Can You Rank Duplicate Content in the Search Engines?

We have all heard about the duplicate content penalty that Google imposes on websites that contain the same (or very similar) webpage’s than another. Some way it’s a myth and it only applies to your own website, and others swear that it is real and true.

Google itself has denied that there is any penalty for dupe content but what happens in reality? Can you rank duplicate content in the search engines?

For starters, just look how many news stories break with all the same (or very similar) content and all of them seem to do fine in the rankings. Most regional newspapers print online the same story practically word for word – straight off the newswire with no real consequences. Or is there?

From my own experiences this is what I’ve found when I’ve submitted the exact same article to more than one directory. In the first two weeks, practically every article ranks only and I can nearly always find multiple copies (often up to 100) listed in the Serps.

One month later about half of them are still there, and about two to three months later, perhaps only two or three remain.

So what does this tell us? Here is my opinion and findings:

Google wants to show readers the most relevant content that it can and therefore may show the latest news or new stories multiple times but this won’t last for the long term.

Over time G seems to move most of the dupe content to the supplemental index and only display what it considers to be the most relevant or most authoritative version of that content.

So while it won’t actually penalize your site for having duplicate content, it will place your pages that it considers copies in the supplemental index and only display those pages it considers the authority for that content. You duplicate page might rank, but it certainly won’t be in the top 10 pages in Google’s index.

So how do you get YOUR page, even if it is duplicate content, listed high in the search engines?

You’ve got to make Google think that you page is the authority and the others are just copies of yours. Many people assume that Google does this by date, and if you’ve placed the content on your blog first before you submit your article to article directories then you’ll get the ‘authority’ of that article.

That’s not true.

Google will give the highest weight to the page that it deems the most important, the one that has the most authority.

And how do you get this authority?

BACKLINKS

Yes it’s all a big popularity contest. When it all comes down to it, the web page with the most links pointing to it, is usually the one that Google will show in its index.

If you want your page to list high in the Serps rather than another you need to point some links at it.

How many links does it take?

Who knows? That depends on your competition and how many links they have got to their pages. It might take 1 it might take 100.

Don’t believe me?

Currently I make a commission from a website (actually it’s an online store) that displays the exact same content for every member who is part of it. The idea is that we send our customers our ‘store’ link which is really just www.store.com/tracey, www.store.com/jane, www.store.com/debbie and so one.

I have no control over the content of this site, but I believe I can get my ‘store’ ranked high in the SERPS.

There are hundreds of members I believe, and none of them have any idea about SEO (most of them are stay at home mums). This is a great opportunity for me.

I’ve just started this experiment and with only two links I already have 23 pages listed online. They don’t rank very high yet, but I haven’t really started attacked it. I plan to let you know my progress as I go.

I believe that I’ll be able to get my store listed high in the search engines within a month and start making sales (and commissions). I may even be able to knock down the official store – we’ll see.

Anyway I’ll let you know my progress in one month’s time and we’ll see if you really can rank duplicate content in the search engines!