Duplicate content and, especially, precisely how it is viewed by the major search engines is being hotly debated and opinions vary widely. As if this debate is not enough, the scope of the problem as far as articles is concerned depends to some extent on whether you are writing or publishing articles. In this brief article we are going to look at the problem from the publisher's perspective.

There is a huge amount of duplicate content floating about today and there are obviously occasions when it is right to use it. For example, if you have a site dealing with American history you could decide to provide your visitors with details of the Declaration of Independence and post sections of it, or even the contents of the whole document. Obviously in this case it would be most inappropriate to rewrite it in order to avoid any duplicate content penalty.

By the same token, if you discover a well written article which would provide valuable content for your audience then you might feel that it is appropriate to publish it on your site. Here the writer obviously owns the rights to the article and will generally only allow its use providing it is not changed in any manner and that he is credited for the article by adding his 'about the author' paragraph at the end of the article.

In both of these cases you will obviously be adding a page to your site which will be viewed as duplicate content by the search engines and will present you with problems . But does this matter?

A large number of webmasters today are obsessed with achieving high search engine rankings and have lost sight of the real purpose of a site which is to provide a valuable resource for your visitors. If at this juncture you are expecting me to say that the main purpose of your site is to make you money then some re-thinking is necessary.

One problem for many webmasters is that while they wish to use their site to make money the search engines are not concerned with whether or not you make money (putting to one side the subject of their own advertising programs) and are going to rank pages in their search results depending upon how relevant each page is to the search being performed and whether they feel that the page will give the searcher the information which he is looking for.

Obviously, if your page is considered relevant and placed highly in the search results you are going to get traffic and therefore make money and herein lies the key.

Your aim ought to be to build a site which provides valuable content for your audience and which will have them staying on your site and navigating their way from page to page and will also have them adding your site to their favorites menu and returning on a regular basis.

To a large extent this means that you have to add fresh and unique content on a regular basis which you will need to write yourself or outsource to other people to write for you. It is this fresh and unique content which will be picked up and indexed by the search engines to provide you with your free search engine traffic. However, there are two other things which you will have to consider.

First of all, if your site is going to have 'authority' and to retain the attention of your visitors it will need to provide both depth and width in covering your subject and here making reference to and quoting or publishing the work of other people can be extremely helpful.

Second, despite the fact that the search engines rank pages and not sites, there can be little doubt that they are also evaluating your site as a whole and giving credit to your individual site pages to some extent on their value as a part of your overall site.

The bottom line is that, while most of your site needs to be made up of fresh and unique content, there is certainly a role to be played by including well written and relevant articles from other writers wherever these add weight to the overall message which your site is putting across.

Sustainable Living Articles @ http://www.articlegarden.com 

By: Donald Saunders

WebMarketingCentre.com provides information on article writing and article submission and is also an article directory where you can pick up a free online article for your website or ezine and to which you can submit articles on a wide variety of topics including articles on cancer and much more.