and idiot-proofed behind what Microsoft has already accomplished.  All I can say is make me eat my words.