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Duplicate content is a hotly debated issue when it comes to how it affects your web-site ranking. And it’s become an even bigger issue over time as spammers and other malicious Internet users have taken to the practice of content scraping, or scraping the content from a web site to use on their own with only minor changes to the appearance, not to the content itself.

Content scraping has become such a problem that search engines now look for duplicate copy, even when it’s hidden behind a link like the Similar Pages that Google uses for related content. If they find it, your site may be lowered in the rankings or even delisted completely.

Still, the duplicate-copy issue isn’t as simple as it may seem. Some people think there’s too much worry about it, whereas others insist the problem needs to be addressed. And both are right to some degree. Let me explain.

First, you need to understand that not all duplicate content is the same kind. You need to appreciate some differences.

• Reprints:This is duplicate content published on multiple sites with the permission of the copyright holder. These are the articles that you or others create and then distribute to create links back to your site or to sites that are relevant to the content of yours. Reprints are not bad duplicate content, but they can get your site thrown into the realm of Similar Pages, which means they’ll be buried behind other results.

• Site Mirroring: This is the kind of duplication that can cause one or more of your sites to be delisted from a search engine. Site mirroring is literally keeping exact copies of your web site in two different places on the Internet. Web sites used to practice site mirroring all the time as a way to avoid downtime when one site crashed. These days, server capabilities are such that site mirroring isn’t as necessary as it once was, and search engines now “dis-include” mirrored content because of the spamming implications it can have. Spammers have been known to mirror sites to create a false Internet for the purpose of stealing user names, passwords, account numbers, and other personal information.

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  Tags: duplicate content

Two of the three big search engines (Google and Yahoo) place a large importance on one way links to determine rankings. Each link to your site is like a vote and the more votes you have, the higher you will rank.

In this article I will be sharing with you some important info on link building and some strategies to help your one way link building.

Before we get started, it’s important to understand the fundamentals…

Beginning with the very basics, a link is a way of navigating from one webpage to another. An ‘internal link’ is a link within the same website. An ‘external link’ takes you from a webpage in one website to a webpage in another website. The term ‘backlink’ means when another website links to yours.

There are 4 different types of links:

* URL Link - This is simply a website url that is a link.

* Text Links (aka static links) - This is the most common type of link (when you click on a word or phrase and it is a link)

* Image Links - An image link is simply an image that you click on to navigate to another webpage.

* Dynamic Links - These types of links are in another programming language called Javascript and while they also take you from one webpage to another, they have ‘extra codes’ to perform special functions.

(these types of links can appear in many different forms)

It is important to be able to recognize these types of links, even if you are not familiar with web design and programming. You don’t have to memorize the codes, just learn to identify each type of link.

Links provide navigation for human visitors and for ’spiders’ (aka: crawlers, robots, bots). Simply put, a spider is a computer program that goes to websites and gathers information. Search engines use spiders to visit and ‘index’ your website. This means that they gather information about your site in order to list it in their search results.

When the search engine spiders index your website, they follow the links to get from one webpage to another. It’s important to know that search engines cannot follow ‘dynamic links’ and do not follow html links that have a special code in them that says ‘no follow’.

The place where ‘no follow’ is commonly found is in the “meta tags” section of the website. Simply put, meta tags are information that is for the spiders only and is not seen by human visitors. You can see the code for any website in your browser by choosing ‘view source’. (From Internet Explorer, choose Page » View Source. From Firefox choose View » Page Source)

If a search engine spider cannot follow a link from another website to yours, you can still receive visitors but the link will not have any value from a search engine optimization perspective.

What types of links should you get?

There are 2 types of links that you can get:

* One-way links - A one-way link is when another website links to you and you don’t link back to them.

* Reciprocal links - A reciprocal link is when a website links to you and you link back to them.

One-way links are more valuable in the eyes of the search engines. However, each link has its own individual value based on: how relevant it is to your site, the text in and around the link, how much authority the website that links to you has, etc.

Also, it’s important to know that you can get links that have ‘no value’ in the eyes of the search engines, but they bring you hundreds or thousands of targeted visitors…

Generally speaking, the more websites that link to you the better. However, building links takes time and energy and if you focus on getting ‘high-quality links’, you will get a bigger return on your investment. 50 high quality links can be much more valuable from a search engine optimization perspective than 1000 ‘low quality links’.

What’s a high quality link? - Links that brings you Page Reputation (which shows the search engines that other related websites consider you to be important), and links that give you PageRank. Sometimes both at once, sometimes not…

To get high rankings on your website, you want to obtain links for targeted keywords. For this reason it’s necessary to start with Keyword Research.

If your website is about “bird watching”, the first step is to ‘do keyword research’ and find out which keyword you should aim for. While you could just start getting text links for the keyword phrase “bird watching”, if no one is searching for that - you won’t get any visitors. There’s no sense in ranking on the first page for a keyword that no one is looking for.

Or, if there is a lot of competition for that keyword, you might want to pick a “lower hanging fruit”.

Here is a great free keywords tool. (The numbers you see are searches/day.)

Another important part is making sure your page is optimized for the keyword you are targeting. If you are focussed on building one way links to your site but the links have anchor text which doesn’t even appear on your page, you will likely be wasting your time. (I say likely assuming that you have some competition for your targeted keywords, if there is no competition then it doesn’t matter).

