Unfortunately, most of the time it's not your actions that cause the duplicate content penalty. Thieves take not only your written work, but other types of content from your site, such as page layouts, graphics, and links. Most of the time they care little for the content itself, but instead they simply want your spot in the SERPs. Intentions are quite malicious - they hope that you'll eventually get banned, and they'll enjoy the ride!

Just a few small changes can ensure that your content is protected. Try a service like Copyscape.com, which allows you to determine whether any of the content on your site has been copied elsewhere. Simply type in the URL of the page in question, and Copyscape will return a list of pages from Google's index that have the exact same text, whether it be from your content, merchant content, feeds, or other articles you've reused. There are two options: a free manual search or a subscription to the Copysentry service, which offers greater protection.

If, indeed, someone else is using your content, your first step is to email them and request that the content be removed. If they don't respond to this request, your next move is to report them to Google as violators of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act guidelines, detailed at www.google.com/dmca.html.

HOW TO AVOID DUPLICATION

The following strategies will help you modify your online behavior so that your content is more unique and you are better able to avoid duplicate content penalties.

Always add UNIQUE feeds to automated feeds, and mix it up:

If there is any duplicate content on your site from automated feeds and especially merchant feeds, make a special effort to incorporate unique material. If feeds are a great source of commissions for you, use some of the profits to protect your site and develop unique content. Be careful what content is distributed for Affiliate use:

It's never a smart idea to encourage your affiliates to copy your articles, sales copy, reviews, and ads. While it involves more work, a smarter strategy consists of building a growing database of resources for affiliates that contain multiple versions of your marketing tools, your sales and pre-sales copy, and mini-site templates. This extra work will impress your affiliates AND protect your business from penalties for duplicate content.

You should also offer your affiliates free, branded downloads, like viral reports, software tools, audio and videos. None of these downloads will appear on their sites, so they will avoid duplicate content consequences.

Permanently redirect multiple domains to the same site:

Use a "301 status code" on your site, which signals to browsers that a page has moved. This permanent redirection code will demonstrate to Google spiders that you're directing branded domains to your own web site, rather than using duplicate content at another site. Consult your hosting company if you have any questions about implementing this suggestion.

Submit articles in Text Format:

Sending articles in plain text format forces anyone who would "scrap" them for their own sites to do a little bit of work. Without an HTML format, they will have to do some formatting of their own, at least with paragraph tags or line breaks. Reformatting may not always prevent the content from being judged as duplicate, but it may help.

Create multiple versions of your articles:

Many readers won't take this advice because of the extra work involved, but the strategy is effective and the time investment is definitely worthwhile. Try creating several versions of the same article before submitting it for distribution. These different versions can be considered "creative edits," in the sense that they involve a few simple revisions to make the content more unique. Consider delegating this task to a college student or freelance editor; their labor is less costly and, after all, you're paying for rewrites rather than original research and writing. Always make your content as unique as possible, and make sure that anyone else who uses the content with your permission re-writes it in their own words. Google is now able to determine where the content first appeared. This means that it's more likely that the people who are stealing your content will be penalized, and not you.