Free Content for Websites
Continuation of Lesson 22 from You Can Make
Money Writing
The idea of using articles others write as free content for
a website or blog is great, but I have noticed over the last
few years that getting traffic to pages made from this source
is becoming more difficult. This is most likely due to the "duplicate
content penalty" assessed by the search engines. Fortunately
it generally won't hurt your website to have some duplicate content
- it just may not help if it's not showing in the search engines.
In other words, you might get search traffic by adding an article
or two, and you probably don't have to worry about hurting your
existing traffic.
The steps outlined above (previous page) can resolve this
problem to some extent. Add enough of your own writing and the
page may be "unique" enough. Of course, one of the
advantages of using articles written by others is to save yourself
the time and trouble, so how much effort do you want to put into
this process? That is something you'll have to decide after you
do some experimentation.
There is another aspect to this, though. It's the fact that
you can make your site more valuable to visitors by adding really
good articles written by others. This can boost the repeat visits
or number of pages viewed, even if the only traffic those pages
get is from your own internal links promoting them.
Bad Links
Some of the people who have articles out there in the directories
no longer have a website. They gave it a shot and gave up. They
even let the domain name expire. As a result, the articles no
longer link to a site. So check to see if the site is active
before taking an article to use on your site.
There is another kind of "bad link" to watch out
for as well. Some websites are considered "bad neighborhoods"
by the search engines. This is because they have too many "black
hat" optimization tricks, spammy content, or even viruses.
If you link to them, you hurt the credibility of your website,
of course. In addition, your search engine rankings may even
be downgraded.
This is important, so I'll explain it a bit more. According
to Google, no incoming link can hurt your ranking. I assume that
other search engines are the same. This makes sense, because
it just wouldn't be fair for search engines to give competitors
or bad characters the ability to destroy your ranking by linking
to you from a bunch of spammy sites. A link from a "bad"
site may not help you, but it can't hurt.
On the other hand, you control the places your website links
to. So it is fair to penalize your site for linking to bad sites.
Keep that in mind when you agree to exchange links with others,
or use articles by other authors - which of course require links
to their sites.
Now, how do you determine which are "bad" sites?
It used to be easy with the Google Toolbar. You just visited
the site and if the PageRank bar was gray it meant the site was
"banned" from their index for some reason - a "bad"
site. If it was white or white with green (PR 0 or higher), it
was in Google's index, and thus okay.
At some point though, Google changed the tool and now a gray
bar is the default reading for any new website for a while. Here
is the routine to use now for checking the safety of sites you
might link to:
If a site has a PageRank of 0 or higher (white bar or white
and green), it's okay to link to, because it is of high enough
quality to be in the Google search index.
If the PageRank bar is gray, you need to do some more research.
Enter the whole name in Google (www.whatever.com). If there are
no results, the site is likely banned for some reason (unless
it is very new and not yet in the index), and you shouldn't link
to it. This is also the way to check every site you might link
to if you don't have a Google Toolbar installed.
You can also add your own discernment to the equation. Is
the website one you don't mind linking to? I personally won't
link to any site that uses tricks to "trap" the visitor
there (like those that don't allow you to use your "back"
button), or that has too many pop-ups (one is too many for my
tastes, but two rules it out for sure). No free content is worth
damaging my reputation of my websites. And certainly if I get
a warning from my anti-virus program I'll never link to the site
- or ever go there again.
It would be nice if that was all, if you could just check
the link in the article to see that it goes to a site, and that
the site is safe. But let me tell you a story.
I had neglected one of our sites for quite a while. Usually
this isn't a problem. In fact, the ability to make money without
even looking at a site for a year is one of the things I love
about this business.
This site, however, had many pages on it where I used articles
by other authors. I noticed one day that it had gone from a PageRank
3 to PageRank 0. Also, the revenue - probably because of this
downgrade - had declined by 80% over many months. I may never
know why for sure, but what I found gives me a clue.
I started to check out the pages, testing all the links on
them. Fully half of the pages with other author's articles had
bad links. Many of these authors had just given up their websites,
so the links went nowhere. That's bad enough, but some of the
websites had actually been banned by Google for whatever nasty
things they were doing. I suspect that the links to those sites
are the reason I lost PageRank (and profits).
Of course I removed the articles which linked to bad sites.
There are two ways to do this. For some I simply deleted the
page. Others, if the page had good keywords and I thought it
was getting traffic from some search engines, I replaced with
my own writing.
For the articles from authors who no longer had a site, I
did three different things. Some of those pages were simply deleted,
and others got my own writing in place of the article. Some were
good articles, though, and I hated to give them up.
I decided that since I had used them in good faith, following
the rules, it would be okay to keep using them without a link.
I left the author's resource box, complete with website address,
but I made it so it didn't link. Then I added this to the bottom
of the article:
Note: The link URL is incorrect/non-functioning.
If you are the author, please contact me so I can include a proper
link.
I figured that if they are no longer online, they aren't going
to know or care. But if they are, and they have another website
(or this one was just temporarily offline), they can contact
me so I can link the article properly. all things considered,
I think it's a fair approach, but you can decide that for yourself.
It took a little time and work to fix that site, and it still
hasn't regained its PageRank. But I learned a few good lessons
about using free content for websites. Here they are:
1. Be Cautious From the Start
When using articles by other authors, check the links in their
resource boxes. In deciding which to use, start with the criteria
laid out in the first part of this lesson, but also lean towards
using those which link to well-established and decent websites
- those less likely to close down or get banned for bad practices.
2. Don't Ignore Your Website
Even if you are done with the active part of building the
website, schedule occasional site "inspections." This
is most important if you have used a lot of articles from others.
Check not only all pages with these articles, but any pages where
you link to other websites. Make sure those sites are still there
and still safe.
3. Make This Systematic
I set up an inspection schedule for all of our websites after
this experience. As I inspected them, I spent a lot of time trying
to locate the pages with other authors content, especially on
those sites which have hundreds of pages. To make this easier
in the future, I now group together on the site map all pages
that have off-site links. Myself or my wife can now go online,
go to the site map, and quickly check all the pages that have
those links. Set up a system that works for you.
Continues here... More Ways to
Use Free Content
Note: This is part of the book, You Can Make Money
Writing. There are links to all the all the lessons/chapters
on the home page.
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