Is Duplicate Content Really Bad For Our Websites?

Anand Srinivasan is the founder of KnewThis.com – the World’s FIRST Ask&Answer site where affiliate webmasters can build back links and get targeted traffic. Learn more about KnewThis by clicking here

First and foremost, before I begin this article, I would like to clarify that I am not an SEO expert. I am simply yet another webmaster who recently launched his own website and who has learnt a bit of SEO along the way. Also, this article is not a definitive piece in itself, but is just to instigate a bit of discussion from our individual experiences.

A lot many times, we have been told by Google as well as SEO experts that duplicate content hurts our website. And we have indeed taken efforts to minimize the incidence of duplicated content by writing rehashed articles so that Google does not detect it as something copied from elsewhere.

So, the question is does duplicate content actually affect our website rankings? Though I would personally still believe that duplicate content is good neither for our own website nor for the Internet as a whole, I would like to discuss here about two instances where I have observed that duplicate content does not affect rankings to a great extent. Firstly, from my own blog. When I first started blogging, like most of you, I had it hosted on Blogspot. This blogspot blog was my primary site for more than a year before I thought I should move to a .com domain. At this point, I had no idea about duplicate content affecting SERPS. I had no idea how to use 301 redirect to effect a seamless transfer. All that I did was use the Import tool on WordPress to import the whole content from the blogspot site to my new .com blog. It has been over two years since then. Till date, my blogspot website continues to exist and that has not affected my .com site’s ranking one bit. My site is still growing at 25% month on month (on a lower base though).

The second example is drawing from the success of article directories. Article directories like EzineArticles and GoArticles are among the most heavily trafficked websites in the world. A lot of their content is duplicated elsewhere. And they still they remain the primary source of traffic for a lot of affiliate webmasters amongst us.

So, does that mean duplicate content does not matter at all? Of course, it does. But from what I presume, while duplicate content is accounted for in the search engine rankings, websites are not explicitly penalized. If I copy content from a popular website, I shall not be penalized. Rather, when someone searches Google for a related topic, Google realizes that the site I copied from holds better authority than my own copied content and so decides to display their link.

Do you agree? What has been your experience with duplicate content? Please let us know in the comments.

Article Marketing for SEO and Blog Traffic

As far as search engine optimization is concerned, there are three really important factors – content, links and more links.

As far as link building is concerned, article marketing has always been one of the fastest and most cost-effective ways of doing it. On ProfitBlogger I already covered Article Marketing Automation, 1 Way Links, 3 Way Links, FirePow and other useful tools for submitting articles via “blog networks”. Now lets take a look at traditional article marketing, which has been around for much, much longer.

With traditional article marketing there are a few key differences:

  1. Your articles will be published on sites with higher authority and ranking, for example EzineArticles.com and GoArticles.com
  2. You cannot get a way with writing crappy articles, since most sites worth submitting to will manually approve your articles
  3. Instead of creating hyperlinks within the article content, you will only get a link back to your site in your author “resource box”

For niche blogging sites, article marketing has always worked beautifully and will always continue to do so. Article marketing by itself will not get you much direct traffic, but regularly submitting articles over time will get you indirect traffic from pretty awesome search engine rankings.

One software that I have used over the years is Submit Your Article by Steve Shaw. It’s one of the most advanced article submission programs around, with two unique features:

  • Article Leverage – When you enter an article, you’ll be asked to enter many variations for individual sentences and the article title. When your articles are submitted to traditional article marketing sites, each site gets a unique version of your article.
  • Article Trickle – Your articles are submitted slowly, so you get a more natural effect over time. Articles are queued and submitted automatically without your involvement.

submit your article

Recently, Submit Your Article has changed it’s features drastically. Instead of limiting your articles to 8 / month, you can now submit an unlimited amount of articles. At just $37 month it’s definitely one of the tools you’ll want to have in your Internet marketing arsenal.

When you publish an article using the system, it gets published on:

  • The SYA article directory itself, giving you an instant link back
  • Popular article directories like EzineArticles, GoArticles, IdeaMarketers and more
  • Article submission groups that accept email submissions
  • Sites that syndicate content from the above mentioned article directories and groups

One article can get you at least 100-200 links back to your site. Plus, since SYA allows you to create unique variations, it helps to avoid the duplicate content penalty as as a result you get more valid links that are recognized by Google as being “unique”.