In this case a site that has fewer one way links but much better on-page optimization is likely to rank higher. Or maybe you are building one way links to your site but they are just url links and not anchor-text links. Another site that has less links than you but better quality (anchor-text) will be likely to rank higher.

Ideally, you want to build a lot of one way links that have anchor text which includes the primary and secondary keywords that your page is optimized for. Google also uses Latent Semantic Indexing which (in a nutshell) means that they study the synonyms of the keywords on your page. This is to prevent spammers from just loading every second word with their keywords. Their algorithm looks at all the words on your page and how they relate to each other.

So, there’s no sense in building one way links if your content is not worthwhile. You want to optimize your pages for your visitors first. Then, you can go through and “sprinkle” your keywords. Then, go out and get one way links with the anchor-text of your targeted keywords, ideally getting most of these links from websites that are related to yours.

Yes, Google also looks at the relationship between your website’s content and the websites that links to you’s content. Fewer links to your business site from other business sites will be more valuable link-wise than more links coming to you from a site about video games..

Don’t make these link building mistakes:

* Don’t spend all your time getting one way links from sites with no Page Rank. One or two links from related Page Rank 5+ sites can be worth more than 100 links from sites with no PR.

* Be careful about buying links or you can get banned. Especially be careful about Site Wide links. If your website only has a few backlinks one day and the next day you have hundreds Google will see this and penalize you.

* Don’t spend all your time building one way links that are url-links, you want to get anchor-text links.

* Make sure the links you get are actually worth something, don’t get “No-Follow” links.

Happy Link Building!

Jason Storm is an SEO Expert who consults for small-business owners who want to increase their search engine rankings by using content optimization and one way link building strategies. Visit his website Affordable SEO Services for more info and articles.

Tags: link building

If you’re looking for a quick and easy way to start making money online, consider joining one of the Web’s free affiliate programs.

There are endless free to join affiliate programs available on the ‘Net — in any category you might be interested in.

And joining an affiliate program is without a doubt the easiest way to start earning an online income.

Here’s how it works.

You become an affiliate for another company’s product by joining their free affiliate program. Then you promote their products or services on your website. Anytime someone you refer buys something from them, YOU get paid a commission.

And the best part is that it doesn’t cost you anything to get started!

Most good affiliate programs will offer you free resources to help you promote their products effectively. Things like banner ads, salescopy, or product photos that in many cases have already been tested and proven to work.

You simply download them and use them on your website.

Why are they willing to do this?

Well, the better YOU are at promoting their products, the more visitors and sales THEY’LL receive. So everybody wins!

You’re helping them get customers that they might not have been able to get otherwise. And you earn money for doing so!

The amount of money you can earn from affiliate sales will depend on a number of factors:

Commission amount. Companies will offer anywhere from 5% up to 50% of a product’s sale price — a BIG difference.

Price point of product or service. A higher price point means a higher dollar amount for you, depending on the commission. This should be balanced with the commission amount.

Potential volume of sales you can make. Some highly specialized products can sell far more infrequently than others, limiting the number of sales you can make in a given time period.

How effective you are at promoting their products. The amount of time and effort you’re willing to put into promotion is a HUGE factor. Techniques like building an opt-in list and using email marketing to build relationships with your site visitors can catapult your earning potential.

There are a number of ways to find free affiliate programs. But if you’re just getting started, you might want to check out affiliate directories like AssociatePrograms.com and AffiliatesDirectory.com. They provide lists of credible free to join affiliate programs that have been pre-screened.

You can also sift through websites that sell products you’re interested in. They’ll tell you if they have a program they can join.

As an affiliate, you earn a commission for any sales made by people who click through from your website and purchase an affiliate product. So making money with website affiliate programs is dependent on maximizing the number of sales your site visitors make.

And in order to maximize sales, your website needs traffic — and lots of it!

Here are some techniques that will help you send visitors to your website:

Achieve a high ranking in the search engines.

Make sure your website includes keywords that target your particular market. When the search engine “spiders” come to index your site, they’ll boost your site higher in the rankings for those keywords. Ideally, you want your site to show up on the first or second page of search results.

Write short articles that will be distributed all over the Web.

All that’s required is about 400 words on a subject related to the product you are promoting. Include your byline and a link to your website at the bottom of each article, then submit them to free article directories, like EzineArticles.com.

When other site owners who are looking for content for their own sites republish your article, your name — and site link — will be propagated all over the ‘Net.

Buy pay-per-click traffic.

One of the fastest ways to drive additional traffic to your site is by advertising with pay-per-click search engines, like Google AdWords. All that means is that your link shows up in the section for paid advertisers. Then every time someone clicks on your link from a search engine results page, you pay a pre-determined amount.

Build a list of visitors’ email addresses.

This allows you to contact your visitors again with valuable information that will lure them back to your website. Or, you can even promote affiliate products directly by email.

It’s a great way to build relationships and trust, which translates into more sales over time.

Once you’ve got these tricks working for you, it is much easier to start making money online with affiliate programs.

Bjorn Brands is a successfull enterprenuer who transitioned from having his own building company to a great online business. Download his FREE eBook “The Affiliate Marketing Roadmap” right here http://www.moneyacces.com/freelesson/The%20Affiliate%20Marketing%20Roadmap.exe (no opt-in)