Is PLR Duplicate Content? The Truth Behind the Myth & How to Rewrite PLR

Here’s a question I get all the time.

“If I use your blog posts on my site, won’t that affect my SEO, or will Google penalize my site?”

It doesn’t take long traveling down the SEO rabbit hole to find horror stories of duplicate content tanking websites or outright removing them from Google. 

How much of it is true? Will your site be penalized if you purchase PLR articles? Will your products stand out if you purchase PLR courses? And what is the best way to rewrite PLR content to make it unique? 

I’ll answer these questions and more in this article.

Your Guide to Duplicate Content & PLR

Duplicate content refers to identical pieces of content published across the web or within your site. 

For example, if you had blog posts on your website that were identical to each other or if another website copied your blog content, both cases would be considered “duplicate content.” Duplicate content is more common than you’d think; many sites have duplicate content without realizing it or creating it on purpose! 

Duplicate content can appear in a few other forms, though not all of them are benign:

  • Print-friendly versions of pages: If you offer a print-friendly version of your articles, that's duplicate content. Google is usually smart enough to ignore or filter these out, though.
  • Scraped content: Some malicious folks will “scrape” (copy) the content from a website to create a new website with identical content. This is a copyright violation and can result in legal action against the site doing the scraping.  
  • Syndicated content: News websites often syndicate content by distributing it to multiple sources. You can do the same thing by importing a story published on your website to Medium or similar publications. Usually, these syndicated pieces point back to the original source, telling Google where to focus.

And if you’re in a crowded niche, chances are you’re answering many of the same questions as your competitor. While this content is not word-for-word duplicate content, some blogs only have so much to say about a particular topic and will overlap.

So, duplicate content is the same content on the same website. Is this a cause for concern? Read on. 

The Real Problem With Duplicate Content

Duplicate content (especially when it comes to PLR) is a concern for two reasons:

  • It could harm your SEO: This is mainly a concern with PLR articles. Google has said that they do not penalize websites for duplicate content; however, if you have content identical to 10 other websites, then Google will have a hard time differentiating and deciding who should rank.
  • It can lead to unoriginal content and products: If you purchase the same PLR course as 10 other coaches/consultants in your niche, who’s to say it’s any different or unique than the others? Aside from SEO, this is the other major concern people have when purchasing PLR products. 

The second problem is an easy one to fix – simply customize your PLR products and voila, you have a unique product for your customers. 

The first bullet is a thorny question for SEO. Google doesn’t care so much if your content is the same as another piece of content already on the web. The issue is that when Google has two or more pieces of content that are identical, then content quality matters a lot less than the authority of your website. 

Authority is a measure of how important your site is. The older your website, the more traffic it gets, and the more websites link to yours (called backlinks by SEO folks), the more authoritative your site is. 

But authority isn’t cheap  – especially when it comes to getting backlinks. As a result, if you are outright duplicating websites that are more authoritative than you, then you are facing an uphill battle when it comes to outranking them.

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So What Happens When I Publish PLR Articles?

You won’t (or likely won’t) be penalized by Google for publishing PLR content, so what’s the worst that can happen?

While you won’t tank your rankings, if you’re in a crowded niche or going up against big competitors and have content identical to them, then chances are good that you won’t rank. If ranking on Google and getting gobs of traffic isn’t your goal, then I’d suppose that’s not so much of a concern. 

But even if traffic isn’t your goal, it’s probably better if you find a few key ways to differentiate so that you stand out. Even if ranking isn’t your goal, when people do read your content, they’ll see that it’s different and get a sense of your unique brand and voice. 

Isn’t that worth spending a few minutes customizing your PLR articles? Read on as I break down tactics you can use to rewrite your PLR articles.

How to Rewrite Your PLR Articles: 3 Fast Tactics

Rewriting PLR content doesn’t need to take hours of time. Here are three quick tactics you can use to enhance and rewrite your PLR articles:

  • Add unique insights or experiences
  • Customize them to your audience
  • Enhance them with AI

Add Unique Insights and Experiences

There's nothing more powerful than adding your own experiences to a PLR Article. 

For example, suppose I took an article from my 10 Done-for-You Blog Posts & Emails: Lead Magnets pack. Specifically, let’s say I choose the one titled “How Email Marketing Can Help Your Business: It’s All About the List.”

