Search engines make every effort to display diverse results for Internet users and they frown on substantive blocks of content within or across domains--particularly when the content is exactly the same or close to it. If they think the duplication is an intentional attempt to manipulate search engine ranking, they will drop your website and any other site that shares your content down to the bottom of the list.

Avoiding duplicate content when you submit articles and making sure that you have original content on your own website is the best way to make sure you don't get penalized. Here are a few things that you will want to keep in mind:

Avoiding Content Duplication When Creating Content

The key to is to create original and useful content for your website. After all, the goal is to get your website avoiding duplicate content to rank high in the search engines. Once you have built up content for your website you can begin to submit articles to other sites, blogs, and forums for backlinks. Original articles are best for avoiding duplicate content, but you can syndicate an article with good results providing you follow two rules. The first is to make sure you have a link in the syndicated article that takes the reader back to the original article on your website. The second is to submit articles to quality sites that are respected and have consistently good rankings in the search engine results.

Avoiding Content Duplication When Outsourcing

Avoiding content duplication when you outsource your content writing can be especially difficult. The last thing you want to do is pay a writer to write multiple articles on one topic. The additional money you spend can eat up all of the profits you receive when you submit articles. To get around this, try asking your writer to create one article for your website. Then, alter the text to create a second and a third article. This way when you submit articles to other websites, you will be submitting original articles.

(Warning: When using this method of avoiding duplicate content, make sure that you either purchase full rights to the first article or change it significantly--if you don't, the writer could accuse you of plagiarism.)

Final Thoughts on Avoiding Content Duplication

Avoiding duplicate content is easier said than done. It takes time to learn the tricks associated with avoiding duplicate content and even more time put them into practice. Eventually, you may begin to wonder if you should just forget about content duplication and submit articles as they are. As tempting as this may be, it is important that you stick to the idea of avoiding article duplication. If you stay on course, your website will rank much higher in the search engines.