SHOCKING: Is it just a ploy or not?!

[Emmanuel Betinis]

WOW!

My jaw just dropped while reading through some information on this forum about submitting the same article more than once in different places/different directories online. Really! For two years I've been busting my butt making sure I do not EVER post the same article twice ANYWHERE. Please excuse my ignorance here, but this is like a breath of fresh air to me RIGHT NOW although to some of you it may be old news. I have noticed some significant differences in knowledge and how information is exchanged between fellow marketers in this forum when compared to other forums like the SEO Elite/Keyword Elite (great products) forums. I have been "programmed" over the past couple years in "other" forums to believe that this duplicate content rule is something I, as an internet marketer, REALLY need to watch. With that being said, naturally I have a few thoughts and questions I'd now like to vent and express as I feel a sense of new hope blossoming from the pit of my stomach as I type this...

So, granted this "duplicate content rule" is indeed a MYTH, you're all saying I could in theory (heck, and in practice) write ONE SINGLE article, post it to 100 DIFFERENT article directories without modifying A TINCH of the ENTIRE article, and as long as:

a.) that single article is NOT found as being a duplicate on any of the 100 article directories I submitted to
and
b.) the page's domain the article points to in the resource box of the article also does not contain the duplicate article

...THEN it's "A-OK" and will count as a wonderful and powerful backlink (granted it's theme-relevant) and will NOT be "penalized" by Google & others? Is this correct?

Also, about "spreading your submissions out over time" such as submitting a few articles per day: this makes complete sense because it looks "natural" to the SEs...but even if I submitted the same article to 50 directories all in one day, directory owners don't all approve their articles on the same day...so wouldn't the article 'approval' dates/times during this 'approval' process of the article on those 50 different directories still be 'staggered' in that they won't all approve the article at the same time on the same day (more than likely anyway) resulting in what appears to then still be a "nice, natural spread out submission" anyway?

Now, if this dupe content truly is a myth then what's up with the "big dogs" like Brad Callen & Co. talking about it like the plague? And then what's with all these "article spinner" softwares out there? This "MYTH-BUST" you're all bringing up here today is then basically saying they're all useless and crap pieces of software then, right (for purposes of "getting around" the supposed "dupe rule")? If my points and lines of questioning here are valid in this paragraph as well, then is this 'more than likely' than just a ploy for 'article spinner software creators/marketers' to make money off naive/newbie/misinformed internet marketers? If so, would it then be fair to say they've had us (the ones that believed in the myth) working WAY harder than necessary all this time when it comes to article writing & submission?

Any type of contribution to this specific topic will be greatly appreciated.

P.S. I'm also doing a test myself currently with a keyword search phrase using only a single article completely unchanged with each submission on hundreds of directories across the web.

[Kay King]

Except for occasional mass submissions I think you'll find most don't submit to hundreds of sites - only to the top sites that are well known and have high traffic. Some who do mass submissions submit several forms of the same article - some submit the same article.

You're over analyzing. The term "duplicate content" is so easy to discuss that it is discussed endlessly and explained wrongly in many cases. There is also a supplemental index - but even that isn't a concern for those writing original articles to promote their sites. You will see the term "duplicate content penalty" used - but fact is that penalty did not apply to articles at all but to a way sites were being constructed.

All you need to know is that you cannot plagiarize yourself - your goal in submitting to a directory is not only for a "link" - but in the hope other site owners will want to publish your article on their site (with your bio box intact). When that happens, think of it as "viral" instead of "duplicate".

Some top directories aren't interested in articles that have already been published elsewhere - but you can publish your article on your site and also to directories.

You don't need to know everything about it - just that it's not a problem when you are writing your own articles. Article marketing (for someone who can write well) is one of the easiest free marketing tools you can use - maybe that's why people are so focused on making it seem complex.

kay

[Emmanuel Betinis]

I appreciate your prompt reply, Ms. King.

Originally Posted by Kay King

...but fact is that penalty did not apply to articles at all but to a way sites were being constructed.

Interesting...

Originally Posted by Kay King

Some top directories aren't interested in articles that have already been published elsewhere

Why is this (since "duplicate content" isn't a problem/penalty with my own self-written articles)?

Originally Posted by Kay King

Article marketing (for someone who can write well) is one of the easiest free marketing tools you can use - maybe that's why people are so focused on making it seem complex.

Perhaps. I have the type of "do it right and right only" type of personality that can be terribly crippling to my online business efforts at times.

