For article marketing to be effective, you need to distribute your articles widely. As discussed last week, the use of article directories is most effective. Equally important, the articles need to be picked up by various webmasters and reprinted in their websites, blogs and newsletters. A resulting effect of article marketing then would be duplicate content around the web. Duplicate content is availability of the same or closely similar content in the internet. However experience has shown that article marketing is one of the most effective marketing methods online. Even further some article directories that are wholly duplicate content have enviable SERP and PR. Examples include Ezine Articles and Article Dashboard

Some quarters believe that duplicate content is penalized by Search Engines (SE). They argue that SEs indices would be bloated by duplicates which do not add value to the internet and as such SEs would penalize any content that is duplicated. The penalties speculated include decreased Page Rank (PR), dropped Search Engine Rank Position (SERP) and even complete de-indexing i.e. a complete removal from a SEs index or database. You will commonly come across statements like, "You cannot rank well with dupes", referring to duplicate content.

Others hold the opposing view that a duplicate content penalty does not exist in the simplistic explanation above. They hold that a dupes penalty is more complex and it just does not penalize all duplicate content. They point to all major news websites that borrow content from each other as well as from common agencies word for word, as proof.

Furthermore if a dupes penalty existed in such a simplistic fashion, then article marketing would be ineffective for PR and SERP. However experience has shown that article marketing is one of the most effective marketing methods online. Even further some article directories that are wholly duplicate content have enviable SERP and PR. Examples include Ezine Articles and Article Dashboard.

The opinion on which this article is based on is from the authoritative MattCutts blog. Matt is an employee of Google the lead SE. He would obviously point to a more than fairly accurate direction to the matter. Responding to a question at a conference as to whether or not Google penalizes duplicated content, Matt explained that the SE would serve what it considers the best page. He did caution though against dupes within same domains or replicating a whole website on another domain, However experience has shown that article marketing is one of the most effective marketing methods online. Even further some article directories that are wholly duplicate content have enviable SERP and PR. Examples include Ezine Articles and Article Dashboard

Matt's assertion is proven by the indexing of thousands of the same content in different domains. A search for a widely circulated article "101 Ways To Build Links in 2006" serves back over 100,000 backlinks in different domains. This proof of just how effective article marketing can be.