The Duplicate Content Myth Put To Bed (Part 4 Of 7)

The Duplicate Content Myth Put To Bed

Will your site get penalized for having duplicate content?

At a recent search engine convention in the US, many Googler’s (that’s pretty much all of us) asked questions about content and sites with duplicate content. There are many myths surrounding this topic so below I set the record straight. Especially for some of the more frustrated people who don’t understand this concept.

So exactly what is duplicate content?

Duplicate content simply refers to large unlimited blocks of content that are similar to other chucks of information in either the index of your site or others. Most the time you will see this occur in forums, or blogs and it is unintentional. In some cases duplicated content is spread across one’s domain in order to trick search engine rankings and drive more traffic by using popular keywords, now referred to as “long-tail keywords“

What is non-duplicate content?

According to the algorithms used by major search engines such as Google, a good example of non-duplicate content would be the same article written in English and French. Also, a lot of marketers worry about the occasional partial snippets of text getting flagged as duplicate content, when it simply doesn’t matter.

This brings us back to the important question…Just why does Google care about duplicate content?

Well it all comes back to giving users varied information quickly! Users don’t want to be faced with pages and pages of the same original content. In fact think how annoyed you get when you type in a search term and the same old info comes up, over and over. It’s most annoying, and a waist of time to say the least.

How does Google deal with this content?

Google has a bad habit of picking and choosing which sites are the original when duplicate materials are found. If your site is relatively new and the article sites you are posting on have been around for a while, you could end up losing ranking or worse, getting blacklisted right off the SERP.

The Following is Quoted from Google:-

How can Webmasters proactively address duplicate content issues?

Block appropriately: Rather than letting our algorithms determine the “best” version of a document, you may wish to help guide us to your preferred version. For instance, if you don’t want us to index the printer versions of your site’s articles, disallow those directories or make use of regular expressions in your robots.txt file.

Use 301s: If you have restructured your site, use 301 redirects (”RedirectPermanent”) in your .htaccess file to smartly redirect users, the Googlebot, and other spiders.
Be consistent: Endeavor to keep your internal linking consistent; don’t link to /page/ and /page and /page/index.htm.

Use TLDs: To help us serve the most appropriate version of a document, use top level domains whenever possible to handle country-specific content. We’re more likely to know that .de indicates Germany-focused content, for instance, than /de or de.example.com.

Syndicate carefully: If you syndicate your content on other sites, make sure they include a link back to the original article on each syndicated article. Even with that, note that we’ll always show the (unblocked) version we think is most appropriate for users in each given search, which may or may not be the version you’d prefer.Use the preferred domain feature of webmaster tools: If other sites link to yours using both the www and non-www version of your URLs, you can let us know which way you prefer your site to be indexed.

Minimize boilerplate repetition: For instance, instead of including lengthy copyright text on the bottom of every page, include a very brief summary and then link to a page with more details.

Avoid publishing stubs: Users don’t like seeing “empty” pages, so avoid placeholders where possible. This means not publishing (or at least blocking) pages with zero reviews, no real estate listings, etc., so users (and bots) aren’t subjected to a zillion instances of “Below you’ll find a superb list of all the great rental opportunities in [insert cityname]…” with no actual listings.

Understand your CMS: Make sure you’re familiar with how content is displayed on your Web site, particularly if it includes a blog, a forum, or related system that often shows the same content in multiple formats.

Don’t worry be happy: Don’t fret too much about sites that scrape (misappropriate and republish) your content. Though annoying, it’s highly unlikely that such sites can negatively impact your site’s presence in Google. If you do spot a case that’s particularly frustrating, you are welcome to file a DMCA request to claim ownership of the content and have us deal with the rogue site.

In short, a general awareness of duplicate content issues and a few minutes of thoughtful preventative maintenance should help you to help us provide users with unique and relevant content.

quoted From: Google Webmaster Central Blog

Remember, repeat visitors are CRITICAL to your survival.The job of a search engine is to maintain the most accurate and useful search results possible. This will mean that you can’t take a bunch of private label articles, press releases or article directory content and use it to drive tons of traffic.It just won’t work. To make sure Google and other major search engines favour your site, you must avoid duplicate content at all costs.

Cheers

John S.
http://www.trafficsecretsreport.com

Oops I Did It Again! The Dirt On Link Building

Ok that first bit sounded like britney spears when she was in her “hey day!” ….well those days have long gone right!?She has been exposed……BUT enough about britney!

What I am going to do for you today is expose the so called miracle link builders out there.
You know the ad ….the Typical one would be : “Get 200 one-way links for $39.95.”

