Using Blogs to Generate Leads is Great But...Duplicate Content: Understand the Rules and Avoid the Duplicate Content Penalty

In just about every course on Internet marketing will have some section about using blogs to generate low cost leads. Using blogs to generate leads is an excellent marketing strategy which can be very effective. It is also  stated over and over again that content is king! Always use original content so the search engines will love you.

Perhaps this is a good time to talk about why content is so important in the first place and then why its important to avoid getting penalized for duplicate content.

Fresh and original content is what creates interest in the Internet and websites. without it, everything would be stale and uninteresting.

Imagine for a minute that every site you visited on the we had the same information. Every time you clicked on a URL you went to a site with nothing interesting, current or different.

We'd all be bored to snores if this was the case. Search engines love variety and originality. It's the lifeblood of the Internet.

Using blogs to generate leads is a really cool way to attract people, potential customers or prospects to you. They type in a keyword into a search engine and the search engine sends it's feelers out and if your content matches what this person is looking for , your blog might be the one that comes up on the first page for this person to find.

This prospect will then hopefully read what you have on your blog, perhaps take an interest and see what else you have on there, like links etc. If they click and either buy something or even opt-in to your newsletter etc, you have generated a lead for yourself at a very low cost.

All this is great assuming you have content in your blog that the search engines believes is original and not copied word for word from someone else.

Google has a definition of duplicate content.

"Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar...In some cases, content is duplicated across domains in an attempt to manipulate search engine rankings or garner more traffic via popular or long-tail queries".

There are ways that you can use the content created by others that are perfectly acceptable. You must give credit to the author along with any links, their name, and any other instructions from the source of the content.

You may find articles of interest that you can rewrite and put your personal spin on things.

You might hire an elance writer to write original content for you. You might purchase Private Label Rights (PLR) to articles which allows you to rewrite them and claim them as your own, but they must be rewritten at least 50-75%.

Always use quality content when you're using blogs to generate leads. Remember, you can use different formats. For example, you may have written a really cool article on a relevant topic and you've put it on your blog or maybe published it as an article like on Ezine Articles.

You might then change the format and put it into a pdf format so people can buy or download. You might want to record a video or audio, simply reading the words that your wrote.

Duplicate content Penalty-What is it?

If Google or other search engines believe you are using duplicate content your site may be relegated to the back blocks of Google, ending up in the supplemental index or they may leave you out all together.

Keep your content fresh and make it available in different formats.This will keep you fresh as well.

Using Blogs to generate leads is an important marketing strategy. To learn more of these strategies be sure to sign up for your free Renegade University Course.