Duplicate Content: What You Ought to Know About

Originally published at “Duplicate Content: What You Ought to Know About”.

Take a look at your website. How much of your content might be considered as duplicate by a search engine algorithm? Even though you never copy anyone you can’t answer ‘none’ because someone can be copying you. Duplicate content is one of the biggest issues both for search engines trying to keep their results’ relevancy high, and webmasters trying to avoid search engine penalties.

Penalties for having duplicate content can be really harmful. This is not just a downgrade in rankings but a move to supplementary results which are hardly visible to the most of the web users. Normally it is expected that Google would select one URL over another to display in SERPs, while duplicates could be found in supplemental results. Unfortunately this is not always so. In the thread “Duplicate content observation” in the WebmasterWorld.com forum you can read about a case when an original high quality and authoritative page was removed from Google’s index together with its duplicates. Considering that this can happen even to the most honest webmaster, one can imagine the amount of attention this issue gets on any SEO forum.

Types of Duplicate Content

Duplicate content has a wider definition than the ‘copy-paste’ plagiarism; it is not just content scrapped from a competitor’s site, a SERP or a RSS feed. Apart from this there are few more aspects that are generally referred to as duplicate content.

Circular Navigation

Jake Baille from TrueLocal vaguely defines circular navigation as having multiple paths across website. This can be understood as the same content being accessible via different URLs. An example of the circular navigation could be an article that is retrieved by links like
- www.example.com/articles/1/ ,
- www.mysite.com/article1/
- www.mysite.com/articles.php?id=1

Another legitimate use of multiple URLs is forum threads. Each thread can be accessible by a link like www.myforum.com/index.php/topic.1201.html , and each message within the tread has a URL like www.myforum.com/index.php/topic.1201.msg.01.html . In the eyes of a search engine all the links lead to different pages with identical content. Solution? Think of a consistent way of linking, or apply robot.txt exclusion rules.

This can also be the case when other people link to you using differently looking URLs. Since these external links are out of your control, you should create a 301 redirect to the canonical URL you choose to be displayed.

Printer-Friendly Versions

Making a printer friendly version is a common practice and it adds value to the visitors. But printer-friendly version is also a prominent example of duplicate content! Fortunately a simple solution like adding a ‘noindex’ meta tag to your print pages solves the issue.

Product-Only Pages

Product pages looking similar are common among online stores. Typically they are created using a single template. Often two different product pages share a description that varies in just few words or numbers, which causes them to be filtered out as duplicate content. This issue has no easy solution. Either you rewrite robot.txt to allow only one product description to be crawled and lose SE traffic to the rest of them, or you roll up your sleeves and add something different to each product page, like testimonials, which is time consuming or nearly impossible depending on the number of product types in your stock.

How Do Duplicate Content Filters Work?

There are several algorithms in data mining aiming to detect similar text passages. The one claimed to be used by search engines is w-shingling. Each document has a unique fingerprint or shinglings – the contiguous subsequences of tokens (blocks of text). The ratio of magnitude of union and intersection of two documents’ shinglings can be used to determine their resemblance. Another algorithm that can be used for duplicates detection is Levenshtein’s distance

It is naturally to expect from a duplicate content filter to be able to discover the origin and rank it higher. The simplest way to detect the origin would be comparing the date of indexing implying that the original source is uploaded and crawled earlier than its copies. But with the advent of the RSS feeds the new content can be distributed instantaneously and this approach is no longer valid.

Concerning the origin’s right to be ranked higher – this is not always implemented. In this article you can read about an experiment of an article distribution. An article was syndicated twice scoring as many as 19000 copies. After some time Google, Yahoo and MSN have purged their indices leaving just few of the duplicates. MSN’s filter managed not only to discover the origin but also put it to the top of the search results. Yahoo has also discovered the origin, but in the results page to the title of the article, the origin’s position fluctuated obviously responding to the way Yahoo counts relevancy and authority.

To the tester’s amusement Google’s refined index did not include the original at all! Evidently Google featured only those pages with copies of the same article which it considered relevant and authoritative with no regard to the original source of the content! I’ve already mentioned a thread where a similar problem is discussed. The both stories took place in 2005 and early 2006 and so far I found no evidence that this issue is resolved.

For more information on search engine optimization and marketing check out our SEO Training Materials website.

About the AuthorOleg Ishenko, an Internet marketing professional gives useful advice on search engine optimization at his website SEO Training Materials

Still Looking for Prince Charming? Keep Looking!

Summary: Between Disney and Hollywood, it is difficult, if not seemingly impossible, to find a man with whom we can share a meaningful, committed, healthy, and mutual-beneficial relationship with…on a long-term basis. Does “happily ever after” really exist?

