Recovering From Google Farmer Panda Update

Not sure how I missed this, but the great Vanessa Fox has a fantastic post up on Search Engine Land about what to do if your traffic has gone down since the Google Farmer/Panda Update. It is quite a long post, but she covers it pretty thoroughly. I have had a handful of sites affected by the last update, but am pretty sure what changes I need to make. Not drastic mind you. Pay close attention to the authoritative Content and duplicate content. While not surprising, many sites might fall into the more ads than content category. She also covers how Google recently launched an algorithm update intended to address scraper sites, but I know for a fact that this still needs tweaking on their end. I see scraper sites outranking some original sites everyday. Web spam is always changing and sometimes Google seems to chase their own tail in this department quite often. Anyways, read it slow and absorb it as it is a great post. She really writes great stuff and is worth following.

Yoast On Duplicate Content

If you have read my blog for a while you know I follow every word that Joost de Valk, better knows as Yoast, preaches. Today he has a super post for you to better understand the different causes of duplicate content, and how to find the solution for each of the causes. This is straight and to the point and something you will likely want to bookmark and refer back to. I also am a fan of his new SEO Wordpress plugin I have talked about recently. You will want to consider learning how to use it. He is a master of Wordpress and SEO and anything he puts out, I subscribe to. Make sure you follow him on Twitter @Yoast.

Only So Many Ways To Say Some Things

The old duplicate content argument is starting to resurface again in relation to ranking in the SERPS. When dealing with product descriptions, you will often see the same stock description show up on several retailer sites. It is not uncommon to even see them on Amazon. Is it OK to use this duplicate content on your site? Sure, I guess, as long as the original source is allowing it. Which most do. If you were to build a complete site though with all duplicate content, it will be very hard to stand out in the SERPS ranking wise. I know there are only so many ways to say something is black and goes 55 mph. If you must use stock product descriptions, try to add something else unique to the page as well. Perhaps also a video or some product ratings. Try to make the full contents of the page be different than any other page out there. Yes. Even if it all is duplicate content. Tons of sites make a living off of aggregating content. Take Mahalo.com for example. I will say though, you stand a better chance the more unique you are. Even if this means spinning something with the Best Spinner. Try to put together pages of content that can not be found elsewhere and yet give the surfer what they are looking for. It is not so much the duplicate content that kills you, than it is the fact that no pages on your domain have uniqueness. Get creative, even if you are using SOME duplicate content. In all honesty though, the more original content you have on site, the better it is for all involved.

Free Textbroker Unique Content Verifier

Got an email the other day from Textbroker announcing their new Unique Content Verifier desktop application for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Not only is it free, but it offers multiple layers of web checking as well. You have the ability to check straight text without a URL by copy-pasting an article into application. to make sure that your content is unique. You can also check posted articles with a single URL or an entire site. The program has a mapping function that automatically creates a full sitemap based on your criteria, allowing you to check an entire site. You now have the ability to protect your own websites from content thieves with the automatic daily plagiarism check function. Watch the video on the site for more clarification.

Textbroker also has great writers as well and I use them in addition to Need An Article for getting articles and product reviews written for my sites. Like all article writing services, it takes a little searching to find the right writer that fits your style, but Textbroker has been around I while and I trust my work to them.

The Best Spinner Download Version Available

A new content spinner that is still in beta testing is now available for download. Currently it is free, but I do not know if there are future plans to charge people that download in the beta version. Regardless, I have played around with it and it does exactly what it says it does. It takes a little playing around with it and I must warn once again that if you use a content spinner, use it responsibly and try to spin very thoroughly. If the starting piece of content is crap, the output will be crap as well. Remember that you should be keeping the surfer in mind as well as the search engines when creating ANY piece of content. I still stand behind the notion that original unique content is the best way to go, but this tool does have it's place in the giant scheme of things. Especially if you are using it for article sites.

Are We Headed For An Entirely Spun Web?

I wanted to follow up on the post a few days ago on the The Future Of Web Content. I came across another article I missed on TechCrunch entitled, The End Of Hand Crafted Content. The article is both enlightening, yet disturbing. Now I admit to spinning content myself, mostly for article sites. This time of year it is normal to see more spun content start to resurface along with people asking about spinning content (or rewriting content) which to me is really the same thing.

