Whether or not you believe in the Google duplicate content penalty, there’s no doubt that using PLR on a website without any serious modification is probably not a good idea. You may or may not get penalized for publishing an exact same article, but if you think of how search engines work, for virtually any search phrase your PLR content may rank for, there will be hundreds if not thousands of other websites that will also rank.

I’ve done a few experiments with some strictly PLR content sites, and honestly it wasn’t worth the effort. There are other ways to use PLR articles though that will not incur the wrath of the search engines, and yet still can help you with your affiliate marketing projects.

Read my top 5 ways to use PLR articles after the jump!

1. Create your own special report

Rewrite and compile several PLR articles into a special report, and offer it as an incentive to sign up for a mailing list, or as a bonus to a product you sell. You can also include affiliate links inside and give it away as a free viral report. You could even create an eBook and sell it!

The easiest way to create a PDF report with affiliate links is to use OpenOffice. Here’s a post I wrote about creating your own PDF files.

2. Use in an auto-responder series

Add value to your mailing list by creating a 5 day mini e-course, or anything really and use PLR articles. While search engine “machines” can tell if something is duplicate very easily, since it’s seen everything on the internet, humans have not.

Using PLR articles as value content can be helpful until you can create your own high quality content.

3. Create a paid membership site

Here’s a very interesting concept that can be used in two ways. First, it can be used in the same way as #2, very few people will be able to tell it is duplicate content, and search engines should not be allowed to spider membership sites, so they cannot penalize you. This means you can really gather a huge amount of content and offer it all to your members.

Another way to look at this is starting your own PLR membership site, where you collect PLR and distribute it to your members so they can use it in their own projects. Just remember to always obey and pass along the rights to any PLR you sell/give away.

4. Get ideas, get information, get inspiration

Create your own unique web content by using the PLR as a source for ideas and info. The key here though is to stray as far away from the original content as possible. I would definitely suggest you write it completely in your own voice, and only use the PLR as a knowledge base.

5. Re-write and submit to article directories

Here the goal is to get as many backlinks as possible, and some traffic along the way. Writing articles for directories can be really time consuming, and sometimes you don’t really want to submit your best stuff (that should mostly be reserved for your website). That’s why a re-write of PLR can save you time and energy.

Plus, if you really want to soup up your article marketing, you can outsource PLR rewrites for a fraction of the cost of an original article, yet you’ll still get the same “unique” result in the eyes of the search engines.

I hope this gives you some ideas to get going. Just remember that generally, PLR can be a bit crappy, so always try and improve it if needed whenever you use any of these strategies. Also remember to always check your rights to use PLR articles which should always be included when you obtain them.

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