Shall I begin with a confession? I am a 27-year-old single-never-been-married-woman. And as I sit here at work typing this article, I am left to examine my life and its direction. I have graduated college. I have started up my own business, and I’m now helping my best friend start one of her own. I have “real job” – full-time with complete benefits. On the surface, it would seem that I have everything going for me. Alas, when I think of what I have not yet accomplished, particularly in the relationship department I am forced to take inventory of my life, and my self, in attempts to answer this one burning question that my friends ask me on a daily basis – Why hasn’t some wonderful Prince Charming come in and sweep you away yet? You’re such an amazing person? Why aren’t you married yet? Don’t you want to get married, Danielle? (Gee, if I knew the answer to that question I wouldn’t have nightmares of becoming an old maid whose only companion is an army of cats, and is thus forced to trade in her sanity for mastering a similitude of intellectual conversation in the form of various meows and purrs!) The truth is that I do want to get married. I think I would be good at an eternal companionship with a man with who similarly-held values of religion and education, mutual respect, and healthy intimacy can blossom and flourish. That being said, however, I don’t have a fairy godmother that will, at the arbitrary wave of her magic wand, squelch my single-hood with the appearance of a perfect man. If it were as simple as singing or losing my shoe to net Prince Charming then, by all means, I would not hesitate. Ah, but therein lies my dilemma. Between Disney and Hollywood, it is difficult, if not seemingly impossible, to find a man with whom I (or any woman) can share a meaningful, committed and long-term relationship. Hence, I pose the put the following question out into the cosmos – Does happily ever after even exist? Or is that a fallacy fancily formed by the executives at Disney?

Fortunately, I am optimist. Okay, the truth is that my best friend is the perpetual optimist, whereas I am a pseudo optimist that is often plagued by episodic skepticism. While I do believe that there are marriages that, despite the tests of time, can flourish in happiness and bring forth immeasurable amount of joy. Now, this is not to ignore the fact that marriage, as with any meaningful relationship, requires a constant effort on the part of both husband and wife. To anyone who squirms or shutters at such a thought, may I kindly suggest that any worthwhile endeavor requires an earnest, honest, and diligent investment of time, energy and effort? In other words, love is work. And I am willing to work for love. Problematic, however, is that my perception of the so-called “right one” is, more or less, distorted. Growing up, I, like many girls, fantasized about Prince Charming. Now, as an adult, I realize that if I insist on searching for Prince Charming, I can resolve to continue searching and thus die alone. The bottom-line there is no such thing as a Prince Charming. Men are human beings. And thank goodness for that! Personally, I am on a constant-every-second-of-the-day journey toward improving myself; working tenaciously to transform my weaknesses into strengths, and, in turn, become the best version of myself so that I may bless my friends, my community, and my fellowmen. (Pun intended). In all honesty, aren’t we all struggling to grow and improve? Aren’t we all striving for eternal bliss and peace? So, if we are all rowing feverishly along the same tumultuous tides of life, let us row together by realizing there is no such thing as Prince Charming (or Princess Charming); no perfect people, rather imperfect people working toward becoming the best version of ourselves. We are all in the same boat. And, frankly, I much prefer to row as a team, than alone. That established, are there any decent, honest, hard-working, intelligent, compassionate men out there looking for an equally contributing and compatible partner who is in it for the long haul? How does a single woman, who has been brainwashed by unrealistic ideals of what constitutes “true love”, find real love.

So as to not put the cart before the horse, if you will, real love begins with healthy relationships and healthy relationships begin with mature dating. Mature dating assumes that two individuals with a healthy self actualization are drawn together yes, perhaps, by an initial physical attraction or chemistry, but moreover by an interest in learning more about the other person and their life–”what makes them tick”. Above all, mature dating is, first and foremost, based on respect that leads to a genuine friendship. Friendship is an essential ingredient for a healthy relationship, for through friendship sincere care, concern, compassion develops which, in turn, breeds the seeds of real love–not infatuation or merely the “love of the idea of someone”, but real love, which includes recognizing another’s limitations and idiosyncrasies but maximizing and celebrating each others strengths and gifts. When I consider the unconditional love my buddy and I have for each other; that our friendship is truly based a genuine care, concern, and love for the other person and how that friendship has endured despite our differences and despite trials that we have faced individually and collectively–I see that a similar such commitment (though in a different form and context) ought to be present in any man from whom I would accept a marriage proposal, much less consider engaging in a serious relationship with. I often joke to myself, “If only I could find the male version of my best friend!”

Now that we have established its crucial function and purpose, especially with regard to finding real love, let us examine the following components of healthy relationships. Simply put, a healthy relationship includes open, honest two-way communication, mutual respect, and trust. It cannot be over-stated; trust is an absolutely essential, vital part of any healthy relationship. If you cannot trust another person, how can they ever be expected to trust you? After all, you have yet to invest yourself, completely and honestly, into the relationship. Similarly, you must trust yourself and your own capacity to be a positively contributing member of the relationship in order to fully invest that trust in the other person. Love without trust is not love. It is, rather, an acute form of infatuation parading itself, falsely, as love. You cannot love someone completely, without investing yourself into the relationship completely, and trust.

