Duplicate content : Rewriting or posting as it is

Don't forget about the Original Content Penalty, as we spoke of before....

I syndicate the same article to many sites, article directories, newsletters, etc.

If you write your own stuff, there is nothing for you to worry about.

If you buy articles, make sure the are CopyScape-safe before you accept the job as complete. You don't want to be saying an article is yours, when others also claim ownership of it.

If you don't want to use CopyScape, then grab a sentence or two from within the article, put the sentence in quotes, and run it through Google.

I don't spin articles.

How did it work out for me?

Read my signature again.

I generally start with a Q&A in the forum or from my website. I construct a decent reply for that topic, and hit post.

Then I take my copy and go to a blog, and write out a second draft with a few more words and ideas tossed into the mix. Then I post to the blog.

Then I take that blog draft, expand again on basic concepts, smooth the flow, and then distribute that as syndicated content.

Between draft one and the final draft of my article, as it will be when I syndicate is usually 4-5 hours. But I have made three uses out of the same basic content.

Article syndication is somewhat like news.

News syndicates sell their content to other news agencies.

With article syndication, we give it away to publishers, provided the publisher prints our article resource box in full, with live links back to our website.

I could write a 20-page ebook, just on writing a good resource box, but in a nutshell, it should: bridge the reader from the article to the resource box; show the reader what you want them to do and how to do it; provide a solid call-to-action; provide the link to go where they need to go to take the action you want them to take, and finally tell who you are.

For example:

If you would like to learn more about writing an effective resource box, stay tuned for an upcoming report on the topic. To be sure you don't miss the announcement, sign up for the author's mailing list here: http://domain.com/ Article written by: Bill Platt

Bill.....WOW.....your posts are such a wealth of information.....thank you!

I was going to post a comment to the OP but your post blew me away and got my creative juices flowing instead! Sorry OP....I've got nothing even remotely close to Bill's advice!

Hi Bill, just wanted your advice if possible. If I wrote an article for say Ezine, could I then submit the same article to other article submission sites without altering the content?

1. Yes, you can post an article on your site, then submit the exact same article to multiple article directories. Submitting it to multiple article directories using an account with the same author name will help article directory personnel easily know that other copies of the article on other article directories were written by the same author, though they can also know this if they check the pages linked by the resource box links on the copies found on other article directories, since it will usually be pages on the same site linked by the submitted article copy, so the article directory personnel will be able to confirm that the article was written and submitted by the owner of the account who also owns full rights to the submitted article, but it's easier for them to validate this if you use an account with the same author name.

2. It's more difficult for Google to confirm how much content was actually provided by the site than just using syndicated content or syndicating its own content all over the Internet, as Matt Cutts advised on this post... So, he advise site owners to let Google know the original source of the syndicated content, for the original copy to have higher PR than the syndicated copies. Aside from resource box links usually pointing to the site of the author, EZA and other article directories provide links pointing to the profile page of the author, so this is nicely covered by many article directories, because people will see the site URL of the author on the profile page.

3. I ran an test last year. I wrote an article, posted it on my website, social bookmarked my onsite article then submitted an article to EZA and several other article directories. I did not build backlinks pointing to my article on the article directories after it was published 24 hours upon submission. 5 days later, 15 site owners placed my article on their own sites as syndicated content, after seeing it in the "Most Viewed" section of EZA. Checked the Google PR of their homepages and the page where they posted my article, then checked the Google PR of my EZA article. The Google PR of my article went from 0 to 4 after 5 days, because other site owners did the backlinking for me. When I search "target traffic generation" on Google, without quotes, my article ranks as the top result, followed by copies on other sites included in either the search results index, or in the supplemental index.

Without wanting in any way either to detract or to distract from all the excellent information provided by Bill, above ...

Here you have a good question. You do need to think about this one. Especially if you're using EZA.

It's not "proving that you're those people" that matters, per se: if there's no "contested authorship" (i.e. the article having previously been published under another name), you won't be asked to.

But if you submit to EZA (and the same may be true for some other article directories) an article which has previously been published elsewhere under a name different from the name or pen-name under which you submit it to EZA, it will cause a problem, and a rejection, and quite often the suspension of your EZA account until you explain it to them.

EZA don't - of course - require previously unpublished content, but they do require you to be the author or rights-owner of the material.

These problems are easily avoided, very simply, by having one pen-name per niche, and sticking to it everywhere you publish anything, including on your own niche website.

There's much more explanation about this question in this post, and the thread in which it appears.