[sylviad]

Hi,

You will find many differing views on article submissions and duplication. Some will tell you to modify your article slightly for each directory, ie: give it a new title, change/rewrite a few paragraphs.

One problem you might run into by submitting the same article to hundreds of sites will come from the directories themselves. If the editors scan to see if it's original and find that every directory on the planet carries it, they might refuse to publish it.

Also, having your same article all over the place won't mean it will get picked up by a google search from every one of those sites. Google will not produce all 100 results for your article.

It's better to have different articles so that google picks up as many as possible per search, or at least more than one. This is much less likely to happen otherwise.

As far as article spinners go, they are only as good as their users. They switch sections around. You can rewrite a few paragraphs and the software will mix and match at random. If you do not produce those alternate paragraphs properly, the article will no longer make sense, or will be less effective.

You have to rewrite each paragraph in the context of the entire article, not just as a stand-alone paragraph. That's the error many article spinner users make.

For best results, post 5 different articles to 5 top directories (EzineArticles, ArticleDashboard, SearchWarp, GoArticles and IdeaMarketers for instance) in the hope google will pick up more than one during a search. Post a different article to as many other directories as you want just to get the backlink credits.

I hope this helps.

Sylvia

[effektz]

Yeah it's hard to get punished for dupe content unless it's posted anywhere and everywhere, that's my experience anyway

[Emmanuel Betinis]

I really appreciate everyone's efforts and replies here so far.

With all due respect, I was looking for a more straight-up & simple YES/NO answer to the 3 questions of the OP. But it seems as if I've found the concrete answers I was looking for on my own. I feel it's only right for me to now bring closure to myself, this thread, and anyone else that stumbles across it in the future that may have had the same "loose ends" in their head about this topic as I did...

So...my main question that I bolded in the OP was:

Originally Posted by anapest

WOW!

So, granted this "duplicate content rule" is indeed a MYTH, you're all saying I could in theory (heck, and in practice) write ONE SINGLE article, post it to 100 DIFFERENT article directories without modifying A TINCH of the ENTIRE article, and as long as:

a.) that single article is NOT found as being a duplicate on any of the 100 article directories I submitted to
and
b.) the page's domain the article points to in the resource box of the article also does not contain the duplicate article

...THEN it's "A-OK" and will count as a wonderful and powerful backlink (granted it's theme-relevant) and will NOT be "penalized" by Google & others? Is this correct?

THE ANSWER: Yes, this is correct. The following information was taken from Articles, Duplicate Content - Myth and Fact | JR's Internet Marketing Strategies:


================================================== =====
ARTICLES AND DUPLICATE CONTENT - FACT AND MYTH

MYTH: You have to use some article spinner software, to change your articles around or you will get slapped by Google for submitting the same article to different article sites.

FACT: Totally UNTRUE and doesn’t even make sense. I can and do all the time, submit the same article to thousands of sites with Article Marketer and they always show up in search results for the keywords, some rank higher than others, depending on the article site, but they will all be there.

MYTH: Google will slap you for submitting the same article to different article sites.

FACT: Umm, okay how would they do this? In reality, logistically there is no way that Google can penalize the author even if they wanted to, which they don’t.

If, in reality, Google penalized for duplicate articles the logic would follow that G would have to penalize the article sites for publishing the duplicates and that would mean that there would be no article sites left since they often feature the same article submitted by the same author that is also published on other sites.

And, then would it also follow that if same articles were considered duplicate content, the millions of sites that syndicate and disburse articles and news feeds, such as that from the Associated Press, would have been banned long ago.

FACT: Duplicate Content has nothing to do with the submitting the same article. Duplicate content refers to the significantly noticeable duplicated content within the SAME domain or across multiple domains.
================================================== =====

Also, Google recently posted a very comprehensive post about duplicate content on their Webmaster Central Blog that will hopefully crush the myths forever and end the constant barage of hype that exists about duplicate content, read it at: Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Demystifying the "duplicate content penalty"


To conclude, even though 2 out of 3 questions of the OP still remain unanswered, I hope this post helps individuals in the future since the primary question stated above is cleared up quite well.

[Buster Iversen]

I would imagine that posting it 10 different places would not be a problem in any way but if you post it 100 different places it might be another story.

Anyway the only way to know for sure how it works is to get a job at google working on their search algorithm.

[Angela V. Edwards]

Why in the world would Brad Callen propagate a myth like this when he sells "article distribution" software that distributes the same article to multiple article directories?