Can a site full of well spun content survive and rank. If spun well enough to pass a Copyscape check and with enough QUALITY backlinks, no reason to think you can't according to the article. Does it mean it is right or legal? I guess you could get quite a few different opinions depending on who you ask. Don't we all really just do research and reformulate articles we find anyway? Especially if we are not very knowledgeable on the niche to begin with. I could write forever on fixing problems with Windows or PC's. I can't write forever on using a Mac. I know nothing about them. I could however read up and rewrite articles on it though or pay someone to.

All of this lends more credence though to charging for the content in niches that you know you can be an authority on. On the flip side you can see how spinning or rewriting articles THOROUGHLY could work as well. Just as a test, I will likely try a site in the near future of completely well spun articles that completely pass a Copyscape check, mainly because I want to see for myself if it works. You would have to think that some how Google would catch onto all of this in the near future. Perhaps though it could be the ultimate hole in Google and the one with the best SEO and backlinks would win. Isn't that what Google was trying to get away from in the first place? If everyone starts doing it, isn't that where we are headed? I, in no way endorse a site full of spun content, but it seems right now that it is totally acceptable.

Final question is, how long until your spun content is spun or rewritten by someone else though? Are we headed for an entirely spun web?

DISCLAIMER: This blog post was not spun. Not yet!

Using Syndicated Articles On Your Site

There has been a ton written in the past on duplicate content. If you have a site full of copied articles and content, be prepared not to rank for it. On the flip side, syndicating some articles is fine. Look at it from an online newspaper website point of view. Newspapers are full of AP stories that are shared across several websites. On the flip side, individual newspaper sites also have a ton of their own unique stories and articles as well.

If you are going to use syndicated articles, make sure you have the approval to do so first and foremost. Most of the free article directories like Ezine Articles permit this as long as you keep all of the links and credits in tact. Make sure this articles add to the value of your website and are beneficial to your surfers. Also do not fall into the trap of over syndicating. It is very easy to do. Mix in a healthy dose of your own original content and your site will not suffer.

Article directories have a ton of great articles. After syndicating, you might try to contact the writer through his site in the footer of the article and work out some sort of link deal as well. A few times I have also found freshly abandoned domains as well and bought them. Then redirected them to my own niche site. It won't happen often, but it does indeed happen every now in again.

Like anything else, don't over do it and stay as natural as possible.

Rand Fishkin On Duplicate Content

Rand Fishkin hits another home run with the latest Whiteboard Friday video he did on duplicate content. Rand shows how you can protect your content to always rank the highest over someone who may copy, scrape or even syndicate.

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday - Dealing with Duplicate Content from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

The Rewrite Dilemma

I received an email from a reader that was inquiring about a new service that rewrites articles for customers and wanted my thoughts on the service. While I do not use the service the reader was questioning about, I have heard of several that do this.

My thoughts on rewriting others content is this: We all tend to use other articles as basis of information in writing our own works of original content. If you are rewriting the content, but are merely copying the whole articles thought process and overall body, you should probably link to the original article as a source of inspiration or reference. If you are TOTALLY rewriting it, to add something new in ways of views or additional information, then you can claim it as your own. While in the Google guidelines it says there really is no penalty for duplicate content, you should reference in good faith if you syndicate an article or merely rewrite. Some articles can indeed be rewritten for the better, I know a ton of mine could really be improved. My thinking is though, if you are going to go that far as to spend money on a rewrite, why not pay for a totally original piece of work? Sure it will cost you a little bit more, but if done by the right service, it will lend more credibility to your site in general. The site in question from the reader, I will indeed try, just to see how close it comes to the original article from a plagiarism aspect and to see if it is actually rewritten better on a quality standpoint. I will report back in a future post.

Using the Ahhhhhhh Factor

Depending on your niche, you may be at a lost to what type of content to add or blog about. Perhaps you own a dog niche site or a cat niche site. Do you post pictures everyday of cute little dogs or cats, with a witty little summation or quote. this is easy content to find with Google or even Flickr. Let's say today's blog post is about the Dachshunds breed. You could post a blog post with a couple of cute pictures a funny quote and then list about 5 items with the PHPBay plugin. Do this daily and you will get the Ahhhhhh followers who visit daily. You will condition them. Now this is a very broad example, but can be adapted for nearly every niche, especially those geared towards women. Now go get your Ahhhhhhh factor turned on.

