Syndicating my content = lower rankings?

[vtotheyouknow]

I have 3 websites in the music niche and I've written a ton of articles that could easily be posted on all 3 websites.

In addition to that, I also have unique articles devoted to each site only.

Would Google view that as partially duplicate content and penalize me in the SERPs? Anybody have experience with this?

Thanks!
Vic

[PatriciaJ]

Duplicate content is when you place the same content on your site twice. If you put the same article on different sites you are syndicating it.

I have 3 music sites too and some of the articles are a fit for all of them, never had any problems and get some really good traffic.

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by vtotheyouknow

Would Google view that as partially duplicate content and penalize me in the SERPs?

No.

Google would view it as partly syndicated content and not penalize you in the SERP's.

It's true, though, that two of the three sites may not gain as much in SEO terms as they would perhaps have done if, instead of syndicating some of the content, you had put only previously unpublished content on all three sites. So, in that sense, there can be some "opportunity cost", but only when compared with a potential benefit from something different which you haven't done. But a "penalty"? No - absolutely not. (Some people selling "spinning software" like to try to pretend that that's a "penalty". It's largely because of the misguided and sometimes plain dishonest information they have an incentive to promote that people so often misunderstand this whole subject, and that one of the longest-running urban myths of internet marketing is continually perpetuated and propagated.)

This is among the many reasons why professional article marketers take care to have their content published and indexed on their own site before submitting it to any article directories. The article directories may not gain much in SEO terms from the syndicated material, but the original site-owner is in no way "penalized".

A lot of the incidental commentary in this fine thread gives a lot more detail about the answer to your question.

[vtotheyouknow]

Thanks guys!

Alexa, as an aside, every reply you make to a thread is thoughtful, thorough and bubbling with good vibes. Thanks a million!

Vic