Duplicate content is probably one of the biggest taboos on the Internet. When I first began my Internet Marketing I was told "Avoid duplicate content or you will be penalized".

But is This Really True?

If you are marketing on the Internet, what is your primary goal?

Exposure, also called TRAFFIC.

You want as many people as possible to see your content. With as many as a billion people a day searching on the Internet; How are they going to find you?

If every article, every Squidoo lens, blogs or Hubpage is unique from everything else; How do you get exposure? We are told to get backlinks to our content to increase their ranking with the search engines. Yes, that will work, but you need a lot of backlinks to get a decent ranking. Please note I Do NOT mean that you copy other peoples content, it should always be your own.

It's like trying to find one particular snowflake in a snow storm. It's very difficult.

So, How Does Duplicate Content Help You?

Here's an analogy:

You are on the beach searching for red grains of sand. If there is only one red grain of sand it's going to be a very difficult search. Ranking may increase the "size" of the red grain of sand, but it's still only one grain of sand.

However if you have 50,000 grains of red sand it's going to be much easier for someone to find your red grains among all the other grains on the beach.

You may be penalized, but it really doesn't matter because you are all over the Internet.

Exposure (traffic) is more important than ranking. That's why RSS Feeds are becoming so popular. They redistribute your content throughout the Internet. Actually I believe that the more you are seen on the Internet the higher your ranking will eventually be.

The search engines know this. They may only rank one of your red grains of sand (content) and not the others. But that's OK because they are thousands of you out there to be found by the millions of searchers.

Take advantage of article submitters, RSS Feeds and anything else that will increase your exposure on the Internet. Like Daegan Smith says, "It doesn't have to be good, just get it out there".

It's like a House of Mirrors; see thousands of you all over the Internet.