Many people have joined a private label rights service. They get hundreds of new articles and even full length ebooks every month. They can publish these articles to increase the content on their web sites. They can use the ebooks as new products or as promotional items for visitors who sign up for their newsletters.

Not only can members of private label rights services use the articles and ebooks, but they can publish the material under their own name. This gives them added authority in the eyes of their site's visitors and increases the likelihood of a visitor making a purchase, or at least returning to their site.

But, one thing you should consider about publishing any private label rights article on your site is its potential to be considered as "duplicate content." If you are publishing an article that can be found on another site, your article can be considered duplicate content. While translations of articles and short quotes are not considered duplicate content, major portions of, or the entire content of articles can be flagged as duplicate content.

Understand that search engines want to present a full spectrum of relevant information to their search users. If a number of items on the search results page contain essentially the same content, the search engine user will not be pleased with the results of their search. Such a user may well decide that the search results were below their expectations and decide to use other search engines in the future.

Google is one search engine that considers duplicate content negatively. Google penalizes duplicate content by trying to index only one version of an article. If Google believes you are trying to manipulate the search algorithm by using duplicate content they may also make downward ranking adjustments to your site.

If you are using private label content, you can find out how many other sites are using that same content by selecting a sentence from an article, putting quotes around it, and entering that sentence into a search engine. Often you'll find 10, 50, or 100 other sites with the same article.

I used the first sentence of a private label rights article in a Google search and found only 5 results. But, the duplicate content message was displayed: "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 5 already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included." When I clicked to see all the items, there were 53 items, more than 10 times as many as originally indicated.

I did the same search on MSM's Live Search and found 31 items.

Try this with a couple of private label content articles you have published on your site. Do your results indicate that your private label content articles may be flagged as duplicate content and thus not found by the average search engine user?

If so, how can you safely utilize private label rights content on your site?

First, you should add a new first paragraph to the article. This paragraph can relate the information that follows to the rest of your site and provide a smooth introduction to the new material.

Second, you should rewrite substantial portions of the first two or three paragraphs. Just state the concepts of those paragraphs in your own words. I like to read a few sentences in a paragraph and then reword them in my own style. Then I delete the original sentences and continue with the next sentences.

This process creates at least three or four paragraphs totally in your own words that are very unlikely to be duplicated elsewhere.

Just how may paragraphs you rewrite is up to you. The more your rewrite the better off you will be. And, the more you change, the more original the article will appear to both the search engines and your site's visitors.

Third, write a new closing paragraph. Make this a summary of the article. You may also include a lead-in to another page on your site with a link to that page.

Private label rights articles can be very helpful. They can provide research that would take you many hours to perform. All you have to do to effectively use the results of that research is to state the ideas in your own words and thus, avoid the duplicate content penalty.