Article Syndication: Blogs not accepting articles from my blog

Pull up a google search right now for Oklahoma City Tornado. In the first 4 pages, on my search, there is no less than 4 identical (word for word) stories of the incident all syndicated (key word) from Reuters. None of the websites in question were Reuters themselves.

Yet we discuss article syndication as a game where only one piece of the content can rank at all. A game where "Duplicate Content" will doom your copy to obscurity. Yet it is the exact game that news agencies play EVERY SINGLE DAY to get us our coverage, and yet still have the potential to rank high... or not.

Of course, that leaves less competition for those who know the real truth and not some myths.

In everyday parlance, indeed - but not by Google, for the purposes of explaining to people what "duplicate content" is to their algorithms. Content duplicated across domains is "syndicated content", not "duplicate content", for that purpose. As they go to such great lengths to clarify on their blogs and websites, in videos, in interviews, at conferences, and so on.

In common parlance, perhaps. Not to Google, and certainly not in their significance regarding SEO.

A syndicated copy can even outrank the original, under some circumstances.

Yes, quite correct. That's Google's stated intention, and it's what happens about 85-90% of the time (maybe even a little more, these days).

That isn't a problem if you own the one indexed in the main index. This is why article marketers always publish their article on their own site first and have it indexed there before submitting it anywhere else. Not that doing this, of course, will necessarily guarantee that theirs will always be "the one that ranks", but to gain the cumulative benefit of the initial indexations and to produce that outcome over the long term.

Article marketing has so little to do with SEO, anyway, that it's a fairly academic question (as I think you're rightly implying).

People who syndicate articles (directly from authors, from Ezine Articles, from Reuters, from Associated Press, or from anywhere else) are not doing for SEO benefits. They're doing so because it's content they want to share with their subscribers/readers/visitors. (That's why most don't care whether or not it's previously been published, just like The Times newspaper doesn't, when it wants to publish an article).

The problem arises because some Webmasters mistakenly imagine that their sites will, somehow, be "penalized" for syndicating it.

And that arises because they don't distinguish - as Google and all professional article marketers do - between "duplicate content" and "syndicated content".

Absolutely.

Not so at all: in all my experience of doing this for a living, it would rarely require unique content.

The world's leading news and sports websites who syndicate content from Reuters don't care a damn that it isn't "unique content". The only people who care about that are those Webmasters ill-informed enough mistakenly to imagine that Google will somehow "penalize" them for re-publishing content that's previously been published online. It's utter nonsense, of course, but some do still believe it.

On a brighter note, if you stay away from the "IM" and "MMO" niches in which, from this perspective, "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing", it isn't much of an issue at all. (And I suspect - though without experience of them - that those niches aren't that great for article marketing, anyway, to be honest.)

Really? The first link I picked from your list is a 2007 article from some Internet Marketer.

I went ahead and clicked another link - another 2007 article.

This is embarrassing.

Don't even get me started on the "making a living by syndicating our content." You don't want to go there.

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As explained in this thread, with endless links and references in posts #10, #12 and #15 above, including links to what Google themselves go to such great lengths to clarify on this subject, content "duplicated across domains" is not duplicate content, for this purpose. It's a simple, straightforward, factual issue.

That's the only thing that matters in the entire debate anyways.

The only real downside is you could be facing serious allegations here of being a duplicate contender for master article syndicator.