Info / Signup : Submit Your Article.

35 Ways To Get Links to Your Blog

Want to get more links to your blog, improve your WordPress SEO, get more traffic and make lots of money? Here are some ways you can do that with little or no money.

  1. Leave Blog Comments – Yes, this still works. Jus find related blogs and participate in the comments. Make sure your comments are relevant or it will probably be deleted. Although most blogs have the “no-follow” tag attached to a commenter’s URL, it still helps you in terms of direct traffic, more exposure and other stuff.
  2. Do Trackbacks – Trackbacks, just like leaving a comment, can get you more traffic and links to your blog. If you and the blog you’re linking to is using WordPress, a trackback should happen naturally. Otherwise you may want to manually use the “Trackback” feature in WP.
  3. Link Exchange – Start a small link exchange with your WordPress blog, choosing a handful of high-quality partners to begin with. Use a 3-way link exchange if you have more than one blog.
  4. Trade Blogrolls – You may also want to manually look for blogroll partners. Linking up with several high-quality blogs may help in your SEO cause more than you can imagine.
  5. Use Forum Signatures – Participate in any forum regularly? Make sure you take advantage of forums that allow you to leave a signature. Choose the correct anchor words for your blog, and create a simple but powerful signature to your blog or website.
  6. Use Email Signatures – Although email signatures don’t help with SEP, it can get you a lot of real-world fans and loyal readers. Just enter a good signature in your Gmail or Yahoo Mail. If your blog appeals to a mass market, this can sometimes be one of your best marketing methods, and it’s so easy to do there’s almost no excuse if you’re not already doing it.
  7. Submit Articles – Submitting articles is an classic, text-book method of getting more links to your blog. However, dues to concerns on duplicate content, you perhaps need a better solution. Try JetSubmiter or Article Marketing Automation to make sure every article you submit is unique, therefore you get more recognized back links with just a little extra effort.
  8. Submit Blog Content – You can also use FirePow or 1 Way Links to submit the same article as blog content, and have thousands of blogs out there link back to yours. This strategy is very powerful for niche blogs.
  9. Be a Guest Blogger – Sign-up as a guest blogger for a real, authoritative blog, and with every post you submit you should also be getting a link back to your site. Many sites including WordPress Hacks, Blogging Tips etc openly advertise for guest bloggers. Some don’t, but you can always ask the blog owner.
  10. 3 Way Links – Use Jonathan Leger’s service; it works and I can prove it. I’ve had a few sites link first page in Google for smaller keyword terms using just this one tool. You can get a few hundred back links worth it.
  11. Publish Videos – Publish videos in YouTube, but make sure you include your website URL (example http://profitblogger.com) in the description field of each video. See this video of mine for example. Although the links are no-follow, its still recognized as a back link by Yahoo and MSN, and hopefully Google too. You can automate videos submissions too if you want using Traffic Geyser.
  12. Post A (Fake) Classified Ad – Go to USFreeAds.com and post a fake classifieds, syndicate to all their partner sites if possible. Although you have nothing to sell, you can always sell “advertising” on your blog if you get what I mean. Good opportunity to link back to your blog so your potential “advertisers” can see where their money will be spent. What is someone actually contacts you for an ad spot? Take it!
  13. Submit Press Release – Submit a press release using PrWeb.com and syndicate to as many sites as you can afford.
  14. Publish a Book – A book? Although it has nothing to do with online marketing, it can establish you as an expert in your field and people would start linking to your pages spontaneously.
  15. Write an e-book – Similar to writing a book, this time write an e-book or information product. If you think it’s going to be hard work you can also use the audio interview product creation method.
  16. Recruit Affiliates – When you have an ebook or digital products, you can start to recruit affiliates to promote for you. In comes the back links from thousands of different websites, and you’ll probably be making a lot of money in the process too.
  17. Hold a Contest – Hold a blog contest, a Christmas giveaway of anything where you can give something to your readers for very little effort on their part.
  18. Join A Blog Carnival – A blog “carnival” is simply a collection of conversations on the same topic. If someone has written a post, he can start a carnival and invite other bloggers to post their own ideas and arguments, while linking to all the other posts in that particular carnival.
  19. Start a Blog Meme – A blog “meme” is more like a game of “tag”, and while I used to see this quite often it doesn’t seem so popular anymore. Basically you can just start a post like “10 Things About Myself You Didn’t Know” or “How I Started Blogging” – anything that is personal – and then at the bottom of your post you “tag” a few people, linking to their blogs. These people then have to write their version of the same post, linking both to you (the person who tagged them) and a few other people they want to tag. Dome properly it can get you a lot of back links, but it all depends on the availability and willingness of the people you tag to play along.
