The Duplicate Content Myth… or is it?
Wednesday, May 17th, 2006Hi,
there’s a lot of discussion going on about duplicate content nowadays so I’ve decided to clarify a few things here. Don’t tell this to anyone as the fewer people know about this the better!
I’m going to be straight forward about this, so try to keep up
Duplicate content per se isn’t bad. Search engines don’t absolutely adore it, but your site won’t get de-indexed or even penalized if it’s showing duplicate content. But there’s a simple twist…
If you were to copy an article and paste it directly to your site, especially if it’s an article that 189,000 other sites have on them, your site is going to be awarded fewer points and will therefore rank much lower for your chosen keywords…
But if you were to add something to your articles, then you can very quickly make the page unique in the eyes of the search engines and they will reward your site more points than the others… nice…
But you cannot go and change the content of articles you get from article directories. That’s against terms of service. But what you can and should do is write an introduction to the article and concluding remarks at the end thus making the web site “unique”.
The other side is the “private label articles”. These you can change as you wish. I really suggest you don’t put them on your site exactly as they come as 100’s of other people are doing it. What you want to do is something similar to what you’ve done with the articles from the directories… write your own introduction, maybe add a paragraph or two inside the article and write your own conclusion.
You must remember that you *must* put some work into everything! Don’t just purchase software that “makes your article unique” — that’s all baloney. The best one that I’ve seen adds some pre-written, general content and finds some synonyms for many words in the article. The problem is that search engines can determine those synonyms just as fast as that software. And they can also pick up on those “general sentences” embedded into the article. It can work for now, but you should never try to outsmart search engines…
The Secret No One Wants You To Know…
Search engines are a business. And a very serious and profitable business at that. They work very very hard to give their customers (you and me) what we want:
- relevant results
- useful results
- as fast as they can
That’s basically it! Do you think that a multi-million dollar corporation like Google will allow some punk to use their system to make a quick buck and make their customers frustrated and angry in the process!? No, didn’t think so…
So why do people do that anyway? Well, all I could think of was the following:
- they get blinded by the “easy money” mentality
- they know that their “tactics” won’t work for the long term and are just doing it to get a quick buck and leave
- they are selling useless software and gimmicks to unsuspecting suckers trying to make it online
- they simply don’t know better
Maybe there’s more, but this about covers it.
Believe me that Google and other search engines have people working around the clock to determine “flaws” in their algorithms and to find about different tactics people use to “outsmart” them.
Search engines are getting “smarter” every day and if you’re building your sites for the long term, then you should consider this:
- provide relevant, accurate and useful information on your sites
- “duplicate content” is OK as long as it complies with the previous rule and as long as you put some effort into it to make it “unique”
This is basically it
— really!
This has worked for me and still works extremely well. I don’t fear any “updates” or anything. My sites rank high and that for the long-term. Sure, I’ve fallen victim to some scammers and got pulled in by the “quick buck mentality”, but where’s that work now? It all went down the drain in less than a month.
So, what’s better — to put in eight hours of work a day for the first three months and then live of it for the rest of your life or to put four hours a week and see results and in a few weeks do four more hours more with something else and so on for the rest of your life?
I’d take the first option any day of the week, and you?
So, To Wrap Up…
Many people think that they will make a fortune by slapping private label articles or articles from article directories on their sites. They couldn’t be further from the truth. What those people don’t realize that by just putting some work into it they indeed could be making you a fortune quite quickly!
So, instead of slapping 50 articles a day on your sites, consider putting just five, but give them a simple twist — write an introduction in the beginning and a summary at the end. It will take you an hour or so, but after a week you’ll have 35 new, unique content rich sites that the search engines love. Do this for a couple of months. Of course don’t forget to do the off-page search engine optimization also (getting quality links back to your site)!
Write some articles yourself or outsource them. The rest can be private label articles and articles from article directories — with a twist
(lol, I love saying “with a twist”).
You’ll see that in a few months you’ll start getting massive amounts of traffic to your sites! Then it’s just a matter of maintenance which is a lot less work.
I’ve just given you the real “system” to work (with) the search engines. It is extremely rewarding. Think of it as symbiosis (where two or more animal/plant/bacteria species work together for a mutual benefit). You provide relevant and useful content and search engines provide guests to read it. Simple yet profound…
Think about it.
I’d also be very happy to read your comments on this. What do you think?
Have a great day!