Article Marketing and Duplicate Content: Myths?

[lirikh]

Hey, I was just wondering how does google take in account duplicate content on article directories. For example, you have 5 articles on your own website. After they have been indexed on your site, you take them separately and submit them to the top 10 directories -- without spinning or modifying anything.

I heard there is no such thing as duplicate content on article directories, as it gets syndicated. Do you think google will penalize me if I post the same articles on article directories?

Thanks

[dburk]

Hi lirikh,

What you heard is either utter nonsense, or taken out of context. Article syndication indeed does create duplicate content.

What you may have misunderstood is that there is no duplicate content penalty, however there is a duplicate content filter. Google applies the filter on SERP pages to provide users with more diverse results.

[Kecia]

Duplicate content only refers to the exact same article published multiple times on the same domain. You are free to take an article from your website - once it's been indexed - and submit it to 10 or more article directories.

[Kurt]

Originally Posted by Kecia

Duplicate content only refers to the exact same article published multiple times on the same domain. You are free to take an article from your website - once it's been indexed - and submit it to 10 or more article directories.

Actually, here's Google's definition:

Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar.

Duplicate content - Webmaster Tools Help

[dburk]

Originally Posted by Kecia

Duplicate content only refers to the exact same article published multiple times on the same domain. You are free to take an article from your website - once it's been indexed - and submit it to 10 or more article directories.

Hi Kecia,

What Kurt said.

[lirikh]

@Kurt Yeah that's exactly what I heard too. Duplicate content can only happen within its own domain range, for instance two same pages from the same domain name.

So if you take your article, and publish it to different article directories -- meaning they have different domain names -- no duplicate content will be found.

So my question is this: why do people spin their articles?

[dnwn]

Originally Posted by Kurt

Actually, here's Google's definition:

So you understand that we cannot submit original articles that is indexed to article directories?

[Kurt]

Originally Posted by lirikh

@Kurt Yeah that's exactly what I heard too. Duplicate content can only happen within its own domain range, for instance two same pages from the same domain name.

So if you take your article, and publish it to different article directories -- meaning they have different domain names -- no duplicate content will be found.

So my question is this: why do people spin their articles?

Originally Posted by dnwn

So you understand that we cannot submit original articles that is indexed to article directories?

As Don said above, there isn't a "penalty", but there is a filter. One reason to spin is to get around the filter.

However, this adds another risk and if you followed the link I posted above, Google looks for "malicious" doop content, which probably includes spinning. So the question becomes, do you spin well enough to avoid the penalty from malicious content?

[lirikh]

Originally Posted by Kurt

As Don said above, there isn't a "penalty", but there is a filter. One reason to spin is to get around the filter.

However, this adds another risk and if you followed the link I posted above, Google looks for "malicious" doop content, which probably includes spinning. So the question becomes, do you spin well enough to avoid the penalty from malicious content?

Hmmm this doesn't make sense.. What you're saying is duplicate content has no "penalty", but spin content can get the penalty.

[Kurt]

Originally Posted by lirikh

Hmmm this doesn't make sense.. What you're saying is duplicate content has no "penalty", but spin content can get the penalty.

No...It isn't what I'm saying, it's what Google is saying. Read the page I linked to.

[dburk]

Originally Posted by lirikh

Hmmm this doesn't make sense.. What you're saying is duplicate content has no "penalty", but spin content can get the penalty.

Hi lirikh,

It makes perfect sense to me. The penalty referred to is not a penalty for duplicate content, it is penalty for link schemes designed to manipulate PageRank. A specific example would be a Doorway or Bridge page, which are both a violation of Google's webmaster guidelines.

[lirikh]

Originally Posted by dburk

Hi lirikh,

It makes perfect sense to me. The penalty referred to is not a penalty for duplicate content, it is penalty for link schemes designed to manipulate PageRank. A specific example would be a Doorway or Bridge page, which are both a violation of Google's webmaster guidelines.

I still don't understand then why do people spin their articles if there's a risk to get penalized for link schemes when they can just submit the same article and benefit as much without getting the risk for penalty. Sorry if this is confusing.

Thank you.

[dburk]

Originally Posted by lirikh

I still don't understand then why do people spin their articles if there's a risk to get penalized for link schemes when they can just submit the same article and benefit as much without getting the risk for penalty. Sorry if this is confusing.

Thank you.

Hi lirikh,

Any time you rewrite an article you are spinning the content by creating alternate versions of the content. This is true weather you use a tool or not, however when one speaks of spinning articles on this forum they are generally referring to placing their alternate versions into a special spin syntax that can be processed by a spinning tool.

When you spin an article you are simply creating new content. How you use your content is a completely different matter. The penalty isn't for duplicate, nor spun content the penalty has nothing to do with either of those. The penalty is for how you are using your content, regardless of whether it is original, duplicate or spun.

[Kurt]

Originally Posted by lirikh

I still don't understand then why do people spin their articles if there's a risk to get penalized for link schemes when they can just submit the same article and benefit as much without getting the risk for penalty. Sorry if this is confusing.

Thank you.

There's a number of reasons people choose to spin.

They could be mistaken about a doop content penalty.

They want to have more than one articles rank, dodging the doop content filter.

They want to use different keywords so they can rank for different keywords.

And, just because there's no doop content penalty doesn't necessarily mean there isn't an "original content bonus".

[SEOBestTips]

Since panda update we have seen a lot of evidence proving that duplicate content has been penalized, as many of the article directories have lost massive organic traffic and rankings. I.e. ezinearticles. Thus they have made serious revisions to try and fix this mess and eliminate the spammy/spun duped content.

What is most important is for you to always write your own UNIQUE content.. Google is focused on those individuals who steal/scrape content from other sites, than spin it and re-submit with their links. This is a sure way to get penalized, because Google can detect duped/scraped content using N-grams and similar algorithms.

If you create your own content, spin it, and submit it to many directories. You will gain more weight than just submitting the exact same article because the variation will allow your backlinks to not be de-valued and combined as quickly. If its identical in content, Google will de-value all the links until you only receive weight from the original, highest quality submission.

[Kurt]

Originally Posted by SEOBestTips

Since panda update we have seen a lot of evidence proving that duplicate content has been penalized, as many of the article directories have lost massive organic traffic and rankings. I.e. ezinearticles. Thus they have made serious revisions to try and fix this mess and eliminate the spammy/spun duped content.

What is most important is for you to always write your own UNIQUE content.. Google is focused on those individuals who steal/scrape content from other sites, than spin it and re-submit with their links. This is a sure way to get penalized, because Google can detect duped/scraped content using N-grams and similar algorithms.

If you create your own content, spin it, and submit it to many directories. You will gain more weight than just submitting the exact same article because the variation will allow your backlinks to not be de-valued and combined as quickly. If its identical in content, Google will de-value all the links until you only receive weight from the original, highest quality submission.

Which is why a good spinner, by that I mean a person not a program, knows how to vary n-grams and text vectors.

[SEOBestTips]

Absolutely, there's nothing better than human intelligence and doing things right!!

[NRC1983]

I am more inclined to think it is more of a duplicate content on the same domain, I have a blog, alot of which is duplicate content ( not same article on the same domain, but the same article somewhere else on the web), it has hardly any backlinks ( never bothered to build any) and it has a higher page rank then my current site with tons of backlinks and lots of original content and also ranks higher in google...

[Sabrina178]

Originally Posted by SEOBestTips

Absolutely, there's nothing better than human intelligence and doing things right!!

you nailed it