Hey peeps..... I was thinking about something that causes SR some ranking issues; duplicate content.

You see, most of the peeps dropping articles tend to do so as part of a larger article marketing campaign; which means much of the content isn't unique.... for example;

How to Squeeze Blood from a Copywriter
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Not+t … p;filter=0

5 Critical Questions To Ask BEFORE You Hire a Web Designer
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en& … tnG=Search

... and that's just the first 2 articles. As you might imagine almost ALL of them are the same....

I am curious as to what we can offer or do in order to encourage people to submit unique content?

Should we maybe limit home page face time to only those that submit unique articles? (this would get them a higher PR linkee)

Maybe nofollow non-unique content? (once more rewarding unique conent only with link love)

Anyone have any ideas?

the nofollow idea is valid,
what of the time a person writes exclusive, but in two weeks puts on their own site?

matte wrote:

the nofollow idea is valid,
what of the time a person writes exclusive, but in two weeks puts on their own site?

Well, considering the SR crawl rates and the fact that it is somewhat of an authority I suppose it wouldn't be a huge deal... but ultimately being seen by the SEs as a repository for regurgitation; it's an issue worth looking at.

I just wasn't sure how to encourage more unique content... since we know they are using it as much for links as anything else, maybe the links is where we need to hit them. I am going to start posting more on the blog starting this week and so we'll have unique content there, just trying to think of ways to increase the level of it in the main articles area.... sigh.....

How much of a page needs to be unique?
or put another way
How much of a page is used to determine it's a duplicate?

i mean, if you took 2 articles, substr() them in half and post them together on the same page, would that page be duplicate content?

do it with 4, or 5 or XX

surely the more articles on a page the lower the posibilities of the page becoming duplicate. You could possibly get away with not even cutting them up, just slapping them together.

use whatever system you want to match articles together. Rand() would infinitely decrease the possibility of dupes as the page content changes on each damn refresh!

At the end of the day, building a page for Visitors is not at the forefront of anyones mind is it?

My first reaction is revenue sharing (eg showing the author's adsense or other discreet affiliate/advert part of the time) for as long as the article remains unique.

If links is the way to go, then i agree with the idea of the links getting a no-follow as soon as the article is found to have been duplicated.

It is then up to the author (who we hope owns the copyright) to keep the net free from duplicates (eg sending cease and desist notices to offenders of copy-right infringement)

However, reducing link weight may cause articles to stop coming in at all.

As far as mashing up content goes..........

If mash ups worked then we'd all be millionaires

The exact figures escape all but those who have worked on the algorithm, but a sensible guess - and for the purposes of this discussion - i'd say sentence level is where to look at for uniqueness.

If a search term pulls back 10 pages that all have the exact same sentence in it and that sentence is critical/relevant  to the the search term then the pages would be filtered for duplicate content and only one or two of these 10 pages would be returned in the SERPs - whichever goog thinks is the most relevant/important/authoritative.

Beef it up to paragraphs and pages and you can see where the problem comes

I am curious as to what we can offer or do in order to encourage people to submit unique content?

So, which came first,

*  the chicken or the egg?

*  the value of the backlink or the unique content with the backlink in the bio box?

Article writing and submission is based on getting value for effort in the backlink.

Some fine people, such as the Gypsy, may contribute unique articles out of the goodness of their heart, but most will be looking for something of value in return.

Several people regularly contribute unique content in the forum. The return:

If they have a SEO related buisness website, then the first couple of links may have some value. If they run and SEO a website in any other field, then the backlinks are pretty much useless, apart from assisting in indexing of new sites.

Therefore:

*  Allow unique, dofollow, manually placed deep links at the end of the posts of approved SR contributers.

*  Allow a bit of off toppic content in these posts so as to give the backlinks some relevency in the case of non SEO site backlinks.

If the above two suggestions are not acceptable, then come up with a better idea to attract better forum content. This idea builds on what we already have.