[Kay King]

Why is this (since "duplicate content" isn't a problem/penalty with my own self-written articles)?

Simply because they want the ranking for original articles perhaps. I think (not sure as I've never had a problem with it) EZA may require this. That doesn't stop you publishing to other articles directories - but it's wise to submit to the higher ranked ones first anyway, I'd think.

Isn't it great to find something that doesn't take as much work as you thought?

kay

[Emmanuel Betinis]

Originally Posted by Buster Iversen

I would imagine that posting it 10 different places would not be a problem in any way but if you post it 100 different places it might be another story.

NO...

It doesn't matter. The theory is, regardless of the # of duplicate articles, if they are all on DIFFERENT DOMAINS (As resolved once and for all stated in my colored/bolded post above) it's fine. Since it's unnecessary to copy-paste/repeat the answer again as stated above please refer to JR's Internet Marketing Strategies that I have stated above as he conducted this test himself (along with many other internet marketers online including myself currently conducting a small test as we speak/type).

Originally Posted by Buster Iversen

Anyway the only way to know for sure how it works is to get a job at google working on their search algorithm.

Well, not exactly...

Another way to know for sure that it works (rather than HOW) is to test and try it yourself, right?

Originally Posted by Angela V. Edwards

Why in the world would Brad Callen propagate a myth like this when he sells "article distribution" software that distributes the same article to multiple article directories?

Because...

He sells "Article Submitter" AND "Article Spinner" - what a great upsell. You can't have the fries without the ketchup, right?
(Well, I could...I actually prefer ranch)

Originally Posted by Kay King

Isn't it great to find something that doesn't take as much work as you thought?

Absolutely. And also to find something that doesn't take as much money (in this case the 'something' is knowledge).

[Bishop81]

If you could get penalized in Google by having the same article posted at several sites, then you would be able to harm others that you're competing against by simply spreading their articles out to those sites instead of yours.

As you can see, in the end it just doesn't make sense. Don't you want other people to pull your articles (bio box intact, of course) and use them on their sites? If duplicate content was a problem, then every time somebody did this it would hurt your rankings.

[Angela V. Edwards]

Originally Posted by Bishop81

If you could get penalized in Google by having the same article posted at several sites, then you would be able to harm others that you're competing against by simply spreading their articles out to those sites instead of yours.

As you can see, in the end it just doesn't make sense. Don't you want other people to pull your articles (bio box intact, of course) and use them on their sites? If duplicate content was a problem, then every time somebody did this it would hurt your rankings.

Exactly. And it would also hurt EZA and GoArticle's rankings, since the same articles appear on THEIR sites as well. But they are both a Page Rank 6 and both have EXCELLENT Search Engine Placement.

[Emmanuel Betinis]

Yep.

Awesome.

Thanks for participating, guys/gals.

[LivingCovers]

Wow!!! This are tips one can't do without as an Affiliate
Marketer. Great resource all put together in one place.

[Emmanuel Betinis]

I'm glad you enjoyed it. I sure did!

[Michael Lee]

Some well-known marketers say that you should submit unique content everytime to EACH directory or content-sharing site, because the duplicate content rule is posting only one instance of the same article when someone searches for keywords related to it.

However, there have been many cases where I've been submitting the very same article to a number of directories, and that article often occupies many spots in the search engines.

[Emmanuel Betinis]

Originally Posted by Michael Lee

Some well-known marketers say that you should submit unique content everytime to EACH directory or content-sharing site, because the duplicate content rule is posting only one instance of the same article when someone searches for keywords related to it.

However, there have been many cases where I've been submitting the very same article to a number of directories, and that article often occupies many spots in the search engines.

Interesting. Why would the "well-known marketers" want to lie to us? Perhaps to leverage their own efforts (granted IF this is true)?

[Emmanuel Betinis]

I'll be posting a video of the information from Articles, Duplicate Content - Myth and Fact | JR's Internet Marketing Strategies because it helps to see a VISUAL REPRESENTATION/EXPLANATION to help clarify thoughts in your mind. It will be interesting to see reactions/thoughts to this since it will be going against what many marketers were told/thought/practice. However, the techniques have been proven to work. Until then...

[Emmanuel Betinis]

YouTube - Article Marketing - Is Duplicate...

Refer to Articles, Duplicate Content - Myth and Fact | JR's Internet Marketing Strategies while watching.