The experts at the Center for Young Women’s Health in Boston put it this way:

“Healthy relationships are about feeling good about who you are and feeling SAFE with another person,” says Phaebra Thomas. Thomas, a registered nurse and counselor, continues “By getting to know yourself and who you are, it will get easier to recognize the differences between healthy and unhealthy relationships. Communication, trust and respect are the key ingredients for healthy relationships.” With that, she, along with colleague Moira Traci, has compiled a checklist for identifying healthy relationships, particularly with regards to mature dating. Following my rendition of that checklist:

<u>How to determine whether or not you are in a Healthy Relationship?</u>

• You are comfortable with who you are, and feel safe with the other person. This includes trusting each other to keep confidences, to communicate openly and freely, and a willingness to work out problems and/or discuss concerns together.

• An equal amount of give and take is present in the relationship. In unhealthy relationships, there is an unfair balance. If there is a feeling that you are giving a considerably disproportionate amount of attention, time, and service; that you giving the other person more attention than they give to you, this good be an indicator of an unresolved, underlying problem. In a healthy relationship, both parties enjoy spend time with the other person. Furthermore, in a healthy relationship, there is a respect for one another’s space, interests, commitments, and traditions.

• There is a genuine respect, care, and concern for each other–a desire to serve. This includes a willingness to listen, to take a sincere interest in the other person’s life, a willingness to support each other in times of crisis, and a commitment to uplifting and celebrating each others victories. Remember, just as jealousy is not an admirable quality, jealously and possessiveness does not belong in a healthy relationship. A healthy relationship is comprised to two independent individuals who choose to share their life inter-dependently.

In sum, as we all strive to form and maintain meaningful relationships with each other; to meet and marry someone we love, respect, admire, and trust, and thus share a life of love and happiness with, it is important to keep in mind that we must first work on ourselves–work on our perception of love and being willing to work for it and at it. So, to that, I say so long Prince Charming. And hello to my future husband! (Wherever he is, he better be working just as hard as I am at locating his whereabouts!)

About the AuthorAuthor Bio: Danielle White is a client account specialist for 10xMarketing, which represents Heavenly Matched, a premiere provider of quality dating and relationship services. Heavenly Matched provides information and tools on mature dating, how to find <a href=”http://www.heavenlymatched.com/serious_relationships/love_and_happ

Create Your Own Google Toolbar Buttons

These quick and easy instructions will show you how to create your own custom buttons for the Google Toolbar. If you have a web site or a Blog and you want to share your custom icon or search function for the Google Toolbar button to the world, this tutorial includes step-by-step instructions for you. By creating a custom icon or search function, you make it convenient for others to return to your site or search it. Take command of the toolbar and add a personal touch with icons and useful functions.

The following tutorial provides simple and easy to follow instructions for novice web developers and Blog enthusiasts who would like to create a personalized button and share it with the world. The process can take a little time if you want to create unique and nice looking icons that have a personal touch. When you are done, you will have a custom button that anyone can add to the Google Toolbar.

I. EXAMPLE

1. Install the Google Toolbar (http://toolbar.google.com/T4/index_xp.html) upgrade if you do not have it already

2. Go to http://www.ExecutiveBlueprints.com to see a sample of how this tool can work for you.

Look for the link: “Add this button to your Google Toolbar for Quick Reference”

The is an example of the how the link and icon may function from your web site or Blog. You can use your own font style and web site placement, or include the link in the signature block of your email messages. This will make it very easy for people utilize your custom button on their own Google Toolbar.

II. COPY CODE TO CREATE YOUR BUTTON

1. Go to http://www.ExecutiveBlueprints.com/slashdot_button.xml Copy and Paste the code as an XML file to your own computer. Name the file “slashdot_buttom.xml”.

TIP: Be sure SAVE AS an XML file, not as an HTML page.

2. Modify the URL, Name and Description in the code to reflect your own web page or Blog, Name and Description. The Name and Description must be less than 30 characters. For Example, if your web site is http://www.FirstOCHomes.com, then you might use the following URL, Name and Description as follows:

<site>http://www.firstochomes.com/<;/site> <title>FirstOCHomes</title> <description>FirstOCHomes: Real Estate</description>

So far you have only copied basic code into an XML file and personalized three lines of text. This is pretty easy so far!

3. Post your XML File to your domain server on the Internet. The file should be in your root (main) directory.

4. Create a link from your Home Page to your personal slashdot_buttom.xml file. (For example: Link text: “Add this button to your Google Toolbar for Quick Reference”, Link like this: http://toolbar.google.com/buttons/add?url=http://www.firstochomes.com/slashdot_button.xml)

TIP: Be sure to use the full path of the link, including the “http://toolbar.google.com/buttons/add?url=” and the precise URL for your custom slashdot_button.xml file.

Now you should have a functioning link that will offer visitors the option to create an icon on the Google Toolbar that links directly to your web page or Blog. This custom button is a simple and convenient shortcut.