This will increase the quantity and quantity of forum posts, thus, over time, increasing the value of backlinks in the articles section. In turn, the increased value of backlinks in article bio boxes will attract unique articles of better quality, thus improving SR ranking.

The value of an SR backlink will place SR in a position to demand first publishing rites of articles.

Beyond first publishing rites, no exclusive requirements can successfully be made. Scraper sites, ya know, and content thieves.

Please note that it would be impossible to police article ownership once word got around that SR was publishing unique, high quality SEO articles. All that can be done is to get the content indexed first.

Regards,
Laurie.

I suspect the questions might get more thought and input if they were done in another SR survey form. This particular folder doesn't get visited as often as a few others.

That being said, when I wrote my one and only article (so far, but probably one of three that I would submit to SR given my sites don't really fit into the SR frame of mind), I did submit it only to SR. Maybe a little explanation of why would help answer your question from one person's POV. I chose SR alone, because I participate on this forum, and I wanted input from folks I knew - other long term participants. I wanted the ability to directly interact with those who read the article, which, I thought, would increase the linking thingy for my sites. (Got tired of using the proper jargon. ) It did increase interest in my sites, so I'm thinking that could be one thing SR can offer that most sites that accept articles don't do.

As far as penalties for getting articles noticed more (sent out to other sites, too), welllll, as a writer, that one might well tick me off. The second (or third) reason for article writing is the hopes of "viraling!" We want folks to like our article enough (or be annoyed by it enough) to want to copy and paste it onto their sites, in hopes of it snowballing. Link bait, baby! It's all the rage! Unless you give a really good reason for the article to be posted only here, and then clearly state that it still has the ability to snowball, which you have suggested, you're going to get a lot less articles. Face it, something about the Internet almost makes people merely skim whatever they are reading, so writers are not always going to read the complete story.

Did this help at all, given my lack of prolific article writing?!

While we hae a few ideas to encourage unqiue stuff... ultimately I hope to make SR a regular stop for the Marketing crowd and the traffic should hopefully placate many.

Unfortunately many peeps use SR for link building via article marketing more than actual exposure or traffic. This is why they pump them out to many sites... I'd prefer it to be more like WebPro news and related sites as far as peeps comming back to get their daily fix...

I know it can certainly drive traffic as SR is one of my top referrers lately with some of the blog posts I have done... 

Will we ever get there? Will it be destined to be a repository? Maybe, but I was merely thinking out loud about ways to increase the reputation of the place over-all... we have some ideas cooking... see where it leads.

Part of the problem is from an SEO standpoint... having a large amount of duplicate content severly limits the ability to drive organic traffic... Heck, I wouldn't even care as much if peeps gave a 2 week grace period before posting them elsewhere... as it stands, many of them are already indexed elsewhere prior to be picked up on SR....

... time will tell......

Closing doors is a bad idea

If you say only unique articles, or minimum posts before sig links then you are driving away users and content generation.

Most of those that use SR for posting content for links are still helping SR to be an informative place, and a growing resource.

They key here is to open more doors, specifically for unique content.

You'll never get rid of the spammer but assertive pruning will keep the site pleasant, at least

TheGypsy wrote:

While we hae a few ideas to encourage unqiue stuff... ultimately I hope to make SR a regular stop for the Marketing crowd and the traffic should hopefully placate many.

Unfortunately many peeps use SR for link building via article marketing more than actual exposure or traffic. This is why they pump them out to many sites... I'd prefer it to be more like WebPro news and related sites as far as peeps comming back to get their daily fix...

I know it can certainly drive traffic as SR is one of my top referrers lately with some of the blog posts I have done... 

Will we ever get there? Will it be destined to be a repository? Maybe, but I was merely thinking out loud about ways to increase the reputation of the place over-all... we have some ideas cooking... see where it leads.

Part of the problem is from an SEO standpoint... having a large amount of duplicate content severly limits the ability to drive organic traffic... Heck, I wouldn't even care as much if peeps gave a 2 week grace period before posting them elsewhere... as it stands, many of them are already indexed elsewhere prior to be picked up on SR....

