timjpriebe — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 20:46:05 +0000

I was replying to your question: "If you're worried about keeping a visitor on your site, why would you show them a way out with a link?"

And when you said something can hurt your site, you must have been referring soley to hurting your site's ranking. That's not necessarily the same thing as hurting your site in general. I realize now that you were making that implication, and I didn't pick up on it. I was not referring only to SEO.

(BTW, there's no need to quote entire messages in your reply. Just takes up server space if too many people do it.)

ConstantContent — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 19:19:57 +0000

I never said you shouldn't link to external sites. My original post says "Duplicate content is never a good thing, unless of course its simply for good reading.", good reading for the visitor that is.

Occasionally is the key, any more and that's where you get in trouble and it could hurt your site. There are reasons newer article directories like contenttycoon.com articlecube.com, article-highway.com, tons of others have a PR0. When your duplicate content far out numbers your unique content, this is where you can get into trouble. You can say the PR0 on these sites and the hundreds more is for other reasons and not because of duplicate content, but my own personal experience with duplicate content is not a good one.

This whole subject is debatable, Google is the only one that could tell us who's correct.

chrishirst — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 18:16:38 +0000

Well said Tim,

timjpriebe — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 16:25:30 +0000

Not linking to any external sites on your own is, IMO, a ridiculous concept that kills the point of the internet. If you really have so little faith in visitors to your website, you're in trouble. If they don't come back to your site, it's not because you had external links. It's because you're doing something else wrong on your website. If your website has valuable and unique information, they'll be back.

I did say unique. That said, I can see how ocassionally using free articles can be beneficial. Let's say I start a site where people can vote on their favorite cartoon, and that's the main point of the site. Well, throwing some articles up that discuss some of those cartoons can't hurt anything, and it can add some volume to the site.

But the unique aspect of the site is still there. You go to the site to vote on cartoons and see how they are ranked. The articles are just an added bonus to the site visitors. However, they can help to increase search engine rankings on a site that might not otherwise rank high at all.

ConstantContent — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 14:40:20 +0000

chrishirst wrote: It can make your site more "sticky". Meaning it could mean the difference between keeping a visitor a little longer by giving more related information for them to view, Rankings are not everything in this world.

I agree but when your talking about free articles that are on hundreds of other sites you're not normally talking about quality articles. Most of these articles are written to plug something else, either a product, site, or person. All of these free articles have bylines that include links to other sites. If you're worried about keeping a visitor on your site, why would you show them a way out with a link?

timjpriebe — Sun, 15 Jan 2006 15:07:47 +0000

Although my specific articles wouldn't work, I submit mine to ezinearticles.com. They seem to have some pretty good ones.

Edit: But now I see you already use them. Sorry about that!

chrishirst — Sun, 15 Jan 2006 10:05:49 +0000

Google does not penalise for duplicate content, the pages that are calculated as least important simply get filtered out of the SERP for that query. However the duplicate may well appear for other queries.
The whole site will not be affected, as pages are ranked as individual entities not as a collection.
However if a page has enough different content on it alongside the duplicated article, both (or all) pages can appear in the same SERP, take this as an example.
Having a page with PR0 is simply no indication of a "penalty". There are many reasons the toolbar is more incorrect than usual, PR is just based on links pointing to an exact URI. Content, unique or duplicate simply doesn't enter in to it.

ConstantContent wrote: With that said if you say it doesn't help, why would you use it? Just as filler? That's not helping your site

Simple.
It can make your site more "sticky". Meaning it could mean the difference between keeping a visitor a little longer by giving more related information for them to view, Rankings are not everything in this world.

ConstantContent — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 14:55:50 +0000

I have to disagree as a person that has been hurt from using free content many times I have learned my lesson. Google places a penalty (PR0) on duplicate content pages, if you have enough your site will hold no weight. I’m not saying you will get banned but the duplicate content pages will bring your site down in any SE rankings your trying to work on. I know this is a debatable subject but I have a lot of personal experience with duplicate content and I’m just telling you what I have learned.

With that said if you say it doesn't help, why would you use it? Just as filler? That's not helping your site...

chrishirst — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 09:20:11 +0000

Free articles as content do not actually "hurt" a site, although they may not help greatly in some cases.

Unique content is obviously much preferable if your budget allows for it.

ConstantContent — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 03:21:46 +0000

Can I ask why your even looking for free articles? Free articles hurt your site IMO... Duplicate content is never a good thing, unless of course its simply for good reading. But for a website, duplicate content will do much more harm then good.