Google Supports New Canonical Tag

Google has announced that they now support a new format canonical tag that allows you to publicly specify which preferred version of a URL you want. If your site has identical or vastly similar content that's accessible through multiple URL strings, this new format provides you with more control over the URL returned in search results. It also helps to make sure that properties such as link popularity are consolidated to your preferred version. Now, you can simply add the new link tag to specify your preferred version of a URL. The new tag goes inside the section of the duplicate content page.

Duplicate Content Explained By Google

I am a bit under the weather tonight, but came across a Google bookmark I had from the Google Webmaster blog explaining their views on duplicate content. This post should clear up what is and is not penalized by Google. It is very easy to fall into one of the areas they are talking about with BANS sites if you are not careful though. Read it and bookmark it and make sure you understand it.

Need An Article? Unique Content Is King!

As many of you know who read this blog on a regular basis, I am constantly harping on unique original content on your Build A Niche Stores. If you are not adding content, you are in for a hard road. Without content you are just a thin affiliate site and unless you have strong backlinks either paid or unpaid, it will be hard to keep that store successful over a long period of time. You have to offer value with your stores on the web. By adding good solid keyword original content, you are also setting yourself up to acquiring natural deep linking backlinks to your store, which are priceless. As you also know, I like to write a lot of my own content, but with so many stores I wanted to maximize my time versus cost efforts without losing quality. I have been watching all of the reviews on the Need An Article service and recently joined to give them a test drive. I have used posters on the Digital Point forum as well in the past, but got inconsistent results. I ordered 5 articles on Need An Article and received them back very fast. The articles were very well written and factual. I also ran them through Copyscape and they passed with flying colors. There have been a few article spinners recently that have come down the pipe and I was just not comfortable with them and none where even worth a review. I only advertise products and services that I use and endorse on this blog. I could get away with promoting other things to make a buck, but in the long run it will not help you or the longevity and trust factor of this blog. Please do not take this as a crack on other bloggers or article spinner programs either. If you are using spinners and having good success, by all means keep doing what you are doing. Need An Article does have a monthly fee, so if you are on a budget, I suggest joining a month and then getting as many articles as you need done in the first month. I for one am keeping my membership as I like the flexibility of having these writers at my disposal. They will soon be offering a request a writer feature that will enable you to have your article written by your favorite writer as well. I had three different writers on my first five articles I had done and all were quality. I do feel if you are going to pay for some unique content I would make sure it goes on your own site first. Wait for that to get indexed by the SERPS before submitting it off to article directories if that is your plan. That way your article on your store is the original on the web. This will not be the last time you hear me harp on original content, but I do highly endorse Need An Article if you simply can't or do not like writing yourself.

Long Versus Short Articles as Content Strategy

Well it is Friday and I wanted to give you this read before the week is out. This is a great article on long versus short articles. get yourself in the right frame of mind before reading it. Another message along this same line is when to add something as a blog post or as a page of content on your Build A Niche Store. Personally on blogs I have attached to BANS stores, I usually only make a paragraph or two post. If you have some info or lengthy content, I highly suggest adding it as a page of content on your store. Blog post are really feel are daily feedings for the SERPS. Also I think the perfect lenghth for an article or page of content is 350 words or better. Personally, I do not think I have written anything over 550 words. But if it takes you more words to increase the number of keyword phrases, by all means do not let a word count hold you back. As you go into the weekend remember, ORIGINAL KEYWORD DRIVEN CONTENT IS KING. Make it a plan to write at least one page of content or one free article this weekend. Most of you fear it more than you should. It is in your head, so put it down on paper or in notepad.

Original content and article submissions

I see a ton of people who take their original content and post it up to their site along with posting it to every free article site on the planet. This is a no-no in my opinion. I suggest changing up the content for each place you submit it to as to not trip any duplicate content issues and cheapen the source link, being yours. If you can at the least, have 2 versions, the best keyword driven one for your site and one other version for your favorite article submission site. You want your original to stick out above the crowd, so why cheapen it up by putting copies all over the web?

Per Matt Cutts

My advice would be 1) to avoid over-syndicating the articles that you write, and 2) if you do syndicate content, make sure that you include a link to the original content. That will help ensure that the original content has more PageRank, which will aid in picking the best documents in our index.