... time will tell......

I still like to believe SR has some credibility in the marketplace. That is why I still put a few articles into your site... Not that many mind you, but I do send you a few.

And when I am looking for my articles later, SR tends to keep good rankings on the articles they accept. The best thing about SR right now is the increasing number of people using the RSS feeds from SR.

If you put nofollows on my links, I would still post here regardless. I use article marketing primarily to put my message in front of potential audiences, and to therefore generate traffic from my articles. SEM is a bonus for article marketing, but it is not the primary goal with my own article marketing.

(I don't put customer articles here anymore, because your anti-spam tools have made submission here that much more time-consuming.)

If you forced me to only submit unique articles, you would only see me once and again for a forum comment like now. I have not done much in your forum in a very long time.

The forum is your best opportunity to generate new and unique content. If your forum was more active, you would not need to worry too much about unique content.

My absence from this forum has been long-running, since I noticed a real lack of activity on this forum. Looking today, I see far more "recent" activity than I have noticed in most of the last couple years. All you have to do is to keep an eye to the "last post dates" in the forums, to get an indication of what I am looking at here.

I submit here, not because my articles on this site provide much bang. I only see a dozen visitors a month from SR. The reason I post here is because I have always felt that SR has potential that it is not realizing. I post here in the hope that one day, SR will realize its full potential.

If I have to do unique articles to see my articles on your site, then I will have to look more closely at what I receive in return from SR. And when one can only see a dozen or so visitors per month, unique article requirements would force me to stop posting any articles here at all.

As to more frequent posting in your forum, this site has a lot of very tight cliques in which I do not fit. I suspect that is the same reason why activity on this forum is hit and miss to say the least. People sense where they are not really welcome and they stop coming.

The uniqueness of the articles on your main site are not a primary issue I don't think. Look at SiteProNews. They don't print unique articles either. And yet they continue to have a half a million loyal readers. What is so much different between them and you?

* You have a forum and they don't. (The forum is your greatest asset, and yet it is not a really friendly place to meet like-minded people.)

* Their site is prettier than yours.

* Their site is easier to navigate than yours.

* Their site has more links to more useful resources than you do.

WebPro news is much the same. It shines for a number of reasons. In their case, they pay people to create original content. They haven't accepted reprint content for a few years, but they "pay" to have content developed for them. The flow of cash more than makes up for not using reprint content. But not everyone can afford to pay to create loads of original content. (Granted, not everyone on the WPN site is on the payroll, but enough information on their site is paid-to-develop-content, specifically the video feeds, to make a real difference for them.)

All-in-all, you have a website that has true potential that is vastly underutilized. The lack of unique content at your front door is not your problem. If other people can generate vast traffic utilizing non-unique content, then you should be able to do the same. If you are not, the problem lies elsewhere.

While I may not be influenced by nofollow tags, some of the other article writers may just bid you farewell if you do that. By making it harder to get content in your site, you will be ensuring that you will have much less content to choose from. With less content on your site, you will find traffic dropping off worse than it has.

I say that with all hopes that you will take it as sincere advice. There was a time, many years ago, when I could count on SR to send lots of traffic to my site, when one of my articles was published. There was a time when SR was one of my "five most coveted targets" for my articles. These days, if you do or you don't publish my articles, then it is not going to be a great loss to me.

If I find out that my articles are no longer wanted here, then I could save an extra five minutes of my time by not submitting here at all.

I am real easy. If you don't want me to submit articles to your site, I will stop immediately, and you will never see nor hear from me again. (Given my past experiences here, I would not be the least bit surprised for someone to pop their head up and tell me to not let the door hit me on the ass on the way out. But if you ask me, that is the reason why this site has lost its place in the limelight over the last couple years.)

Bill Platt

G'day Bill. Great post, Mate!

Hope you'll stick around.

Regards,
Laurie.

