In the print world, writers expect to have multiple publications of their works.  An article, for example,  might appear first in a magazine, then in an anthology, then in a collection of the writer’s essays.  Multiple publications increases the reputation – the “relevance” – of the writer’s standing.

Online, multiple publications of a blog post, however, are reputed to decrease “relevance” with search engines and may actually harm the standing of the blog post in search engine listings.

Many companies have multiple blogs, or are parts of networks of blogs – including their own employees’ corporate or individual blogs - which have different segments of readers.  Content on one blog may appeal to readers of another blog.

Yet, we hear it’s a “no-no” to repost and duplicate content.

We asked Daryl Scott, creator of competitive intelligence software AttaainCI, for clarification.

From Daryl Scott:

Let’s consider Site A and Site B.

• Having a link from Site A to Site B could increase traffic for Site B.
• Having the content from Site B duplicated on Site A could help increase traffic to Site A (i.e., more content to be discovered by the search engines).
• It is doubtful that duplicating the content would benefit BOTH Sites.

Search engines automatically handle duplicate content all the time, and generally "decide" which site to show in the search results if duplicate content is found, and they also "decide" the order of the sites within the search results that have the duplicated content (sometimes even eliminating one of the duplicates from the results).

A possible side effect of running the exact same content on both Sites A and B is that one of them may get rewarded while the other is not (and maybe does not even show up in the search results).

So, in the worst case scenario from Site B’s point of view, Site A might show up in the search results related to the content rather than Site B.  Maybe that's OK, based on what the blog writers are trying to accomplish, but it’s just something to consider.

 If Sites A and B are working in cooperation with each other, the best way to leverage the content of Site B is probably to "paraphrase" it (and perhaps comment on it to add value) on Site A and also provide the link to the source. That adds new content to Site A while still providing the value of a link to the source to Site B.

The whole subject of "duplicate content" and even the so-called "duplicate content penalty" (which is not so much a penalty as just a lack of benefit in some cases as described above) has been covered at length on the Internet. 

If you have interest, you might check out these discussions that cover this topic in more detail:  Demystifying the "duplicate content penalty" from the Official Google Webmaster Blog and The Duplicate Content Penalty Myth.

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From Handshake 2.0:

Thanks to Daryl Scott for our new understanding of duplicate content, we won't duplicate the content here, but we pointed out in Company Intelligence:  My Company or That Other Company? that a free company intelligence report from AttaainCI offers an intriguing dilemma. 

Will I choose a free report to find out what everyone else knows about my company?  Or will I choose a free report to find out everything about my top competitor?