TIMOTHY MARTELL recently wrote a somewhat scathing assessment of an overlooked SEO problem. Those familiar with SEO know that duplicate content can be the "anchor around your kneck" when it comes to trying to keep a first page position on GOOGLE.  His entire article can be found here.

The down and dirty summation of the articles and graphs is this: 

• Duplicate content is bad.
• You probably have never checked to see if this applies to you.
• He blames the vendors.

Does this apply to you?  Try going to your dealership website and selecting the first ten words in your "ABOUT US" section.

One dealership about us page has the first twenty-one words of :

Our experienced staff has helped many people get into the car that they want and we want to help you too.

When you place quotes around the phrase and do a search you get 403,000 results of exactly the same twenty-one words.  

Is this the vendors fault?  Mr. Martell vehemently argues that it is. 

Or does this even really matter?  If everyone is doing it then we all have the same penalty from google so in theory we should all still be handicapped evenly.

If you want to avoid duplicate content penalties then a simple rephrasing should suffice to quiet the great google beast.

WHAT DO YOU THINK? DOES THIS MATTER?