Avoiding the Duplicate Content Penalty using Savvy Article Submission Strategies

Article submission is an important aspect of article marketing, and if you know how to avoid the duplicate content penalty when you write articles then you have a very powerful tool at your disposal. Many people do not understand the term 'duplicate content' as applied by Google in particular, so here is some guidance to help you.

So why 'Google' particularly? Because Google is the most used search engine, and more searches are carried out using Google than any other. many people use other search engines such as Yahoo and Bing (Microsoft)for specific purposes such as email services, but Google is by far the most widely preferred for straight keyword-based information retrieval. However, there is also that much misunderstood duplicate content penalty that article submission can involve. Or so most believe!

When you want one of your web pages listed on a search negine results page - any search engine - always write with Google in mind, but also naturally with the reader in mind, and you will achieve what you are seeking to achieve. Part of achieving that involves being aware of the requirements of specifc Google algorithms, such as its latent sematic indexing (LSI) algorithm, and the PageRank calculation based upon the quantity and quality of other web pages linked to yours, and structuring your article to conform to them - not page rank).

Even with all of that, however, article submission to a number of ezines and article directories is essential if you are to maximize the probability of your article being listed on Page #1 of Google for the keyword it is optimized on. This surprises many people - the fact that an article can be listed, let alone listed highly. It is commonly believed that the principal reason for article submission is to receive back-links from the directories and ezines, and also to have them read where they are published.

It is true that these are worthwhile benefits, although far more valuable is having your article listed in Google's search engine results pages along with the link to a page on your website you have provided in your Author's Resource. Each directory that publishes your article does so on a page of its own, and that page can be listed the same as any other web page. In fact, due to the high number of links such article pages can have pointing to them, unless you are very good at SEO then you will have more chance of getting a Page #1 listing of a published article than were it contained on a page in your website.

The 'duplicate content penalty' is activated when you submit the same article to multiple article directories. These will be considered to be duplicates, and therefore penalized, right? Wrong! In fact, and this is confirmed by Google, there is no such thing as a penalty for duplicate content, and here is how the misconception occurs.

Google considers its customers to be those seeking information by using its search engine. They aren't people like you and I that use the search engine for advertising, or even those that pay for Google Adwords PPC advertising, but are people using Google to find information using specific search terms or 'keywords'. Google want to provide as good a service as possible to its customers, and to offer numbers of web pages containing exactly the same content is failing to achieve that.

Ultimately, Google will leave only one listed page containing any specific content. That, however, takes quite a while to happen. The initial result could be that several listings of the same article could be acquired, getting there by virtue of the SEO applied both by you in your article and by the directory. Over a period of time your listings will gradually be dropped until you have only one listing of of a web page containing each article, with a consequent reduction in the PageRank provided to your listed Resource web page. This takes some time to take place, however.

You can copy my preferred strategy of submitting the same article to over 400 ezines and article directories and have them published by them all. Each publication will not only give you good PageRank points, but is also liable to be listed on Google before duplication leads to them slowly being removed. Over a period of time, Google will delist them and also the PageRank points allocated from each publication.

I offset that by using an article submission strategy involving writing and submitting a totally new article every week or two using a distribution service. Not only does that make up for those that are dropped but also results in a net PR gain and the opportunity for an increasing number of articles to be listed. Here are two possible strategies that you can use to achieve that.

a) You can write a different version of the article each time, using the same keywords and Resource URL, so that you maintain and even improve your listing for that keyword and your URL listing in Google, or

b) You can write a new article using different keywords but the same URL, and hopefully get Google listings for a variety of keywords while maintaining and even improving your PageRank for you web page.

Each has its advantages: strategy a) offers you the chance to obtain multiple listings of the same article for the same keyword, maximizing the likelihood of a searcher clicking to your article, while b) enables you to achieve one listing on each of several different results pages, thus exposing your article once to a number of different searches or keywords. I do both!

An implication of this interpretation of Google's duplicate content penalty, for want of a better term, is that you can take a blog posting and expand it to at least 500 words and submit it to article directories. This article submission strategy is used by many people, and while it is technically classed as duplicate content, it takes some time for Google to start dropping the duplicate pages. Irrespective of what others might tell you, you will not be banned from any directory or search engine for doing this: it is common practice.