We’re in the middle of “Content Theft” Week on Source Blogger. If you missed it, earlier in the week, we kicked it off with: Content Theft: Capitalizing On YOUR Creativity. We then followed that up with  How Google Punishes The Content Thieves!

We’re slowly moving toward “The Shocking Confessions of a Real Content Thief“. You will not want to miss that one! Before I even get started with “Losing SERP Rank – Google’s Duplicate Content Penalty, I want to give new readers to come onboard.

We know you are skeptical of new blogs. But, I want you take some time and review some of the archived content on Source Blogger. You won’t find this type of consistent, high-quality content anywhere in the blogosphere. We were one of the hottest blogs to some out last year and intend to continue that magic this year. We’re committed to your success as a blogger. We’re not going to stop until we are the #1 blog in our category.

All this without ever touching your wallet. So, join us. Allow me to introduce you to the rest of the loyal followers of Source Blogger. They are the Source Blogger community. You can join our community here.

Let’s get into the reality that is Google’s Duplicate Content Penalty: 

Duplicate Content Penalty – How to Lose Google Ranking Overnight

The “Duplicate Content Penalty.” It sounds like some complex legal term, doesn’t it? It’s consequences may be just as serious to you as a blogger. This penalty is applied by Google and possibly other search engines when content found on your blog/website is reproduced from another site/blog.

The best advice I can give you is to maintain your blog’s creative expression and independence, but do it in a way that does not conflict with Google Search (or Google AdSense).

Since the inception of the World Wide Web, it has been targeted by every slick internet marketer, social media marketer, schemer, scammer, splogger, and spammer. It’s a tense ongoing battle by search engines (Google, Microsoft Bing, Yahoo, and Ask) to provide the most relevant, informative results from their keyword searches.

In the past, receiving high search rank (or SERP Rank) was as easy as duplicating keywords or duplicating content. Search engines have become more dynamic preventing this from occurring, say, outside of a few odd exceptions.  

Affiliate Sites

As with many of the affiliate sites online, once you register with them, set up your profile, and review what type of advertising strategies you intend to incorporate, in their resources section there are (typically WordPress-friendly) template pages that can be downloaded and reconstructed under your new URL. If there were 2-3 of you, it would be competitive. But imagine hundreds of affiliates doing the same thing! Now when you perform a keyword search with terms directly related to the topic of thses template pages, you could see hundreds of other sites with content completely identical in nature.

In our last article, How Google Punishes The Content Thieves! , we discussed affiliate sites and how Google feels that these sites offer little-to-no value to the reader.

We need to be clear here. At Source Blogger, we are 100% supportive of our fellow affiliate marketers. We feel that any site that mobilizes a network of other participants, delivering more traffic to a site and driving higher sales of a product, is an incredible concept.

But, obviously, your effectiveness is undermined when duplicate content is omitted from Google Search results.

A Blogger’s Content

If you have been blogging for any length of time, it can be a challenge to consistently provide quality for your readers. Often, when doing research of a topic, there are typically between 1-5 articles that are already receiving high Search Rank and are well written.

For many bloggers, they cave in to the temptation to copy someone else’s body of work.

What is the likelihood that a reader will discover you committed plagiarism? Not very likely. But, it has happened. I have seen this occur.

Just recently, a very well-known blog in the Blogging Resources section of Entrecard, with an Alexa Rank of around 23k, (probably the highest Alexa Rank of the blogs on Entrecard), copied an article, word for word, from Darren Rowse of ProBlogger. The article’s title was something like how to make $30,000 a year as a blogger. (It’s typical for many bloggers to draw you in with a big, bold “static headline” and then disappoint with some recycled, generic, generalized content. – sorry Darren!) Anyway, the Entrecard Blogger copied it word for word. And to make matters worse, actually commented on behalf of ProBlogger in the comments section under the post as Mr. ProBlogger himself. Can you believe that guy? Darren was going crazy on Twitter, tweeting on the whole situation.  We got a good chuckle out of that! (ssshh!)

In closing, duplicate content will do very little to enhance your online credibility and identity. Should you avoid all duplicate content completely? Of course not! So, how much duplicate is acceptable? You’ll have to determine that on your own.

In the final installment of “Content Theft” Week on Source Blogger, we were approached by a guest blogger about sharing his methods of stealing content. You should get a lot of the next article aptly entitled: “The Shocking Confessions of a Real Content Thief”