  20. Content Thieves – Let people steal your content. Actually I say that because there’s not much you can do about it. But the good news is that in almost 90% of the cases the copied article will link back to your original version. Plus, make sure each article you write has several “deep links” pointing to previous posts (like what I’m doing here), so even if the assholes steal one article from you they end up linking back to a few of your articles. Google will recognize your article as the original with all these links pointing back to it.
  21. Buy Text Links – Got some cash? Head on over to Text Link Ads and buy some links on popular blogs. Expect to pay a lot of money monthly for a single site-wide link, but you can also show for post-level links which are cheaper and more targeted.
  22. Buy a Sponsored Review – Similar to buying a link with Text Link Ads, but this time the links are permanent. You can signup as an advertiser with SponsoredReviews.com and order a review. A few bloggers may take up your opportunity depending on how much you want to pay. They then write a review about your blog, linking back to it. Very powerful for non-competitive markets.
  23. Buy a Sponsored Post – Similar to sponsored reviews, but this time is can be any post instead of a “review”. You can announce a good post, a new resource, or a new product. Signup as an advertiser with Pay Per Post and post your opportunity. I think you can still get links as low as $5 / blog. (note: you can also make money from PPP and other paid blogging services as a blogger)
  24. Add a Web Directory – Get a software like PHP Link Directory or PHP Pro Bid and add a web directory to your existing blog. You can initially let webmasters submit their links for free, and when you have enough bulk you can start charging a low fee for each link they submit.
  25. Use Yahoo Answers – It’s like a forum, but not quite. People go here to get help and directions for their problems. Search for questions related to your market, and give honest solutions, including links to other people’s blogs and most importantly, yours too!
  26. Build Squidoo Lenses – A “Squidoo Lens” is a one-page comprehensive resource about a topic. The trick is to make each lens as good as possible in just one page. Create a new lens based on a keyword suitable to your blog, and list the best resources for that keyword including links to your affiliate programs and your blog.
  27. Build Free Satellite Blogs – This is a concept used more often in autopilot blogs than in normal blogs, but it’s still useful. Build “satellite” blogs using BlogSpot or on WordPress.com and link keywords in articles back to your main blogs
  28. Links in Your Flickr Account – If you have an active Flickr account, you make also want to include links to your blog in the photo descriptions. You can also comment on other people’s photos, similar to commenting on a blog.
  29. Start a “group writing project” – Darren Rowse does this a lot, and by starting one you can get a lot of good links to your blog. In fact, you can also just participate in one and can still get a fair amount of “goodwill” links.
  30. Join a blog network – This is going for top-quality links. Attach your blog to a network like 9 Rules, WebLogs Inc or other similar networks, and watch as your blog gets linked form almost every other blog in their network. Of course this is one of the hardest ways to get your blog linked, as only the best blogs are every accepted. Besides, the idea of “blog networks” isn’t as popular now as it used to be a few years back.
  31. Create free WordPress themes – Works like magic, and if you create a really good WordPress theme you can have thousands of links not only from new sites, but from established ones as well. A link back to the theme creator at the bottom of each theme is pretty much widely accepted and tolerated, but keep it to just one link to be professional. You can get a theme created in RentACoder or Elance for less than $200, and make sure you list it in the WordPress themes directory after you comply to their terms.
  32. Create free website / blog templates – Just like WordPress themes, you can also create PHP Link directory skins, BlogSpot templates, normal website templates, Joomla Templates, and much more. Just look for any CMS / website building solution out there that allows changing themes and allows third-party themes.
  33. Get a Twitter account – Twitter, use it. Get an account and make sure you install the WordPress plugin for Twitter which posts all your latest post automatically.
  34. Social bookmarking – Old, but still relevant. Not a hot topic anymore these days but as long as people use services like Delicious and Digg, getting a link from them are also important. Use Auto Social Poster to automate your bookmarking, or do it manually. Also make sure you have some good social bookmarking plugins to encourage others to save your pages. You can also outsource your social bookmarking.
  35. Write a link bait article – Spend some time writing an article that other people would be too lazy to duplicate, and as a result they would just link to yours. Do a “Top X” post link this, or even a great tutorial series. This works much, much better if your readers have their own blogs :)

Any more to add? Do leave a comment below.

