MoreNiche Affiliate Tutorials

Welcome to the fourth tutorial in the series on taking your first steps to becoming a MoreNiche affiliate!

The following tutorial will help you understand how to avoid duplicate content and the search engine penalties should you choose to use it. Everything that you learn here can be utilised to your benefit.

Join free today

Duplicate content

When it comes to the real world of online marketing, finding a single version of a document that has been left unaltered or not re-iterated elsewhere on the web is rare.

One clear example of this can be seen in online newspaper articles. Take the theme of falling property prices. Search for this topic within targeted search engines such as Google and you’ll find that in 5, 10 or even 20 articles there is duplicate content, figures and quotes. Some have not even been rephrased.

But here is not the only place you’ll find this type of duplication. Recipes, fitness programs (in particular in their workout tips), diet programs, definitions, and explanations; are all notorious for doing the exact same thing. They copy.

Now borrowing tips for a recipe may seem fine – after all, aren’t all recipes essentially the same – but this can present a problem for your website. Search engines are renowned for penalising a sites ranking if it looks as though they have lifted content from another site. Your ranking and indexing within Google could simply become lower due to this one key mistake.

Yet despite this penalisation, many of these sites still rank well amongst their competitors, begging the question of: are there are no filters to prevent such breaches?

Filters exist, but they are in a primitive form

In order to perform such searches, Search Engine’s need to use a lot of resources to be able to check the whole web for signs of duplication. For this reason, many engines opt to use simple forms so that they can uncover duplicate content within websites.

How?

The most common and easiest way to perform this action is to look into link patterns. The process itself is fairly straight forward. Picking two linked sites, these engines cross reference between the two looking for duplicate pages/content. If after this search they find that such copy exists, these engines focus on the site that links back to the source site and try to remove it.

How does this work?

It is simpler than it sounds. Let’s say in this scenario website B (one based on health news) republishes an article that was originally published on site A (a website that is a recognised health research institute). By duplicating this article they are putting a direct link to site A as a place for reference. Through this unique link search engines are able to recognise that site A is the original source for this article, whereas site B has obviously copied it for their own means.

With this awareness, Site B is penalised for containing dupe content within their website.

Simple, yes? Now here comes the complicated part.

How do search engines penalise?

Now having maybe one or two articles like this within your site won’t harm your ranking too much. Especially if these articles are surrounded by lots of original content. But – and yes there is a but – if say site B contains more duplicate content than there is original, then the website will be penalised.

And this is not if the site is 50/50.

If a website is found to contain a significant number of pages containing duplicate contain – 4 or 5 pages out of 12 – then the websites positioning within search result pages will be considerably lower. In some cases the website could be moved to a supplemental index or in worse case scenarios become completely unlisted from a search index.

With that in mind it is important to ensure that your affiliate website contains little or no duplication at all. Yes, even if the merchant has sent you over an article. If you appear to have duplicate content, your own site will lose ranking, lose conversions and will receive less traffic.

Test Conducted

We know this may be easier said than done, but to achieve success in affiliate marketing it is vital that you re-write content to make it original and unique to your own website.

Here is an example of how easy it is to lose ranking – even when you try to amend it afterwards:

Website X (the main source site) has 5 pages of original content and is ranked #1 on Google for a very uncommon search term. On this website alone there are over 100 links linking back to it and as well as it having an overall Google Page Rank of PR4.

Now a few weeks after its first launch, 30 pages of content - from another site that requires a link back - is added. No copy changes are made to these additional pages, so when Google indexes it now, its previous position of #1 falls. And not by a small amount. It moves down to position #67 out of 100.

With us so far? Well here comes the interesting part...

3 months after launch, all duplicate pages are removed, leaving the page with just its original content. Nothing but pure credible links.

Now when search engines came to update and re-examine the page again the website moves back up to position #2. Yes, a whole 65 places.

And all this was achieved simply to removing all forms of duplication from the copy.

What does it mean to you?

The idea behind demonstrating all this to you is simple. DO NOT link back to websites that have the same content as yours. Avoid it, especially if the number of pages that are duplicate are reams upon reams.

If a link is formed, your ranking will fall.

What you should do?

