This a guest post from Duncan, an internet marketer who blogs about everything from on-site optimization to finding the best links on the net.
Duplicate content is a hot topic at the moment, with much speculation about if it can harm your site, or if you can actually benefit from scraping content from other sites and placing it on your own. Most webmasters, bloggers and SEO experts agree that accidental internal dupe content, caused by pagination, categorization etc, won’t harm your site power (apart from reducing internal linking power on the dupe pages), unless it is interpreted to be manipulative duplication, which can lead to penalties.
Aside from legal ramifications, there seems to be little negative effect from content theft – taking content from other people’s sites and publishing it on your own. Indeed, many people have RSS or other feeds from external sites populating their pages, and do not report any ranking problems for the pages of their site that do have unique copy.
One thing that many people are not clear on though is how Google determines which is the original source of the copy, and which are the duplicate versions. Here are some of things it looks at when determining original from duplicate content.
Comment spam. Everyone has encountered it. Even the typical blog reader who just stumbled upon an article for something they searched in Google has probably seen their fair share of comments from people by the name of Loan Modification that think that article is a “great post” and would also like to drop in the fact that they offer incredible deals. Here are some different viewpoints of valuable comments and comment spam from blog owners to link builders.
Blog Owner’s Perspective
As a blog owner, I engage in a daily battle with comment spam. Every day, there are several posts with moderated comments, waiting to be cleared, from people who have not even seemingly read the post, but comment anyway in hopes of dropping a link for link building or traffic generating purposes.
Do I ask for comment spam? Some people would think so, considering I made my blog dofollow with the added benefit of KeywordLuv. But I kind of consider those things rewards for good, valuable comments. If you can prove in your comment that you actually read the post and had some insight into it, then you deserve a link back to your site. If you can’t, then I will probably not approve your comment.
Sometime in December of 2009 as everybody started to take a look back at the last year of blogging, I decided to do the same. I was still unemployed after finishing my MBA and realized that I hadn’t used one of the major skills I acquired during my MBA, putting together a marketing plan.
As I read numerous posts about how people monetize blogs and the ongoing theme that “blogs don’t make money businesses do,” I realized businesses have marketing plans, so it seemed to make sense that my blog should have a quarterly marketing plan. In putting together that plan, I came up with several reasons why a blog needs a marketing plan. Let’s look at how a marketing plan can help take your blog up to the next level.
It all began while compiling a list of high PageRank dofollow blogs in and not yet a part of the dofollow blog directory. I know, there are a ton of lists out there of high PR dofollow blogs, but I find that most do not include pertinent information, like live links to the blogs, if they require registration, do they allow keywords, etc. Plus a lot of the lists out there are older, so many of the sites are no longer dofollow. Some sites on these lists are dofollow, but don’t actually link to commenters’ websites but some profile page. And some sites have not updated in a long time, plus they close comments for articles after a certain time period, so there is no where to comment. But back to the point…
Do you know what the most difficult information to find was on many of blogs? A quick blurb on what the blog was actually about.
This is a guest post by Leo Dimilo who has been an online marketer for over a decade and has quietly been earning a living online.
I am a marketer that also happens to blog. I guess you could call me a “cross-over” hybrid because I want you to know that there is a huge difference between being a blogger and being an internet marketer.
Bloggers blog, Internet Marketers make money online. We use the same tools, for the most part, but the big difference is that online marketers make money more easily with less traffic and less work.
In this article, I am going to show you some tips on how to implement common marketing strategies for those of you who aspire to blog for a living. But first, let’s look at the differences between online marketers and bloggers.
Since I got my new HTC Droid Eris, I have been comparing two different plugins to make my WordPress sites more mobile friendly – WordPress Mobile Pack and WPtouch iPhone Theme. Both get the job done effectively – it is just a matter of whether you are looking for something simple or something with a lot of features.
WordPress Mobile Pack – Simplicity
WordPress Plugin Site ~ Plugin Homepage
WordPress Mobile Pack was the first plugin I discovered while surfing another WordPress blog on my Droid. It basically allows you to setup your blog in a mobile format with four basic theme colors (black, red, blue, and green). Here is what my Dofollow resource site looks like on the Droid using WordPress Mobile Pack.
Homepage using WordPress Mobile Pack
Who doesn’t like getting some extra traffic and more page views? We all love it, don’t we? Here are 11 WordPress plugins which should help you in various ways, from “tracking activities of your visitors” to “greeting them personally” so that you can achieve your goal of getting more traffic.
YARPP
This posts plugin will help you to increase page views of your website. Once installed, it will show links to other posts related to a current post at end that could be useful for your visitors by introducing them to other relevant content on your website.
WP-Email
This plugin will add a small “Email this Page” link at the end of your posts which your visitors can click and then send link of your posts to anybody.
Search Meter
This plugin is very helpful if you already have a search box on your blog. When activated, this plugin would start recording all terms your visitors are searching for, and the results they are receiving. It will reveal popular searches on your blog and unsuccessful searches with no results so you know what your visitors are looking for. With the help of this plugin, you can also show your readers the most recent and popular searches.
This is a guest post from Henri Junttila, a freelance blogger. He runs the Wake Up Cloud, a blog about self improvement and achieve what you truly want in life. Subscribe to his feed for more awesome articles.
Maybe you’ve seen me around. Maybe you haven’t. In any case, I have been blogging for just around one month. During this time I’ve connected with many and enjoyed the journey.
A lot of people think there’s a secret to growing your blog fast. There are a lot of factors that come into play if you want to get more traffic, subscribers and even fans. Let’s have a peek at those, shall we?
Mentor
The first thing I always do when I want to learn something new is to find someone who’s already doing what I want to do. My mentor at the moment is Chris Garrett who has been immensely helpful in answering my questions.
It’s that time of year… when most people are in the midst of goal setting for the new year to make sure that it is better than the last. Here are some of my goals in blogging and social media for 2010. Although I’m off to a slow start, I feel I have plenty of time to make these goals happen!
Blogging Goals
This year, two of the most important things I want to focus on in the blogging arena is content and community. Therefore, my goals in blogging are as follows.
- Create a schedule using Google Calendar for weekly posting on all blogs, including:
How Blog Commenting Has Made a Difference
by Kristi on January 13, 2010 · 59 comments
For the last several months in 2009, however, I have had a heavy workload, including more responsibility at my main job, managing multiple blogs, and doing various freelance projects. I had to make a choice between continuing to comment on a lot of sites, or spend that time focusing on the content I put on my site. I chose the latter, and hoped to give back to the bloggers who have been very supportive of me with lots of social media shares on Stumble & Twitter, plus link love and resources in my Fetching Friday posts.
In mid-December, I was able to make time for blog commenting again. I forgot just how much I enjoyed visiting my reader’s blogs and responding to their posts, as opposed to just reading through and sharing socially. Commenting again has been a thoroughly enjoyable experience, and has proven very beneficial in the several ways.
Increase of Blog Mentions
Blog commenting is a well known way of link building. But more important than the links you drop in the comments is the links you get from other bloggers in their posts. I have noticed a definite increase in the number of times Kikolani has been mentioned on other sites, and it is greatly appreciated!
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