Now ask yourself….

How many websites did you submit each individual article to?

You’ve probably fallen victim to the duplicate articles dilemma.

Rewind to a few years ago when “Internet marketing gurus” were pushing their viral marketing strategies and encouraging people to submit the same article to every known article directory they could get their hands on. Well, guess what? They were encouraging countless people to essentially spam the search engines with their writings and trick a system big on copyrights and original content. Everybody knows how huge a taboo spam is. Eventually, Google and the other guys caught on and implemented algorithms in their web crawlers to weed out and bury the duplicates.

And who can blame them? How reliable would users consider an engine that listed the same exact information in the top ten spots for a search, just on different websites? That’s like a library only offering different editions of the same book when someone was looking for research on a particular topic. What if someone turned in a paper with a works cited for 10 sources all essentially the same piece of information? Intelligent people would find a new library and the guy who wrote a paper would probably fail the assignment.

Google wants to bring value to their users and offer a service second-to-none, that’s how they climbed to the top in the first place. So, if you’re trapped in the habit of creating duplicate content, you should ask yourself the same question - are you creating any real value for people?

The Reality of Article Submission

Most of the article databases receive very little relative traffic to begin with and return a low residual effect. Their traffic rankings cannot compete with more prominent sites like universities and news sources, or high traffic directories and blogs. If you’ve spent several hours on a top notch article, why publish it on www.most-awesome-articles.com (not really a website) where it won’t get ranked, it won’t be found by the website users, and when other sites like WordPress, HubPages, Squidoo, and EzineArticles are around? If you wanted to include a guest piece in your magazine or paper, which source would you rely on… one from a prominent editor at CNN or a random letter received from spikeymikey@nowheremail.com?

Google thinks in a similar fashion on their end. Why list an article from www.most-awesome-articles.com when they already have a version from HubPages?

You might be thinking to yourself - what about Reuters? What about authorized syndication? It’s true that Google and the other engines allow some room for syndication from common news sources, but most of us do not operate in those circles or have access to that content to freely use, so why take the chance?  Probability dictates that Google will pick up one of your articles, but the rest will get lost in the engine and with them all the time spent submitting to dozens of useless directories.

Truth betold, no one can guess why Google keeps one version of web copy over another. It could be related to the age of the page (how long it’s been live online), the reliability of the source, the code to text ratio compared to the other versions… and sometimes, the engine will list more than one copy. It’s all guess work, but you can bet that more often than not, only one version will be viable.

The Solutions That Almost Saved You

But then there came in the works a hybrid solution to try and trick the engines again! Re-write the article so the web crawlers think it’s something new, so one can submit almost the same article to at least the top publication sites without needing to create something fresh. And so began the age of www.dupecop.com and similar services to check the percentage difference between docs.

Here too though, writers beware, Google’s web crawlers are more sophisticated than people give them credit for, and even an article that appears to be 50% different can be picked up as a dupe. To safeguard this technique, a service like QuoteFinder http://blogoscoped.com/quotefinder/ is recommended. Just change the sentences that show more than one online source in your new article.

The Best Solution for Duplicate Content… Doh!

I however, have an even better solution! Stop creating duplicate articles completely and start writing original and unique content that really offers value to your readers and hopefully potential clients. Nobody likes a fraud, a hack, or a two-timer – and that’s what you’ll look like if the smarter-than-you-think readers find out you’re duplicating content out there, or worse, simply rehashing someone else’s. Don’t destroy your potential credibility, visibility, and profitability because of laziness. Make each article you write count and make sure it’s one-of-a-kind.

The following benefits of article marketing can be yours…

• Increased page rankings (with inbound links)
• Increased webpage traffic
• Increased credibility
• Increased visibility
• Increased clients and customers
• Increased profits

But if you duplicate content all you’ll do is lose the above benefits plus…

• Waste time
• Waste money
• Become discouraged

What to do with your now unwasted time?

Search engines also like pages to stay fresh! Update your articles from time-to-time. Add in new information, take out parts now obsolete, add in some graphics, optimize the keywords, and keep editing until you get ranked on the first page for your targeted keywords. A well maintained and fully tweaked article can bring in more traffic and more business than 15 hurried and forgotten pieces any day!

So do continue with your article marketing, and do submit your awesome work so people can find it at EzineArticles, your blog, or other sites, but steer clear from tendencies to submit duplicates – in the end, you’re just committing internet marketing suicide. And like spam, we know how deadly that can be.

You can read more from the source over at Google and their warnings and guidleines about duplicate content.