Now, we may be telling you to not link directly to websites - to prevent duplication - but you can still link to popular articles from our MoreNiche Content Connection. Yes, you read it correctly. It is all a matter of following a few simple rules and understanding how search engines work.

Pages on the web are assessed by search engines as a piece of code. They are not evaluated as an article, but are viewed as a whole. This can include the sites specific menu, its HTML tags, your layout, titles, description… you can see where this is going, they look at everything.

So the key to avoiding duplication is to mix up the code. Move it around and add in some extras. In their eyes, this article will now look a part of some bigger code.

And that’s it. Know this little secret, and you can use our articles.

Some useful tips for Content Connection users

To ensure further security within your use of articles, try using one or more of the following tips:

• Menu size: try using articles whose pages have a solid, fixed menu size
• Titles and content: when using a ‘used article’ try creating a unique introduction and ending to change the coding of the article. Similarly, experimenting with the titles and changing them can make a difference
• Synonyms: replace words with synonyms, phrases and different words
• Commentary: one key way to break up an article and change the content is to add a comment between sections or alternatively provide links to detailed information on other pages.
• Product reviews: similar to the one above, insert short product reviews, say a paragraph with a photograph, before providing a link for them to see the full review
• Length: say you have got a long article. Try splitting it into shorter versions, with 150-200 words per page. By splitting the article onto separate pages, you are changing the appearance of its coding.
• Re-write: the simplest way to prevent duplication is to rewrite the articles in your own words. By introducing your own tone of voice to the article – language, writing style and opinion – you can change the appearance of the code.
• Articles: another method is to combine articles. Obviously make sure you choose short ones, but as a whole piece they will look different from their originals (and will be much longer).
• Bullet points: if your article involves lists of bullets, try mixing their order whilst trying to keep them all structured
• Open your mind: try thinking outside the box when approaching these articles. Tackle them from a different perspective and open your mind to new horizons

Last tip

And this is an important one: DO NOT try to host a DMOZ directory. Not even part of it. Why? Well they may be able to help you make more pages for your website, but if Google find out they can easily ban you for it. Worse of all, they can remove your entire website from the internet.

Now you’re probably thinking: it can’t be that bad. But it can.

A coffee company tried to do this and as a result lost their site. And they were a big company too. They hosted over 1,000 pages from DMOZ – in a bid to increase visitors by another 500, but when caught lost their site.

It may sound shocking, but unfortunately it is true. Duplicate content can have a damaging result upon your website, so be wary.

Affiliate Marketing Tools and Resources

Domain Registration

GoDaddy – is the number one domain name registration service that we have found to date.

RegisterFly – is slightly less reliable as a domain registration service but does offer cheaper prices on certain domain name types.

Hosting

AnHosting – is renowned for hosting up to 10 domains under one account. Included in the package is CPanel and Fantastico; it is WordPress friendly, and has got many other scripts and statistics tools to offer.

BlueHost – will host up to 6 domains under one account; is WordPress friendly and includes within its package CPanel, scripts and tools.

HostGator – is a hosting service that has got CPanel; is WordPress friendly, and contains scripts and statistics tools.

MyriadNetwork – is a hosting service with CPanel and is also WordPress friendly.

Dreamweaver – is a professional HTML editor, ideal for working with our MoreNiche templates.

XSitePro – is a great asset for creating small review websites for marketers who have got little or no knowledge of design and HTML. This tool can’t be used with free MoreNiche templates.

Adobe PhotoShop – professional photo editing software.

Keyword Research Tools

KeywordElite – specialises in keyword research features. This tool will collect and find for you a range of keywords that you can incorporate onto your website. It is used by most top SEO and PPC marketers.

WordTracker – is one of the most popular online keyword research services available, offering advanced keyword research and suggestions.

SeoElite – is one of most popular SEO tools on the market, offering a multiple range functions, from competition research to automatic link exchange approaches and much, much more.

Aweber – one of the best email marketing services on the web. With this tool you can capture emails, create multiple campaigns, add in double opt-in functions, can create a great partnership with major internet providers to ensure your emails gets delivered and read.

We hope you enjoyed this tutorial and find it useful for your affiliate marketing stratergies. If you want more webmaster advice and want to promote an exclusive selection of products with great commission come in and join us today for free!