Duplicate Content - Is it Safe for Affiliate Marketing Business?

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Is Duplicate Content safe to use in your affiliate marketing business?

A lot has been written about the use of duplicate content. Today I don’t want to add one word more to all the screaming and yelling associated with this contentious subject.

What I will do instead is to pose a challenge to you at the end of this article and leave it to you to do the right thing that you deem beneficial to your site targeted visitors, your belief and I guess your pockets.

As I write this, we very well know that Google is the gigantic authority as far as search engines are concerned and the potential of deriving the most visitors for your site from the search engine results is concerned.

So let us do the right thing that any smart affiliate marketer should do.

For a moment ignore all the rest of that noise coming from less authority areas and let’s head to Google and see what they have to say about the use of duplicate content. What is duplicate content according to Google?

This is what they had to say on their blogs.

Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar…

It’s unintentional or at least not malicious in origin…and — worse yet — linked via multiple distinct URLs, and so on. In some cases, content is duplicated across domains in an attempt to manipulate search engine rankings or garner more traffic via popular or long-tail queries.

Just for the benefit of doubt, this is what yahoo says about it’s quality search:

Yahoo! strives to provide the best search experience on the Web by directing searchers to high-quality and relevant web content in response to a search query. Pages Yahoo! Wants Included in its Index: Original and unique content of genuine value

And finally MSN is not quite helpful as far as duplicate content is concerned but this is what MSN had to say.

The best way to attract people to your site, and keep them coming back, is to design your pages with valuable content that your target audience is interested in.

Now I will leave it there. Let us bring it much more home to our core business – affiliate marketing business. This time let us just look at:

Google guidelines for affiliates.

If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content gives users a reason to visit your site first.

Having quoted all this sources from the big boys who matter as far as duplicate content is concerned let me digress and let us take this discussion to our normal physical world that is part and parcel of our ordinary life.

For now forget about internet marketing and for that matter this contentious issue of duplicate content and whether or not to use it, if you can rank high with search engines or if you can be penalized by using duplicate content and all that confusion.

We all eat food, don’t we? Not all of us cook though. In fact, the majority of us buy either fast food or have that particular favorite restaurant that we don’t seem to stop visiting.

Let me pin this further. Most restaurants of course serve their own burger. It’s burger right! – some form of food right! But what is it that makes you like like that particular burger in this one specific restaurant as compared to another location?

• Is it the taste?

• Is it the size?

• Is it the way it’s wrapped?

• Or is it the special way they treat you while serving you?

Comeon’ there must be something that makes you like this particular restaurant and their special burger.

Now tell me what if all over a sudden, they started serving you the burger from the restaurant down the street that you don’t like? What would you feel? Would you keep going back?

From this illustration take the burger to be duplicate content.

Of course there are exceptions, for instance if the next restaurant is 50 miles down the road, then you don’t have much choice do you? (Duplicate content can be beneficial on some rare untapped niches but not in affiliate marketing business.)

In conclusion to this contentious topic - Use of duplicate content.

Some webmaster do cite that big sites like Google, Yahoo, Article Ezine and other big player continue to use duplicate content and still maintain a high page rank and Alexa ranking. I agree.

Probably this is what you should do. Take your time to study this site and be sure to understand their core business. See how much devotion and resources they pour to make their core business distinct and unique.

Then study successful affiliate marketers. Are they using duplicate content, if so what percentage of their content is duplicate content? Under which categories can you find this content?

You can use this free tool to check if a site has duplicate content.

You might want to start off with those sites that are for and against the use of duplicate content. Check their PR and Alexa rank, that should tell you something and the direction you would want to take your affiliate marketing business 5 years down the line.