I am real easy. If you don't want me to submit articles to your site, I will stop immediately, and you will never see nor hear from me again. (Given my past experiences here, I would not be the least bit surprised for someone to pop their head up and tell me to not let the door hit me on the ass on the way out. But if you ask me, that is the reason why this site has lost its place in the limelight over the last couple years.)

Bill Platt

Was rather shocked by the end of your response. Couldn't imagine anyone telling you to piss off, Bill. Kept quiet, just in case me writing that would stop such an honest answer. Ummm, either whoever you're talking about doesn't come on here enough to tell you to do so, or, ummmm, no one is going to! As stated in another folder - personally, I look forward to your articles. I didn't think much new could be said about writing articles, until I noticed the ones you write, either do teach me something new, or are lots of fun to read. (I got a kick out of your contest attempt - both an article, and another link to win the contest! )

As for your answer to Gyp's request -- sure was better hearing from someone who does write articles (galore) included in SR. I knew my measly response couldn't be that helpful, since I'm not yet a continual article writer. Given my area of interest, generally speaking, I'm still not going to be writing for SR often. Funny thing - you taught me that a while ago.

Well, since I started this thread more than a few ideas/discussions have been had around this issue here and in private. As a guy that pokes around SRs indexation and link profile(s), there are more than a few things that jumped to mind, and this was one of them

Ultimately what is good for the site is good for the peeps that post here (articles and forum members).

At this point I think the home page being organized into Blog,Articles and Forum threads does work and maybe we can offer Newsletter coverage (and attribution) for those that feed unique content... with my little scraper manipulation scheme, there is likely value all the articles (tee hee) - for my end, building up the SEO Blog will also help as far as unique content (as do the forums)... just playing with ideas for that part of the site (article repository)

To be honest, I have a pet interest in qualitative research and this post was a great way to get a feel for what folks felt. I am glad that Bill even decided to join as it fills out the viewpoints...

bill.platt wrote:

The forum is your best opportunity to generate new and unique content. If your forum was more active, you would not need to worry too much about unique content.

Bill Platt

Thus my interest in attracting new vistors via uniqu content which obviously can translate into SEO benefits. As stated though, the Blog will likely end up being the route for that....

bill.platt wrote:

As to more frequent posting in your forum, this site has a lot of very tight cliques in which I do not fit. I suspect that is the same reason why activity on this forum is hit and miss to say the least. People sense where they are not really welcome and they stop coming.

Lol.... most forums I am on tend to have that to a certain degree... I think it comes from the spammers in that peeps aren't as instantly forthcoming with advice as in years past... this is most forums though... not unique to SR. To be honest some forums I am on are actually harsher than this one... even I haven't been as aggressive of late, which I am infamous for.

That being said... there is a time, for sake of quality interactions, that it is valid. I also find that forums have diverse personalities and when there are small clashes, it isn't always a bad thing. This is a social medium and no one gets paid to be here... I think folks can speak as they please (within reason)

bill.platt wrote:

The reason I post here is because I have always felt that SR has potential that it is not realizing. I post here in the hope that one day, SR will realize its full potential.

... and that part I agree with and is the genesis of this post ;0)

atwhatcost wrote:

Was rather shocked by the end of your response. Couldn't imagine anyone telling you to piss off, Bill. Kept quiet, just in case me writing that would stop such an honest answer. Ummm, either whoever you're talking about doesn't come on here enough to tell you to do so, or, ummmm, no one is going to!

Probably not. I am sure I would have heard by now if that was to be said.

atwhatcost wrote:

I didn't think much new could be said about writing articles, until I noticed the ones you write, either do teach me something new, or are lots of fun to read. (I got a kick out of your contest attempt - both an article, and another link to win the contest! )

Although I did not win that contest under the guidelines for the contest... If only the contest would have been six weeks instead of four weeks, I  would have been a runner up. The person in #1 and #2 at the end of the contest was disqualified for whatever reason. I never could figure out why. 8 days after the contest ended I was #5, and with the disqualified person, I would have been in third, which did earn a prize.