The post opens with the following paragraph:

Even if you run a brick-and-mortar offline business, an email list can help you grow your customer base and build deeper relationships with them. Through the content you share with them there, they’ll become buyers and brand advocates. Here’s how it works.

Here's how I'd make that paragraph "mine":

Coaches: It doesn't matter if your business is predominantly offline. An email list can help you grow your customer base and nurture relationships with them.  How does that happen? Through the content you share with them! Email is more personal, and over time, your subscribers will become buyers and brand advocates. Ready to dig deeper?

As you can see, we both started with the same PLR Content, and I included my audience. I referenced a myth they have about email lists (I don't need one because my business is offline), and I kept the reference to the customer base. Then, I tailored the rest of the paragraph to my audience. 

This isn't duplicate content; it's not the type of content that gets you into trouble. It's the type of content that a coach would see and feel that it was talking directly to them.

In this way, PLR helps me rapidly speed up my process for content creation rather than being the sole provider of content for a website. 

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Customize and Personalize to Match Your Audience

When it comes to using our done-for-you blog posts, the secret to being found and getting the right traffic is to customize it to your audience and add your own content where possible. 

For example, you can add:

This isn't duplicate content; it's not the type of content that gets you into trouble. It's the type of content that a coach would see and feel that it was talking directly to them.

In this way, PLR helps me rapidly speed up my process for content creation rather than being the sole provider of content for a website. 

  • Additional points
  • Examples
  • Graphics

And more enhancements that are directly relevant to your audience. That includes changing the title, sub-headings, and other key bits of language to ensure your audience knows it's for them.

Note: Targeting working moms? Then put that phrase in your title, along with examples in your posts. Aiming to work with tech startup founders? Put that into the post, and search engines will know that when someone searches for "tech startup marketing tips," your blog post on the topic is the one to show.

Enhance with AI

Following the above tactics will help you quickly create customized pieces of content for your site, but if you’re too short on time for that, I’ve got another tip: use those sections as prompts for your favorite AI assistant. 

AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude are truly game-changers for PLR content transformation. Simply feed the text to these tools and give it a prompt like:

  • Rewrite this content in such-and-such style
  • Based on these sample case studies, write specific examples to enhance the content
  • Elaborate on this point of the text

And so on. 

Instead of spending hours manually rewriting, you can feed the original content through AI with specific instructions about tone, style, audience, and target keywords.

Rewriting PLR Articles: A Checklist

Rewriting PLR Articles: A Checklist

You can build a web presence and thriving blog with PLR articles, you just need to make the necessary changes to stand out. 

Start by purchasing high-quality PLR articles. Low-quality or free stuff will likely not be very good and give you a much bigger headache than writing content from scratch.

Once you have your PLR articles, the next step is to copy and paste them into your site and edit them.

  • 1. Create a new headline - bonus points if you include your ideal client in the headline.
  • 2. Edit the opening paragraph so it appeals to your audience.
  • 3. Add a branded image with your logo. 
  • 4. Add a little story or your experience to the content. Not essential, but it really helps your audience connect with you.
  • 5. Add your call to action. Ideally to subscribe to your email list, or depending on the content, direct them to your sales page.
  • 6. Add a PS reminder of the main point and your call to action.
  • 7. Schedule your post ready to go live!

PLR Articles can be used as-is, but we always recommend you add value to your content by adding some customization. It can take 2+ hours to write a good quality blog post from scratch, even with the help of AI. Or just 20 minutes to edit a PLR Article so your audience loves it. 

  • PLR, or done-for-you blog posts, will give you a steady stream of content.
  • PLR Articles don't have to be used as blog posts. They can be repurposed for videos, live stream scripts, and infographics - the only limit is your imagination!
  • They'll save you hours and hours of time as well as grow your audience
  • They can easily be handed to a virtual assistant to customize if you're too busy to do it yourself

As you can see, duplicate content isn't really an issue when it comes to PLR Content and White Label Courses, and you won't feel a negative impact or traffic filter if you follow the tips I've shared with you.

Remember this the next time someone tells you horrible things will happen to you if you use PLR Articles: They have just enough knowledge to be dangerous (to your business) but not enough to help you overcome it. You can always share this article with them - they'll love you for it! 

What are you going to create your next blog posts about?

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Enjoy!

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