There have been lots of discussions going on whether it’s still smart to be using duplicate content on your web pages. In this article, I want to give you my opinion about it and what I’ve personally noticed with regards to the use of PLR content or free reprint articles on my own websites and on my clients’ websites.
First of all, let’s have a look back 3-4 years ago. Back then, you could simply slap up a website which was scraping content from other sites or even from the search engine results pages (e.g. Traffic Equalizer as the one software which started it all) and you had a site that attracted a lot of visitors automatically because you had “optimized” content. Some people made a lot of money from these tactics (5 figures monthly) and they were building dozens of such sites on a daily basis.
Nowaways, these tactics are seen as “search engine spam” or “black hat tactics”. There is a time for everything and if people were making decent money with it then it fulfilled its purpose – at least for the developers of those scripts and the ones who were using it (yes, I had used it as well in the beginning…). But the search engines wised up and were taking measures to detect that kind of content.
The next step the “lazy” marketers were taking was the creation of automatic content sites. There were (and still are) tons of scripts out there which will allow you to fetch articles from article directories and from RSS feeds directly and create a whole website with this content. You simply enter a keyword (or multiple keywords) and with a few clicks of your mouse, you had a whole website. After some time, the search engines found out about it and in most cases your rankings and your Google Pagerank was gone overnight – and so was the income!
Especially, if you had been using nothing else than content which got published from an RSS feed automatically which was one of the latest trends and had been done in combination with WordPress or with scripts which then created an archive of these published RSS news on your server. Your site could survive longer if you had been using a completely unique and modified website template for it. If you were using a website template that had been provided by the developer of such a scraper/RSS script, then you had to be prepared to lose your site fairly quickly.
A different way of building sites quickly was by using a desktop software (or online versions for that matter) which created a complete site from PLR articles you had sitting on your harddrive. As long as it was still working with the search engines, I had done it as well – after all, it’s much quicker than to build something from scratch.
But what I’ve been noticing in the last few weeks and months from observing the rankings of dozens of those kind of sites was that these kind of sites were not getting great rankings anymore.
Personally, I’ve noticed a recent trend with my websites that completely new sites which have nothing but duplicate content on them are getting a greyed out Google toolbar (you need to have the Google toolbar installed to see this).
Meaning, they were penalized.
In the past, I had only seen this kind of penalty with scraper sites but Google has extended this to new, non-unique sites as well. At least, when you’re starting out with a new site, you should be adding unique content on a regular basis now. Once I had replaced the non-unique content with unique articles, the greyed out toolbar was gone and it was white instead. That means that with the next Google update, the site will be getting a Google Pagerank.
So what is the next logical step in this “cat and mouse game”…?
The next step can only be to provide Google with what it really wants: Great and unique content. Yes, I know, it might be hard to build a site completely from scratch and write unique content for it. I would prefer some kind of automation, too…. But in the end, you’ll be getting rewarded with more visitors from the search engines and better rankings in general and you’ll have more loyal visitors if they see that you’re providing unique content on your site.
Instead of giving your website visitors the quickest “exit” from your site by publishing rehashed and sometimes even very badly written PLR content and wanting them to click on your Adsense- or other PPC ads, you’ll attract visitors who’ll be staying on your site for much longer and who will be using your site as one of the first points of interest whenever they want to get new content on the same subject.
You can make use of this behaviour by offering them a free report or ebook and getting them on a mailing list. This way, you’ll be able to direct them to your website every time you have some new content and you’ll be able to make long term profits from your site by adding the proper monetization to it – not just from Adsense or affiliate programs.
You might also be able to get direct advertisers who want to advertise with you. This can mean easy monthly profits. A lot of sites which are getting many visitors are charging $200 and more for placing a simple banner on their site. In this case, you’ll be building a real business instead of relying on the latest “fad”.
I know this goes against most of what most others are preaching, that you need volume to build your VRE empire… One thing doesn’t exclude the other, though. While you, yourself might only be able to build very few sites using this tactic, you should be using the profits from these sites to start outsourcing as much as you can to get more sites up and running. Instead of adding new pages to these new sites yourself, you simply find someone to do it for you.
You go to sites like Elance.com or Scriptlance.com and you post a project that you’re looking for a reliable writer who’ll be posting new content to your site on a regular basis. The easiest way to get this done is by using a WordPress blog. Pay this person per unique post (e.g. $2-3) and you’re looking at monthly costs which will be quite low for these regular updates (the posts don’t have to have the length of full blown articles – often 200-300 words are enough).
This is what I am personally doing now in combination with silo-structuring and LSI, I’m mainly doing Web 2.0 promotions and article marketing. With regards to my search engine rankings and visitors I must say that this has been the best step I’ve taken in a long time. There has hardly been something before that had such a dramatic impact on my rankings… and if you want to attract more visitors to your own sites then I suggest you start doing the same!
