Duplicate Content - The Most Misunderstood Term In Internet Marketing - What It Is - What It Is Not

Duplicate content is a very, very misunderstood term when applied to internet marketing.

A ton of people out there still believe that if they create an article or other piece of content for their website that they cannot use this same article for an article directory, a blog, a social bookmarking site etc. They believe they cannot use the same content twice. This is not true. This is not what duplicate content is.

Many people believe that Google will only show one result for the same piece of content. Again this is not true. You can check this out for yourself by going to Google, copying the exact contents of any article appearing anywhere online and pasting the contents into the search bar (in quotation marks to get an exact search match). When you click search you will find multiple results from many different websites containing this exact, same, word for word content.

Now that we know what duplicate content is not, let me explain what it is. Duplicate content is when you have the same content, more than once, on the same website. Even if you have it on different pages of the same website it will still be considered duplicate content and will therefore not be allowed.

However, let me reiterate, the exact same article or content on different websites is allowed and is not duplicate content. As an example, you may have the exact same article appearing on your website, an article directory, a blog, squido or a social bookmarking site at the same time. This makes it very possible that you may have your article appearing multiple times on the first couple of pages of Google search results. Remember, you may give your article to as many article directories as you want, as many blogs as you want and as many social bookmarking sites as you want, thus increasing your odds even more of having your article appear on the first page of search results. Again, as long as it only appears on different websites, it is not duplicate content!

In internet marketing as in any other business, knowledge is power. So remember that search engines not only love content, but also backlinks to popular, content rich sites such as article directories and social bookmarking sites. Therefore, by applying your knowledge of what is and what is not considered to be duplicate content it is clear to see how it is possible for you to dominate search engine results.