So the word from big G! is:

Lets put this to bed once and for all, folks: Theres no such thing as a duplicate content penalty. At least, not in the way most people mean when they say that.

There are some penalties that are related to the idea of having the same content as another site"for example, if youre scraping content from other sites and republishing it, or if you republish content without adding any additional value. These tactics are clearly outlined (and discouraged) in our Webmaster Guidelines:

• Dont create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
• Avoid cookie cutter approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
• If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.

If you werent already aware, a wordpress blog creates duplicate content just because of the way the pages are structured.

A domain-name/page-1/ and domain-name.com/blogging/2008/09/10/todays-post.html might contain the same content. Unless youre willing to spend a little time setting no follow tags on sections on your blog, you are already publishing duplicate content on the web.

Im not overly disturbed that I might be slapped down by the search engines for this duplicate content and think the time could be better spent on growing my business instead.

Where a blog can stand out is to provide value to the content publishing process.

Its been mentioned before that a genuine review (rather than scraped/republished content from other sites) will generate more sales, because it blends the visitors needs for accurate and useful information, together with your attempt to monetize the site.

Secondly, moving from a purely automated/mechanical approach to SEO and linkbuilding to a social traffic-based approach can yield great dividends for your business.

Blogs, in particular, are a great way for existing businesses to ramp up their marketing efforts and for new marketers to get their foot in the door.

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