“Duplicate content” refers to the same article being published on multiple pages online. This term is usually associated with how the various search engines perceive an article that is published on many sites online.

There is some misunderstanding about how search engines regard identical content. Many people, including some webmasters, will tell you that duplication of your copy or content on various websites will hurt your SEO, not improve it.

And while this may have been true at one time, in 2010 it’s a myth.

Google does NOT punish an author, copywriter or website for having an article published on more than one website. This is because the whole goal of article marketing is to have your article republished or cited on as many sites as possible.

Search engines don’t regard it as being a bad thing to have a piece of content published on multiple sites, though they will most likely only show a couple instances of the article in their search results.

Most online publishers or article directories are ok with duplicate content as well, provided that you are the exclusive copyright holder of the copy. That’s because the entire purpose of these directories is to provide free reprint articles for news aggregators, website owners and ezine editors. When an article is published on a directory, the end GOAL is usually that the article be republished on other websites.

This is not to say that there are not a few directories that prefer to be the first website to publish your content. Check the editorial guidelines at the article submission site to see if the site has such a rule.

It should also be noted that when talking about identical content on the web, you mean the same copy on DIFFERENT websites. Submitting duplicate content to the SAME publisher is still a no-no. This is a different scenario than the one above, because no publisher wants to receive duplicate feature stories or articles. Your articles may discuss the same topic or topics repeatedly, but publishers want authors to submit articles that are fresh – completely new to their site.