Why post duplicate content to your blogs?
May 23, 2008
I just launched a new free service, ShareAPost.com that lets you put other people's blog posts on your own blogs in seconds. It's been a great success in the 24 hours that it's been live. There's close to 5,000 blog posts in the content directory already.
A question that kept popping up on the forum was whether or not Google is willing to rank duplicate content. People weren't sure if they should republish other folks' blog content because of the duplicate content "issue."
Now, back when my Search Engine Myths Exposed report was available, it crushed the idea that Google doesn't rank duplicate content. I won't go into the heavy detail of that report, but I'll sum it up before providing proof from the ShareAPost site itself that Google does, in fact, rank and send traffic to duplicate content.
Google makes two statements on their blog that by themselves should squash concerns over duplicate content:
- "Duplicate content doesn't cause your site to be penalized." That's a direct quote. Google makes it plain that it will not hurt you to have duplicate content on your site.
- "If you syndicate your content on other sites, make sure they include a link back to the original article on each syndicated article." Again, a direct quote.
The second quote warrants a bit more explanation. Why does Google want you to get links back to the original article if you syndicate an article? That's easy: the article with the most links wins the search game.
You see, it's not the original article that necessarily ranks well in Google. Here's a search at Google which proves that (I wrote that article, and it originally appeared on this blog — but EzineArticles outranks my blog because it has more links aimed at it [I never optimized that article]).
So yes, the short of it is that Google will rank and send traffic to duplicate content. But let's have some proof, shall we? ShareAPost is made up of 100% duplicate content. Every excerpt it shows is from a post on somebody else's blog. That's its purpose: to show you content that you can post on your own blog by permission of the person who created the blog.
If the nay-sayers are right in saying that Google won't send traffic to duplicate content, then why, pray tell, is Google sending me traffic just 24 hours after I launched the service?
Don't believe me? Here's the screenshot of the domain's stats:
Yes, 117 page views from Google in the last 24 hours. And notice another benefit? Windows Live has already sent 137 page views — in 24 hours! That's 254 page views to a brand new domain with barely a half a dozen links into it in less than 24 hours.
Can you get traffic to duplicate content? Absolutely! Now let me tell you a "secret" that makes it even easier…
The "Secret" To Using Duplicate Content
When Google chooses which web page to rank for a given set of keywords, it examines the links into that page (and a number of other factors) to determine how well each matching page should rank for the keywords. If two pages of duplicate content are both optimized for the same keywords, Google will only choose one of them to show in the search results — the one that has the most links.
So to rank a full page of duplicate content, you simply need to optimize your page better than the competition's if they're trying to rank the same articles for the same keywords.
BUT THERE IS AN EASIER WAY
Want to get traffic from duplicate content the easy way? Here's how you do it:
- Setup a Wordpress blog.
- Use ShareAPost.com to post summaries of good quality articles to your blog in seconds (yes, ShareAPost has an option to post a summary instead of the full text).
- Get some links aimed at your blog.
That's it. It's really that easy.
Why Wordpress? Why Summaries?
Why post summaries of articles you feel are of good quality instead of the full post? Because you can configure Wordpress to display X number of posts per page of the blog, and when Google sees a page consisting of 5-10 small excerpts of different articles, it doesn't see it as duplicate content.
Take this one step further and group related summaries under the same Wordpress category and then Google will crawl the "category" pages and see that the material is all closely related, which is a good optimization technique.
That's right: put a bunch of brief summaries onto one page and Google sees it as a page of unique content. Shocked? Awed? In disbelief? Look back at the stats for ShareAPost if you don't believe me.
Also, as of right now ShareAPost.com only has 124 pages indexed in Google. I just added a tag cloud to the bottom of the ShareAPost home page which will produce hundreds more pages. When Google indexes those pages, what do you think will happen? That's right: Google (and the other big search engines) will send more and more traffic to those nice little summary pages. As I get more links into the site it will result in even more traffic from better rankings as well.
The Other Good Reason
Of course, that's not the only reason to post other folks' quality content to your blog. If you don't have time to update dozens of blogs by writing unique posts for each of them every day, you can find top-quality posts from ShareAPost to post to your blog instead. This gives your visitors good quality material to read, for which you can show advertisements or affiliate links.
Newspapers have been using syndicated content for this very same reason for years. Does each newspaper produce its own comic strips, or self-help advice? No! And most major newspapers use syndicated classified ads as well. More quality content to put their own ads around.
The online world is no different. Using syndicated ("duplicate") content is not a crime, and Google does not treat it as such. If you want to do full posts of great articles, just get some links into the article using some more long tail keywords (i.e. "dallas internet marketing advice" instead of "internet marketing"). What's the likelihood that others are trying to rank that same article for those same keywords? If it's slim to none, then you've got a traffic-pulling piece of "duplicate" content.
So what are you waiting for? Get over to ShareAPost.com now and start syndicating some of that content. The search engines will reward you for it!
Please post your thoughts and comments below.
Niche Site Case Study Follow-Up
May 21, 2008
Well, it's been 9 months since my original niche site case study, so I thought it would make sense to revisit it and see how the site is doing.
If you followed the original case study, then you know that my goal was to earn $3 a day with a small, niche content site. I tried a number of monetization methods, but AdSense was the only really successful one.
To get the site ranked in Google, I put it in the 3WayLinks.net network. I also distributed 10 unique articles to a few article sites (most notably EzineArticles.com). After my last post about the case study, I also submitted the site to a few dozen social bookmarking sites using this software. That's all the link building I've done.
The site has maintained a top ten ranking for 4 of the last 6 months. In January I had some server problems that caused the site to be down for a few days, and that knocked it out of its rankings for two months! That goes to show you how important up-time is to Google. Fortunately I was able to resurrect it by adding a blog to the site. That blog jumped the site back into the top 10.
