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What' The Truth on Duplicate Content

by blogsy
15 replies
Originally Posted by BIG Mike View Post

Hot Damn - Finally someone with some freaking common sense!

When you post an article to a directory like EZA, in theory at least, that article will be picked up and published on hundreds or thousands of sites. And yet, no one is penalized for it.

When you publish an RSS Feed to an aggregator, tens of thousands of sites will be displaying your feed (again in theory) and search engines don't have a problem with it.

The same is true for Press Releases...and Social Bookmarking, Blogging, yada, yada, yada. Not to mention resellers of various products - I was searching for View Sonic monitors the other day and came up with tons of "duplicate" content between all of the distributors.

I've never believed in spinning articles and agree it's a total waste of time. I've tried it in the past and honestly? the results were no better/worse than with duplicate articles.

Of course now the article spinner set are going to flame me, because they're the only ones promoting the concept...obviously because they profit from it.

So I'll ask them this in advance - show me hard, cold facts that prove spun articles will out-perform unspun articles. Then show me factually how search engines respond to duplicate content.

Trust me...if article spinners really outperformed duplicating articles, I'd have built and be selling one
Based on the quote above from Big Mike and others in another part of the forum all the article rewriting and spinning, etc, is just a waste of time, money and costly software. If this is true there is an awful of a unesessary work going on.

I have always doubted the duplicate content frenzy based on the logic above but I have never been completely game to ignor it either. Everybody keeps telling you to rewrite by hand or use rewrite software (or if you can't be bothered spin them) before submitting to the 100s of various directories, blogs, etc.

BIG MIKE ... let me get this crystal clear ... are you saying that if you write an article and submit it to EzineArticles wait until it's accepted, and then post the same unchanged article to as many different directories, etc, as you like, you will get the same results and benefits without any SE penalties ... Your saying if you had made the articles more unique by whatever means, that it would have been a total waste of time and effort from a linking and traffic point of view.
#content #duplicate #truth
  • Profile picture of the author JennJessop
    Oh Wow... I guess I have never thought of it that way. You know what makes me sad is the reason I had never thought of it that way is I was just following the pack. I don't know for sure one way or the other but it sure does give some food for thought.
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    • Profile picture of the author Kay King
      Logically I would think that uniquely written articles should outperform duplicate ones although I don't any prove of that. The reason I normally re-write articles that I have submitted to EZA which I use to post to other directories is to prevent EZA from penalizing me accusing me of using duplicate content. 07-14-2009 11:36 PM
      That's the kind of answer that confuses people. "Logically" - you can't duplicate yourself. Articles are not duplicated - they are syndicated.

      Unfortunately, some marketers trying to guess what google wants and end up doing hours of work they don't have to do. Google has been very clear that duplication does not apply to article marketing.

      You are over thinking what EZA is doing. Their rule is meant to prevent people from submitting PLR articles (unchanged) as their own and thus having one article claimed by several authors. If the article is your own, you won't have any problem with EZA or any other directory.

      It doesn't seem to matter how many times this is answered - some people refuse to believe it. Those of us who have been submitting articles (and never rewriting them) for years know it's not necessary.

      kay
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  • Profile picture of the author geolt7
    Logically I would think that uniquely written articles should outperform duplicate ones although I don't any prove of that. The reason I normally re-write articles that I have submitted to EZA which I use to post to other directories is to prevent EZA from penalizing me accusing me of using duplicate content.
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    • Profile picture of the author peter gibson
      Originally Posted by geolt7 View Post

      Logically I would think that uniquely written articles should outperform duplicate ones although I don't any prove of that.
      I have proof otherwise. The only thing that causes one page of content over another is the amount of effort put in to ranking that content. It is neither harder nor easier to rank content, regardless of where it is located (with the exception of the site's pre-existing PR and authority of course)

      Originally Posted by geolt7 View Post

      The reason I normally re-write articles that I have submitted to EZA which I use to post to other directories is to prevent EZA from penalizing me accusing me of using duplicate content.
      Ezine doesn't care a lick about your article showing up on different article directories in the exact same form. I've been at it for years and have never had one issue. Every article I wrote for my first year online went to 30 different directories EXACTLY as they were submitted to EZA. That reaches into the hundreds, if not thousands of articles. I have yet to receive one warning.

