Thread: Negative Effect on SEO From Duplicate Content

On your main page, perhaps, hundreds won't change much. But, in your deep pages where you might only get three or four visitors per day from a phrase, a few links can make the difference. Never turn down a good link.

Never turn down a good link! Mafiamaster said so!

And I agree!

But it seems so many webmasters do not agree.
I give away free links, paid links at low cost, etc.
And most webmasters turn this down!
OH, your site is not page rank 4, why should I have my link there, even if it is free.

That's probably because a lot of people think a link from a low quality site might have a negative effect on their site, maybe that the link might be counted as spammy. I'm not absolutely sure this isn't true, but what if an owner of a "low quality" site organically links to your site (not as a free link give away or a paid link)? Then that too would have to count as negative? Doesn't really make a lot of sense.

Age old argument. Bad site links to good site. Does google screw around with the good site?
One time, I think Matt Cutts said that google search takes in account the possiblity of links from bad sites/spammy sites to a good site and discounts them.

No, what it boils down to is this: too many webmasters have bought into the whole page rank and will not advertise or have their link (paid or free) on any site or page that does not have page rank.
Traffic be damned!

Think of all the links sold on a page rank site that come next page rank update, are now on a low to no page rank site!

Originally Posted by Mafiamaster

But, in your deep pages where you might only get three or four visitors per day from a phrase, a few links can make the difference. Never turn down a good link.

Deeplinks are a major problem for retail because it is dynamic.

Building deeplinks is great, but when the products don't sell anymore for whatever reasons (manufacturers don't make the products, people don't buy the products anymore, etc) the links are lost, time consuming is lost.

After learning the lessons the hard way, I am chosing only the platforms providing flexibilities so I can edit and update or replace the deeplinks.

Yes you are right, never turn down a good link

Originally Posted by bhartzer

I totally agree, I would definitely keep adding fresh content on a regular basis, and getting as many links to those new articles as you can. Personally, I actually write blog posts that link to the blog post or article that I want to promote.

Originally Posted by Natural Elements

That's really what we do. Since the begining of 2011 we added more than 40 products and almost the same quantity in new articles.

As far as backlinks, we worked on that a little, but regarding our google webmaster tools we have around 120,000 backlinks, so hundred's will not change much our ranks.

40 new articles is a great amount of new content. I would try to get as many 'deep' backlinks that I could using free blogs, article marketing, social bookmarking etc

The deep linking should help Google recognize that you are the original source.

For some of the older pages that have been heavily copied and have a grayed-out toolbar, try rewriting a few of the articles and deep linking as soon as you post.

Originally Posted by Natural Elements

Deeplinks are a major problem for retail because it is dynamic.

Building deeplinks is great, but when the products don't sell anymore for whatever reasons (manufacturers don't make the products, people don't buy the products anymore, etc) the links are lost, time consuming is lost.

The links won't be totally lost. You can use a permanent 301 redirect to your homepage from the IIS console.

Originally Posted by bogart

The deep linking should help Google recognize that you are the original source.

I don't think Google has a problem recognizing that we are the original source because they crawl extremely fast our site. If someone copy our articles we use DMCA and send them to the search engines. There will always be a few webmasters trying to steal or copy your work, but I feel sorry if they lack imagination.

For some of the older pages that have been heavily copied and have a grayed-out toolbar, try rewriting a few of the articles and deep linking as soon as you post.

The old page heavily copied are not found anymore because Google de-indexed the infrigments automatically, which seems to be a great thing.

The links won't be totally lost. You can use a permanent 301 redirect to your homepage from the IIS console.

We always use 301 permanent redirects in our htaccess file, we use a special compatible module url rewriter for Microsoft IIS so we don't do that in the IIs console.

I am very surprise that many webmasters do not check their links and update the 301. That's pretty easy if you use the little software Xenu's Link Sleuth.

My opinion on low quality sites is this...If it's low quality, fine, don't get it. But, no PR doesn't mean low quality. I remember a few times seeing iowadawg offering free links and I forgot to PM him. My fault...But, I checked his sites out and just because they didn't have PR didn't mean they were low quality. What happens when he builds the site up over the next three years? That permanent link is still there, I'm still getting traffic from it and maybe at that point, it's got PR. Unless it's a porn site, gambling site or one of those dumb pharmacy sites, getting a link from a site will always help. Don't pay for it, but if it is free and you don't have to do any work, why not?

Originally Posted by Mafiamaster

My opinion on low quality sites is this...If it's low quality, fine, don't get it. But, no PR doesn't mean low quality.

The Google PR is just an indicator of quality, but really isn't a ranking indicator. Don't make me wrong PR is perhaps valuable for some industries, but for others the SERP is much more important.

If I found sites with no PR but very relevant to my website pages, of course I will try to get backlinks.

Speaking of which, the last Panda Google update IMO was based on ranking by authority rather than relevancy. This explain why I have much more visitors and less customers.

Now my question is: Do you think Google switched the relevancy to their Adwords system instead of the organic search?

Originally Posted by Natural Elements

The Google PR is just an indicator of quality, but really isn't a ranking indicator. Don't make me wrong

PR isn't so much an indicator of quality as a 'lack of PR' or grayed-out indicates some issues i.e. duplicate content. But PR is updated so infrequently that it becomes useless. When was the last Google PR update in 2011?

Originally Posted by Natural Elements

Speaking of which, the last Panda Google update IMO was based on ranking by authority rather than relevancy. This explain why I have much more visitors and less customers.

Now my question is: Do you think Google switched the relevancy to their Adwords system instead of the organic search?

I think that the MAYDAY/FARMER/PANDA Google algorithm updates are attacking the same problem. Publishers/the IM industry has sucessfully dominated long tail search and brand keywords to the point that big adwords clients are complaining. Something like you said, "more visitors and less customers".

The trend is that Google increasing the value on some or all of these factors:

Trust Rank
Authority
Brand Authority
Social media
Relevant inbound links (think Hilltop)
Traffic Rank based on data from the toolbar, chrome, bounce rate
Traffic quality based on ips i.e. business ips,ip location, marketing data associated with ip. Traffic from Greenwich CT and Greenwich Village would be more valuable than lower income zip codes.