Q: Will Google/MSN/Yahoo penalize me ofr duplicate content if I submit/reprint articles?

Q: Aren't you afraid of the duplicate content penalty?

Q: Should I change the title, bio, or some other minor part of the article when publishing the article on my site so I can avoid the duplicate content penalty?

A: Duplicate content is an oft misunderstood concept for webmasters. The duplicate content penalty is typically applied to one site that has hundreds of similar pages in an effort to spam the search engines. For example, if you write a script that simply changes the title of your page every time it loads (but the content stays the same) and then use that page for your 404 page, you will end up with a penalty because you will appear to have thousands of pages that are virtually identical on thousands of unique urls. This will result in a duplicate content penalty.

The duplicate content filter is applied to sites that all print the same thing. This is because when you are searching for something, SE's assume you don't want to see the exact same result across thousands of sites. For example, if you search for stories on Villepin's approval rating, you don't want to see all 50,000 sites that just published the same AP news article about yesterdays protests. You are probably more interested in seeing a broad range of different articles that match your search term. Therefore, the SE's apply a filter that filters out (not penalizing them) the other 49,999 sites printing that AP news article in favor of that one *best* site with the article. This way there is room for other older articles about Villepin.

So, applying this knowledge to article submissions means that if you publish an article on your site and also in every article directory known to man, you will not get penalized, however, your site may get filtered from the search results. Search engines like Google try to produce the best results for your search term. If the search engine determines that another site (like an article directory for example) is more of an authority on your article's content than your site is, that site will appear in the search results before your own site (if your own site shows up at all). While this is a "bad thing", it is not a penalty.

So we know you won't get penalized for submittinbg articles, but how can you make sure to get the maximum benefit? First, publish the articles on your own site first and make sure they get spidered. The first site the spiders find has the best chance of not getting filtered. Second, ensure that you have a quality site about your topic. Do not rely solely on article submissions for links. Build other links in your niche so you become more of an authority than the article directories to which you are submitting articles. By following these two simple steps, you can master the article submission process and maximize your results.