Some SEO Insight Needed

[bjbtexas]

I was browsing my stats today when I ran across the term “camp warneke new braunfels texas” The term had been used to access to my site 5 times, so being curious I went to Google and pasted the term in the search box and brought it up. My site advenquest.com was no where to be found in the 107 possible results. No big deal, on to Yahoo where I found my site listed # 1. Interesting, but again no big deal - It’s not like I’m getting rich on that term. But, still curious, I went back to Google. And what I had originally seen on Goole caught my eye - the #1 listing for the term “camp warneke new braunfels texas” on Google is the story I wrote for my site then put on Ezinarticles.com.

How it is my story about an old swimming hole in Texas gets top billing on Ezinarticles.com, but is nowhere to be found on Google for my own website.

Is this proof of duplicate content penalty?

A site which has absolutely nothing to do with the subject in the article has the only listing for my original content on this keyword in Google.

The link from Ezinarticles is worthless and the article is published in several other equally worthless venues.

Is there any value in publishing your original content to other sites? And does the time tested idea of publishing your articles for exposure hold up?

[incrediblehelp]

Their is no duplicate content penalty rather their is a duplicate filter. Is it possible when you wrote your article that you submitted it to various article directories about the same time as adding it to your website? If yes Google could have easily spidered it on the ezinearticles.com website first and attributed this website as the originator of the post.

It is always a good idea to publish article on your website for a week or so first and then syndicate them.

Also when syndicating an article I hope you understand "worthless" websites will always copy your article word for word and place it on another website. Check this link to see sampling of the crap that has scrapped this article.

[bjbtexas]

This article was published previously on my site long before it was syndicated.

My reference to worthless is the links not the websites. However, even your expanded search the sites using my synidicated content are listed while my site is not.

How did I get penalized or filtered out and they didn't?

[SEOforGoogle]

bjbtexas - I have seen the same thing happen to my articles as well - In some cases, the entire article was ripped off, and someone else claimed that they wrote it.

To me, it's part of doing business on the Internet - and while it's disappointing to see the work that you put into not even recognized by the engines, hopefully, your product/service/name is getting exposure on the web.

[bjbtexas]

The internet, you love to hate it. I was checking my logs one day and ran across a guy who had copied my style sheets, logos and pictures, but no content.

Everyone copies, but my question you touched on -- "hopefully, your product/service/name is getting exposure on the web"

Is the content syndication, RSS feeds and such worth the exposure if ultimately you don't get credit for the content and its keywords?

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by bjbtexas

This article was published previously on my site long before it was syndicated.

Looks like "they" are scrapping your website then.

[bjbtexas]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

Looks like "they" are scrapping your website then.

Other sites may be scrapping, but ezinearticles.com just published what I gave them and they are number one for that keyword phase.

Should webmasters who publish original content continue to provide syndicated content if they don't end up getting any keyword credit?

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by bjbtexas

Should webmasters who publish original content continue to provide syndicated content if they don't end up getting any keyword credit?

Hey I totally agree with you! Obviously you know now that is not the way it is working lately on the SE's. You really wind up with two situations with articles lately:

Your writing them to actually write them. You do it to provide a service or resource to the visitors to your website. If that is the case syndication of them is unnecessary and more than likely they will rank down the line on their own. Possibly issues that could hurt them ranking on their own down the road are aggressive scrappers on your website. Usually these scrappers wont rank over your great website because the SE's should be smarter than that. Of course with the recent issues at Google we find this not to be the case lately for some.

The second reason people write articles is for SEO reasons. They find themselves writing and then syndicating because someone told them it would lead to backlinks or better rankings for your website down the line. Well the reason this doesn't always work is because the websites that get a hold of you article could care less about you or the copyright violations they are breaking. You wind up writing a great article and then not having it help you with back links or even ranking at all on its own.

works. If you value ranking for your articel then distributing it may not be the thing to do.

[nswaby]

One of the things I've noticed in publishing articles for SEO effect is each website that publishes your article tends to have different title and metatags, so the same article may end up getting ranked on a number of different sites. If a duplicate penalty applied, it would delete the other sites as well.

Probably the biggest reason Ezine articles ranks well is due to page rank and constantly changing content.

The biggest thing I've learned about posting articles is to make sure and use anchor text within the article as well as your resource box. I don't even submit to sites that don't allow anchor text within the article body anymore. Then, when other sites use your article, you'll get the inbound link, even if your specific article page doesn't get ranked.

Hope that helps.

[bjbtexas]

Originally Posted by nswaby

I don't even submit to sites that don't allow anchor text within the article body anymore.

What sites allow anchor text?

[ditto]

You may find this list of 60+ article directories useful -
http://www.how-to-make-money-online....-Directory.php

It's a little out of date in that the PR rankings are wrong but it's still very useful.

As for how to market with articles. You should publish your articles exclusively on your site first for a week or so depending on your spider frequency and then begin submitting them to article directories.

In doing this the SE's have your site down as the original 'authority' site. ;)

hth,

[bjbtexas]

What you are saying is what happened and in that order. My article had been published on my site exclusively for over a year and was listed in Google. Now with all the Google shake-ups the scrappers sites and legit free content publishers the waters have been muddied. The #1 site for the keywords in my article on Google is the ezinearticles site where I later syndicated it - my site -- not listed. In fact, while the article page( http://www.advenquest.com/modules/AM...php?storyid=81 ) is listed in Google –in searching keywords from the article my site are nowhere to be found.

My point – I have been penalized out of existence on Google for this story. My feeling is why do I want to syndicate articles if some where down the line I get no keyword credit in terms of Google. Remember, Yahoo has it right, but Google has erased my site for this particular keyword phrase -- even though you find my story in tons of other sites for this phrase in Google.


Chris is his newsletter comments hit the nail on the head:

Keeping Track of Your Content
What recourse do webmasters have when content they've produced is receiving high search engine rankings, but appearing on another site, a site they did not develop? What actions can you take to correct this situation? Taking a look at the dilemma being described below, you see it the poster is facing a similar scenario. How should he address this? In the situation being described, it's not as if his content was stolen; quite the contrary, in fact. The problem is, he submitted an article to an ezine depository and this is the version that's being ranked, not the original article located on his site.

Should the poster be worried about duplicate content penalties or can he reclaim this link with a little communication with Google? Let us know what you think at WebProWorld.

Note:
Currently, there is a "scrapper" looking site with words form my article list listed first.