Duplicate Content Question

It seems that the duplicate content “penalty” myth just won’t die any time soon.  Once again, an example of a new marketer getting misled about duplicate content and a so-called “penalty” imposed by Google.

Question:

I was wondering if you could explain something for me. First of all I should say
I am a complete newbie.

I am just starting with article marketing as a traffic generation source because
I understand it and it makes sense to me.

I want to start to submit my articles to the various articles directories you
have listed on your site
http://www.fridaytrafficreport.com/top-21-the-best-article-directory-list/

However someone has told me that google will penalize me, for duplicate content,
if I submit the same article to different directories.

If I write 10 articles…can I post that group of articles to each of the
different directories i.e. post all 10 articles to ezinearticles.com and then
post the exact same 10 articles on submityourarticle.com without penalty for
posting duplicate content on different directories?

There is no Google duplicate content penalty.  What happens is Google, wherever it sees an article first, will likely defer to that URL for ranking purposes.  The rest of the time it sees that exact article, it will blow it off.  Since Google makes money by having a diverse and rich selection of different types of content in it’s results, it doesn’t want all top 10 results to be the same article on different sites.

The main purpose of article syndication is not to get into the top 10 listings with every iteration of the same article.  It is 1)  to get direct traffic from the places you syndicate that article and 2)  to get any link love back to your site with your article’s signature.

The only people who call not getting all 10 spots in the top 10 a penalty are people who are trying to manipulate Google in a way they’ve long since fixed.

Just syndicate your articles for direct traffic and backlinks to your main site.  There is no penalty related to duplicate content other than the fact that Google won’t list the same content in it’s results if it has already chosen which copy of the article it wants to rank.

Tagged as: duplicate content