In the current results, the #1 is the person disqualified. I have been bouncing between #2 and #3 for the last few weeks.

I still get a kick out of that. ;-)

atwhatcost wrote:

As for your answer to Gyp's request -- sure was better hearing from someone who does write articles (galore) included in SR. I knew my measly response couldn't be that helpful, since I'm not yet a continual article writer. Given my area of interest, generally speaking, I'm still not going to be writing for SR often.

Funny thing - you taught me that a while ago.

I don't understand how or why I would have taught you that?

I  firmly believe that everyone has the ability within themselves to write great articles; it is just that many people simply do not have enough confidence in their own abilities to tell a good story, to believe me when I tell them that.

If it is a question of grammar,  anyone can benefit from an outisde editor. Even I could use an editor sometimes... expecially if you have caught some of my own most embarrassing errors in my articles.

The last article I had published here has one error in it... I copied the wrong number into one of my points.

The most embarrassing was the "mother lode". I knew "mother lode" was the correct spelling, but in the article published  in newsletters that reached better than a million readers, the first paragraph said that "webmasters thought they hit the mother load."

I received more than 200 emails telling me of my misspelling!

Honestly. If I taught you that  you could not write for SR, then you should not have listened to me.


Bill

Bill,
Nah! You misunderstood. I can write for SR, and do have a couple of articles to include once I can get that new site up and running.  I won't be writing articles for SR often though, because SEO, affiliated marketing, web design, and the other common topics found within SR's range, aren't related to my area of interest, or, more exacting, aren't relevant to my site(s). Writing about marketing or article writing, just don't lend themselves to teddy bears. With that, those articles are slightly out of scope with my expertise (if I'm up to being an expert yet - I doubt it). I have in mind, instead, a series of articles for teddy bear related magazines/directories about how teddies are macho, how the rise and fall of their markets were affected by the two world wars, and how they are effectively used to help those in need of comfort. That's what I learned from you - stick with what we know, and make articles relevant for our sites.

As for the ability to write -- sounds like we both have the same confidence, and the same embarassment about grammatical mistakes. My homebased business included creating copy that sells, but my most embarrassing moment was when a prospective customer faxed me back my newsletter with "three" grammatical errors in the article about creating marketing copy as a tool to bring in customers. Only one of the three errors was a real error, but he wanted nothing to do with my business, so I couldn't apologize, or let him know the rules had changed since he had gone to school. I understand how embarrassing it is to know how to write, but still get caught with our grammatical pants down. (How's that for a crappy metaphor?! LOL)

In my older age, I'm trying not to nitpick about other's grammar anymore, in hopes that I don't get 200 people correcting mine. LOL

As for the contest, I think there should have been, at least, a do-over, preferrably a return to it several months later, to find out who kept the best ratings. Black hat will get you to the top quicker, but gray or white will keep you there for a while. If they disqualified the first two, they probably were against any black hatting. I can't think of any other reason to be disqualified.

atwhatcost wrote:

As for the contest, I think there should have been, at least, a do-over, preferrably a return to it several months later, to find out who kept the best ratings. Black hat will get you to the top quicker, but gray or white will keep you there for a while. If they disqualified the first two, they probably were against any black hatting. I can't think of any other reason to be disqualified.

Thank you for the clarifcation on the other.

On the contest, I am not sure, but I think the thing that got that person disqualified was that she was working with another blackhatter who specializes in getting sites delisted from google.

If that is the truth of the matter, I am glad she was disqualified before they got to my site. Of course, the person who won the contest had been delisted for two weeks by  the blackhatter, but she had returned to the top of the listings before the contest was over.

Ah! Didn't think of that option, and I just got WordPress to drop a link farm account. (Just when I thought they didn't exist anymore!)

BTW, also enjoyed your article about Google being demoted from god status. Of course, I might be predjudice - Google gives me a little over 30% of my visitors. Sure, it's my number one sender, but I'm not into giving up the other 2/3rds either.