Mark Jackson was ready to tell colleagues at a search engine conference last year that search engines frown upon duplicate content. That's until he came across a competitor's Web site that ranked No.
1 on Google for one competitive keyword in particular. Not only did the company rank high, but did a whole slew of things good SEOers shouldn't, including have multiple versions of their Web site and
participate in link farms, he writes.
Of course, Jackson admits, there are exceptions to every rule. It's not always a good idea for SEOers to repeat metadata descriptions and H1
tags for product descriptions, for example, but these days it's often done. In another common practice of late, sites share editorial content and product descriptions. Some experts suggest avoiding
duplicate page titles at all costs. Jackson offers suggestions on how to avoid being ousted by Google, Microsoft and Yahoo if you have to smooth a few wrinkles after doing some of the things you
shouldn't do.
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