The Mighty “All In One SEO” for WordPress

This is the only SEO plugins for WordPress that I recommend in WordPress Adsense System and Super Affiliate Blogger, simply because it’s simple to use and it works!

all-in-one-seo

The All-In-One-SEO-Pack for WordPress is a simple optimization plugin that is easy to install and works without much hassle. In fact this is one of my Top 10 plugins that I use on all my blogs.

You can:

  1. Set the title format for the home page, pots, page, category, archives and even tag pages
  2. Choose to add the “noindex” attribute to your tag / category pages
  3. Easy access window in each post you write were you can add keywords, description and individual post titles
  4. Much more

The truth is by using this plugin, you can pretty much “set-and-forget” about search engine optimization. Very, very useful for any type of blog. So far, I haven’t come across any other plugin that does SEO as well as the AIOSP.

Download this plugin here. Or you can also install this plugin automatically without downloading it.

Google SEO Guide Published

google seo

Google recently published a better, more comprehensive document on SEO or Search Engine Optimization. While the simple report doesn’t contain anything more than what you may already know about SEO, it is definitely better than the very vague guidelines they used to reference!

Download It Here.

I highly recommend you take a look at it, both to refresh your memory and to distinguish all the wrong and contradictory SEO advice you may find out there. Make your blog better, apply some of these SEO techniques if you’re not already doing it.

If you’re using WordPress, the good news is even the default installation is already quite search-engine friendly. Still, there are a few tweaks you can do to get better search engine results.

The Future of Internet Marketing

As Market-Vantage aptly puts

Internet Marketing is the process of using the interactive technologies available via the Internet to further create a dialog with potential customers by connecting with them with good educational content about your company’s products or service offerings.

1 “Change” is the keyword of every practice and Internet Marketing has also evolved over the years. There has been a sudden burst of click only companies and the success shows that there are a lot of revenues that people have generated. The future of online marketing has been a hot debate topic for quite some time now, but nevertheless, it seems bright.

The online marketing business has grown by leaps and bounds and as this digital revolution keeps growing, the motive behind it has not changed one bit from consumer marketing. The motive has and will remain the same i.e. increasing awareness about your product or service, tracking potential customers and creating value for them. But without doubt, the approach has seen a sea change; be it the way we do business, the way we market, service , sell, communicate, distribute, and work.

The future of online marketing may have the following implementations;

  • There will be a transformation from static sites to personalized and dynamic sites which would more effectively enable actual e-commerce. Investment worth millions of dollars in an online business would not raise eye-brows.
  • Search Personalization, SEO, rankings and search results will have specially devised internet marketing strategies which will generate more revenue for both the client and the company. This would obviously mean new advertising methods being implemented for the success of the same. This would further result in diversification of strategies and focus on a combination of strategies and advertising models. The concept of 4C’s of Internet Marketing will actually be implemented.
  • The corporate citizens across the globe will operate in new digital marketplace wherein almost all e-commerce applications such as shopping, paying bills, entertainment, and banking everywhere will be dealt online. The harbingers of some of these applications have already been implemented in some developed continents.
  • The problems of spam, frauds, phishing scams and identity theft concerns will continue, but strict measures will be implemented. This would lead to a reduction in display of banner ads, PPC methods, click frauds etc. Another important concept will be the upsurge in information publishing and copyright of free copyright articles.
  • The achievement of Marketing ROI will become more difficult as there would be a plethora of similar services being offered by many sites. This would further result in increased competition which may go the unethical way at times.

