I read a post today on duplicate content and Google’s possible reaction to it and it got me to thinking.  I thought that the consequences of having duplicate content on your blog goes way beyond what Google thinks  and has everything to do with what your readers think about it. I’m not talking about those of you who have multiple blogs that duplicate their own articles. Heck, even I do that as it’s added exposure and it is also interesting to see the reaction it gets on each blog. Having said that, I do try to add additional content, whether it’s in the form of an introduction or just something new that came to me when transferring the post.

I don’t even have a problem with bloggers who copy and paste entire articles as their post, apart from the fact that I think they are going way beyond being what I consider to be a lazy blogger. What I do have a problem with is when they do not mention that the article is not their own thereby letting their readers assume that it is actually original content. This goes beyond plagiarism as it can only be considered content theft.

I prefer to link to an article that I really like rather than taking the easy way out and just doing a copy and paste. The benefit to this is that it allows me to add my own thoughts to the  article I am linking to resulting in my own original content, something that I believe many readers prefer. You could also do a direct quotation from part of the article as long as you give attribution to the original author. You should never, ever post an article leaving others to believe it is your own because when you are found out, and you will be found out, you would have ruined all your credibility as a professional blogger.

[eminimall]

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