The Affiliate Review 1-15 03/08/08

March 8th, 2008 Len Thurmond Posted in The Affiliate Review Archives |

========================================

IN THIS WEEK’S REVIEW

========================================

• Just Something to Think About

• This Week’s Editorial: How to Cheat with Articles

• Now That’s Funny!

• Food For Thought: What is the deal with Duplicate Content?

• The Androgynous Stone: Chapter 5

========================================

JUST SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

========================================

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.

Albert Einstein
========================================

THIS WEEK’S EDITORIAL

========================================
Hi guys,

Last week I wrote about “Other People’s Content” and how it can be useful, but this week is all about how to be a true original–just like Len!

Both Len and myself are asked by folks about duplicate content all the time. “Do I have to write everything myself?” “Will I get a big PENALTY if I quote someone else on my website?” (That makes a funny picture in my mind…”You naughty Affiliate Marketer! To the PENALTY BOX WITH YOU!!!”)

So anyway here is basically the deal. Search engines don’t like it because it annoys their visitors when they go to search for a topic and get back a set of search results that contain exactly the same thing.

It’s not a problem to have short little snippets of things that might be on another web page such as a direct quote, however if you have a substantially large block of text that is exactly the same then that is considered “duplicate content”.

Be sure to read Len’s great article this week answering some of your questions about what exactly IS the big deal with duplicate content.

So let’s say you want to make the search engines happy by having some nice original content on your site. Are you ready to unleash your literary brilliance onto the world?

For some people, sitting down and typing out an article is the most natural thing in the world. For others, however, it might seem like a GIANT SIZED task.

Well fortunately, there is a perfectly legal way to “cheat” your way to success by making over an article that you already have. All you need to start with is an article on your chosen topic that you found on a free article directory, purchased as part of a package, or BETTER YET, had delivered right to your desktop with Len’s Article Innovator software! Using a bit of imagination, you can change the article enough so that it is no longer the same article.

Here is a quick way to do it:

1. First read through the article to get a general idea of what it is about.

2. Write a new headline. Be creative and try to include your main keywords but don’t make it too long.

3. Write a “sub” headline. This is where you write a couple of lines to let the reader know what the article is about and get them excited to read it. (This is just like you often see in sales letters).

4. Rewrite the paragraphs. Most articles you will be rewriting aren’t very long so this shouldn’t be too hard. Just think of a different way to say the same thing and write it in a conversational tone. Remember to stay on topic but don’t think about it too much. You can always go back and edit later. Just write.

5. End with some kind of “call to action”. This is where you get them to do something like visit a web site or learn more about an affiliate product.

6. Make a “resource box” with something about you as an author and a link to your site. I’ll expand on this concept next week.

OTHER USEFUL RE-WRITING TIPS

- Make lists of things within your articles. People like to scan things especially on the web so make it easy with a bulleted list. (Perhaps a list of a certain product’s features, or symptoms of a disease, etc.)

- Break up the article into several sections and put subheadings before each one.

-Put some additional interesting content near the top of the article. Perhaps a link to another web site, a photo, or a video.

There! Now you have put your own “spin” on the topic and hopefully given it some of your own personality so it will be something interesting for a human to read as well as a search engine.

There is no “magic” percentage for how unique it has to be for the search engines to like it. I personally like to be at least 50% unique but the more original the better. You ultimately want it to be unique enough so that the original author could come across it and not even recognize it as his own.

You know, it would sure be nice if you could just KNOW how unique your article is while you are writing it. In fact, wouldn’t it be handy if you could see line by line if that same phrase is duplicated in Google, and if so how many times?

Hey! Now you can!!

One of the new features in Len’s Article Innovator software is a “Write Pad” where you can create original content with ease and get immediate feedback on how unique it is.

http://www.articleinnovator.com/AIVideos/02_writepad/

Until the next ‘review,
Sandy Swain

========================================

NOW THAT’S FUNNY!

========================================
Okay, groan if you want, but I couldn’t resist telling this old joke while we’re talking about duplicate content.

A woman has twins and gives them up for adoption.

One of them goes to a family in Egypt and is named Amal. The other goes to a family in Spain. They name him Juan.

Years later, Juan sends a picture of himself to his birth mother. Upon receiving the picture, she tells her husband that she wishes she also had a picture of Amal.

He responds, “They’re twins! If you’ve seen Juan, you’ve seen Amal.”

========================================

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: WHAT IS THE DEAL WITH DUPLICATE CONTENT?
========================================
By Len Thurmond

What is the Deal with “Duplicate Content”?