III. CREATE YOUR PERSONAL ICON

The following steps will help you to create a personalized icon for your custom button. You will need an image editing application. If you do not have any custom software, you can use Microsoft Paint program that is typically included as a free accessory with Microsoft Windows. (Programs > Accessories > Paint).

The following instructions are useful tips for using the Microsoft Paint Program to create your personalized icon: The Icon size must be 16×16. 16 pixels high by 16 pixels wide is a small and simple logo, don’t plan on using words or phrases.

- View > Zoom > Large Size: Get a better view.

- View > Zoom > Show Grid: Start at the top left corner and count 16 pixels to the right and 16 pixels down, this is your working area.

- SAVE AS: “myicon.gif” Save your icon as a GIF file, so it will have a clear background.

- POST your “myicon.gif” file to your web site or use it on your blog. This will help people to recognize the icon as your custom button!

IV. TURN YOUR ICON INTO A GOOGLE TOOLBAR BUTTON

1. Go to: http://www.motobit.com/util/base64-decoder-encoder.asp

2. Scroll down the page and look for the option to “or select a file to convert to a base64 string”

3. Click BROWSE and search for the “myicon.gif” personal icon that you created and saved on your computer.

4. When you have clicked on your icon, then click the button to “CONVERT the source Data”. Your icon image will be converted into Base 64 Code.

5. Copy ALL of the Base 64 code text that appears in the top box on the web site and PASTE this code into the slashdot_button.xml file that you created. This Base 64 Code for your icon should be pasted between the existing <icon> and </icon> on your XML page (see the above sample XML page as reference). Be sure to replace all of the previous code, and be sure to use all of the Base 64 Code from the top white box on the Base 64 web site (you may have to scroll to see all of the code).

6. SAVE your updated slashdot_button.xml file to your web site. Now you should have a shortcut for the Google Toolbar and a Custom Button icon that you created yourself! You can create links on your web site or Blog, include the shortcut in emails, and submit it to the Google API gallery at http://www.google.com/support/toolbar/bin/request.py?contact_type=button

V. MORE INFORMATION

For information on how to create more sophisticated search tool and RSS feed functions, go to http://www.google.com/tools/toolbar/buttons/apis/howto_guide.html Email the URL for your XML file to submit your custom button to the gallery at www.BizRolodex.com

______________________________________________________

Words of Wisdom

“The Internet is like alcohol in some sense. It accentuates what you would do anyway. If you want to be a loner, you can be more alone. If you want to connect, it makes it easier to connect.” – Esther Dyson

“You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.” – Steve Jobs

“We’ve heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true.” – Robert Wilensky ______________________________________________________

You may distribute this article freely, print it, sell it, or include it as part of a package as long as it is intact, unchanged and delivered in the original format with acknowledgement to Executive Blueprints Inc.

About the Author: John Mehrmann is a freelance writer and President of Executive Blueprints Inc., an organization devoted to improving business practices and developing human capital. www.ExecutiveBlueprints.com provides resource materials for trainers, sample Case Studies, educational articles and references to local affiliates for consulting and executive coaching. http://www.InstituteforAdvancedLeadership.com provides self-paced tutorials for personal development and tools for trainers. Presentation materials, reference guides and exercises are available for continuous development.

About the Author

John Mehrmann is a freelance author, industry expert and President of Executive Blueprints Inc, an organization dedicated to developing human capital and personal growth.

Surviving Your First Tradeshow

I have a little greeting card company called Early Bird Publishing and paid to have a booth at the National Stationary Show this week at the Jacob Javits Center in New York. For me the purpose of the show is to generate sales, network and search for potential business opportunities.

To accomplish most of these goals, you just have to stand in front of your booth from 9 am to 6 pm and smile engagingly at every person who walks by. This isn’t a skill they cover in business school; in fact I learned how to do it from watching a hairless Chihuahua work the room during pet adoption day at the pound. He lives in my town now and whenever I see him walking regally alongside the lady who selected him from that sea of adorable competitors he gives me a little wink. His name was Ray when he was in the pound but now it’s Eduardo. If he’s ever reincarnated and comes back as an insurance salesman, watch out.

You have to have thick skin to work a trade show. Often people walk by without so much as a glance and if you’re not careful you can start to feel like a bruised pear in the produce section. Experiencing rejection at tradeshows is as guaranteed as rain during a family picnic but always tempered by conversations about the big deal – think Willie Loman meets Cinderella which translates into hope squared for you math buffs — and you’ll have a pretty good idea.

Usually the big deal pitch comes from a tag team of impeccably dressed people from foreign countries who descend upon your booth like paratroopers, examine all your samples in great detail, and speak to each other in urgent hushed tones before turning their attention to you.

I’ve been in the publishing business for many years and the really big deals always had something to do with foreign distribution and translation.

“I represent 47 countries including their Epcot Center counterparts and we’d like to translate your product into every known language including one that is only communicated by using hand puppets and tapping on a hollowed gourd with a monkey’s fibula. Unfortunately, we do not have a pen at this time but will be back tomorrow at 9:30 am to finalize everything before our flight at 9:35 am.”

