Duplicate content and, particularly, exactly how it is viewed by the search engines is a hot topic of debate and there are a wide range of opinions. As if this is not enough in itself, the scope of the problem as far as articles is concerned depends to a certain degree on whether you are a writer or a publisher. In this brief article we are going to discuss the problem from the perspective of the publisher.
There is an enormous quantity of duplicate content about today and there are obviously occasions when it is proper to make use of it. For instance, if you operate a site talking about American history you might decide to include details of the Declaration of Independence and post extracts from it, or perhaps the contents of the whole document. Clearly here it would be inappropriate to say the least to attempt to rewrite it in order to avoid any duplicate content penalty.
Similarly, if you discover an article that would be of value to your visitors then you may well feel that it is right to publish it on your site. Here the writer obviously owns the rights to the article and will usually only allow it to be used providing it is not edited in any manner and that he is credited for your use of the article by adding his 'about the author' paragraph at the conclusion of the article.
In both cases you will obviously be adding a page to your site that is going to be viewed as duplicate content by the search engines and will present you with problems . But does this really matter?
Many site owners today have become obsessed with getting high search engine rankings and have lost sight of the real purpose of a site which is to provide a valuable resource for your visitors. If at this point you were expecting me to say that the main purpose of your site is to make you money then you will have to do some re-thinking.
One common problem for many site owners is that while they want to use their site to make money the search engines are not in the slightest bit interested in whether you make money or not (putting on one side the separate subject of their own advertising programs) and are going to rank pages in the search results depending upon how relevant each page is to the search term entered and whether or not they feel that the page is going to provide the searcher with the information required.
Obviously, if your page is considered relevant and placed high in the search results you are going to receive traffic and thus make money and it is here that the key is to be found.
Your aim must be to build a site that provides valuable content for your visitors and that is going to keep them on your site and navigating their way from page to page and will also have them book marking the site and coming back on a regular basis.
To a large degree this means that you must add fresh and unique pages regularly which you will have to write yourself or hire others to write for you. It is these fresh and unique pages that will be indexed by the search engines to bring you your free search engine traffic. But, there are two other things that you must take into consideration.
First of all, if your site is going to have 'authority' and to command the attention of your visitors it will have to provide both depth and width in covering your subject and it is here that referring to and quoting or publishing the work of others can be invaluable.
Second, though the search engines rank pages and not sites, there can be little doubt that they also evaluate your site as a whole and give credit to your individual site pages to a certain degree on their value as a part of your overall site.
The bottom line is that, while the majority of your site should be made up of fresh and unique content, there is certainly a role to be played by including well written and relevant articles from other writers where these add weight to the overall message which your site is conveying.
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