Google's Duplicate Content Filter - Urban Legend?

If you are on a blog like writingup, then yes, use original content, and ping after every post.

I have posted at five major blog sites for three years. I am not big here - yet, but I make more money from this blog because of the traffic.
However, your personal website is different.

The Duplicate Content Penalty

Let’s look at the “Duplicate Content Penalty.” It has been around for years, and haunts society like an urban legend.

It is feared despite the near total lack of reasonable proof that it exists in the form that most web owners understand.

The Penalty suggests that if my site has the same content as yours, one will be penalized.

Then, you do a Google search and what comes up as #1 on the search? An article directory, and an article that has 15000 downloads.

As usual, Google's duplicate content penalty has nothing to do with duplicate content. And it’s not a 'real penalty. It’s just a by-product of how the search engines work.

What happens is 'authority' sites get ranked. So, your little site with 100 articles on how to make the world's best short bread has the same article on mixing batter as a massive, 10 000 page website that focuses on cooking cookies - they get ranked - you don't. This is not a penalty, it is the 'natural consequences of living in the net environment.'

But, let's say that you've dutifully posted your article on 50 000 other websites, with an inbound link to a single article (never your index page) - then wham - you've just knocked the poor cooking cookies website off the charts.
What to do --- What to do?

You can do two things.

1. Put new content on your site weekly. Syndicate actively. And build links.
2. Toss the whole thing and become a Social Networking expert like Sharon Hurley Hall - and laugh at the search engine crawlers all the way to the bank.





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