Saturday, December 20, 2008

Determining Duplicate Content; When Can You Repost Your Articles?

When it comes to search engine optimization, there is much debate over the effects of duplicate content. Writers and webpage designers are in a quandary over the rules determining duplicate content and how it can affect SEO, filters, content views, and the earnings involved for both writer and website owner.

I write articles for many different sites, including my own websites, blogs, and other sites like eHow , Bukisa , Helium, and Squidoo . To determine how I felt about this issue of duplicating content across sites, I decided to do some of my own research.

One side of the debate holds the argument that it is never appropriate to duplicate an article on more than one website. The claim is that Google and other search engines filter out duplicate content based on certain criteria. Therefore, duplicating content would put you, and the sites that you write for, at major risk of 'losing' some pages as many will be filtered out and not displayed in search engine results.

The opposing viewpoint states that duplicate articles, as long as they are legitimate, are not at risk of filtering, especially when titled differently and displayed on completely different websites. Because of this, one may freely post a duplicate article anywhere possible without worry.

When determining the secret rules behind SEO, no one can really be 100% positive. I discovered an invaluable article called Duplicate Content Filter: What it is and how it works and a Similar Page Checker tool that helped me to determine whether duplicating my articles across more than one website is beneficial to myself, as well as the hosting website, or whether to steer clear of it and take the time to rewrite articles each time I post.

The Similar Page Checker helps to determine the percentage of similarity between two pages. I checked a few of mine between sites, and based on my gut reaction at the similarity percentage, I decided whether or not to make changes to the content. This is a great tool to use on an ongoing basis to decide for yourself how to post your articles.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Make Money Blogging for Smorty

IMPORTANT UPDATE!!!! 12/31/2008
******Unbeknownst to me, involving your blog with Smorty or any other Paid to Post or Sponsored Reviews website really upsets Google. I have just proven this with my own experience as Google PageRank was updated and the only one of my sites that is back to N/A is the blog I use for Smorty. I'm officially cancelling my account and removing all links to any Pay Per Post, 'make money with your blog' sites until further notice...(which may be never!)



Smorty is a website that offers paid writing jobs for your blog. Based upon some criteria involving page ranks and blog popularity, you will be offered paid assignments and you can start making money for your blog. Your job is to simply write your opinions about people’s products and services, and publish these opinions to your blog. You will be paid shortly after your blog entry has been approved.

Sign up for Smorty. To get blog approval, here are part of Smorty’s guidelines: "Blogs that are not indexed, have little or no content, are banned from search engines or contain hate related and crude content may be rejected or put on Probation until corrected. Your blog must be older than 30 days and have at least 10 posts to apply." Other than that, the only rules are the obvious ones.

One thing that I really like about Smorty is their post exchange program. They pair you with other similarly ranked blogs, and you write a review for that blog. In turn, another blogger will write a review for your blog. Instead of a 'link exchange' this process is creating an inbound-only link from another blog, therefore increasing your Google PageRank. When Google PageRank increases, not only does your blog popularity increase, but your opportunities for making blogging money will increase as you are offered more paid reviews. I find this little program to be quite awesome!

Smorty is currently offering a beta version of their Digxa Widgets. I haven't yet tried this feature, but I have read that it connects to products by Amazon. If you aren't yet an Amazon affiliate, and don't have plans to become one, this is a super easy way to begin earning commission from product sales. Yet another great way to make money for blogging with Smorty.

Lastly, Smorty offers a friend referral program. You will earn 5% commission on all payments made to any referred bloggers who sign up under your referral link. If you have a blog, it is my opinion that you can’t lose with Smorty.