Writers and Duplicate Content: Posting Articles on Multiple Websites

Will posting your articles on multiple websites hurt your earnings and Google index rankings?

Search for "duplicate content penalty" on any search engine and you'll see a slew of SEO "experts" going on and on about how search engines like Google penalize duplicate content. They warn of copying even your own work onto multiple websites.

But as far as writers go, placing your articles on a few writing websites may not hurt your earnings (may actually increase them) and is unlikely to affect your content's overall ranking in search results. I say this for a number of reasons.

Google duplicate content penalty myth:

Google busted up this myth in 2008 by addressing the fact that they do not penalize for duplicate content in most cases. Their logic stems from the fact that people steal articles and content from one site and paste it all over other websites in hopes of bringing in traffic. It isn't the writer's fault so why penalize them for it.

You can read the word from Google here:http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/

Plagiarizing and duplicate content:

Some people talk about "self plagiarizing", which is when you take your own words or ideas from a previous work you did and use it in a new work without citing the original. Since most article hosting sites do not restrict republishing work under non-exclusive terms, the whole idea of stealing your own work goes out the window.

Of course it is always a good idea to use the same pen name on both sites and keep the titles similar if not the same. You should also use the same e-mail address for all of your writing sites in case someone does challenge the ownership of your content.

Since most writing sites invite and allow writer's to repost their non-exclusive work as long as they own the rights, it's absurd to think that people should be punished for doing so.

As this relates to search engines, you'll be spreading the number of times your content appears which increases the chances of it being linked by other sites and discovered by browsers searching under different search terms. Plus by using the same pen name and details, you create more chances for you as a writer to spread your name.

Earning money:

Some people who say duplicate content is bad miss the reasoning that others use to spread their content across multiple sites. In the world of online writing if site A pays upfront and residuals for first rights to publish and site B accepts non-exclusive work anytime and offers residual income, you can potentially earn more from the same article.

Unless you have an article appearing only on one site that also happens to be within the first 10 results of a search engine like Google, putting the article on multiple sites will likely earn more money rather than less.

For example I have a few articles that have been grand slams in terms of consistent residual income; they are posted on 2 websites and both are top earners for me on each website. In results one comes up in the first page and the other comes in the 3rd page, but they both earn well. By using multiple sites you boost your chances of making money on the article over the long term.

What is duplicate content:

Duplicate and identical often go hand in hand. Consider this. You write one article and post it on 3 different writing websites at 3 different times. Each website has its own set of ads, own HTML coding, own look, and own style of linking. At the very least the dates of the articles and web addresses are completely different. These aren't identical pages of the same content, they are different pages with similar content.

Google does make it clear that affiliate marketing sites that encourage people to use the same exact HTML code page over and over again are likely to suffer due to so much competition.

Also creating websites that have a ton of subdomains and pages with identical articles and content appearing over and over again is likely to be flagged or get passed over when search results are given. But again it is a fine line; after all some writing websites let multiple writers write to the same title and often the content is extremely similar to the other content under the title.

Overall posting your content if you have the rights to it on multiple writing websites is not going to kill your earnings or ruin your rankings in search results. In my experience I have earned a little extra money on each article that I've reposted and I won't be at a total loss if one writing website goes under.