"Google's Duplicate Content Penalty Isn't Real" & the Return of Franco Valentino (Content Lab, Ep. 30)

Recently, a very interesting conversation occurred in IMPACT Elite -- where close to 5,000 of the brightest mights in digital sales and marketing come together to talk shop -- about avoiding the dreaded duplicate content penalty in pillar content: 

Shout-out to Brian Walker for asking such a great question!
(And for listening to the pod!)

At one point during this back and forth however, one of my favorite humans in the business (and the technical SEO savant behind our Is SEO Dead in 2019? guide) Franco Valentino broke my brain when he informed me of a simple truth:

The duplicate content penalty we all fear from Google isn't real. It doesn't exist. 

So, of course, we needed to talk about it:

Which brings us to this week's episode. 

If the duplicate content penalty isn't real, why do so many of us think it is? And how should we be thinking about duplicating content across our content pillars, geo-targeted landing pages, and more?

Don't panic. Franco is here to help make sense of all of this.

Enjoy!