      All EZA is concerned with is that you are the 100% original owner/creator of said content.

      In the first place article directories have no business telling you NOT to place your work on other sites, unless they are paying for exclusive rights to your work. Imagine you wrote a killer song, and one radio station said you cannot play that song on other stations unless you change the lyrics or altered the bass and guitar line. Now imagine every radio station asking you to alter the same song.

      Secondly, when you alter your work for mass submission you may in fact be cutting or editing out some inherent quality from the initial work. As a result altering your articles for seperate directories can have a significant negative effect for the reader - who, in the end, is the person you most want to impress.
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  • Profile picture of the author webatomic
    I read a good article on this very subject today. Lemme try and dig it up:

    The Duplicate Content Penalty Myth

    and this:

    SEOmoz | The Illustrated Guide to Duplicate Content in the Search Engines
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  • Profile picture of the author peter gibson
    .. and click here to get the scoop on what a bunch of us think about the dupe content myth.

    http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...eza-first.html
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  • Profile picture of the author JennJessop
    WOW! this totally just rocked my world. I was taught and I think many others do teach as well to never use duplicate content, to always spin it. What a waste! Thank You SO Much. You guys have all just saved me a lot of time!
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    • Profile picture of the author peter gibson
      Originally Posted by JennJessop View Post

      WOW! this totally just rocked my world. I was taught and I think many others do teach as well to never use duplicate content, to always spin it. What a waste! Thank You SO Much. You guys have all just saved me a lot of time!
      Most of these "teachers" either have a vested interest in some article spinning software, or have otherwise been duped when they were just learning themselves. There has been a crap load of money made on article spinning software, and if you ask me (and many others 'round these parts) it is a complete waste of effort.
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  • Profile picture of the author Daredevil Marketing
    The issue of duplicate content seems to spur heated arguments on a lot of forums so I tend to stay away from it. The lack of disclosure that Google adheres to concerning their indexing policies tend to flame the tendencies for people to tightly adhere to their beliefs about dupe content rather and shun the conflicting data that sometimes surfaces.

    I've done my own extensive testing and from what I've found, dupe content on an authority site will most certainly outrank other sites that published the same content, many times even if the less authoritative site published it first.

    But that's certainly not always the case. But sometimes it is.

    I'm sure you see the problem with this answer - the problem is that I haven't got an answer for you.

    NOBODY DOES.

    So here's the general policy I have about my own published content.

    If it's content that I want to publish on one of my websites, I try very hard to ensure that all content is 100% original and I'll run it through Copyscape in the even that I have my doubts. If there is content that I know already exists but I know that my readers will find it useful I will still publish it but disallow it from being indexed via robots.txt

    (I generally use Yoast's wonderful "Meta Robots" Wordpress plugin for this)

    For Web 2.0 sites and article marketing aside from EzineArticles, Buzzle, and one or two others, I generally repurpose the same piece of content at least 9 or 10 times. Sometimes I'll change the intro around a bit, but most of the time I'll leave it alone. After all, these articles are for nothing more than for backlinks anyway.

    But like I said, for the MAIN article marketing sites I will ensure that all the content is 100% unique as well.

    I'll also repurpose the content in other ways as well. In .pdf format to be submitted to other places and shared and/or I will read them aloud into a microphone and put that audio in a video on YouTube. Additionally, I find that I can always repurpose the content into auto-responder series' as well.

    There really is no reason for one to tear their hair out trying to figure out what Google is up to because even if you ever did figure out what they were doing, they'd just change it a week later anyway.

