Make your web site articles unique
Many Internet marketers have gigabytes of PLR (private label rights) lying on their hard drives. There is a tendency of either not use them or use them as is. There is another choice. The choice is not what I'm doing in this site where I'm testing the duplicate content penalty issues.
You can use the better PLR material as research material and then make them your own...
Don't be a Pringle
Pringles are very tasty and fit together really well. They can be packed together in tight area and are so addictive. But that's not the way web sites and posts should be.
People and hence the search engines don't want to get the same pages on all the positions within a search.
Think of the following metaphor:
During the middle Ages, knights used a Heraldic Coat of Arms to identify themselves. One man in armor looked a lot like another, so the Heraldic Coat of Arms was used to identify a knight in battle. In a society where few people could read and write, pictures were very important.
A Heraldic Coat of Arms was more like a label for instant identification than it was like a painting. You wanted to know instantly who was coming toward you, so you could know which side he was on. Coats of arms later took on further significance and meanings. They also became a way of showing membership in the aristocracy, after they lost their significance in warfare.
In the same way your domain name, logo, website theme represent your sites individuality.
You want to be immediately recognizable. Big corporations spend millions developing their name, logo look and feel. Harley Davidson has even gone as far as trade marking the unique sound of their engines.
So have your own style even when using PLR (private label rights) products. You can use these as starting point and then make them your own. So when writing articles make sure each one is unique.
Duplicate content and ezinearticles marketing
One great article marketing tool is to place your articles in the top article directories like ezinearticles. The bad news is that the best article directories do not accept crap (technical term) articles any more. The good news is that they don't accept crap articles anymore.
This improved quality of accepted articles mean that you have to spend more time and effort to get your article accepted but once an article is in the directory you'll have less competition.
The following are hints about how to quickly write high quality articles which are acceptable to ezinearticles:
- Read all the directory rules.
- Read a few new articles to discover current standards - especially reading articles with your selected keywords helps with your research.
- Do good keyword research. Are people interested in this topic.
- Use all standard on page SEO techniques.
- Again repeat - read the directory rules - do they allow HTML tags or other type of typographic control - use bolded fonts wisely for emphasis. Also use lots of white space - short paragraphs - one idea at most in a paragraph.
- Do not just use PLR (private rights label) or public domain material. You can use these sources to get ideas of what to write about - for research. But write in your own words. This avoids duplicate content. Remember that the good article directories will check for duplicate content. So to emphasize:
Always write in your own words.
That means write a fresh article - do not just reedit one of your own articles - type it fresh. - Check the grammar and spelling.
- Use simple sentence structure.
- Write colloquially as though you were speaking to a friend.
- Do a final edit before submission - if you are not accepted you have to reedit and then start the vetting process anew.
- The gold in article marketing is the resource at the end. Use it well. Typically you are allowed two links - link one to your website and one to an individual post or page. Do not link directly to an affiliate sales page. Always presell any affiliate product before sending someone to their site.
So avoid duplicate content and write a fresh new slant on the article and you'll get it accepted at ezinearticles or other high quality article directory site.
When is it not duplicate content
In print media and even before print when all was in manuscript form, writers have been rewriting their articles and stories since time immemorial. I do not mean selling reprint rights but a new version of the article for another market. Thus if you had written an article on lip stick for Cosmopolitan, you could rewrite the article for a younger teenage audience and submit to Seventeen Magazine and rewrite for an older audience and submit to say Red Book.
This is because authors understood that the research is the most difficult part of writing and once you knew what you had to say changing the style was easy for a professional writer.
Unfortunately, the Internet has made all of us authors (including many who write in English even though their native language is not English) whether we are capable of putting a sentence or two together. Actually as someone whose own native language is not English I'm not being a nativist but just wishing that we had decent writing within the Internet marketing community but much is written by freelances from elance and similar sites whose command of writing is attrocious.
Anyway, the way to multiply your efforts is rewrite your articles totally without getting hindered by any duplicate content penalty.
The way I do this is to do my research; know the subject and then start writing. Once the first article is finished and published on a blog or submitted to an article site like ezinearticles I lay it aside for a few days and then rewrite it totally anew without looking at the previous version.
Since variety is the spice of life I have fun with the new article which becomes a fresh original piece of writing. Moreover, I may even discover or remember some new fact about the topic so a potential reader will not feel cheated. And of course since you are rewriting no one can accuse you of plagiarizing.
WordPress scheduled publishing
WordPress has the advantage of allowing you to schedule your publishing - you can even publish with a time stamp of the past - this allows you to go on vacation knowing that articles you have written today will be published later.
I am using the fact that you can time stamp your posts in the past to publish the duplicate content articles in the past. The ones with least change (that's to say most duplicate content) will be published dated in 2008 and earlier. The one's with some alteration and reediting will be in 2009 and the new articles totally written by me will be published with no time stamp change.
Thus their time stamp will be after August first 2010.
I typically like to write posts which are at least two hundred words long so I have more to write in this post. I wish to add here that the best way to not have duplicate content is to rewrite whatever you want totally yourself. It does take a little longer but you make sure you have new content.
