The Low Down On Duplicate Content

by Sean Rasmussen on April 18, 2009

in Copywriting Tips

Duplicate ContentA lot of people who want to market online re-use their content as much as possible. With so many Web 2.0 places to submit their content, it’s typical to see many articles and blog posts submitted as Duplicate Content.

Some article directories allow syndication of your article so other people can re-print and use it on their site (if they leave your links and by line in tact).

So is it a good idea to submit duplicate content throughout the internet?

Some search engines will not count the second article, as it is Duplicate Content so it could just get one listing in the search engines. That doesn’t mean that people won’t find the article and click through to your site though.

There are other search engines beyond the top few and in reality, SEO isn’t everything! If you publish your article in a place that gets a lot of traffic it could still be quite effective for you in getting people to your website and in establishing yourself as an expert in your niche.

Repurposing Website Content

Some suggest rephrasing and repurposing your articles so that the search engines don’t recognise them as duplicate content.

How Do You Do That?

Rewrite the article so it says the same thing but with different words.
Use a content spinner that changes the article for you.
Change the title and the introduction.

You can also reuse your content in places that won’t necessarily be indexed in search engines such as:

E-books
Special reports
E-mail marketing
Autoresponders

A lot of internet marketers purchase private label rights articles so that they can save time in research and use the content for their own purposes.

Depending on the usage rights that come with the package, they may be able to resell those articles, reuse them as is, and re-write them so that they can use them for things like blogs, website content, ebooks, and other content.

Some internet marketers purchase private label rights articles and run them through software spinners or hire people to rewrite them so that the articles are seen as unique by search engines, and not seen as Duplicate Content.

Beware of too much dilution in the content you post with your name or website on it. Content is still king and despite the ability to get search engines to index your site, if your content doesn’t satisfy readers, it won’t likely do you much good.

It’s now time to go back to the bar, as I am in Port Vila Vanuatu on holiday at the moment, catch up with you soon on my next post.

Have a most outstanding day.

Sean Rasmussen
Aussie Internet Marketing
www.SeanSEO.com © 2008 - 2010

 

{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Jazz Salinger March 21, 2010 at 3:58 pm

Hi Sean,

I have heard a little about these private label rights articles but I guess I haven’t considered using them because I really enjoy writing my own stuff. It takes me a long time to research and write my posts but I’m getting better at it.

Maybe in the future I will need to outsource the writing of my content and spend time repurposing my content but I’m not there at this time.

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2 Peter Damien Ryan July 27, 2010 at 12:38 pm

Most of the PLR pages I have seen are really poor quality. They usually need a total re-write. The only good thing about them is that they do give some ideas or different slants on a topic – and then you write your own based on the PLR main points.
It is different than outsourcing to say Elance – where you can control the content and specify requirements say for keyword density etc.

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3 Elly July 27, 2010 at 12:02 pm

Hi Sean

A spelling mistake in the fourth to last paragraph :

Depending on the usage rights that come with the package they purpose

I don’t think ‘they purpose’ is supposed to be in there

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4 Sean Rasmussen July 27, 2010 at 2:29 pm

Elly to the rescue again :-) All fixed.

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5 Elly July 27, 2010 at 12:06 pm

It is important to know the protocol around duplicate content.

There are some grey arees too but I think your tips on repurposing website content is excellent and it helps to know how to get more mileage out of our posts.

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6 Bernadette Hay July 27, 2010 at 12:29 pm

I wasn’t really very sure on what to change and how much to change website content to avoid duplicate content. I’ve heard different thoughts on what is duplicate and what’s not but this covers it well. I guess some of it comes down to just trying it and keeping track of statistics and results.

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7 Peter Damien Ryan July 27, 2010 at 12:43 pm

It is fairly easy to write a very similar page of contents for inclusion on a blog as well as a website.

I also had two gardening websites and they covered a lot of the same ground (pardon the pun) and I never saw any deleterious affects in traffic and so on.

It is with EzineArticles that duplicate material can get problematic. If you publish the article onto your blog/website first and then submit to them, they pick it up. So it pays to do the Ezine thing first and then use it on your site – and that seems OK

Reply

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