Article Syndication and Duplicate Content Issue

[TopGearMedia]

I have tried to look for an answer for this but havent found one yet... probably because i am lazy... but here is the question posted to this awesome awesome cummunity of SEOs who are ever ready to pitch in with their help.

OK... consider the scenario... I create a super duper article and post it to 50 article directories (like ezine, articlebase etc). The article gets accepted and published on all the 50 article directories. Then... 50 people find the article interesting and post the article on their own websites too... (with links pointing back to me). So now I got 100 websites with identical content all pointing back to my website.

Question 1 - Do search engines treat the content on all the 100 websites as duplicate content?

Question 2 - Do search engines give me value for all those links pointing to me?

Your responses will be much much much appreciated.

Regards,

[CPLDistribution]

1. Yes, although initially a lot of them will be displayed in the serps but overtime the search engines should work out that you are the originator of the content and the other websites will be weeded out of the search results. To test this run a search for the title of one of the latest seomoz blog items then run a search for a very old seomoz blog item. The recent one will have loads of duplicate results but the old one will most likely just have the original seomoz blog.

2. Article directories were penalised in the panda update and have had their ability to rank and pass link juice reduced. Don't expect to get too much value from them, you should get value from any other sites picking up the article though.

As an alternative to article syndication is may be worth considering doing some guest blogging?

[TopGearMedia]

Thanks a lot for your response

I get the point that article directories will not be providing me with much link juice... and I totally agree that guest blogging is a much much better way to get QUALITY links...

but

say, if 2 more websites pick up the article and feature it ... wont search engines still see the two as duplicate content???

regards,

Talha

[ronnyg28]

You could also consider placing the articles on your website and having publishers that pick it up linking directly to your site.

I have a feeling that Panda will keep rolling out to a stage where links from content farms will be nearly worthless (IMO).

Regarding the guest blogging, yes the search engines will see it as duplicate content but that should only affect them websites.

For e.g If 2 high authority websites pick up the article, you will get 2 great backlinks and they will fight it out between each other in the SERP's