It has to be one of the most asked questions I get and most confusing topics for online marketers to figure out – the rules to follow with respect to duplicate content.
Specifically, questions come up about…
- Should I submit the same article I post on my website to a mass number of article distribution directories?
- Should I have the same version of an article appearing on multiple pages of my own site (say a front page, an article archive and a blog?)
- If I do submit an article to a directory (say Ezinearticles.com), should I change the content of the article when posting to my own site, should I just reference the article or should I reference my original content on my website from the syndicated article?
- If I post content to my WordPress blog and, as a result, it appears on many parts of the blog (daily, weekly, monthly archives for example) do I get penalized?
- What is the impact of Google finding duplicate copies of my content – do I get penalized? How do they determine what is original and who should get the most credit for the article
There is so much noise on SEO forums, articles and websites that is frankly just someone’s opinion, most of which is bound to be problematic advice.
I’m not sure any of these questions can be answered 100% by Google publicly because they must also we wary of the vast army of miscretes who are constantly trying to mis-use their search engine for evil.
To begin with – here are two sources of information you should check out before all others…
Google Webmaster Central Blog Post On Duplicate Content
This posting should clear up 99% of the questions you have about "what is duplicate content", "what Google does with duplicate content", "how to avoid duplicate content issues" and much more.
Recently, Google engineer Matt Cutts also posted to his blog regarding the topic of duplicate content – definitely worth a read…
Basic advice is…
1. Continue to develop lots of interesting and valuable content and you will benefit
2. Don’t try blackhat or even grey-hat techniques for fooling search engines into making your content appear more than it is
3. Be creative with your use of content…understand that you have a valuable piece of content that may be useful in a number of ways – both online and offline.
Jeff