Another advantage of writing a totally new articles is that perhaps you remember something new and different about the Topic. Remember that in the long run if you optimize your writing for human readers you'll do well with the search engines in the long run - that is the best practice for SEO - search engine optimization.
Testing for duplicate content
First a digression:
This whole web site reminds me of the who song: "Substitute."
The site itself is a duplicate of another site. This is so that I did not have to install and activate all the same plugins over and over again. I like WordPress since it is easy to set up duplicate sites once you know what you are doing. I must admit it took me a year or so of trial and much error to discover how to quickly duplicate WordPress sites.
Anyway the purpose of this site is to test theories about effects of duplicate content on SEO.
Like many others involved in Internet marketing I have acquired lots and lots of PLR (private label right) products and articles. So I'll put some of those on this site. Note, I am not trying to do any black hat SEO (search engine optimization). This is a test. At the same time I'll change the material here a little.
I find that much PLR material must have been written by people who do not write good English. I was going to write that they must be written by people whose native language is not English. But given the atrocious state of our education I'm not sure about that anymore.
Anyway, there will both totally new freshly written posts on this web site as well as duplicate content (duplicate but slightly edited - by edited I mean I'll be editing manually and not use automatic article spinners).
I'll give example of crap produced by spinners and PLR writers also write about writing. It is nearly August First, 2010 Pacific time (where I live). The new articles written by me will be published timestamped in the future (as they are written). The duplicate content will be published with a time stamp past the one for this post.
What are Search Engine Algorithms?
Algorithm is a term coming from mathematics named after the great Iranian mathematician Al Khawramzi. So let's see what an algorithm is:
According to Wikipedia:
An algorithm is a finite sequence of instructions, an explicit, step-by-step procedure for solving a problem, often used for calculation and data processing. It is formally a type of effective method in which a list of well-defined instructions for completing a task…
Applied to search engines algorithms are the set of instructions which decide where a certain page will be in the search after the whole Internet has been spidered, by the robots or spiders. The spiders move around the web (world wide web) searching for flies - I mean pages - the metaphor of spider can be taken too far...
After the spider has returned all the content of Internet to the search engine's database the search engine algorithm decides which page to put where for any search term (keyword).
Now that we know how your web page shows up in the search engines it’s important to understand the type of algorithm used by the search engines.
So basically what this is saying is, is that the search engines critique your sites based on certain criteria to see where it will rank in their results. Some of these criteria’s include:
- Location & Frequency of keywords on your web page
- Amount of links pointing to your site - backlinks quality is more important than quantity.
- How well is your website structured. You don't want to many levels.
- How relevant and unique your content is
- How often your content changes - thus blogs do well in SEPS (search engine results page).
Understanding how the search engines spider and their SERP algorithm is the roots of search engine optimization.
Search Engines Explained
I understand that many of you have different levels of knowledge, some of you know little to nothing about ranking in the SERPS (search engine results page), some of you have a little knowledge but not enough to dominate and the rest of you probably know enough about SEO (search engine optimization) to rank reasonably highly for some keywords.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is basically performing small tasks on and to your website (on page SEO) so that the search engine spiders can crawl (look over) your site so they can include it in their directory, this is also known as getting indexed. There are methods which get your site spidered quicker.
A spider is a robot program (also known as bot) that the search engines use to scour the web and check millions of millions of websites with trillions of pages at super speeds. Since there are millions of sites being built each day, there is no way you or any company can keep up with a task such as that. These spiders index and sort web pages by relevance, so your web page shows up in the search engines when it is appropriate for the keyword you are targeting.
All activity on the web starts with a keyword! People get on the internet to search for something and they generally go the search engines to find this information. When a topic is searched in the search engines the most relevant sites will show up first! These sites have optimized their web pages and links from other sites (incoming links or backlinks) to show up first in the SERPS. Web pages with the top organic rankings get all the traffic for absolutely no cost!
Organic ranking is where you don't pay for the place in SERP as opposed to paid per click advertising.
Most prospects/searchers only look at the top 3 pages of results of any search engine listing! So you can’t be dangling at the bottom of the results page expecting to get traffic! Ideally you want to be near the top of first page. That's the goal of all SEO.
Find that hot niche
This is one of the most talked about subjects in Internet Marketing and can be like the search for the Holy Grail! 
The good news is it really does not have to be that difficult and you can find hungry niches with ease it just requires you to think a bit outside the box.
This step is the exact method I use to find hungry niches and is quite easy to do!
The first thing you need to do especially with your first product is find a niche that interests you.
This is not always the case and there will be plenty of profitable niches that you do not really interest you at all, but with your first product it is a good idea to find a niche that you have some sort of interest in.
If you are having difficulty thinking of a good niche that you have interest in, the best thing to do is think about your hobbies and other interests.
The first niche I can think of for you is “How to make money online” as you are reading this guide.
Just think of things that you enjoy doing like photography, cooking, playing computer games, fishing, DIY, Ebay, collecting stamps etc...
You can also find popular niches by looking at ebay pulse, Amazon best sellers, click bank - keeping up with the news is also very useful in finding hot niches.
