Content Syndication Is Your Friend
December 31, 2009
Content duplication has been a buzz topic in SEO for a while now. You can read about it til you puke and never have to leave WebProNews.com. It's one of the modern webmaster's favorite things to fret over and has been for at least two years.
Google doesn't like duplicate content. We all get that now. There is still the lingering perception that there is some sort of duplicate content penalty despite repeated assurances from multiple Googlers to the contrary. Maybe there is no penalty; maybe there is some sort of mechanism at work that webmasters perceive as a penalty... it really matters very little. At the end of the day, if you aren't showing up for your own content but somebody else is... you probably aren't the happiest little webmaster.
As a result, syndication has been quite unfairly vilified. Traditionally speaking, having a site link to your content has always been perceived as a compliment of sorts (Google certainly thought it was a fair indicator of quality). That said, syndicating content... having your great content actually picked up by a larger, more influential site was even better in a lot of ways. The syndicated content was put right in front of a whole new user base without them having to click a thing. Generally you also got a nice link back to your site to boot. If you produced a great piece of content, why not have it show up everywhere you possibly could?
Penalty or not, it is clearly the case that the site where content originates may not always rank best for that content. Google wants to do their best to make sure they keep the content of their results pages as distinct from one another as they can. In short, Google doesn't want to have a result page where 4 of the 10 results are all essentially the exact same article.
Here's the thing though syndication is good. It can drive traffic to your site. It can establish your reputation and credibility within a niche and it can generate high quality inbound links. If you are upset because the larger, more recognized and more popular site's syndication of your content outranks your own then I'd have to say you might need to rethink that one a little bit. So what if it does? You are there because you want to be exposed to the larger site's community. You want the links, attention, reputation and all the good things that go along with that don't you? Of course you do. So if you do a search and find that the big site is number one on a good search query with your content, you don't get upset - you say 'yay'.
Why do you say yay? Because your super great content would never have that top position if not for the fact that Google found it on the larger more authoritative site. Sure, if it's that good you can probably get a decent ranking but it won't be as good. Beyond the ranking, even if your site is #2 and the big site is #3 for the same article, guess which one is likely to get clicked thru more; the link to your site, which is not all that well known? Or the link to a site that somebody has heard of?
If you aren't a household name or a recognized authority in whatever areas you are covering, the fastest way to build that reputation and credibility is to become associated with the brand that is. What's the best way to do that? Get your name, your company and your link on their domain. Because at the end of the day the likelihood of you just outranking them on your own for similar subject matter is probably going to be a tough order.
Abby Johnson talked to Eric Enge from Stone Temple Consulting at SES recently about the syndication vs. duplicate content problem. Eric has some great tips in the video for minimizing the negative aspects of duplication on a syndication model. Three specific items he talks about are syndicating excerpts, including a no-index tag, and writing 'alternative' versions of your content expressly for syndication. He also talks about how effective a syndication model can be. One site he'd worked with increased their traffic by over 50% using syndication almost exclusively.
Google is also working on some stuff to help us help them (isn't that just awesome of them?). Read up on their new cross domain canonical tag. It's new, none of the other search engines support it yet, and it remains to be seen how effective it will be, but it's a start. Whatever you do, don't throw the proverbial baby (syndication) out with the bathwater (duplicated content worries). There is a lot of upside to an effective syndication strategy.
Have You Read This?
> Duplicate Content Owners Catch A Break From Google
> Duplicate Content On Google, Bing, & Yahoo
> 10 Search Topics That Require Further Discussion
Liberal Twitter Users Rejoice at Rush Limbaugh’s Hospitalization
December 31, 2009
Health Update from RushLimbaugh.com (1:30 AM EST Thursday)
ALERT: Rush was admitted to a Honolulu hospital today and is resting comfortably after suffering chest pains. Rush appreciates your prayers and well wishes. He will keep you updated via RushLimbaugh.com and on Thursday's radio program.
Original article: Liberal Hate Tweets Chant "Die Rush"
I just read the news on TMZ that Rush Limbaugh was rushed to the hospital with chest pains while vacationing in Hawaii. The story was about an hour old and didn't have many details so I searched Twitter to see if people on the scene would have more news.
I didn't see any further information but I am amazed at how dominant haters of conservatives are on Twitter. They seem so proud to voice their rather baseless opinions. Most Twitter posters seem to hope Limbaugh dies! They seem to think Limbaugh (and all conservatives) are full of hate. I know that is untrue because I am a conservative and conservatives I know are about individual freedom and less government, not hate. But, that's besides the point.
