Article Marketing and Duplicate Content

The title says it all. You've probably been told be several people or read on many blogs that you receive a "duplicate content penalty" if you have several articles of the exact same content on the web.

Let's be frank about it. It's not a "penalty" as much as it a protection against displaying duplicate content on search results for user searches. For example, if you have five of the exact same articles spread across five different article directories, searchers would not be very fond of the those five locations being displayed in the first five spots of the results.

This is where the "duplicate content filter" comes into place for search engines. They scan and gather the most relevant and trustworthy website and display that location first, prior to the other duplicated locations.

The one strategy that is foolproof is writing original content for each article. This doesn't mean you can't take the same article and rewrite for another purpose or another directory. Just make sure that the content is different enough that search engines shouldn't be putting it through the duplicate content filter. You could do this by rotating paragraphs, change strong adjectives, adding content or even deleting content.

Now that you've read through this short article, I hope you have gathered enough information that you won't be scared of that penalty everyone is running from. Be smart about your content and you will do just fine.