YEAH RIGHT!

Now, I am a big believer in outsourcing and hiring people to outsource your work. It’s a a killer tactic, but as long as they share your vision in exactly what you want. The so called “dirty” area is where companies offer to build links for you, and package or bundle it up in ”pay per link” jobs. They spit out worthless posts that sit out in cyberspace and cry “SPAM HERE DONT CLICK!”. Not good right?

The secret underlying fact here is that link building companies owns a series of “collaborating” sites, a whole network of them, somtimes termed ”link farms”, which are not noticed by Google or have no significant importance where they stand. They con people to add links to this big farm of worthlessness.

what happens? All you have is a big bunch of worthless links sitting somewhere and your site can’t possibly get more exposure and better rankings. In fact sometimes this can hurt you and you’re worse off than before you started … Plus your bank account is a little bit worse for wear too right?

This is a serious problem, because most marketers believe they just need links all over the place when they first start to succeed. That is not true. But really what is crutial to winning at this game is, very high quality links, placed in just the right spot on and in pages, and targeting the right anchor text on other pages as well.

But think about it, if someone at Google want to buy a dog and they type in “dogs for sale” are they really looking to buy? or just window shopping online? It highly likely. What breed of dog are they after? What size? What colour? What Price range? Where do they live? See the problem? There are too many variables! This is where smart marketing is key. Don’t focus on keywords where buyers are just mearly window shopping. You want the keywords where people are almost commited to buying before they hit that damn search button!.
Lets say in the search engine rankings you are at #1 for a particular keyword or phrase, but you receive no traffic, you fail.

This traffic is just worthless. Lets say you receive 8,000+ unique visitors per day and no one decides to buy, the traffic is worthless. Dead ballast really.
Remember traffic is important but Conversion means everything to you too.

So, where do you go from here?

You need to test first. Use PPC and perform smaller tests. See which keywords convert well. This technique is used only by some, and of those using it only a handful fully understand it. But here is the kicker!. Don’t spend all your time studing and working out which keywords get the most searches, sit down and have a look which keywords bring the most buyers! Thats the power of all this!

Now get back to work.

Hope this helps!

Cheers

John S.

http://www.trafficsecretsreport.com

Good Content = Great Traffic.

Good Content = Great Traffic.

I come across a lot of people, who complain that they have this great looking website but they never get any traffic? Does that sound familiar at all?

Then once you visit their website, there is nothing there. No sharp attention grabbing graphics, no text and no communication between the website and the visitor. I have even seen one page, bright red with two lines of text, and an email address, AGGHHHH! I think I burnt my retina’s out with that one. PHEW!

The best chance of getting loads of traffic is to give them (i.e. Your visitors) something when they get there. Make it worth while visiting.

To do this you MUST have high quality, unique content if you want long-term, free search engine traffic and also return visitors. This is the most important tip of all. But I see a majority of potential websites fail at this. What they don’t realize, is that this is what will set you apart from all your competitors online.

Your main goal is to Provide LOTS of information-rich, content because:-

1) Search engines love it!

2) People who crave for your information will keep visiting!

The rate at which websites are growing is astounding, and search engines are now just being clogged with junk at an alarming rate.

Google craves for good content continuously. If you can feed good content continuously, then expect to get higher ranking in the search engines, and if you content is good enough, you will also get other people linking back to your site.

Your job is to spend as much time posting content on your site that people will talk about. That way, your website will automatically end up with lots of free, one way links. People will even start recommending others to your site without you telling them to do so.

This has worked very well in the past, but it continues to be one of the best ways to grow your traffic exponentially. Help people out, give good quality content that solves peoples problems, network with others and you will soon see a massive increase in traffic and ranking in the popular search engines.

Cheers

John S.

http://www.trafficsecretsreport.com

internet traffic - Google Clamps down on squidoo

Internet Traffic

If anyone has squidoo used in the past to increase their marketing efforts they will know that squidoo is a highly successful way to bring in lots of good targeted internet traffic to your website. Your probably experiencing more internet traffic than ever if you can get a good ranking in google. But news this week (NOW CONFIRMED) that this free ride seems to be coming to an end.

This happens to almost any new internet traffic tactic that starts working well online. It gets abused and then it goes away.

TechCrunch just made a great post about how Google is cracking down on Squidoo’s spam http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/07/10/google-acting-against-squidoo-due-to-spam/

Oh well it was good while it lasted huh?

internet traffic rules!

For the most amazing secrets for generating massive internet traffic please visit :-http://www.trafficsecretsreport.com