The site is currently #3 for its primary and secondary keywords, and #5 for a third major set of keywords. To date, it has earned $757 from AdSense, or about $2.75 per day. My goal was $3 a day, and it's well passed that now, but the two months it spent off the first page of Google because of the server problems is currently keeping the overall average down. For the Month of May, the site has averaged $4.90 per day in AdSense, and is set to outpace its best month to date (December 2007) both in earnings and in traffic.
I know you guys like to see screen shots and charts, so here are a few:
May's Search Traffic
May's AdSense Earnings
It may seem amazing, but I'm still receiving some traffic from the original 10 articles I wrote. That's why I always recommend writing articles regularly. If 10 articles can keep traffic coming for 9 months, imagine what 10 articles per month could do for your site's traffic (not to mention backlinks and rankings)?
Lessons Learned
I learned a few important lessons from this case study. One lesson is that up-time is vital to Google. Google doesn't like to risk displaying sites in top rankings if it thinks your site may go down for a few days. That would be a disservice to the searchers, and so your site might get penalized for it.
Second, I learned that if that does happen, and Google knocks your rankings down, you can resurrect them with a blog. Just adding a blog to the site and "drip-feeding" fresh content to the site caused Google to launch the site to the #3 position for its primary keywords. I didn't do any additional link building to accomplish this.
Third, the case study has demonstrated what I already knew to be true: 3WayLinks.net is a long-term network. There were many nay-sayers in the beginning who just knew Google would tweak its algorithm to prevent 3WL from working, and yet, 9 months later it's going strong. The results I'm seeing and hearing from the 3WL members on the forum are nothing short of phenomenal. Are there risks involved? Absolutely. Is it worth taking those risks? I'll let you make that decision.
All in all this has been a very enlightening case study, and I'd love to hear what you think about it in a comment below.
Google neglecting your site? Add a blog.
May 5, 2008
How long has everyone been telling you that Google loves blogs? Months? Years? Well, it's true, and I wanted to share an experience that helps reinforce that truth to you.
The Blog That Resurrected My Rankings
I had a site devoted to a particular type of exercise equipment. The site was in the top 7 results for its keywords in Google for over six months. Unfortunately I had server problems and the site went down for a few days. Google crawled the site constantly because it was well-linked, and so big G knew instantly that the site was down. Since it stayed down for a few days, Google must have decided it wasn't coming back up, and its rankings plummetted.
After the site did come back up, it reappeared in Google, but this time on the third page (ranking 25 - 28 for its keywords, on average). Its original page one rankings just wouldn't come back. I shrugged it off as a lesson learned and basically forgot about the site.
Early last week, though, I was testing a tool I'm creating that helps you write and post blog posts to Wordpress blogs super fast. I decided to setup a blog on the site that lost its rankings, just to test it out. I made a bunch of blog posts (they were post-dated so they would show up slowly over time), and sat back to see what would happen.
To my surprise, over the weekend my site jumped back onto page one for its rankings. I hadn't touched that site in months, and now it's ranking better than it ever was — at #4 for 3 great sets of keywords. This, of course, has spiked my AdSense earnings for the site.
Another nice benefit of the new blog is that the blog itself is getting some additional traffic from Google, even though the blog does not have any external links directly to it. Google is applying the authority of the site itself to the blog. Since the site is well-linked, the blog is given a bit of "trust" by Google and is appearing in the search results as well.
Scraper Sites Can Help You Rank
On a related note regarding blogs and traffic, I've recently setup a blog that automatically creates a bunch of posts each day based on a variety of keywords. This blog is a test for a larger idea I have in mind, and the test is working great, with the blog having achieved more than 12,000 unique visitors in the last 5 days. The vast majority of the traffic has come from Google.
As part of that same test, I setup a second, similar blog that does the same kind of thing. Despite the second blog actually having more content, it has (so far) received no joy from Google at all (it's not even indexed yet).
The difference is in the scraper sites that are referencing the content. The keywords that I'm creating content around for my successful blog is a scraper magnet — hundreds of scraper sites are auto-posting content from my own blog to theirs, and giving a reference link back to my blog posts to try and make it more legit.
How do these scraper sites know about my brand-new blog posts so fast? Because the blog is indexed by Google's blog search, and many scraper sites scrape results from that blog search to post to their own blogs. They also scrape many other blog search engines, and since my blog pings those search engines when I make a new post, the blog's content gets picked up and spread around fast.
Those links from these automated scraper sites have resulted in my blog quickly gaining hundreds of backlinks from all over the web, and that means great rankings for the pages of my blog.
The second test blog I setup, however, has not attracted the scraper blogs and so hasn't even been indexed in Google yet. It might seem strange that scraper sites can help you rank, but if they link back to the source of the content, they really can.
Trackbacks Are Your Friend
On a final note, I recommend setting up your blog to automatically post trackback links to the blog posts that you link out to. If you're not familiar with trackbacks, it's a simple concept: any time you link to an external blog post from within your own blog post, your blog posts a "comment" to the blog post you've linked to, letting the readers of that post know about your own post referencing it.
Now, not all blogs will approve your trackback link, but many will, and I've received literally thousands of visitors from a single trackback link appearing on a popular blog. So make sure you setup your blog to automatically post trackbacks to the blogs that you link out to — it can often result in a flood of traffic.
Have any more great blog-related traffic building ideas? Care to share your opinion about this post? Please post your thoughts in a comment below.
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Jonathan Leger has been earning his living online full-time since the fall of 2004. He regularly posts advice about search engine optimization (his current passion), AdSense and Internet Marketing. 
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