Also, the Google blog entry about this at Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Demystifying the "duplicate content penalty"

[GeorgR.]

i think that the "duplicate content" penalty especially for articles is WAY overrated.

I see my sites getting indexed well...even with the "so called" bad duplicate content.

If it were the case Google penalizes for "duplicate articles"...it would indeed penalize the fact that goood articles go viral....eg. if i post an article on EZA and it goes viral on whatever other article site and blog...WTF should i get penalized for this?

I think its nonsense and not too much to worry about.

[magentawave]

Originally Posted by anapest

YouTube - Article Marketing - Is Duplicate Content A Problem?

Refer to Articles, Duplicate Content - Myth and Fact | JR's Internet Marketing Strategies while watching.

Also, the Google blog entry about this at Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Demystifying the "duplicate content penalty"

Good stuff, thanks for posting!

Steve

[Emmanuel Betinis]

My pleasure.

[FrediDoo]

Anapest, just wanted to share a great, resounding, THANKYOU for this post! Also, in your original post you mentioned that you were testing out the whole, "single article to many places" thing - how did that one go?

[Jon Alexander]

Actually, it's not fine.

You post the same article to multiple different sites, all sorts of things will happen.

Mostly excluding the things you WANT to happen.

If you don't understand why that is, you need to step back and have a little think.

Imagine YOU were a search engine.

Go on, give it a go.

Imagine you found the same old same old on multiple domains.


What conclusions would your draw about the domains, the person who posted the stuff, and the sites the stuff is promoting?

Go on. Give it go.

[Emmanuel Betinis]

Originally Posted by Jon Alexander

Actually, it's not fine.

You post the same article to multiple different sites, all sorts of things will happen.

Mostly excluding the things you WANT to happen.

If you don't understand why that is, you need to step back and have a little think.

Imagine YOU were a search engine.

Go on, give it a go.

Imagine you found the same old same old on multiple domains.


What conclusions would your draw about the domains, the person who posted the stuff, and the sites the stuff is promoting?

Go on. Give it go.

I did. Did you?

[Emmanuel Betinis]

Originally Posted by FrediDoo

Anapest, just wanted to share a great, resounding, THANKYOU for this post! Also, in your original post you mentioned that you were testing out the whole, "single article to many places" thing - how did that one go?

Awesome...you're welcome.

By the way, the test was GREAT! I dominated 3 out of the 10 positions of Google on page one for the term I was going for (and they were all from different article directories!).


EDIT: And just for your own help, the three directories that "stuck" were:

1.) eZine articles
2.) GoArticles
3.) Arcamax (This was was weird because I wasn't expecting this directory to kick so much butt for me - one day I got 250 visitors from this single article alone)

[Emmanuel Betinis]

UPDATE: On the second page of Google a 4th article is in the 11th position (Amazines) along with a Digg.com version of it in the 17th position of page 2.


So, so far I'm hitting 5 spots in the first 2 pages of the SERPs in Google (3 of which are on page 1).

[FrediDoo]

Ta for the detailed reply! But I think the main thing is, where is your main site sitting in the rankings?

[Nick.A]

Interesting thread and excellent results achieved, Emmanuel!

Originally Posted by anapest

UPDATE: On the second page of Google a 4th article is in the 11th position (Amazines) along with a Digg.com version of it in the 17th position of page 2.


So, so far I'm hitting 5 spots in the first 2 pages of the SERPs in Google (3 of which are on page 1).

[Emmanuel Betinis]

Originally Posted by FrediDoo

Ta for the detailed reply! But I think the main thing is, where is your main site sitting in the rankings?

FrediDoo, good question...although the main thing actually is whether or not Google will index/display duplicate content articles. Nonetheless, as to not ignore your question, my site is still in the "evaluation" period of you will...it was on the first page, then dropped off the SERPs for a while, now it's in the 600-something position (This, in my experience, by the way, is normal in the beginning phases of a brand new page being introduced to Google - especially if it is not from an authority domain having aged backlinks pointing to it such as mine in this example).

Despite the fact that the main topic here is duplicate articles how they are ranked and if they even show up and stick in the SERPs, I will keep you notified as to the status of the actual page the articles are pointing to as time goes on as well.

[Emmanuel Betinis]

YouTube - Article Marketing - Is Duplicate...

[Nick.A]

Hey Emmanuel,

I think I am right in saying that a number of article directories including ArcaMax and GoArticles distribute their articles by email. So it's no surprise to hear that you are getting traffic to your webpage via clicks in emails.

