I’m going through the basic SEO (search engine optimization) process of getting a website to the top of search engine results pages, including exactly what SEO really is and what it’s all about.
This is the seventeenth article in this series. You should always try to create unique original content when writing articles or posts. Let’s see what would happen if you use duplicate content. Without going into too much detail, let me walk you through the process of what happens with SEO within Google. Google constantly searches the Internet for fresh new content. This process occurs smoothly and is constant. When they find new content, they do what’s called a “new” crawl, they take the content and index it.
They would usually take the new links, put them in another index to crawl later. Before going through that process, they take the new content and compare it to the existing content they’ve already crawled.
They make comparisons of your content and existing content already in their databases. If they find duplicate content, they “discard” it, including embedded links. Obviously, this doesn’t detract from someone who could go to something like EzineArticles and “publish” your article. This is because they have left the article unchanged with everything intact. Your article remains unique original content. Is it okay to take the same article and post it to hundreds of article directories? I would stay away from that. In that case, your original content becomes duplicate content. It is only original from the first article directory you submitted it to.
I’ve seen a lot of information on the internet that says this is fine. In fact, there are many “article submitters” available that you can get. These submitters automate the process of submitting to article directories and will do many at once.
I look like this… I’m not an SEO guru. I am recounting my experiences regarding SEO. With all the time and effort you put into an SEO campaign… why waste your time with tools or pieces of software that could hurt you in the long run? What happens if someone steals your content and uses it for themselves? It happens all the time! I stopped counting all the sites I discovered on the internet that took my own personal articles and replaced my name and links with theirs. Well, the worst thing that usually happens to these people for the most part is…nothing!
Nothing means nothing. Google shows up and crawls your site, it will end up discarding duplicate content, including links. There are software tools you can get called article spinners. These programs take your own unique content and create new articles from it. They can be used, but I’ve always found it just as easy to write a new article or perhaps rewrite older existing articles.
In both the short and long term, you should focus on making all of your content original and unique.