The other thing I should mention here is try not to spend too much time thinking about this as it can prevent you from taking action!
Once you have thought of a niche that you have some interest in settle on that niche and get started.
Ok, so once you have got your niche the first thing you need to do is see if it is profitable and people are looking for it!
Remember don't spend too much time on this just think of something you have an interest in and move on to the next step.
The next thing you need to do is go to Overture and check out how many people are searching for your niche.
Do bear in mind though that your niches search results should have more than 500 searches per month at the very least.
This works out at about 16 unique searches per day on overture. Overture is a search engine that is not as big as Google so you can times the results by 4 to get a more accurate view of how many people are searching for a certain phrase.
If you followed the above steps and your niche has less than 500 searches per month then you will need to find another I'm afraid as it may not be worth putting the work in if there are so few looking for it!
So if you have a very small niche, try and think of another niche with more search results.
If you have found a niche with a decent amount of search results move onto Step 3 where we will find out if your niche will make you money!
Pagerank – what?
Anyone doing any real search engine optimization (SEO) specially off page SEO must have heard of pagerank. But not everyone knows what is meant by pagerank.
So What is Pagerank?
I felt it necessary to include this inside this site because it plays an important role when you begin building links. I think Wikipedia is much better at explaining things, so here is the definition from Wikipedia:
Pagerank is a link analysis algorithm used by the Google Internet search engine that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of "measuring" its relative importance within the set.
A website can have a pagerank of 1 – 9, obviously the higher the pagerank the better! When your finding site to link to yours if is important to find those links that have high pagerank (PR). Sites like CNN.com have a page rank of 9. Given that most websites get very little traffic 99.99 percent of sites have a page rank of 1.
However, page rank alone is not everything. An incoming link from a site related to your keyword may be more important than one from a higher pageranked site.
Remember that Google keeps changing it's algorithm and to quote William Goldberg (Oscar winning script writer of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid) writing about the movie industry:
"No on knows anything."
The above may be just as true about SEO.
How best to write how to articles
"How to" articles are searched for a lot on search sites like Google and Yahoo. Here's a "How to" article on writing "How to: articles:
If you are using articles to help drive traffic to your website you will need to come up with ideas for articles that people will want to read and publish. The quality of articles found on article directories can vary significantly so it is important that yours are among the best available for your article marketing campaign to be successful.
There is no end to the subjects you can write about and you can use any style you wish. However, it has to be something that people will want to read. "How to" articles are very popular with both website owners and readers and can be a great way to get your article marketing campaign underway. Basically, the purpose of a 'how to' article is to explain to a reader how to do something.
Of course, you will have to have a good knowledge of how to do the task yourself before you can think about instructing anyone else how to do it, so stick to what you know. There are many possibilities.Each person is an expert in many fields but does not consider himself/herself as the expert. The point is that there are lots and lots of topics you know much more about than others.
If you have experience in networking you could write a 'how to' article on how to set up a router at home, or if you love cars you could write an article on 'how to service your car'. There are endless possibilities for 'how to' articles, in fact you are reading one right now.
So let's get started. When you are writing a "how to" article remember that you are the teacher so write in an authoritative but casual friendly tone. You are sharing your expertise with someone who may have little knowledge of the subject at hand. So keep your writing style simple and your instructions clear.
At the beginning of your article tell your reader what their goal is and summarize how it is going to be achieved. This will prepare them for the task ahead. You should also inform them of what, if anything, they will need to have to hand to complete the task. Going back to the setting up a router example, you would need to tell them that they will need their computer, router, instruction booklet and perhaps and ethernet cable to complete the task.
Also, you must start at the beginning and work through the task step by step. Sometimes it may be beneficial to use bullet points to help give the impression that it is a step by step process. Alternatively you can link the steps with words like 'next', 'and then' or 'now'. If you are new to writing the bullet points option might be best for you as it keeps things simple, and helps you avoid complex grammatical structures.
As you write, do not edit - just write. Once done, re-read and edit your text, and try to read it from the reader's point of view, assuming they know nothing about the task at hand. As an expert on the subject it can be too easy to make things over-complex because the task is second nature to you. Try to imagine you are doing it for the first time and instruct the reader accordingly. Going back to our previous example, will the reader actually know what an ethernet cable is, or what a router is for that matter?
If a particular stage in the task is complex you may want to repeat the instruction, or ask the reader to check their progress so they are sure they have followed your instructions successfully.
With longer articles it is important to do this regularly so the reader does not lose track. Summarize what they have done so far, tell them what should have already been achieved and ask them to check that everything is as it should be. If a reader finds that the project does not look like what you have described, they can then retrace the last few steps and see where they went wrong.
If you work through your article in this manner you should be left with a clear, concise 'how to' article that takes the reader through each step of the project to completion. Read it again, at least twice, to make sure that it is well written and that instructions are clear. Wrap up with a concluding paragraph congratulating the reader for a job well done.
And finally, the icing on the cake, the headline. This does not necessarily have to be done at the end. It can be done before you write the article but you may find that headline ideas will come to you as you write your content. Be sure to spend some time perfecting your headline as this can be the difference between the success and failure of your article.