[tommygadget]

Oh, it is a bad idea to submit to all the directories all at once. Spread the links over time for a more natural profile.

TomG.

[James Schramko]

Just get it out there. Stop being overly strategic.

Think MULTI media channels and you can re-purpose that content over and over again. Articles, web 2.0, blogs etc...

[Love2Blog]

Originally Posted by anapest

Interesting. Why would the "well-known marketers" want to lie to us? Perhaps to leverage their own efforts (granted IF this is true)?

LOL, they don't lie, they are just clueless!! The dupe content myth is the biggest crock on the net. The only dupe content that is penalized are mirror sites that are built with the intention of manipulating the SERPS.

ARTICLE MARKETING IS NOT DUPLICATE CONTENT and NEVER HAS BEEN!

You can submit the same article to a 1000 sites and it is NOT dupe content!

JR

[Love2Blog]

Originally Posted by tommygadget

Oh, it is a bad idea to submit to all the directories all at once. Spread the links over time for a more natural profile.

TomG.

Another myth, it takes time for all submissions to get approved, whether it's articles or directory links, they do not all just appear overnight, even if you submitted 10 articles a day you would not get 3,000 links all at once, it takes time for approval, and the approval is not simultaneous and neither is the crawl rate.

[redicelander]

Well, why do you think article sites have the publishing button? If you can publish somebody else's article then that is a duplicate copy of that person's article being put somewhere on the net, right? Funny that that simple detail didn't turn you on to this earlier.

Also, in the OP, regarding your "b.", that also does not seem to be a problem at least according to the author of this Warrior thread:

Step By Step - How to get the MOST out of an Ezine Article!

[Emmanuel Betinis]

Originally Posted by FrediDoo

Ta for the detailed reply! But I think the main thing is, where is your main site sitting in the rankings?

Originally Posted by anapest

FrediDoo, good question...although the main thing actually is whether or not Google will index/display duplicate content articles. Nonetheless, as to not ignore your question, my site is still in the "evaluation" period of you will...it was on the first page, then dropped off the SERPs for a while, now it's in the 600-something position (This, in my experience, by the way, is normal in the beginning phases of a brand new page being introduced to Google - especially if it is not from an authority domain having aged backlinks pointing to it such as mine in this example).

Despite the fact that the main topic here is duplicate articles how they are ranked and if they even show up and stick in the SERPs, I will keep you notified as to the status of the actual page the articles are pointing to as time goes on as well.

It has been 2 months and 5 days since my last post about this topic.

FrediDoo, as I said I would do, I am updating you on the progress of my test.

Current status 2 months later: #5 in Google (out of 24,200,000 competitors).

[milan]

Originally Posted by Love2Blog

Another myth, it takes time for all submissions to get approved, whether it's articles or directory links, they do not all just appear overnight, even if you submitted 10 articles a day you would not get 3,000 links all at once, it takes time for approval, and the approval is not simultaneous and neither is the crawl rate.

That's not entirely true. "All at the same time" doesn't strictly mean "all at the same day" for Google. The very obvious reason for them to have the tolerance built in is because Google wouldn't crawl all the pages in a day, wouldn't find all the links at the same day even if they would go all live at the same day.

So, yes, you can over do it, but you're right: it's hard to over do it. It's quite harder to over do it than most of the scared people think.

I've over done with directory submissions (last time a year ago), where your way of thinking would apply too (don't get approved at the same time). This happened to 2 sites of mine: the traffic from Google went to literally 0 for about 3 months, then it came out of the sandbox.

I believe it's not so much about overdoing it, but about a quite unnatural linking pattern. For example, it's not natural to have hundreds and hundreds of links to appear in a couple of days and than nothing. That just doesn't happen naturally. Even if a site has their own moment of fame: it can't stop all at once, it must gradually lose it's popularity even if it loses the popularity in 2 days, it doesn't just stop at once.

[Droopy Dawg]

Google will only slap YOUR SITE if it has the same content on multiple pages under your one domain.

If you think Google cares about dupe content... find a PLR article... any PLR article, and just type the title into google and see what happens.

The first 6 or 7 results under that title will be the same article posted in different places.

[Chris Lockwood]

Originally Posted by anapest

Interesting. Why would the "well-known marketers" want to lie to us? Perhaps to leverage their own efforts (granted IF this is true)?

It's not so much lying as the fact that many of them do not know nearly as much about things as they'd like you to believe.

Just because someone is famous doesn't mean everything they say is correct.