Duplicate Content And Article Marketing
Author: Brian Hack

Articles written for internet distribution are meant to be
duplicated. Otherwise, what is the purpose of article marketing
if not to circulate your work and get known as a writer with
some knowledge of certain subjects?

The dilemma begins with the ways content is duplicated. For
example, there is nothing wrong with email unless it is tagged
as spam. The same goes for articles intended to be duplicated
for circulation and not to become what Google technology
considers as duplicate content. So let's start with how Google
looks at duplicate content.

   "Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks
of content within or across domains that either completely match
other content or are appreciably similar. Most of the time when
we see this, it's unintentional or at least not malicious in
origin: forums that generate both regular and stripped-down
mobile-targeted pages, store items shown (and — worse yet —
linked) via multiple distinct URLs, and so on. In some cases,
content is duplicated across domains in an attempt to manipulate
search engine rankings or garner more traffic via popular or
long-tail queries."

The emphasis of technology like Latent Semantic Analysis to
determine letter, word, sentence, paragraph and contextual
relations across domains may influence the technical
interpretation of duplicate content but it falls short in
weighing the importance of circulation to authors who seek
recognition through article marketing, a technique used to get
their work read.

In many cases, the discussion of duplicate content revolves
around how Google states or implies its management of economic
relations between advertiser and publisher. The real value, or
cultural importance of technology in determining duplication,
hinges on how it also relates to the importance of duplication
for circulating the work of authors using legitimate ways of
article marketing..

Writers who want their work duplicated for circulation on the
web must consider the origin or source of their work and the
history of subsequent owners or chain of custody. There are
varieties of ways to establish this type of provenance for
article marketing.

Copyright is literally the rights to copy an original creation.
This means that the time and date of release into the public
domain establishes the first opportunity of rights to copy. So
for example if you post an article first to your own blog then
you can prove ownership of the "original" and subsequent web
syndication makes your article available for other sites to use.


Regardless of the copyright terms of any article distribution
service, websites that choose to publish your work, or other
chain of custody, another important part of provenance is a
resource box has a link back to your original work. The time,
date, and location of your original article will establish proof
of ownership, rights to duplicate content through web
syndication, and a marker for Google to determine provenance.

Although writers do not always start out to become webmasters,
or vice versa, the two are skills are essential in the
development, distribution, and provenance of web content. Today
blogs are freely available and getting easier to set up and
manage. Furthermore, web growth continues to create demand for
original content exponentially greater than what web content
writers are able to supply. Therefore duplicate content derived
from article marketing is an important business building
activity.

As the gap between supply and demand for original content
grows, technical solutions like article spinning and web
scraping become more sophisticated to fill the gap. The down
side of technical supply can appear as plagiarism, lost
congruity, or just plain nonsense. Therefore, authors must rely
on Google technology to distinguish the difference between
duplicate content with and without provenance.

Unfortunately, there are no clear indicators that reward
content writers for their article marketing efforts. Instead,
there is plenty of discussion around duplicate content penalties
without weighing in the importance of provenance and
originality. While blogs can serve as both proof of ownership
and offer distribution through channels of social networking,
the scale of duplication is significantly smaller than overall
web opportunity approached with article marketing. Subsequently
article directories and directory submission services emerge to
appear as the only credible means of large-scale duplication,
circulation, syndication and article marketing.

The work I do as both writer and webmaster at
info-publishing.biz is to develop ways to interface technology
and culture. Technically, info-publishing.biz integrates article
directories, blogs, and an ecommerce site so subscribers and ARC
members can Write to Prosper using controlled means of article
marketing.


About The Author: Brian Hack is an Internet business analyst
and business builder that publishes the Business Builder Report
and distributes software and ebook publications through
http://www.info-publishing.biz. Contact
author@info-publishing.biz