Duplicate Content - please let this myth finally die!

If you trying to emply that I posted this thread due to my sig link then I'm sorry but your sadly mistaken and obvioulsy don't know me very well!

As a matter of fact the reason I started this thread was because I've seen this myth perpetuated at least 10 times in the last day or so and I just left a thread a few minutes ago where there were literally 4 or 5 newbies all saying the same thing to other newbies...which only continues to spread the myth that much more.

No it's not. Publish your article to your site, get it indexed and then submit to the directories. Google is quite capable of ranking both.

This is fact. I have read countless threads of experienced full time article marketers saying this. The only people that say this isn't the case say so because they haven't tested it or they heard it elsewhere with zero proof. I have been outsourcing articles and occasionally doing them myself. I put them on my site, index them then distribute them to the better of the article directories. I don't change them except for removing the links from the main body of text. I have never been punished by Google.

WRONG! Plenty of my articles that I have syndicated with a link pointing to my original article have been outranked by sites hosting copies of those articles that Google considers more of an authority site than mine.

For over a year my site and 7 others that published the exact same article had 7 of the top 10 places. It only has 4 now.

Just sayin'

Oh I know.....

I certainly didn't expect to cure the world of this cancer with one post and like cancer it may live forever. I was just hoping that a few would read it, believe it and help in the cause everytime they saw it themselves.

Making a "Duplicate Content is a myth" thread as a sticky would be awesome, but you're right...still wouldn't stop it, unfortunately.

LOL...ok, you got me...thats funnny!

I know...crazy isn't it!

what do you mean by this exactly?

So how exactly do you take advantage of this if, say, you are an article marketer? If I write an article for one article website, should I then copy the same article into numerous other websites as well to provide extra backlinks? And I assume, by what you're saying, that these articles will have all the same backlink power they'd normally have if they weren't duplicate articles.

Also, say I had a website about halogen heaters. I could add a 'guest post' that was just an article written on ezinearticles, or hubpages or something? I can see how this could save a ridiculous amount of time.

I assume that article sites have a problem with duplicate content though?

Hey I'm a newbie and I just tried this out - but I dont really understand

I just simply took one whole sentence of 12 words from a PLR article and input it into Google search bar, and it returned me 11k ++ results!

So much for those people who says your site/article won't get indexed if they are the same content... it's just that when you click to the last page, it will say "is only showing ___ results and omitting the rest cos they are revelant, blah, blah"

I tried it for 2 more articles and they both returned me 9k + and 12k+ results too! (whole sentence in quotes"

So according to what I did, I personally think that duplicate content is a myth although I am a newbie, but what I dont understand is if my results are in the "omitted results", will they still have the same effect if I am just using them for backlinks?

If you get the article from a source that allows it to be coppied, leave the content alone (dont make changes to it) and leave the link back to the original author then that is perfectly fine and allowed.

I may not have explained myself well enough (as was pointed out by one other poster) but the intent here was to educate people that are confused about this subject.

There can be a penalty for duplicate content and this is where I didnt explain it as best as I should have.

The kind of duplicate content you need to worry about is having the same piece of content on the same site more than once. The penalty for this is typically a drop in the SERPS, at least thats been my experience in the past as well as other I know who have made this mistake.

So that implies that it will be penalized? Seriously, I'm a newbie at all of this and horribly confused. I have unique articles (all written by ME) that I'd love to submit all over the place to generate backlinks. I don't have the time or money to spin them all 50 different ways.

I don't want to be penalized though. and this tidbit from google leads to believe I could be.

Im not even quite sure this deserves a reply.

"no offense intended...but keep your mouth closed"

Interesting...

Bingo...

You will hear many sucessful writers/ article marketers say that they have an original article on their blog and then submit that same article to Ezine and both will rank and both drive traffic in their own ways.

A bit more myth perpetuating going on here, for example "I honestly feel original content is stronger than..." Yep, you can certainly "feel" that way, but the very suggestion is another symptom of this larger disease. There is no evidence - and I mean 0 that proves a piece of 1 time only, original content is any easier to rank or worth anything more than a piece that is syndicated to many article sites. O. Conversely there is plenty of empirical evidence to suggest the opposite is true.

I sited this example eons ago in another thread about dupe content myths, so I'll revert to it here in response to your "feelings":

Plainly by my own experience alone I can tell you that my syndicated content OWNS the first page of google for a highly competitive and profitable keyword. If original content was "stronger" or carried more google "weight" as suggested, why isn't the original content that sits on pages 2 to 10 outranking my own "carbon copies?"

Please note also that since the time of my quoted response above, I've duplicated (no pun intended) these results with other articles and sites, having up to 6 spots within the top 10 for an identical article, on different URLs.

Yep, another technique that specifically caters to the unwarranted fears of duplicate content. Here's why what you are saying above is not the best and most economic use of your time and why you will consistently lose to competitors who successfully syndicate content they produce or purchase:

As you can see, the reasons FOR syndicating your SINGLE piece of content to multiple pages far outweigh any supposed benefits for "keeping it 100% original to you". If not simply for the residual traffic of having infinitely more exposure across the web, than because there just isn't enough hours in the day - or money to spend - making the Utopian "original content only" wish a reality.

That's exactly what I'm saying yes. And as for spinners, since I've not ever mass submitted articles to over the top 30 directories, I've not required the spun versions of anything. One thing you may want to consider, if anyone has reason to perpetuate the duplicate content myth it's the cats that produce article spinner software. Just sayin'.

Bear in mind there are individual sites that truly will not accept duplicate content, as part of their own TOS. I believe huppages is one example. These are sites, web 2.0 properties to be built, and not simple directories. The only directories that require your content be exclusive are those that compensate you for the article, or otherwise offer ways of generating income from the article being placed there. Otherwise your article can certainly exist on many directories, verbatim.

A few spinner "guru" cats can come in to comment on why spinning is popular and necessary, but from what I've seen, spun content that's been submitted to ... say... 1000 directories offers negligible results for the effort. I've only ever seen positive results from the top directories, by submitting my articles manually, verbatim.

Again, where spinners and mass submitters are concerned, I'm no expert.

Hello silvercap,

I've seen this info/latest news from Google and even though I don't really have any "evidence" to show (other than my own sites rankings) I can say that I havent seen any effects from the lates algo change. I would say that this is likely due to the fact that my sites are (at least IMO) high quality sites with high quality content. I usually have about an 80/20 split from syndicated / u nique content on my sites and have have no problems (so far) maintaining or building ranks within my niches.

To be honest I must say this does sound interesting to me...I haven't had these types of problems. My newest site is about 2 months old in a fairly competitive niche and it's already ranking #21 without my doing any real link building to speak of. I know 21 isn't all that great and I know it doesnt get that much traffic but the point is I havent done much link buiding and it already has decent rrank in a fairly competitive niche.

I will send you a PM...so we can discuss this in more detail in private.

Robert