Unfortunately I have to disagree with you in relation to content for higher ranking. To my understanding and personal experience, some SEO tricks – I don’t dare call them techniques – can make any crap website with no content at all get top page ranking at Google. You can see proof of it by reading the article I’ve posted on my blog.
Does this mean that article directories will lose their usefulness for article marketers because when webmasters pick up article from there, they will be publishing duplicate contents?
Article marketing which makes use of article directories to obtain traffic and backlinks will no longer be an effective marketing tool.
Thanks for this info Detlev. tomr
Hi Detlev,
Great information and tips here. I have used my own original content for years. I write about what I do and usually re-write my customer’s information, given to me by them, for their site presence. Some people know what they want to say, but when they write about it they lose focus and just need help getting it right!
Today it is not just “Content is King” anymore. It is “Unique Content is King” and that is the way it should be! The rules hold true for network marketing and especially for anyone running an off-line business and attempting to move it into an Internet presence, that might be similar to other off-line businesses already in their niche!
As for PLR Articles, well they are nice, but unless you have a passion for the niche and rewrite at least more than 25% of the article as well as change the look and feel a little, well good luck getting any ranking!
I have also used news aggregator sites, which really are great for pulling lots of information together. These help with getting current information but you also must be publishing unique content to the niche as well, if you expect anyone to find the information. Partial aggregators, where only a few current articles are pulled to the bottom of each page of unique content are great too!
Detlev, you are right on the money, as far as I am concerned, when it comes to getting it right. There will always be copycats and plagarism going on. Hopefully the systems in place for the future will be better able to weed things out, so the person being influenced by the content gets as close to the source or original author as possible.
Much Success!
Hi Sal,
Thanks for your feedback :).
With regards to PLR articles: That’s what I’ve been trying to bring across for quite a while. They need to be changed. When I offered complete websites with unique content on my Niche Content Websites membership site, it didn’t arise much interest, though. It seems that people were not ready for it, yet…
And yes, as an additional source of content on pages with unique content, RSS aggregators can be useful. That’s why I have been adding e.g. article snippets from Ezinearticles to several of my sites and my customers’ sites. That adds some useful content to it.
Thanks again,
Detlev
Thanks for a good blog. It’s nice to be provoked into thinking about several options.
I for one would say that if you ADAPT your articles, giving due source credit, you can build a decent business. Many articles supplied on PLR packages are written by Indians or others with similar language disabilities when it comes to some word placements, and I have had to correct that part to maintain at least online credibility (as on my site about PDAs).
On the other hand, adapted articles are a shortcut to having to begin from scratch. You can enter sub-headings, expand the articles and bring value to your readers in a timely manner investing only minutes on what would otherwise take hours.
I think the only losers are those who won’t take the 5-10 min. it takes to do a decent job. They end up with worthless duplicate content…
Thanks for allowing us to bring feedback to your attention.
@ Percival:
I am getting the impression, you are confusing 2 things here: Article Marketers are the ones who are publishing articles on these platforms like Ezinearticles or Goarticles and others. For them, publishing articles will stay an effective means of getting visitors and backlinks.
But if one article gets published on hundreds of other article directories and websites, only very few of them will be counting as backlinks. This means, it will become less effective with regards to the total number of backlinks you can get from 1 article.
They are usually not the ones who are getting articles from article directories themselves. For website owners (not “article marketers”!) who have relied on article directories in the past, I think, the times will become much harder. It can work if you have an established site which has been starting out by publishing unique content. Then, adding articles from article directories or PLR articles can still work. But only after your site has established enough credibility with the search engines…
I hope, this makes it a bit clearer.
Thanks,
Detlev
Hello Ari,
that wasn’t the point of my article. Of course, there’s no way for a search engine to see if content makes sense for a human being. It can only compare chains of words with each other – not the meaning of whole sentences.
That kind of comparison can only be done by humans. You can achieve high temporary Google rankings with that kind of crap content – especially if you have a lot of high quality backlinks like the first site you’ve mentioned has.
It has 27 backlinks and despite the fact that a lot of the content is gibberish, it will rank well until someone reports this site for spamming the search engines. And that site will certainly not have great conversions if people are seeing that the content doesn’t make sense.
But as I said, it wasn’t the point of my article. My article was about having whole articles as the only content on a site which are 100% duplicates of other articles already published on other websites before. Articles which have been “spun” are not 100% the same as the original articles and thus are not seen as duplicate content!
I hope, you understand my arguments.
Thanks,
Detlev
@Henrik:
Thanks for the compliment, I’m glad you like my blog …
Yes, unfortunately, I can only confirm what you are saying about the quality of some PLR articles. It’s not just with people from India, though.
And without making corrections to their language style, grammar and spelling, it would make look us, as content publishers, look really stupid. That’s why I recommend that you should always be reading the articles, first, before publishing them online.
Most people have become used to a procedure of getting PLR content, adding the articles to web pages and uploading everything without checking if the content is making any sense at all…
Detlev