article submission and duplicate content

[Homer4Bama]

I have been rather blasé regarding this issue. (Especially since reading multiple different takes on whether or not a duplicate content penalty could be assessed on your own articles.)

Something irked me, so I did a test.

I created an article and posted it on my website. After my site was crawled, I was on page 1 for the topic. (not a very competitive term, but I did get a lead off the page )

I then posted the entire article to an external blog. No changes in content what-so-ever. The external page was indexed and bumped my site out, taking over my page 1 ranking.

Lastly, I submitted the same content to ezine. Ezine bumped out the blog , but left my site still out in the cold.

This has forced me to come up with a new plan for my article submission and blogging strategy....

So here's what I am thinking.....

Create my nice little area / city / neighborhood specific articles for my site alone.

Then....

Create and submit a "generic" or non-area specific version that will compliment the article on my site, but not jeopardize my local content. Although not specific to my area, the article still needs to hold merit, and not be just using a thesaurus to get a 1/3 change and taking out the city references.

What I am hoping for is that I get the best of both worlds. My site does well locally, while my articles get indexed in generic or more general queries....

Thoughts?

[kensmith]

Ed I think that if you are bast keeping local content for your own site. This will make sure you aren't creating your own competition for search terms you care about.

[Homer4Bama]

Thanks Ken!

[lasvegasrealestate]

I think Ken is write. What you could do instead is just put a post on your blog with a small blurb about the article with a link to the rest of it. It may help drive additional traffic to that page and maybe help give you a link or two as well.

[naplesrealestate]

This thread is interesting, because I have completed an article which might create a "buzz." I would like to post it on my blog and then distribute it, with the idea that it can be found, read and then get some links back to the article on my blog.

Does anyone have any good ideas on how I can accomplish this successfully?

[kensmith]

Glenn based on the topic I will post it on my blog for you, or at least write a summary and link back to the main article.

Personally I would never put high quality content on a FFA article type site. Why give away your best stuff?

[Homer4Bama]

Funny thing happened to me last night....

The general article I submitted actually brought in a prospect.

They simply read the article and clicked on the link to learn more specific information for my market, and just like that they picked up the phone and gave me a call.

So needless to say, right now I am a HUGE fan of non-area specific, general term articles which are used to bring vistors to my local site with it's area specific information.

But, I would say that the statement below is a fine line to walk...

Originally Posted by kensmith Personally I would never put high quality content on a FFA article type site. Why give away your best stuff?

1. You don't want to compete with yourself. (Nothing worse than seeing your article on another website out rank you on Google!)

2. Creating two original articles on the same topic with different focus also takes twice as long (at least for me it does...).

It leaves me wondering though...

Is the ROI by being considered knowledgeable in the field worth the effort?

If the article I distributed was bland or uninteresting, would I have received a phone call?

I would like to think that the better your content is across the board, the better off you will be long term...

[naplesrealestate]

Originally Posted by kensmith Glenn based on the topic I will post it on my blog for you, or at least write a summary and link back to the main article. Personally I would never put high quality content on a FFA article type site. Why give away your best stuff?

Ken - sent you an e-mail with a summary. Let me know what you think about the article.

Thank you.

[saboy1]

Outstanding research and testing, just what a good marketer should do. I firmly believe in creating subdivision specific content as well. On one of my sites I added a forum, wrote an article and published it at a popular ezine site with a link to the forum. I am getting an enormous amount of traffic, with up to 50 new sign ups to the forum a day, and about 100 posts.

99.99% of these users and their posts are spam. After fighting a couple weeks cleaning porn ads off my forum every day, I finally gave up and blocked it from posting. Still getting about 50 new user sign ups a day. I guess the point here is that the article got me a ton of traffic, just not the kind I wanted.

John Visser
RE/MAX Communities

[lasvegasrealestate]

Probably better to just put a teaser lead in on article sites to direct traffic back to your main site for the "real" article. Not all sites allow you to do that, some even strip out your html links or put in non-spiderable one instead (which begs a questions why give them anything for nothing in return?). There are some social networking sites that you utilize instead. They give you complete control over what you post and allow you to set it up however you like. For those sites you can put up teaser or bait if you will to draw visitors back to the original source.