The real issue to me is why can't Twitter posts be about information, informed opinion and thoughtful disagreement instead of bashing, group think and hate. This kind of knee jerk twitterism is useful for nothing and makes a great service like Twitter less great.
Here are a few sample hate tweets taken from thousands about Rush Limbaugh:
Key_Air_Uh: Rush Limbaugh might be dieing? My Christmas wish came true!
MaxCJensen: PLEASE USE HASHTAG #DIERUSHDIE IF YOU HOPE RUSH LIMBAUGH DIES. DONT BE ASHAMED, IT IS FOR THE GREATER GOOD OF AMERICA.
DevinBlake: Rush Limbaugh in the hospital with chest pains, please let this be the end of his reign!!! This would be a great end to the decade!!!
aramina: FOR THE RECORD, UNIVERSE, IT WOULD BE FANTASTIC TO START THE NEW YEAR WITHOUT RUSH LIMBAUGH AROUND. JS.
Bane117: Rush Limbaugh rushed to hospital w/ chest pains. Santa actually listened this year.
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What do you think about hate tweets? I won't delete your comments even if you bash.
Tips for Promoting Your Online Videos
December 31, 2009
Online video is an increasingly populur medium from both users' standpoints and business' alike. When done right, it can be a great way to increase engagement and spread brand awareness. It can also be used for search engine optimization purposes. I'm sure you've noticed videos come up in the blended search results for many queries.
WebProNews fired a few questions at Benjamin Wayne, CEO of Fliqz, a Video hosting firm to see if he had some good tips to offer our readers. The following is the product of our Q&A.
Do you have tips for online video promotion? Share them here.
WebProNews: Have you noticed any difference in possible ranking factors for videos among Google, Yahoo, and Bing as far as blended search results go?
Benjamin Wayne: Google tends to be the site that drives the biggest portion of SEO traffic, and they seem to currently ignore all video-level meta-data with the exception of title. Matching the title tag to the video title also appears to have beneficial effects for search ranking. Yahoo tends to dislike video submission from non-partner third parties, and often rejects feeds without providing specifics as to why. Bing seems the most sophisticated in terms of information it considers, but also employs human editors to curate results that appear within Bing Video results.
WPN: Other than the obvious YouTube, which video sites are the most important to have a presence in?
BW: This really depends on the goal, which typically bifurcates into either driving branding by piggy-backing on the audience of a third-party site like YouTube, or driving traffic through submitting videos in such a way that they appear in blended search results and drive traffic back to the publisher. In the former scenario, YouTube really has the lion's share of online video audience, and for most video producers, is the only site they need to care about. If driving traffic is the goal - and for most publishers, this should be their primary agenda - Google's blended search results account for an overwhelming majority of search traffic. Beyond Google, Bing and AOL are both good targets.
WPN: How important are YouTube's new enhanced caption features for video SEO?
BW: They're not currently a factor in how Google ranks results. If this changes, they may become more important.
WPN: How would you convince a skeptical business about the benefits of online video?
BW: As marketers, we typically care about two things: driving traffic, and converting visitors. On the former, it's hard to ignore the extraordinary efficacy of video from an SEO perspective. According to Forrester, video more than times more likely to result in a first-page Google result than traditional SEO. That's an incredibly persuasive number. When it comes to conversion, just look at Zappos recent presentation at the recent Streaming Media West, where Zappos revealed that videos result in a 6-30% greater conversion in sales. That's driving Zappos to strive for 50,000 videos produced next year. Those are numbers you can take to the bank!
WPN: Where are some good places to promote your videos, beyond the video sites themselves?
BW: If the goal is branding (which is tough in practicality to make work in online video) Google is your obvious target. Beyond that, you need to target specific vertical niches that are a solid fit with your brand, product, or service.
WPN: If there is any other video SEO advice you'd like to share, please feel free to do so.
BW: Getting video results to appear in Google is a science, so go to an expert who can help ensure that videos are indexed correctly. Google relies on title above all other meta-data to match results against searches, so make sure that you tune your title against the keywords you want to match. Matching page title tags to the video title is a good way to increase your score. To ensure that Google displays your preferred thumbnail, submit a single, rather than multiple thumbnails, in your feed. And lastly, make sure you submit both the web pages, and the videos themselves, to maximize your search results.
WebProNews would like to thank Mr. Wayne for answering our questions and sharing his insight with our readers.
On a related note, Topher Kohan, the SEO manager for CNN had some interesting things to say in a recent interview with WebPronews: