Does using Articlebase articles on your site push your rank down?

[HRISGuy]

Hello All,

I launched a website (www.hrpayrollsystems.net) last year.  I'm very new to the SEO world so I'm still seeing what works and what doesn't.  We recently republished some articles from articlebase.com that I think may have hurt us in SEO.  Does Google see our site as having duplicate content and then penalize us?  Our top keyword isn't even ranking anymore when I put it in the sites that tell you where you show up.  Help!

[William.Lau]

Yes duplicate content can affect your rankings. It is best to write your own fresh content. Stay away from these article directory/base places.

[MarieHaynes]

These articles can hurt you in two ways.

If you are republishing articles then this creates duplicate content on your site.  If you have enough duplicate content you can be flagged with Panda which will cause your site to drop very far in the results like you are seeing.

If you are posting articles on these sites and linking back to yourself with your keyword as anchor text then this can invite Penguin.  Looking at your backlink profile, this is not your issue.

I would stay far away from this type of site!

The way to tell if you have been affected by Panda (which is the most likely explanation), is to look at your organic search traffic in Google analytics and see if you have a drop that coincides with a Panda refresh date.  If so, then get rid of the duplicate content and by the time the next Panda refresh happens you should recover. The refreshes tend to happen about once a month.  Some sites may take a couple of refreshes before they recover.