Duplicate content penalty in article submission

Q:  I read your article "My Top 7 Essential Twitter Tools" and thought it was very helpful.  I did a Google search on the title and saw that you submitted the article to quite a few directories.  From what I read this could harm your search rankings with duplicate content penalties. I am in the process of submitting some of my articles and I wanted to get your thoughts on this.

Chris Miller

Hi Chris–

A:  I am asked this question all of the time, and frankly, I think it's much ado about nothing.  I've been submitting my articles now through a submission service for 3 years and have never faced what's called a "duplicate content penalty."  I've seen various discussion on this topic online, some saying that it is an issue, while others say there's nothing to worry about.  Submitting articles to various article aggregators has been the main source of traffic to my sites and is the #1 way that people happen upon or are sent to my site.

The nay-sayers report that the article-writer's site is penalized for having the same article appear on her site as appears on other sites online.  Consequently, the author's site won't appear in the search engines when  a keyword search is done for the topic of a particular article.  That, indeed might be true.  However, as long as you have a great resource box with a compelling call to action, I ask, "Who cares?"

I'll be the first to admit that sites that EzineArticles.com have a much higher traffic ranking than my own site, and quite frankly, my site may never generate that volume of traffic.  Therefore, because of its pattern of traffic, Google and other search engines may deem that my article which appears on that site to be more relevant than the same copy of my article appearing on my own site and consequently list my article found there before showing it on my own site, if my own site even shows at all in the search results.

As long as my resource box appears intact, most readers will be tempted to check out my site to take advantage of the giveaway offered in my resource box when they visit my site.  Will I lose a few visitors?  Probably.  However, another payoff to my site is that by submitting this article, I've created a valuable one-way inbound link back to my site from a high traffic, highly-regarded website, and you (literally) can't buy that benefit.

So, whatever (if any) penalties may exist, IMHO, the end justifies the means..:) YMMV.

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