    Hope this helps give some perspective on the issue.

    -DareDevil
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  • Profile picture of the author webatomic
    Makes me question my subscription to Unique Article Wizard for $67 per month. Seems like a big waste of money and time rewriting those articles!
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    • Profile picture of the author peter gibson
      Originally Posted by webatomic View Post

      Makes me question my subscription to Unique Article Wizard for $67 per month. Seems like a big waste of money and time rewriting those articles!
      67.00 puts 6 more extremely well written articles on your site per month. (If you're lucky enough to find my writer )

      Adding each article to the top directories (say 30) will get you 180 high quality backlinks every month not to mention the directory traffic that comes from a well written article. Bookmarking each article through social marker gives you exponentially more backlinks, exposure, and traffic.

      Furthermore, from a good writer there is a good chance an article can go viral, which is like finding gold.

      Which is worth more? I'll let you decide.
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      • Profile picture of the author blogsy
        Originally Posted by Kay King View Post

        That's the kind of answer that confuses people. "Logically" - you can't duplicate yourself. Articles are not duplicated - they are syndicated.

        Unfortunately, some marketers trying to guess what google wants and end up doing hours of work they don't have to do. Google has been very clear that duplication does not apply to article marketing.

        You are over thinking what EZA is doing. Their rule is meant to prevent people from submitting PLR articles (unchanged) as their own and thus having one article claimed by several authors. If the article is your own, you won't have any problem with EZA or any other directory.

        It doesn't seem to matter how many times this is answered - some people refuse to believe it. Those of us who have been submitting articles (and never rewriting them) for years know it's not necessary.

        kay
        Thanks Kay ... that's the clearcut answer I was looking for, clearing up the confusion between duplication and syndication. Sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees, you logically know youv'e got it right but you just need someone to pull your head out of the fog.

        Originally Posted by JennJessop View Post

        WOW! this totally just rocked my world. I was taught and I think many others do teach as well to never use duplicate content, to always spin it. What a waste! Thank You SO Much. You guys have all just saved me a lot of time!
        I knew if this was confirmed it would save some believers a lot of time, which could be put to better use. It might upset some software and membership site owners though, the more your confused the better they like it. Fortunately all my articles so far have been my own uniques to EzineArticles and a few of the other top ten directories. But I was starting to get sucked into the duplicate content hype, and rewriter software,etc, but then I started to think, why can't they be reused, publishers reuse my articles all the time, what's the difference, then you start doubting your own logic, I'm glad I cleared it up.

        Originally Posted by peter gibson View Post

        67.00 puts 6 more extremely well written articles on your site per month. (If you're lucky enough to find my writer )

        Adding each article to the top directories (say 30) will get you 180 high quality backlinks every month not to mention the directory traffic that comes from a well written article. Bookmarking each article through social marker gives you exponentially more backlinks, exposure, and traffic.

        Furthermore, from a good writer there is a good chance an article can go viral, which is like finding gold.

        Which is worth more? I'll let you decide.
        Exactly right, using your money and time more effectively is definately very good advice, and once you clear the misleading hype out of the way, things can really start to happen. Unfortunately there are those in this game that prefer to keep as many as possible in the dark and confused.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jon Alexander
    It's pretty generally accepted that there's no 'duplicate content penalty' as such. However, what would you rather have, 1000 DIFFERENT articles about (eg) 'acne' up there, or 1000 copies of the same article?

    What do you think would be better for your rankings?

    The reason people settle for 1000 of the same is that it used to be too hard to create 1000 DIFFERENT versions.

    Not any more.

    You can get an article put into jetspinner format by hand for a lousy $10 - $15.

    Or less than 75 cents if you're using the right software.

    So while it pains me to disagree with Big Mike, I predict that his own jetspinner will be released soon, because search engines want to present the best user experience they can. Showing 100 pages of listings for an identical article is almost a definition of 'bad user experience'

    Just my 19 cents...
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