2

The future might also have many surprises in store when it comes to internet marketing strategies, promotional activities, functional specifications etc. but one thing is for sure, there seems to be very less saturation in the online marketing sphere in the few decades to come. Making money online would not remain a secret anymore and internet marketing would evolve to be something more than just another business tool. The internet and internet marketing would probably become more than “OUR LIVES”.

JetSubmitter Review – Article Marketing Reloaded

JetSubmitterOn ProfitBlogger I’ve talked about article marketing some time back. In that post I mentioned about how article marketing is a great way to get one-way links to your site. But recently, a new technology has changed the way article marketing works, as I’ve mentioned with services like Article Marketing Automation and 1WayLinks.

This new technology is called “article spinning” Ok, I’ll be honest and admit that it’s not exactly new – article spinning has been around for some time. But the way JetSubmitter works is that it spins the article then submits a completely unique version to over 600+ article directories. That way, each article is recognized as unique content and each backlink counts as a unique link.

image

(If you’re new to SEO concepts for blogging, refer to WordPress SEO Secrets for a crash course)

JetSubmitter is free to use, but there is also a “one-time-offer” to upgrade your account after the initial registration. With the free version of JetSubmitter you have to manually create an account at 600+ article directories but f you upgrade, it’s done for you automatically.

Yes, I did say “automatically”. You create a new Gmail account, enable POP and IMAP access for the account, then enter all the details into your JetSubmitter “Account Creation Project” tab and have a cup of coffee. When you’re done with your last sip you have an account at all 600+ article directories. It sure save you lots of time so make sure to take the upgrade option.

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The New Face of Article Marketing

Here’s how JetSubmitter works:

  1. First you create a “project” to select all the article directories you want to include, than enter your user name and password for all (if you upgraded you can skip this step)
  2. Enter an article (doesn’t matter if it’s freshly written or a PLR article) then create “spin-able” codes in the article (see below)
  3. Once you’re done save the article and select a publishing option
  4. You can choose to submit your articles slowly (I recommend at a rate of about 4-5 sites per day) to make your submission process seem more natural
  5. Sit back and relax as the system handles submissions for you, sending one unique version of the article to each directory, earning you one backlink per site submitted to

image

Does JetSubmitter Work?

Unlike 1WayLinks or Article Marketing Automation, JetSubmitter only accepts more “traditional”type of articles. It means that you’re not allowed to place links anywhere in the article except on the author resource box. Also, it submits your articles to conventional articles sites, not blogs.

Plus, the minimum word count here is 600, unlike 1WayLinks (300 words) or Article Marketing Automation (200 words) so you need to spend more time writing it. It makes sense though since most article submission sites won’t accept articles below 600 words.

The features I like to most is:

  • the auto-account creation at all available article directories (if you upgrade)
  • the time-release submission schedule to make it seem more natural
  • the easy-to-use AJAX interface

At the moment though, there seems to be a lack of clear instructions but if you refer to this article while you’re using the system, things should become pretty clear after a while.

Get Free / Paid Account Here: JetSubmitter SEO Article Marketing

Please also take this poll:
[poll id="2"]

GobalaKrishnan.com Goes to PageRank 0 – But Who Gives A ****?

image Google updates PageRank – and GobalaKrishnan.com gets the big zero. For the past three years this blog has started from zero, to PR3 and even PR5 and now it’s back to square one. But how important is PageRank when advertising or selling text links is not your main profit source?

How much does PageRank effect traffic?

image image image

My Awstats shows a traffic increase from September 2006 to September 2007, traffic was doubled. But September 2008 (last month), my traffic didn’t change quite much at all. The reduction was probably due to the fact that I hardly posted anything in this blog.

PageRank for me isn’t that important, since I mostly make money from affiliate marketing, selling my own products and from email marketing, all of which do not depend on Google’s unpredictable rankings.

However, I do agree that SEO is important. If you’re using WordPress then it’s a little bit easier as the default installation of WordPress is already quite search engine friendly. You can increase the effectiveness of it by reading up on some practical SEO tips for WordPress.

At the end of the day though, what is really important are the royal readers of this blog, my customers, and all my subscribers. To you guys, thanks for reading GobalaKrishnan.com and coming back to see what’s new even though I’ve had some sort of writer’s block recently. I feel much better now!

Google on the other hand, can **** off.

