Should You Use The Same Articles For Marketing That You Have On Your Website?
There are two ways to look at this question: Should article marketing articles be the same articles you publish on your own website? In other words, is it OK to publish it on your website first then distribute it through article directories?
One school of thought says that due to duplicate content issues each article you distribute online should be unique content. That is a valid position, but it’s based on the assumption that there is a duplicate content penalty. There isn’t.
The duplicate content penalty myth came about because someone noticed that Google will not rank the same article if found in multiple places online. That’s not a penalty. It is simply Google’s policy to index and rank the same content only once no matter how many times it is published. There’s a good reason for that. Google doesn’t want one website or individual dominating the search results for a certain key phrase.
Knowing that, you can approach article marketing from a whole new perspective. If Google only ranks each article once then when you publish it on your website you are effectively keeping that article from ranking in the article directories and other websites. But that’s no reason not to do it. It just means that traffic from those articles will be less than it would be otherwise because virtually none of it will be search traffic. You will, however, get search traffic to that page on your website where the article was originally published.
What If I publish In The Article Directory First?
If you publish the article in the article directory before publishing it on your website then it is likely that Google will index the article in the directory and your web page containing that article will not rank at all. There really is no point in any web page on your website not ranking. In that case, if you’ve already published the article in an article directory then I’d say create unique content for your web page.
Why Unique Content Is Always Better
Unique content is always better. You are better off using unique content for your web pages and unique articles for article marketing - even if you don’t care about Google’s duplicate content policy. Why? Because your site visitors will appreciate you more.
Imagine the scenario from your visitors’ point of view: They find your article in a search engine and visit the site on which it is published. Let’s say it’s a site in your niche and they click the link in your author bio to visit your site. They see the same content. Why would they read it? They just read that article somewhere else and clicked the link hoping to find more information with unique content. Too bad you disappointed them. Now they are likely to leave and not come back.
While it isn’t necessary, from an SEO perspective, to use unique articles for article marketing purposes, I’d still recommend it from a user experience perspective. It just makes sense.
