Article Writing

If I write an article with a view to submitting it to article directories (or a PR to a PR site) do I have to make sure it doesn't appear on my own site (the site the article / PR will link to) or can I host it too?

I think you should host it too, but I'm not sure.

Duplicate content isn't good for Google, so doing 1+1 I think the answer is no.

This is what I thought but Google is pretty useless if it assumes that every piece of written text will only appear in a single place. If I write an article and want it nicely exposed then the sensible thing to do is have it circulated in the same way I would if it was newspapers I was dealing with. Google can't have its head so firmly jammed up its own arse that it now thinks it's authoritative for everything written on the internet.

I'm guessing that Google will try and discern which website had the content first and give that site the bulk of the rank. Question is what does it do to the link credibility.

semola said:

Duplicate content isn't good for Google, so doing 1+1 I think the answer is no.

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Write 2 articles (or 2 versions of the article). Keep the best quality article for your own site. Submit the other to article directories.

If you try to submit duplicate content to article directories:
1. Many will reject it, and;
2. It will not get indexed, or will have very little value.

So should I only submit each article to one directory? I thought you just submitted each article to all the big ones.

SEOWhizz said:

Write 2 articles (or 2 versions of the article). Keep the best quality article for your own site. Submit the other to article directories.

If you try to submit duplicate content to article directories:
1. Many will reject it, and;
2. It will not get indexed, or will have very little value.

Click to expand...

See, if you host it ans submit it to directories as well, that would make your article duplicate. Google consider a few factors to determine the authenticity of the article and ultimately only copy of article will appear in search results.


So, its better to go for blogging. Publish the blog post on your website and promote it on different channels.

I would say that playing it safe is the best way forward here. Uniqueness of content is pretty highly valued, so having the same article appear on a directory and on your own site at the same time may not be a good step. What you might consider doing is having two "versions" of the "same" article. Same topic, same title even, but make the one on your website longer than the submitted one.

You could make the same points, but change the way you say things, and you can even include something on the article directories to say "you can read more about this topic at ...". It says a lot about you as a writer if you can show that type of versatility.

llamedo said:

I think you should host it too, but I'm not sure.

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Don't duplicate content like that. You'll get rejected on many of the major article sites and water down the effectiveness of doing article submissions.