Top Blog Directories to Submit Your Blog

What do you mean by being successful as a blogger?

In order to get success with blogs, producing good content on them is definitely the most important factor. Whilst getting your content to reach to the masses is another area of concern. To generate good revenue from either of the practices you get yourself involved into viz. Adsense, Affiliates, Ads, etc., you need to have a decent amount of traffic. Higher the traffic, better is the probability of striking gold! That’s the simple math every blogger who blogs for money is invariably aware of.

How to get that traffic juice into your blog?

When it comes to getting traffic for a blog, we have a lot of ways to help ourselves with. These include SEO, reciprocal link-backs, etc. One great way to draw traffic is to submit your blog to the world’s leading blog directories which look for submission. All you need to do it log on to the blog directory websites, register for an account(depending on the blog directory, if it needs you to), fill in the details about your blog and submit it! This would allow your blog to be classified on the directory. Doing this with a lot of directories is definitely an added advantage. Most of such services are free! Isn’t it a great way to evangelize your blog across the globe?

It’s time now for some action:

Based on my experience and research, I would like to share with you a list of top blog directories apart from Yahoo! and Google submissions, where you can get your blogs listed, for free!

 

9rules

9rules network – One of the best network of blogs which focuses on selection of quality content in order to get listed. A lot of top rated blogs are listed with the 9rules network. They’re know to put the best content from the independent web on their charts! They have an interesting set of 9 rules, and hence the name!

technorati

Technorati – This name needs no introduction. Techhnorati indexes the web within minutes of posting an article on a blog. This provides its users up-to-date information regarding the topics & authors one wishes to know about. They also have a featured list of top 100 blogs which have been exceptionally good with what they aim at.

weblogs

Weblogs – It is a VeriSign service and a ping server which automatically notifies its subscribers whenever there is some new contenton the registered blog. Weblogs.com receives millions of pings every day from blogs that configure their publishing software, like wordpressto notify Weblogs.com the very moment content is published on them.

blo-gs

blo.gs – This is a Yahoo! acquired directory of weblogs and tools for tracking interesting and of course your favorite webloglets on which you keep an eye on. The best part of this service is that you can keep a track of your lists through the web and email, both. It also allows you to put a list on your blog/website as a blogroll which shall list whatever is new on the blog-o-sphere!

blogarama

Blogarama – It is yet another free blog directory with more than 93000 listings. Apart from the free traffic that results from this service, Bograma also does paid advertisements for your blog, if and when needed. A good service to dirty your hands with. Try it out!

[Read more...]

WP Plugin: SEO Smart Links

How often have you had the desire to link a particular post’s content to a previous post which has relatively similar information? What do you try to do in such cases? May be, hunt for old posts, use the search option within your own blog or use the related posts plugin.

But now, we have something still more pleasing. A better way to interlink your posts to key pages deeper into the site! SEO Smart Links plugin can automatically link keywords and phrases in your posts and comments with corresponding posts, pages, categories and tags. All this pretty seamlessly!

Eager to know how does it happen? Cool! The SEO Smart Links plugin actually figures out the keyword phrases which match the title of your posts and pages by default with a special option to enable categories and tags matching too! These phrases are then turned into links which refer to the related posts from within your article. The matching is case insensitive and the original case is preserved. This shall help in giving a well researched look to the post!

So If I mention Top 10 Most Useful “Make Money Blogging” Blogs, which is the title of one of my posts, it will be automatically converted into a link. All this happens in a completely transparent manner, and you can always edit the options from the intuitive administration settings panel.

seo-link

Let’s look at some of the key features of this plugin:

  • Lets you link the keywords in your posts, pages and comments to your other posts, pages, categories and tags.
  • Gives you full control with customizable options.
  • An incorporated ignore list for keywords you do not want to link ever.
  • Gives your weblog a good interlinking, effortlessly.

Installation:

  1. Download the plugin from here.
  2. Upload the plugin folder to your /wp-content/plugins/ directory.
  3. Query caching – set define(ENABLE_CACHE, true); in your wp-config.php file.
  4. Go to the Plugins page and activate the plugin.
  5. Use the Options page to change your options.
  6. There is no 5th step!

I am sure you’re going to love this nifty plugin. Try it out for sure!