They never come back. For years I used to rush around looking for them in vain until wisdom finally intervened and I realized they were the gabardine clad equivalent of fool’s gold. One day scientists in search of an elephant graveyard are going to burst through a clearing in the jungle and discover thousands of South American businessmen in blue suits wandering aimlessly with briefcases and screaming into cell phones with dead batteries. “You don’t understand. I must get out of this place now. The Americans are waiting for my order!”

So in between the big tradeshow deal there is lots of time for just waiting. Lots of time for reflection and thought. This week I started to obsess about how thoughts actually appear in my head and who or what was responsible for creating them. The obsession began as I was standing in the middle of the aisle thinking about the opportunities that could be derived from forming a cooperative with other small greeting card companies when an instant later I began to wonder whether God gets offended when women second guess His creative genius by shaving off their eyebrows and drawing them in themselves with pencils.

Where does an unsolicited thought like that come from? To go from a very logical internal conversation well within the context of what I was doing to suddenly be interrupted with something so far out of left field, psychiatrists wouldn’t know what to make of it.

The only explanation I can think of is that I had not had a chance to eat anything substantial and might have been suffering from some sort of food related dementia. The woman who was scheduled to work the tradeshow with me became ill and I had to work the whole show by myself. Since I could not leave the booth, I was forced to eat all six pounds of the Hershey Kisses we had originally purchased to pass out to attendees to avoid starvation. I must have been hallucinating because I vaguely remember slapping the hand of a woman buyer from Target, who attempted to remove one of the candies from the dish I was clutching protectively to my chest like Humphrey Bogart in “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre”.

The effects wore off instantly however, when I received the biggest order of the day. Someone purchased twelve dozen of every design in my card line. I had the first big deal of my career. And to top it off, the guy who made the purchase lived in my hometown so I didn’t have to worry about him disappearing into the jungle.

He introduced himself as Eduardo but told me his friends call him Ray.

About the Author

John Hartnett is the owner of Early Bird Publishing, a manufacturer of humorous greeting cards (http://www.earlybirdpublishing.com) and distributor for Send Out Cards: Changing Lives One Card at a Time (http://www.sendoutcards.com/hartnett). He is also the author of Now What?,at http://www.johnhartnett.blogspot.com. email:johnhartnett@earlybirdpublishing.com.

Utilizing the secrets of opti lists

Emails are replacing regular mails from the post office. Not only because it is cheaper, since you do not need to buy a stamp, it’s also definitely faster. Emails can be sent in as fast as five seconds, depending on the server, anywhere in the world.

No doubt emails are being used to distribute news letters, promotional mails, and other stuff. How then would you be able to round up email addresses to send those marketing mails you have? Here is where an opt-in list comes in.

An opt-in list is a directory of email address you can send to those mails to. Though it seems to be easy to find email addresses, if you are talking thousands in numbers, it is going to be hard. Besides, you have to determine the recipient of the email. You wouldn’t want your readers mostly male if you are selling lipsticks, right?

A good opt-in list should include the profile of the email address owner. Here are tips on how to create a comprehensive opt-in list for target market.

Create your website. Creating a website is made simple nowadays. A lot of programs are milling about assisting regular computer users in making and maintaining websites in a real simple way. Some website creator just needs you to cut and paste, like that of a regular paint program. Several web hosting sites are available too. Some are even free. If you have a site of your own, you can ask visitors to register with you or sign your guest book as they leave.

Set up a promotion or a freebie. Not all the best things in life are free, as they say. But you can definitely try to give something out for sure. You can see this done all over the web. Free screensavers, free games, free download of programs. And what do they need from you? They just ask for an email address, your name and a little something more about you. Then you can place a check box on the registration form for sending of email. For sure, you can think of something to give out as well.

Write and write some more. There are some web magazines where in readers can submit their writings for a particular topic. If you had a chance to do so, add a link to your article providing information about what you are trying to promote. Some readers of your article may enjoy your work so much they’d like to contact you, so don’t forget to leave your email address too.

Pose an easy opt-out option. People who like to join your opt-in list would, along the way may want to opt out of it somehow. People who are wary of joining may not join at all if they see that it would be near impossible to remove their email address from the listing. Show them that it is as easy to opt-out as it is opting in.

Check other’s strategy too. It would be better if you can find a partner in generating an opt-in list. This way, you can split the expenses and both of you can share the list generated. It will be best to partner with a company that has a business similar to your own line. Both of you can profit more should that be the case.

Use offline ways too. You can put up a small raffle preferably in a supermarket for a certain item they buy. You can place an email address opt-in part in the raffle entry to add to your list. This way, you’d also know the buying preferences of the participants if you mark the entries systemically.

