When you guys write an article and then send it to a bunch of article submission sites, do you also put it up as an informational article page on your website to add pages of content to your site? Or would this show up as a supplemental page and not help any?

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Boulder home loan

Colorado Mortgage

Boulder Homes

I don't because of possible duplicate content issues. I would not want the risk. Why not write some articles for the web and others for only your site?

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Marc Rasmussen
SKY Sotheby's International Realty
Sarasota, FL Real Estate
Sarasota Real Estate

I moving toward the unique side as well. Just space it out - write a few articles a week; 1 for a blog, 1 to distribute, and 1 for your site.

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Steve Castaneda, Realtor
Keller Williams Realty
The MyHomeHouston Team

Specializing in Houston Real Estate. Feel free to visit my Houston Real Estate Blog or read about Real Estate Technology for agents.

Thanks for the tips guys. When you write the article for distribution, you do submit the same article to many article submission sites though right?

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Boulder home loan

Colorado Mortgage

Boulder Homes

Yes, send the articles out to lots of submission sites. And like Steve said, have three unique categories in mind, one for article distribution, one for your blog, and one for new site content.

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Jim Olenbush, ABR, CRS, GRI
Broker / Realtor

Austin Real Estate - Lake Travis Real Estate - Austin Real Estate

Its not so much about duplicate content, but more so in the lines of . . .

If you submit an article to the highly ranked article directories and then place the same article on your own site, there's no way your site will compete with these directories for search engine placement. Unless of course your site has a PR 8 or 9.

Duplicate content is a myth. The only time it applies is if you put the same text over and over on many pages of your own site. And you won't get penalized for it, you just won't rank for all your pages. Google will only take on of those pages for listing.

I think the "duplicate content" stuff is overblown, or that people misinterpret Google propoganda -- provided the original article that you place elsewhere contains a link back to your site.

For example, years ago I wrote a couple of articles for Realty Times and Inman News and some other places. They still show up, even now. A month or so after I wrote the articles, I posted them to my own site because otherwise there would be a gap in my articles. And I wrote lots of stuff for my site.

Plus, some of those same articles appear on about 50,000 sites by now.

If you type "home selling" into Google, my old site still comes up number one. That's pretty generic.

The key is that you can't just write one or two articles, then stop. You have to constantly add content. How hard can it be to look up your local MLS stats and write short articles about home sales pace or inventory once a month? If someone asks you a question about why listings with six photos get looked at more than listings with two photos -- take your verbal answer and write it down. Stuff like that and you have content. Spread it all over the web, providing there are links back to your site in each of those places.

Of course, don't submit duplicate content to other sites. Post it up elsewhere, then after a month or so, add it to your site, too. Do not put the same article in two places on the web that aren't part of your site. That's just rude.

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Terry Light - Professional Contrarian
Office Phone - (949) 305-7995
RealEstateBytes.com
Real Estate Encyclopedia
Author for RealEstate ABC (Creator, too)

That's pretty cool Terry. I think its the consistency that gets most people.

Anything which results in link building, requires dedication and determination!

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DRang3d
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Overseas Mortgages | Overseas Property |
U.K. Investment Property

I used to post articles on my site and wait until they have been indexed before uploading to article sites. I have one I loaded to both 9 or so months back and it still shows up indexed on my site and on article sites. That gives me some link juice. Lately I've ignored the dup content thing and just loaded to my site and article sites all at once. No difference in results.

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Sam Chapman
Austin, Texas
Austin, TX Real Estate |Austin Luxury Homes |Austin Real Estate Blog