Article Submission: How to Avoid the Duplicate Content Penalty.

Although article submission is an important part of the advertising strategy of mnay people, they appear to have a total misconception of Google's duplicate content penalty,as it is wrongly referred to.

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,you also have the so-called duplicate content penalty that can adversely affect your chances of success. 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. That means meeting the needs of Google algorithms such as their LSI algorithm (latent semantic indexing) and also the off-site optimization needs of Google, such as their PageRank parameter (PageRank is correct - 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. Your article is published on its own page by each directory, and that can be listed in the same way as any other web page can be. because article directories can achieve many more links directed to your published article, you are likely to achieve a higher listing on a directory page than on a page on your website, unless you are an expert at SEO of course.

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! What most don't know is that there is no penalty imposed by Google for duplicate content, and here is what actually does happen.

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's aim is to give its customers what they want: good informative content, and to provide them with a load of links all offering exactly the same is not a good service.

Ultimately, Google will leave only one listed page containing any specific content. However, it takes time to achieve that. 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. That compensates for any pages dropped from the listings and also gets you a net PageRank gain because you are publishing new articles faster than Google is dropping them. 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!

One of the implications of this way of looking at duplicate content is that your blog postings can be copied and submitted to article directories, although they are best to be written to a minimum of 500 words to be sure of publication in most dirctories. 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.