Duplicate content via syndication?

[scanlin]

I have a full text RSS feed of my blog available for users with RSS readers. A few sites have said they would like to republish the unedited feed on their site (so my blog postings show up on their sites with links back to my site embedded).

I'm wondering if this is a good/bad idea (to let them republish my postings) and/or if I should do anything in the feed to protect myself from an SEO point of view?

Am I at risk of some kind of duplicate content penalty from Google, or will Google figure out that I'm the original source (which would be good) since the blog postings have links back to my site?

Thanks!

[zen2seo]

If you get a backlink, probably your document will be correctly seen as the cluster representative. Sometimes it can happen that your content is filtered (but there is no duplicate penalty) because the syndicating site is more authoritative than yours, or if your indexation frequency is lower than its and so the syndicate content is indexed before the original one.

If they use the unedited feed, however, you can get some deeplinks if you have internal linking in your contents.

[TellThemEverything]

In all likelihood you'll be ok if they link direct to the original content (not just a link on your site - the URL of the exact content). Also add a few links to other categories/products if you can.

If you are really concerned you could also just syndicate a brief summary of the article in the RSS..

[scanlin]

Thanks, James. The links in the feed link back to my home page, not the blog article on my site. I could change that. I also like the idea of adding additional deep links back to other parts of my site. I will do that.

[scanlin]

Yes, they use the unedited feed. I will add some deeplinks. Good idea. Thanks.

[TellThemEverything]

Yes Mike, the trick is that whenever someone reposts your article they link back to the original version. That can be embedded in your content, or they will also get that from the in your RSS feed.