Newbie Myth 1: The "Duplicate content penalty."

Some webmasters worry that if content on their sites is suddenly on hundreds of other sites, search engines will inflict a "duplicate content penalty." Why is this concern unjustified?

* If this were true, every major newspaper and news portal website would now be de-indexed from search engines, since they all carry "duplicate content" from news wires such as

Reuters and Associated Press.

* Thousands of self-promoting internet gurus have proven that distributing content is an effective method of improving search engine rank.

* Even more thousands of content websites have proven that republishing this content does not carry any search engine penalty.

True, first website to publish an article often seems to be favored by search engines, ranking higher for same content in searches than higher-PageRank pages with same content. But "duplicate" pages do show up in search engine results, even if lower than original site. Meanwhile, reprint content has no effect on ranking of a site's other pages.

The only duplicate content penalty is for duplication of content across pages of a single website. Meanwhile, there is a sort of "copyright theft" penalty, whereby someone who copies content without permission can be manually removed from search engine indexes out of respect for Digital Millennium Copyright Act. But that penalty is only for flagrant theft, not minor mistakes in attributing reprint content.

Newbie Myth 2: The goal is to get in article clearinghouse websites.

There are over 100 popular, high-traffic websites that act as clearinghouses for content made available for redistribution. These websites include isnare.com, amazines.com, and goarticles.com.

Many novice content-distributors are upset when article clearinghouse websites, with tens of thousands of articles each with a backlink, pass negligible PageRank. But point of distributing content to those websites is for other website owners to find your content and put it on their websites--not to get a backlink directly from clearinghouse website (though this is sometimes an unexpected bonus).

Plus, to maximize PageRank-passing links, you also have to submit articles to website owners individually. It's not a small amount of work. But there's no substitute for a polite, individually crafted email recommending a website owner complement his or her existing articles with one you've written.

Myth 3: Any content will do.

You can add these sentences into any ad copy. You may have to change one or two words so it relates more to product or service you're selling.

1. As you keep reading this ad copy, you are feeling more and more compelled to experience all benefits of our product.

2. The more you understand just how valuable our product could be to your life, less you think about delaying this important purchase.

3. After you read this short ad you will feel like your problems are almost completely solved, all you will have to do is order.

4. As you're skimming through this, you're beginning to think you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by trying out our product.