By Karon Thackston © 2008, All Rights Reserved
I’ve been asked the same question at least a hundred times. “If I submit my articles to other sites, does Google count this as duplicate content?” I’ve gone by my own hunches about this issue for about a year with great success for both me and my clients. But, I decided to go straight to the source for a definitive (well, pretty definitive) answer. I emailed Google Webspam Head, Matt Cutts, for some insight.
Before I continue, let me say that this article deals with duplicate content as it pertains to writing and submitting and/or syndicating articles. These principles may not pertain to web copy that is duplicated from page to page and remains exclusively on your site.
I asked Matt if he would explain a few things since it seemed many people were now questioning their online marketing efforts due to the duplicate content filters. My questions included:
1) How can submitted articles count against me as duplicate content if they are posted on other websites? Duplicate content filters are generally on the lookout for copy that has been repeated within the confines of a site. Since articles were distributed to sites other than my own, I wondered about this point.
Matt’s answer: “Taking all your articles and submitting them for syndication all over the place can make it more difficult to determine how much your site [has original] content vs. just used, syndicated content.”
That makes perfect sense. After all, Google is looking for quality, original content to fill its search engine results pages (SERP).
2) Does that mean – from a search engine perspective – you advise people not to submit articles? I couldn’t believe that the answer would be “yes.” Whether offline or on, writing and submitting quality articles has always been a phenomenal way of establishing yourself as an expert, promoting your business and more.
Matt’s answer: “My advice would be 1) to avoid over-syndicating the articles that you write, and 2) if you do syndicate content, then make sure that you include a link to the original content. That will help ensure that the original content has more PageRank, which will aid in picking the best documents in our index.”
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So, how do you avoid “over-syndicating” the articles you distribute about the Internet? Although Matt didn’t go into detail, my personal take would be to:
> > Avoid using article-blaster-type software programs that send your piece to hundreds of article banks and email lists. Instead, use a service that handpicks a select few, quality websites and then manually submits your article.
> > Only submit to websites that allow HTML in the bio/about the author section. A big part of submitting online articles is link popularity. You get a much bigger bang for your buck if you have keyword-rich anchor text links rather than plain http:// links.
> > Place the article on your site and allow it to get indexed before you distribute. This way, you establish yourself in Google’s database as the original writer.
While some people stress out about where their articles rank in the search engines, I, personally, never have. If another site that has reproduced my article (and done so legally) ranks higher than I do for an article, so be it. In the end, a link to my site is provided in the “about the author” section, so readers can find me if they want more information. However, if you prefer that your articles outrank those who reprint your material, then the above tips may help you accomplish that goal.
Above all, don’t let the engines dictate how you run and promote your business. If submitting your articles brings you business, then do it. A diversity of marketing efforts has always been the best way to promote. Writing articles is no exception.
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NOTE: This is an excerpt from a new course I’ve written for Search Engine College on article distribution. It will hopefully be available in April. You can contact Search Engine College if you would like to be notified when the course is taking enrollment.
*** Reprint Requirements: Reprinting Karon’s articles requires the following. The copyright symbol and date must be included with the article as Karon reserves all rights associated with US Copyright laws. Http: and HTML anchor text links must be live and clickable. The resource box (about the author section) must be included. The article and the resource box must be reprinted in their entirety with no additions, changes or deletions.
Good article and great questions for Mr.Google. Although he didn’t give a very detailed answer on over syndication which would have been helpful.
I imagine there are limits to what Matt can say without giving away the recipe to the secret sauce. Thanks for stopping by.
From what I can see from Matt’s responses is that you’d want to avoid submitting articles you have posted on your website to the article directories.
This makes sense because article directories are mostly among the higher ranked sites, and so you’d be hurting your chances of getting your site ranked higher for its content.
I always tell people to submit an article written explicitly for the article directories and point it to further information (a more detailed article)on their site.
This creates a natural flow of information which gives the reader something “more” to build their conclusions with, which conclusion is hopefully to proceed further into buying what you recommend.
But as Matt pointed out, submitting an article with a good bio box pointing to a legitimate site with original content will serve as a back link for any number of directories you submit to. You just have to submit something other than what’s on your site so as not to hurt your site’s ranking.
Thanks for your insight. Couple of things though… I (personally) don’t care if the article on my site gets ranked high. To me it makes no difference because all the links are pointing to my site anyway. I’m going to get all the traffic whether or not my site’s page is #1 or some article directory is #1. (Or some blog that reprinted my article.) While it may mean a lot to some people, I couldn’t care less who’s in the top rankings as long as I’m getting the traffic for it.
I never write a separate article for the directories. I submit the same one to them that I put on my site. I do however put the article on my site first – before I distribute it. That way Google can see that I’m the original source.
Thanks a bunch!
This will be very helpful. Also changing the articles slightly before submiting them can help avoid duplicate content. It the article has a different view point one could take, switch it up a bit and submit.
If you change the first paragraph and last paragraph search engines usually see this as different content.
Thanks!
Hi Brad,
Thanks for stopping by. It is not necessary to change the content at all. That’s another duplicate content penalty myth gone bad. 🙂 (Notice Matt didn’t recommend doing that either.)
Test it for yourself. Take any article. Type the title into Google’s query box using quotes so you pull only results with that exact title in them. What do you see? Hundreds of site pages with that same, exact article on it.
Here’s an example. My article “Call-To-Action: Making it Fit Makes All the Difference” shows on 385 web pages. The same article. Nothing changed.
You do not need to change your articles before distributing them around the Internet.
i do a lot of Article Submissions because it is a good way of getting a good pagerank. i am still looking for a good article submission software.
I’ve never cared for article submission software. As a matter of fact, I believe I’ve read on one of Google’s blogs that Google can tell when software is used by some sort of code it leaves behind. Can’t find it right now. I’ll have to look for that. Software is unreliable in my experience. All the ones I’ve tried have had less than stellar results. Not to mention, I don’t want my articles sent to every possible article directory. Some of those directories are just useless. I’m very choosy about which ones I’ll submit to.
Where can one find a good list of good quality article submission directories? I mean the type that can give the maximum boost to your PR?
Hi Tony. Just do a Google search for “article directories” or “article distribution.” You’ll want to particularly look for sites that (a) allow HTML in the bio section so you can provide anchor text that uses your preferred keyphrases and (b) sites with a Page Rank of at least 3.
Really a peice of information. many of the questions resolved specially in tips specified by you at last.
Thanks
Prashant
I have a question what about the link that you have in the resource box? Would you get credit for it even though that article is submitted through various article directories?
Yes, that’s what the link-building part of article marketing is all about. So the answer is “yes,” you get credit for the links in the resource box on all the different article sites as well as any other blog or site that republishes your articles.
Hi,
what I can’t understand is, why does duplicate content gets not filtered out. I mean, some of my articles are indexed 10x, while google should normally filter all copies out, and only leave 1 article as result. In this way, you would only get 2 backlinks for 1 artcile, even you have submitted it to many sources.
Hi Tina. It does get filtered out in most cases, but Google’s system isn’t perfect by their own admission. You would still get link credit from all sources even if the duplicate content didn’t show from those sources in the search results.