Creating an opt-in list entails a lot of work and funds. You should outline how much you will spend in creating an opt-in list. People appearing at opt-in lists are sales prospects. They are those interested in a certain product that you may be selling. Obtaining an optimal opt-in list would boost your sales up so these tools are undoubtedly essential.

Acquire an opt-in list now or generate one. Either way, you are reaching to people that can be your one of your treasured customers for a long period time.

——————————— Online shopping made easy! Stop searching from one site to the other: Products, Resources, Services, Affiliate Opportunities. Ebay, Amazon, Clickbank, All on one site. Check it out NOW! ———————————- http://www.infogomall.com

About the Author

I am a retired Accountant, i started my online career after i retired. I have had some success with my new online career thanks to the online friends i have made. Hope you are enjoying my articles as much as i enjoy sending you the information. I wish you all the success in your online ventures.

To Your Success: Morris Trahan

Driving Up Search Engine Rankings with Content Hubs

Content hubs, also called “article directories” or “article submission sites,” are web sites with hundreds to thousands of informational articles on them.

Authors can submit their articles to the content hubs. Others can then download these articles and post them on other sites. The benefit for the author is that once the article is posted on a content hub, it contains his company name and web site address. So it provides an inbound link to the author’s web site, meaning a link from another site to his. Plus, if the article is well written it will get downloaded by others and posted on their web sites, providing even more inbound links to the author’s web site.

Inbound Links and Why They’re Important

So what’s the big deal with inbound links? Well, let’s see what Google, the top search engine, says about how important they are to your web site’s ranking on the search engine:

“The heart of our software is PageRank™, a system for ranking web pages developed by our founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University. And while we have dozens of engineers working to improve every aspect of Google on a daily basis, PageRank continues to provide the basis for all of our web search tools.

“PageRank Explained

“PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves ‘important’ weigh more heavily and help to make other pages ‘important.’”

So in order for any web site to get a good page rank on Google, it has to have many sites that link to it. But not just any sites. The sites that link to yours must have a high Google page rank themselves, and if they do, Google assigns more importance and a higher page rank to your web site. So if you have many sites linking to yours, and those sites have a high page rank with Google, then you will have a high page rank also. And that helps to make your site appear higher up when someone searches on the search engine.

How to Get Inbound Links

So now we have established that getting inbound links to your web site is desirable. And we have mentioned that you can get inbound links to your site by submitting articles to content hubs.

Are there any other ways to get inbound links? Yes, there are. There are two other ways that are legitimate:

1. Find other web sites that have high page rank and have something to do with your web site or your industry, write to their webmaster and ask them to put up a link to your site on theirs. Usually it works best to put up a link to their site first before you ask them, which will make them more inclined to link to you. 2. Wait until other sites notice you and decide to put up a link to your web site.

Number one above will take many man-hours, finding the sites and writing to them and putting up a link to their site on yours. Number two means you can’t control it – not a very good option either.

So the best method, in my opinion, is submitting articles to content hubs. There are over 900 hubs on the Internet at this time, some with high Google page ranks. Once you submit an article, it can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks for your article to appear on the search engines. After 4-6 weeks these articles will tend to drop off search engine results, so it is best to submit a new article at least once a month, better twice a month or once a week.

There is a free online tool that measure how many inbound links there are coming to any given site: http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/

Go to this page and enter your web site in it and also enter the web sites of some of your competitors, some of the sites that rank highly for the keywords that you want to rank highly for. This tool will give you a good yardstick for seeing how many links you have compared to your competitors. Chances are you’ll see that the competitors who are highly ranked for your desirable keywords have many more inbound links than you do.

The Solution – a Content Hub Submission Campaign

The solution is to get a campaign going of submitting articles to the content hubs. How fast you decide to go will be determined by your available resources, and the size of the gap between you and the competition.

What should you submit? If you publish a hard copy or email newsletter, then you probably have a bunch of articles that you’ve already written related to your business or industry. Here is a sampling of the article categories from a popular content hub:

Advertising Advice Affiliate Programs Autos Awards Blogs Book Reviews Business Careers CGI Computers Communication Copywriting CSS Dating DHTML Direct Mail Domain Names EBooks ECommerce Education Email Entertainment Environment Family Finance Fitness Food Free Gambling Gardening Government Health Hobbies Home Accessories Home Business Home Repair HTML Humor Insurance Internet Investment Javascript Law Link Popularity Malware Management Marketing Marriage Metaphysical MLM Motivational Multimedia Music Newsletters Non-Profit Off-Line Promotion Online Promotion Other Outdoors Pets Politics Press Releases Product Reviews Psychology Publishing Real Estate Religion RSS Sales Scams Science SE Optimization SE Positioning SE Tactics Self Help Sexuality Site Security Social Issues Spam Spirituality Sports Technology Traffic Analysis Travel Viral Marketing Web Hosting Web Design Webmasters Weight Loss Women’s Issues Writing

Chances are you can find a topic or category that will relate to your web site or business.

The important thing is to get a content hub campaign going. It’s one of the best ways to have a real impact and drive up your search engine rankings.

