Recently a consulting client of mine asked me if I agreed with a colleague of his about Google disliking duplicate content and to reduce or refrain the amount of content he syndicates (distributes) on the Web.

I think there’s a huge misunderstanding out there about how to distribute your content without hurting your website in the eyes of search engines.

If you publish content, you should have the first, original content on your website. No doubt. However, you can “repurpose” it and strategically distribute it on the Web, and this will not hurt your search engine/Google SEO efforts.

This is something I refer to in my SONAR Content Distribution Model TM and has helped my clients’ quantifiably increase traffic rank, traffic visits, leads and sales.

SONAR is a cost effective, yet powerful, method of repurposing and synchronizing content (albeit text, audio, video) distribution into various, targeted channels. And it allows companies, publishers, entrepreneurs … basically anyone with content on their website … the ability to ultimately turn traffic into sales.

SONAR represents the following online distribution platforms:

• S Syndicate partners, content syndication networks, and user generate content sites
• O Online press releases
• N Network (social) communities
• A Article directories
• R Relevant posts to blogs, forums, and bulletin boards

SONAR Case study: My synchronized content distribution technique helped increase traffic ranking and visits to a alternative health website by 3,160% and 81.5% respectively in only three months. And in four months, traffic visits increased to an investment website by nearly 80% as well as an increase its traffic ranking by nearly 150 percent. Plus, the traffic to this investment site was monetized for an ROI of 221%.

So not only was the website’s SEO/SEM efforts NOT hurt by content syndication, it actually improved exponentially with rank, visits and sales.

The key is to repurpose the content. To tweak an original article on your website with minor changes (for example the headline, intro paragraph, closing, etc.) and then syndicate on other different websites.

Google tries to look for the best version …where the content originated … the first, primary source (usually your website) and typically the site that gets the “search engine credit” so to speak via the higher ranking in the organic results listing.

In Google’s view, duplicate content is more hurtful for a site if it’s posted in more than one place on that SAME DOMAIN (not via syndication on other websites such as through online press releases, article directories, etc.).

For example, if you have two pages on your site with virtually the same content, in most cases, Google notices this and ignores one of those Web pages. You will not get both of those listings in the search engine organic results … just one of them.

Keep in mind, Google will decide your pages are duplicate if ONLY your (page titles and Meta descriptions) are the same. So make sure each Web page on your site has unique, relevant tags with targeted keywords.

Now if you’re concerned about Web pages on your website and its text “printer friendly version” hurting your website’s SEO … simply block the search engines from spidering the print friendly version.

When you think about it … syndicating content is the SEO model of social sites (like Digg, Drop Jack, StumpleUpon, etc.) and article directories.

So make sure you understand the power of your content and how to syndicate it the right way before you hit the brakes on any SEO/SEM efforts …

… Because that’s what will actually hurt your site … doing nothing and not leveraging your content.

Wendy Montes de Oca, MBA
Guest Contributor
THE TOTAL PACKAGE

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