The "duplicate
content penalty" myth is one of the biggest obstacles
I face in getting web professionals to embrace reprint
content. The myth is that search engines will
penalize a site if much of its content is also on other
websites.
Clarification: there is a real duplicate content
penalty for content that is duplicated with minor or
no variation across the pages of a single site.
There is also a "mirror" penalty for a site that is
more or less substantially duplicating another single
site. What I'm talking about here is the reprint
of pages of content individually, rather than in a mass,
on multiple sites.
Another clarification: "penalty" is a loaded
concept in SEO. "Penalty" means that search engines
will punish a website for violations of the engine's
terms of service. The punishment can mean making
it less likely that the site will appear in search results.
Punishment can also mean removal from the search engine's
index of web pages ("de-indexing" or "delisting").
How have I exploded the "duplicate content penalty"
myth?
* PageRank. Many thousands of high-PageRank
sites reprint content and provide content for reprint.
The most obvious case is the news wires such as Reuters
(PR 8) and the Associated Press (PR 9) that reprint
to sites such as http://www.nytimes.com/ (PR 10).
* The proliferation of content reprint sites.
There are now hundreds of websites devoted to reprint
content because it's a cheap, easy magnet for web traffic,
especially search engine traffic.
* Experience. I've seen significant search
engine traffic both from distributing content to be
reprinted and from reprinting content on the site.
How I Doubled Search Engine Traffic with Reprint
Content
When I first started distributing content for my main
site, I was stunned by the highly targeted traffic I
got from visitors clicking on the link at the end of
the article. Search engine traffic also slowly
increased both from the links and from having content
on the site.
But I was even more stunned with the search engine traffic
I got when I started putting reprint articles on the
site in September. I had written quite a number
of reprint articles for clients and accumulated a few
webmaster "fans" who looked out for my articles to reprint
them. I wanted to make it easier for them to find
all the reprint articles I had written.
I didn't want to draw too much attention to these articles,
which had nothing to do with the main subject of the
site, web content. So I secluded the articles
in one section of the site.
The articles got a surprising amount of search engine
traffic. The traffic was overwhelmingly from Google,
and for long multiple-word search strings that just
happened to be in the article word for word.
Why was I surprised with all the search engine traffic?
1. The articles had so little link popularity.
The link popularity to the articles came primarily from
a single link to the "reprint content" page from the
homepage, which linked to category pages, which linked
to the articles themselves--three clicks from the homepage.
The sitemap was enormous, well over 100 links, so its
PageRank contribution was minimal. Since these
articles were on the site such a short time I strongly
doubt they got any links from other sites.
2. The articles had so much competition.
These articles had been reprinted far more widely than
the average reprint article, which is lucky if it makes
it into a few dedicated reprint sites. As part
of my service I had done most of the legwork of reprinting
my clients' articles for them. In fact, I guarantee
at least 100 reprints on Google-indexed web pages either
for each article or group of articles. So that's
up to 100 web pages, sometimes more, that were competing
with my web page to appear in search engine results
for the search string.
Why Do Reprint Articles Get Search Engine Traffic?
You would think Google would just pick one web page
with the article as the authoritative edition and send
all the traffic to it.
But that's not how Google works. All the search
engines look at factors beyond just the content on the
web page. They look at links. Google, at
least, claims to look at 100 factors total. Many
of these must relate to the content on the page, but
not all of them.
The whole experience has given me great insight into
what factors Google uses in addition to what we would
consider the page itself, and the relative importance
of each.
* Web page titles (the one in the html title
tag) are extremely important as tie-breakers between
two otherwise equally matched pages. Most reprinters
waste the html title, using the article title as the
web page title. Set yourself apart by creating
unique five-to-ten-word web page titles that include
target keywords.
* Content tweaks. You can also introduce
the article with a unique, keyword-laden editor's note,
and finish the article off with some keyword-laced comments.
* Intra-site link popularity and anchor text (that
is, for links to the article page from other web pages
on the site) are also important. If you can't
link to the page from the homepage, keep it as close
to the homepage as possible and weed out extraneous
links (try putting all your site policies on a single
page).
Reprint articles, like the search engine traffic they
bring, cost nothing. Don't look a gift horse in
the mouth. Forget the "duplicate content penalty."
Get in on content reprints and share the search engine
wealth.
About
the author: Joel Walsh (http://www.joelwalsh.com/) owns UpMarket
Content which has Joel's articles available for reprint,
and also lets you order the complete website promotion
content package of content and distribution services:
http://www.upmarketcontent.com/ |
