Worried about being penalized by search engines for “content mirroring” when it comes to syndicating your articles online?

Reader Asks Maya: “Finally, I have several articles written but haven’t posted them to any article directories to gain some exposure for my expertise. Is it true that your website could be labeled for content mirroring by search engines and penalized for duplicate content?”

GoogleWebmasterCentral.Blogspot.com says, “Syndicate carefully: If you syndicate your content on other sites, make sure they include a link back to the original article on each syndicated article.”

According to Stephan Spencer over at PracticalEcommerce.com, “Google’s supposed ‘duplicate content penalty’ seems to be on everybody’s minds these days.” Of course, Stephan’s post is focused on duplicate content found in many ecommerce websites but I believe his point-of-view very much relates to writers of articles.

Stephan isn’t the only one that recommends edits the copy (in his case, for products on ecommerce sites), but experts like Jeff Herring, TheArticleGuy.com says “The solution is to just tweak the article on your site a bit. Change the intro or conclusion, mix around the order of the tips, add/subtract some words, etc. You want the two versions of the article to be about 20% different from each other. At the same time, don’t freak out about this, because it is only a very small portion of what google looks for. So just make sure the two articles are about 20% different and forget about it, so you can concentrate on writing, posting and marketing more articles.”

I asked IdeaMarketers.com their take on this issue. Marnie Pehrson had the following response on the subject, “It’s my understanding from what I’ve read on the subject that the issue of duplicate content mainly comes into play when you have the same article on 10+ sites. The extras get dumped into Google’s supplemental index and it only looks at the ones on the most reputable sites that have had the article for the longest time. The duplicates are in essence ignored so you’re wasting your time submitting the exact same article to more than 10-12 sites (from a search engine perspective). This isn’t to say that if you have your article prominently placed on several high traffic sites that you won’t benefit from the sheer number of visitors who visit those sites and read your article. In other words, search engines aren’t the only game in town for producing traffic to one’s site. But bottom line… when we’re talking about search engines, the advice given above about making it somewhat different is good if you intend to submit the article to several article directories and have it on your site.”

Company: Ricarda Design
Business Type: Residential Interior Design
Website: RicardaInteriorDesign.com

Background:
Ricarda Lopez, RicardaInteriorDesign.com asked for help in creating her online marketing presence with a website that best represents her interior design company. As their tagline “Because your home is worth some attention” summarizes, Ricarda offers professional interior design advice to San Diego and Chula Vista, California residents and home office entrepreneurs who may simply need the appropriate shopping list to finalize their home design project, help to rearrange awkward furniture layout or a cluttered space to designing custom furniture and cabinetry.

Services Provided:
We did a complete web design (look & feel) from scratch. We also wrote several pages of copy… sprinkled with targeted keywords throughout the site and resourceful 3rd party outbound linking, to help help position her as “Chula Vista, California’s Furniture and Space Interior Design Advisor.”

We always have marketing in mind for our clients. With the goal of building brand awareness and traffic to her website, we created a landing page targeted to home office entrepreneurs who are instructed to download their copy of the “Five Home Office Design Tips” sheet. Also created the call-to-action “Discuss Your Project With Us” on every page of her site.

To humanize the website, we added Ricarda’s Home Office picture gallery and professional photo.

Client Praises:
"Great Job! Thank You, for your patience and valuable advice. I enjoyed the collaboration of ideas and the process of creating a website that represents my design firm. It’s great working with someone who is organized and focused. Maya creates with a focus on marketing. Design Insomnia exceeded my expectations in that I didn’t expect to receive the level of marketing given. I will most definitely recommend your services to everyone I know."

Ricarda Lopez, BFA
Interior Designer, Allied Member ASID
Ricarda Design

Just attended a virtual seminar with Jennifer Laycock (Editor of Search Engine Guide) and Matt Bailey (of SiteLogic) discussing the influence of Social Media for your business. In their presentation, they discuss Stormhoek’s “Blogger’s Wine Freebie 2345” campaign as a big success strategy in the blogosphere. As Erick Schonfeld writes, “Stormhoek hired Hugh McLeod, a well-known marketing blogger, to help kick off its campaign in the UK, and he is also designing some new labels for the wine featuring his trademark cartoon sketches.”

I believe this promotion ended September of 2005 but the publicity continues for Stormhoek! Bloggers had “no obligation to blog about Stormhoek in exchange for the free bottle” but blog about it they did (on personal blogs, Flickr…). When people blog about your products, search engines love that!

It’s a question that popped in my noggin this morning. Working on Giftpile.com to increase their organic listings… back in Nov 2006, we targeted keywords: ‘honeymoon registry’ and was organically listed consistently in 8th - 9th place on Google. Today, Giftpile.com is organically listed in 5th place. Whoop! Whoop! So I was wondering what would happen if I temporarily halt their PPC (’Pay Per Click’) Google Ad and any other PPC - Yahoo Ad, MSN Ad???

So I ask myself:
Does having a PPC Google Ad help in organic listings or *hurt* your organic listings?

Bob Bly recommended I ask you this question to the team at Perry S. Marshall & Associates author of “The Definitive Guide to Google AdWords.”

Bryan Todd, a coach at Perry S. Marshall & Associates responds:

“Very good question. Strictly speaking, one does not influence the other. Your ranking on Google’s organic side is a function of the quality of your site and the # of clicks you get there only. The value of doing AdWords at the same time is that you can choose what page to send the traffic to, and make changes to it as you please. Not so with organic traffic. So unless both sides are taking visitors to identical pages, I’d do both.”