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As I was doing some research the other day, I found a great site that contained an article about the topic I was researching. Then, I clicked on another link. Lo and behold, it was the exact some article. I found it again on a third site.
Was this a case blatent plagiarism? Had someone scraped the content of the article and reposted it?
No, they had not.
The fourth site where I encountered the article explained everything. This was an article from an article directory – freely available to be reprinted on multiple sites as long as the author received credit.
The experience got me wondering about duplicate content, however. Like you, I’ve heard the term “Duplicate Penalty” and wondered what it means for sites like these.
I decided to do a little research.
The first thing that I learned is that the so-called penalty is actually a filter. When a search engine finds duplicate content, then it excludes links from the duplicates. So, it’s not actually a penalty as much as it is an exclusion. You can read more about it at Nitro Marketing.
Here’s a great post from the Online Marketing Performance that gives guidelines, based on a post from Google Matt Cutts, on how to correctly use duplicate content.
Finally, Problogger published a really good explanation of keywords and search engine optimization (SEO) just a few days ago. It’s from Ciaran McKeever of Chance Favors. This is a great post, especially if you are just learning about SEO.
I’ll throw the question about duplicate content out to the experience of the readers. Doubtless, many of you have your own tips to share.
Do you use article directories to find articles for your site? What has your experience been with that?
Do you publish articles on article directories? What has been your experience with that?
Contents (c) Copyright 2008, Laura Spencer. All rights reserved
12 responses so far ↓
1 Thursday // Feb 7, 2008 at
Personally, I’m not a big fan of article directories — especially from a writer’s point of view. It’s very difficult to make money by writing for these directories, and it can be hard to switch from this sort of work to other writing — after all, any editor or client is going to Google your name and see these articles.
Unfortunately, this sort of content duplication does also occur as plagiarism, as well. It is easy to submit others’ writing to article directories and claim it as one’s own. It’s an ongoing issue.
2 Laura // Feb 7, 2008 at
Thanks Thursday!
I’ve heard both positive and negative about the directories. The closest that I’ve come to submitting to an article directory is Constant Content.
3 Mihaela Lica // Feb 7, 2008 at
As you said, Laura, the duplicate content penalty is actually an exclusion from the search results. Unfortunately google is still not able to identify the original source of an article so if someone scraps your content and their site is considered by google more important than yours you’ll see your site unfairly excluded or in the most fortunate case pushed down in the SERPs.
This is bad if you worked a lot to create content of genuine quality, originality and so on.
On the other hand, if you publish articles from your site in directories you have to understand that they’ll be published everywhere on the web and yes, your site will suffer.
The best way to deal with the article directories is to publish different articles.
I do use ezine articles and a few other sites, including helium – but the reason to do so is to generate buzz for something (be it a service, website, company) and to get some links. These links are not always in terms of quality and SEO. But they bring people in and that’s the most important quality of a link.
4 Matt Keegan // Feb 8, 2008 at
I used article directories extensively in 2005 and 2006 as a means to generate some publicity and to provide backlinks.
Today, many of these same articles are all over the place, on splogs, crap sites, etc. Some have gotten a lot of positive attention for me, but most have not.
In addition, many of the articles do not credit me or the links are not activated.
As Michi mentioned, using the directories to post a unique article here and there is the best approach. It isn’t difficult to change the content and come up with a fresh title and then post that article to a different directory.
As for me, I’m stuck with old articles that don’t represent my current writing style. Don’t think for a moment that I’ll hunt them all down to replace or update them though.
5 laura // Feb 8, 2008 at
Hi Mig and Matt!
It seems like you’ve both had some experience with article directories.
Mig – thanks for highlighting the problem with duplicate content and scrapers. It seems that I am constantly battling scrapers. I even had one blogger ask me why it bothered me.
Matt – it sounds like you’ve had mixed experience with article directories. The comment you made about your writing changing is interesting. I think that would have been a problem anyway, with older pieces in your portfolio reflecting an older style.
Very good feedback. Here I was thinking no one cared about this topic.
6 Amber // Feb 9, 2008 at
I used article directories a lot in my early days as a freelance writer, purely to get links back to my own site, and hopefully boost its popularity in the search engines. That worked really well for me, and it did have the desired effect, but lately I’ve been having the same concerns as Matt about it – namely that there are now dozens of articles with my name on them all over the internet, and they no longer really represent either my writing style, or, in some cases, my opinions.
I worry a little about the duplicate content penalty too. Actually, I wish that rather than writing for directories, I’d just invested the same effort in writing for my own site: that way I’d have complete control over the content, as opposed to having just given it away, effectively.
7 martial arts student // Feb 9, 2008 at
The duplicate content penalty really scares me. Just like most of google . . . it really scares me. really from the lack of correct information out there. I worry about articles all the time.
8 Monday Morning Link Love : The Article Writer // Feb 11, 2008 at
[…] What Is The Duplicate Content Penalty? @ Writing Thoughts […]
9 Laura // Feb 11, 2008 at
Martial Arts Student!
I don’t think that you have to be too afraid of it. Especially if you are publishing original content. After all, it’s just a filter. The worst thing that can happen is that you won’t be listed on Google. However, there are other ways to promote your site.
10 Laura // Feb 11, 2008 at
Hi Amber!
Thanks for sharing your experience with article directories. It does seem to be a common one, especially if you have a distinctive writing style.
11 heather (errantdreams) // Feb 12, 2008 at
I don’t use article directories, but I write book reviews and sometimes submit them to more than one location. What I’ve taken to doing, however, is slimming them down at each step. The full review is posted at my site. The next version is posted at Epinions.com, and I often find a few sentences or a paragraph to trim when I do that. The next version is posted at Amazon, where people tend to prefer short reviews anyway, so I usually cut about another third out of the review. Finally, I sometimes take that version and cut out another fifth to a third and post it at LibraryThing.
My reason for cross-posting to Epinions is two-fold. I originally started writing reviews there a long time ago, and it’s useful when requesting review copies from publishers to be able to say, “I’m their top book reviewer.” I also do make a nice little bit of extra change from them.
I re-post to Amazon again because it makes publishers happy, and because having a high Amazon reviewer rank sometimes gets me review copies.
Finally, I post to LT because I can end with a “for full review, visit…” with a link to my own blog, and they hold weighted drawings for free review copies each month as well.
So, whenever I re- or cross-post a review, it’s always because I’m getting something specific out of it, and I try to make sure that the version at my own site offers value the others don’t.
12 Laura // Feb 12, 2008 at
Hi Heather!
It sounds like you specialize in reviews and have a strategy for building up your reputation as a reviewer.
Good for you!