If an article is pulled from a free article directory, it could appear in hundreds of ezines and sites across the web. However, the search engines only give "credit" to the first few and essentially ignore the hundreds (perhaps, thousands) of other sites with that same content.

It's known as the "duplicate content penalty" and is a relatively new phenomenon in search engine technology. Five years ago, sites weren't nearly as penalized as they are today for having duplicate content.

In the most severe cases, this can mean having your site banned by certain search engines.

The concept of PLR content is that it is sold to only a certain number of buyers. Some sell to as few as 25, some as high as 1,000, and yet others sell it to an unlimited number of purchasers.

When you consider that there are billions of websites and blogs on the net, this means the PLR content is much better than free article directory content for serious webpreneurs.

FYI, a note about one-way links (aka backlinks): In the old days of search engine optimization, many webmasters promoted their site through link exchange systems/programs.

Search engines pretty much frown on this now. Why? Because it's like paying for an endorsement. To illustrate, if you were trying to decide on a car purchase, who would you believe more -- the company salesman, or your friend who bought her car from the company and was pleased with the vehicle and the process?

When a search engine finds a one-way link to your site, they assume that it's an "unpaid testimonial," in essence. Two-way links are like company spokespeople (eg, you link to me and I'll link to you).

With reciprocal links, both sites increase their inbound links, but it's a "bad" link. Too many of these and the search engines don't think of your site as a "legitimate source."

How do you do this? Create and distribute fresh, relevant, unique content that others want to link to and pass along to others (who ostensibly will also link to it). 

How much does PLR content cost? As this is a relatively new genre in freelance writing, rates are all over the place (as with most rates in freelance writing). From a few dollars an article to a few hundred dollars in some cases.

What are some of the advantages of using PLR content? Three distinct advantages come immediately to mind: i) fresh content; ii) on a regular basis; iii) for those who either have no time and/or interest in producing it themselves.

3 Things to Look for in a PLR Provider

Rights: As in, make sure you have the right to use the content the way you want. Some companies have limitations on how you can use the content they sell you.

Number of Times Sold: While it's hard to verify, you want to make sure that the company doesn't just say that they resell the content to "only 200 webmasters," but really sell it as many times as they can.

How can you check this? Again, it may be difficult. One way is to make  a minimal purchase and run then run the content through a program like Copyscape.

If it returns 2,000 results when they say they only sell to 200, then it's probably not a company you want to do business with again.

"Unique" Content: While this may sound like a contradiction, it's not. To explain: some PLR content providers use article spinning software to create various versions.