For the past year or so, EVERYONE has been screaming about Duplicate Content.

It’s like Chicken Little running around screaming “The Sky is Falling, The Sky is Falling!”

But do they REALLY have a case or not?

The answer unfortunately is Yes…and no.

It’s true that the Search Engines have changed their Algorithms to look for duplicate content. And can you blame them?

if you chose a search engine and searched for a specific subject that you needed information on, and you got back ten Search Engine Results (SERPs) that ALL had the identical article or ad copy … do you think YOU’D use that search engine the next time you needed one?

Probably NOT!

So, it’s IMPERATIVE that the search engines return a variety of information, from a variety of sites, in order to keep their clients happy.

And since their clients ARE their Life’s Blood, they will do everything in their power to make sure that the information they offer is targeted, relevant, and ORIGINAL!

So if you want to rank high for “Generic Traffic” (and that’s what most of us are after), then you had BETTER not dish up a bunch of over used, Public Domain Articles (or “SPUN” Public Domain articles, which is even worse!).

So YES! The Duplicate Content Scare DOES have merit. A LOT of merit!

But the consequences of NOT using original content are very misunderstood.

Most people seem to believe that if you use duplicate content, your site will be “Penalized”.

The truth is … The search engines operate on an ‘Awards system’.

And by that, I mean that if you do something they like, they reward you, by raising you in their rankings, which in the end, raises the number of people who see your site, and hopefully, the number who actually visit it.

But if you use such things as Duplicate content on your sites, the only “penalty” that you will receive, is that they’ll ignore you and not raise you in their rankings. And even THAT is not specifically true.

There are many factors that decide how, where, when and why you rank. And of the many, is how long your site has been online, and how often there are changes made to it, or additional pages added to it.

So even if your site is nothing BUT Duplicate content … If you add pages to it often enough, and it stays online LONG enough, you may still rank high enough to accomplish your goal.

That’s why Blogs do so well, regardless of the content.

While a GOOD blog full of Original Content will most certainly do better than one with Duplicate Content all through it, the latter can STILL do quite well with such strategies as Contextual advertising, or Link Generation.

Such Blogs can be successfully used for those types of strategies if you have enough of them to make up for the loss of effectiveness that you would get from originality, leave them up long enough, and add pages to them on a regular basis (ALL of which can be maintained after creation, by software such as you’ll find at Auto-Blogger.com)

So BASICALLY what I’m saying is that you need to decide which strategy you wish to employ, first. And then just go for it!

If you go for the “Quantity vs. Quality” strategy, there is no doubt you will be able to pop out hundreds or even thousands of Quality blogs using Duplicate content, in the same time that it takes you to create and maintain a small Fraction of blogs using quality, original content.

But in the end, the results will be much the same (for the time spent), if all you are looking for is targeted traffic. (your number of visitors per site will be far less with the Quantity method, but the numbers should about equal out due to the shear number of sites, vs. the Quality method)

However, you need to also have to take into consideration what it is you want that traffic to do once you get it there.

If you goal is to get them to click on a link to leave your site (either to go to another site you wish to direct them to, or through your Adsense or banners), then you might want to consider using the Quantity method.

It WILL get you a lot of traffic over time, and because your visitors will find little that is original to read, they WILL click on your links.

But if your goal is to get them to buy something, or to come back, you should STRONGLY consider going with Original content strategy, and changing it often (about once a week).

In our world of skepticism, if you want to sell something, you need to win your visitor over with the experience you provide for them.

And THAT means giving them good, ORIGINAL, useful content that will make them come back over and over again, to see what’s new and interesting on your site!

So … IS the Duplicate Content Scare for REAL?

YES & NO :O)

Till next week,

Here’s to your Success,
Len
========================================

THE ANDROGYNOUS STONE: CHAPTER FOUR

========================================

Is it time at last for Sam to get some answers about this mysterious place and what it all has to do with her? Go here to read the fourth chapter of The Androgynous Stone, a novel written by Len Thurmond.

The Androgynous Stone
========================================

A FINAL WORD

========================================

A Few Last Notes…

The Affiliate Review presents opinions of many of the thousands of online programs available on the net today. We emphasize the word opinion for obvious legal reasons. And that is just what the content of The Affiliate Review is…Our Opinion. Nothing More…Nothing Less !

If you have comments or suggestions, Please feel free to post them here on our blog

Here’s To Your Success,

Len Thurmond, Founder of The Affiliate Review
Len@TheAffiliateReview.com

and

Sandy Swain, Editor of The Affiliate Review
Sandy@TheAffiliateReview.com

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!