There are a number of  misconceptions about search engines, especially Google, and how they treat blog posts and articles. One such misconception is called “duplicate content.” The myth is that if you submit the same content to a bunch of different places, you’ll be penalized for having the same content in multiple locations. If this were true, article directories would have died long ago.

Even Rover is confused about Duplicate Content

Syndication is a good thing. If a bot comes across multiple domains with the same content, it will algorithmically determine which URL best represents the duplicate content. If you have duplicate content on your site, the bot will do the same thing. The search engines’ job is to provide searchers with the best representatives of the data they’re looking for, not provide different URLs with the same content.

The easiest way to reduce the potential of being labeled a “search engine deceiver” is to create a noindex meta tag for the duplicate content. This tells the bot to ignore it.

Of course, if you have a large amount of duplicate content on your site, you will be penalized and labeled an online nuisance. In retaliation, the search engines may stop indexing your site or, at the very least, reduce its ranking considerably. Think this is hard to do? Well, if you have an online version and a print version of the same content, you technically have duplicate content. So, for the print version, create the noindex tag and you’re golden.

Why do I mention this? If you’re planning on submitting the same blog post or articles to a variety of places, you can do this confidently knowing you won’t get dinged for having the same content in many locations. However, understand that only one site will rank the highest and others might not be ranked at all.

This means you need to be strategic about how you post items. If you want a blog post to rank on your site, put it there first. If you’re submitting an article to a directory, then you’ll want to submit to the high-end authority site like EzineArticles.com first.

If you’d like to read more about duplicate content issues, you can find in-depth information at Google Webmaster Central.

WordPress.org offers bloggers almost infinite possibilities with their blog design, functionality, feel and presentation. It also does one other thing – it defaults your blog to a “NoFollow” status when people comment on your posts.

If you’re scratching your head about this, it’s simple. If someone comments on something you wrote, they’ll probably assume that their listing of their website will guarantee them a backlink to their site. Unless you disable your NoFollow status, your commentors will come up empty.

While it’s not immediately obvious if a blog is NoFollow or DoFollow, it pays to give some love to people who take the time to read your writings and comment on them. It’s like offering someone cake and coffee when they visit your home. Or, as many of my friends do, a plate of fresh fruit and a glass of water.

Changing your blog’s status to DoFollow is actually pretty easy. It starts with the DoFollow plugin. This easy-to-install plugin suddenly allows your blog to open doors for commentors. They’ll be happy and so will you.

Of course, like the fun couple in the neighborhood, you’ll want to keep out the riff-raff. You know, Spammers. Because once you start telling people about your DoFollow status, they’ll come sniffing around like a dog on a scent. (No disrespect meant in comparing dogs to spammers by the way.) So, to reduce any extra work you have to exert keeping spammers at bay, be sure to install akismet and captcha plugins.

Now the fun part. Want to really stand out in the crowd? Then I suggest you visit CleverMarketer.com and grab the cool graphic that she’s created to advertise the fact that you run a DoFollow blog. The post I’m directing you to on her blog was the inspiration for this post. (Which, if you’re tracking along, is another way to give some love to others on your blog.)

Just because you have a DoFollow blog, doesn’t mean you have to approve every comment that comes in. You DO have your blog set so that you must approve comments before they post, right? If not, it’s a simple change that will reduce clutter and useless comments that are only there to acquire backlinks.

If you’re a commentor and you come across a DoFollow blog, do the right thing. If you comment, make it meaty and useful. Don’t just say, “Great post!” and leave it at that. Add some value to the discussion. At the very least, share a short, relevant story that illustrates a point in the post. In other words, earn that backlink.

If you’d like to know if a blog you frequent and comment on is NoFollow or DoFollow, you’ll want to watch this video from Josh Garcia. In it, he shows you a cool Firefox plugin that makes learning this painless. He also shows you a manual way to tell the blog’s Follow status. It’s good to know both. I don’t want to steal Josh’s thunder, but I will say that I was quite surprised that Copyblogger.com is a NoFollow blog. (Cue the Gasp!) Even though it’s NoFollow, Josh gives some compelling reasons to still comment on a highly trafficked blog like Copyblogger. I won’t spoil the surprise, though.