About the Author

John Eberhard is President of RealWebMarketing.net (http://www.realwebmarketing.net), a marketing consultant, writer and political analyst living in Los Angeles. He can be reached at http://www.realwebmarketing.net/contact.html

One Month Magnate Ebook Review

If you have been in the Internet Marketing world for a while now, you will agree that most money making ebooks on the market only tell you “WHAT” to do but not “HOW” to do it. The WHAT information makes reading enjoyable but it won’t make you money. Not many people (especially the newbies) have the resources to figure out the HOW to do part.

That’s why internet marketing has a poor statistic – more than 95% FAIL! Less than 5% will actually succeed. These are the people who know exactly WHAT and HOW to make money online. They are the ones who are in the “inner circle”.

Recently I was very lucky to come across with Tony Shepherd and his ebook “One Month Magnate”. I was surprised that the price for this ebook is less than $30. I have bought many internet marketing ebooks that cost at least $50 – $97, and most of them only tell you what to do. The One Month Magnate ebook is very unique in the sense that it tells you exactly what and how to make money online in 30 days. I guess that’s why the ebook is named One Month Magnate. It outlines in details from day 1-30 how to make money online.

Here are the summary of the 30 days activities:

Day 1-3: Finding & Researching Market Needs.

Day 4-13: How to become expert in the subject/product you want to market. Yes! some efforts and time are needed here to become an expert in the subject you have chosen. If you follow exactly what Tony did, after 10 days, you will probably know the subject more than 90% of the people. That’s why it makes you an expert.

Day 14-17: Time to consolidate everything you know and create a freebie. This freebie is very important. It will be used to entice your potential customers want to buy your product.

Day 18-20: Based on the consolidated information that you have gathered and researched, now is the time to construct the final product – the one that will create your income.

Day 21-30: These are the periods where you start to promote and monetize your offer or product. Tony will show you where and how he promoted his product. He also discussed Joint Ventures, Press Release, Ezine and other methods he used. At the end of 30 days, Tony made 109 sales and earned $6,788. I followed the methods taught by Tony and I only made $1,331 at the end of 30 days. Yes, not even one-third of what Tony made. But it is very worth it. Because it has given me some extra cash, and more importantly are the invaluable lessons and experiences that I have gone through.

And I want to be honest here, it needs hard work to earn money online. I think you agree, success is a process. If you are willing to go through the process, I guarantee you this ebook will be your best investment. Otherwise don’t bother, unless you are eager to know how money is actually made online.

More info on One Month Magnate here.

About the Author

Leon is an Infopreneur dedicated to sharing his online discoveries across the net. You can visit his site at… http://www.ebiz-quadrant.com

The Lazy Woman’s Guide to Promoting Your Blog or Website

1. Create a blog at blogger.com. Write interesting articles and tidbits of news. Link your blog to your website. Immediately after updating your blog with new information “Ping” weblogs.com and other search engines.

When you “Ping” a blog, you are notifying the search engines that you have updated your blog content and that your listing should be refreshed.

Weblogs.com is a blog update notification service that many individuals and services use to track blog changes. Pinging your blogs to the search engines is the fastest way to get the search engine robots to visit your blog. Also, many people browse these sites to find something new.

2. Submit your blog address to blog search sites and directories. You can submit your blog’s url to websites such as Technorati, Daypop, Blogdex and Popdex. For a complete list of websites where you can submit your url, go to www.guidetorss.com

3. If you have some cash you can promote your blog using pay per click search engines such as Yahoo Search and Google Adwords.

4. Set your blog to display RSS feeds and submit your blog’s RSS feed to the major RSS feed directories online. A good place to start is www.guidetorss.com which provides a list of the top RSS directories.

5. Put your blog URL in your email signature. If you’re a regular at any online discussion forum, you can also add your url to your signature line at the bottom of each message you post.

6. Install a blogroll. A blogroll is a collection of links to other weblogs. Services such as Technorati spider your links to tell who’s linking to you and who you’re linking to. If you show up on someone’s Technorati link list for their site they’re likely to visit your site to see what you said, increasing your exposure.

Blog owners can also visit your site to check it out if you show up on their referral logs.

7. Be an active commenter. Try to leave comments on the blogs that you regularly visit. Most comment systems also provide a way for you to leave a link back to your blog which begs a visit at the very least.

8. If you plan to have anything printed up, put your blog’s web address on it. You can print your blog URL on business cards, stickers, leaflets, etc.

9. Take advantage of blog software features that help to promote your Blog. For example, if you’re using Blogger, you can do this by turning on: “Email This Post”, “Post Pages” “Site feed” and the Blogger Navbar. These features will help attract new visitors to your blog.

10. Exchange Links with other Bloggers or blog owners. This is another effective strategy for generating targeted traffic to your blog for free. It involves contacting other blog owners for a possible link exchange partnership. All you have to do is locate blogs that are related to yours and contact the webmaster to swap links.

11. Write articles or free reports for other webmasters to publish and put your blog url in the byline. The ‘byline’ is the short paragraph that goes at the bottom of each article and describes who the author is and what they do. Write good content, your articles will be published by other webmasters and many readers who like your article will go on to visit your blog.

The Lazy way to get 1,000’s of Visitors to Your Site!

About the Author

Virginia Sanders is a graduate of The University of Texas , an ex high-school teacher and computer applications trainer. She is the mother of twin daughters, and the proud grandmother of a 8-year-old genius named “Gary”.

Virginia describes herself as an expert procrastinator who views affiliate programs as the best chance for other experts in procrastination to find success on the Internet.

Making money selling products

A lot of people are now getting into online businesses and online marketing either to supplement their “real world” income or for it to become their primary source of income. Why? Because online marketing just provides them a lot of benefits!

First, you can reach just about anybody in the world who has Internet access if you market your products online. That means a wider market for you, which can translate to larger profits. Second, setting up an online business requires only a fraction of the cost required to set up an actual business establishment, which means a lot of savings for the business owner.

Another aspect that has attracted a lot of people towards online marketing is the fact that one doesn’t have to have his own products to get started. In online marketing, one can start making a lot of money just by selling, or even by just trying to sell, other people’s products. And getting started with this kind of marketing strategy is actually quite easy. All that one needs to do is to set up an agreement with an online retailer or merchant, and after everything is settled, one can immediately start making money by selling the merchant’s or the retailer’s products. Incidentally, the most popular and the fastest growing method of selling other people’s products online is affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing, in its simplest definition, is a relationship between an online merchant or retailer, who has products to sell, and his affiliates, who are willing to promote the merchant’s product on their website.

In a typical affiliate marketing set up, the merchant provides his affiliates with banners and text ads that links to his site. The affiliates will then get these ads posted on their website and they get paid whenever traffic or sales is directed to the merchant’s website. Affiliates are often paid on commission basis, although other online merchants would opt to pay a fixed fee for the affiliate’s compensation. Starting to make money online with affiliate marketing is relatively quick and easy. All that one has to do is to sign up as an affiliate for an online company that offers affiliate programs. An alternative method, and usually an easier one, is to sign up as a member of an affiliate network–a network that hosts a variety of affiliate programs for different online merchants or retailers. Signing up is usually free, although other companies and networks may require you to pay a particular fee. Such fees, however, are made as payment for additional services that the company may render, like providing you with tools and assistance to jumpstart your online business.

When you sign up with an affiliate marketing program, you are usually required to fill out a form containing information about yourself. Some affiliate programs may also require you to present the URL of your website and describe its contents. This will allow the retailers to verify that you actually have a website with contents that are relevant to their products. Some affiliate programs, however, won’t require you to have a website. After filling out the form and all, you are then allowed to choose the affiliate programs you want to promote.

After signing up with an affiliate program and being an actual affiliate, you are now ready to start making a lot of money by selling other people’s product online. How do you make money? There are actually a number of ways for you to earn money as an affiliate, and most of these ways depends on the type of affiliate marketing program you’ve gotten into.

Many affiliate marketing programs compensate their affiliates in either of three ways: pay-per-click (PPC), pay-per-sale (PPS), or pay-per-lead (PPL). In pay-per-click affiliate marketing, the affiliate is paid whenever he directs traffic to the merchant’s site. PPS and PPL affiliate marketing programs work rather differently. In PPS, the affiliate only gets paid when his referral converts into an actual sale. In typical PPS affiliate programs, the affiliate would usually get 15% to 20% commission for each conversion. PPL affiliate programs work the same way, although affiliates are paid a fixed fee whenever his referral converts into a lead for the company.

Some affiliate marketing programs are two-tier programs, wherein the affiliate is also allowed to recommend other affiliates to the merchant. In such affiliate programs, the affiliate would not only be paid for the traffic or sales that he would direct to the merchant’s site but also for the traffic or sales directed by the affiliates who signed up with the program through his recommendation.

Yet another way of earning more profits with affiliate marketing is through residual affiliate programs. Residual affiliate programs are affiliate programs where the affiliate gets paid a number of times for as long as the merchant keeps the customer the affiliate has referred to his site. One form of residual program gets the affiliate paid a commission every time the referred customer purchases something on the merchant’s site. Another form of residual affiliate program gets the affiliate paid a percentage every month for as long as the company keeps the referred customer.

With a lot of options available and a lot of ways to earn money, affiliate marketing is undoubtedly the most popular and the easiest way to make money by selling other people’s products online. As to how much money one can get from affiliate marketing actually depends on the affiliate. A dedicated and hardworking affiliate would certainly get more from the program compared to those affiliates who would simply sign up and forget about the program later.

About the Author

John Ugoshowa. For more information about affiliate marketing see the affiliate marketing section of The Free Ad Forum at: http://www.thefreeadforum.com/infowizards/CAT/Affiliate-Marketing_68_1.html

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