Duplicate Content has become a huge topic of discussion lately, thanks to the new filters that search engines have implemented. This article will help you understand why you might be caught in the filter, and ways to avoid it. We’ll also show you how you can determine if your pages have duplicate content, and what to do to fix it.

Search engine spam is any deceitful attempts to deliberately trick the search engine into returning inappropriate, redundant, or poor-quality search results. Many times this behavior is seen in pages that are exact replicas of other pages which are created to receive better results in the search engine. Many people assume that creating multiple or similar copies of the same page will either increase their chances of getting listed in search engines or help them get multiple listings, due to the presence of more keywords.

In order to make a search more relevant to a user, search engines use a filter that removes the duplicate content pages from the search results, and the spam along with it. Unfortunately, good, hardworking webmasters have fallen prey to the filters imposed by the search engines that remove duplicate content. It is those webmasters who unknowingly spam the search engines, when there are some things they can do to avoid being filtered out. In order for you to truly understand the concepts you can implement to avoid the duplicate content filter, you need to know how this filter works.

First, we must understand that the term “duplicate content penalty” is actually a misnomer. When we refer to penalties in search engine rankings, we are actually talking about points that are deducted from a page in order to come to an overall relevancy score. But in reality, duplicate content pages are not penalized. Rather they are simply filtered, the way you would use a sieve to remove unwanted particles. Sometimes, “good particles” are accidentally filtered out.

Knowing the difference between the filter and the penalty, you can now understand how a search engine determines what duplicate content is. There are basically four types of duplicate content that are filtered out:

1. Websites with Identical Pages - These pages are considered duplicate, as well as websites that are identical to another website on the Internet are also considered to be spam. Affiliate sites with the same look and feel which contain identical content, for example, are especially vulnerable to a duplicate content filter. Another example would be a website with doorway pages. Many times, these doorways are skewed versions of landing pages. However, these landing pages are identical to other landing pages. Generally, doorway pages are intended to be used to spam the search engines in order to manipulate search engine results.
2. Scraped Content - Scraped content is taking content from a web site and repackaging it to make it look different, but in essence it is nothing more than a duplicate page. With the popularity of blogs on the internet and the syndication of those blogs, scraping is becoming more of a problem for search engines.
3. E-Commerce Product Descriptions - Many eCommerce sites out there use the manufacturer’s descriptions for the products, which hundreds or thousands of other eCommerce stores in the same competitive markets are using too. This duplicate content, while harder to spot, is still considered spam.
4. Distribution of Articles - If you publish an article, and it gets copied and put all over the Internet, this is good, right? Not necessarily for all the sites that feature the same article. This type of duplicate content can be tricky, because even though Yahoo and MSN determine the source of the original article and deems it most relevant in search results, other search engines like Google may not, according to some experts.

So, how does a search engine’s duplicate content filter work? Essentially, when a search engine robot crawls a website, it reads the pages, and stores the information in its database. Then, it compares its findings to other information it has in its database. Depending upon a few factors, such as the overall relevancy score of a website, it then determines which are duplicate content, and then filters out the pages or the websites that qualify as spam. Unfortunately, if your pages are not spam, but have enough similar content, they may still be regarded as spam.

There are several things you can do to avoid the duplicate content filter. First, you must be able to check your pages for duplicate content. Using our Similar Page Checker, you will be able to determine similarity between two pages and make them as unique as possible. By entering the URLs of two pages, this tool will compare those pages, and point out how they are similar so that you can make them unique.

Since you need to know which sites might have copied your site or pages, you will need some help. We recommend using a tool that searches for copies of your page on the Internet: www.copyscape.com. Here, you can put in your web page URL to find replicas of your page on the Internet. This can help you create unique content, or even address the issue of someone “borrowing” your content without your permission.

Let’s look at the issue regarding some search engines possibly not considering the source of the original content from distributed articles. Remember, some search engines, like Google, use link popularity to determine the most relevant results. Continue to build your link popularity, while using tools like www.copyscape.com to find how many other sites have the same article, and if allowed by the author, you may be able to alter the article as to make the content unique.

If you use distributed articles for your content, consider how relevant the article is to your overall web page and then to the site as a whole. Sometimes, simply adding your own commentary to the articles can be enough to avoid the duplicate content filter; the Similar Page Checker could help you make your content unique. Further, the more relevant articles you can add to compliment the first article, the better. Search engines look at the entire web page and its relationship to the whole site, so as long as you aren’t exactly copying someone’s pages, you should be fine.

If you have an eCommerce site, you should write original descriptions for your products. This can be hard to do if you have many products, but it really is necessary if you wish to avoid the duplicate content filter. Here’s another example why using the Similar Page Checker is a great idea. It can tell you how you can change your descriptions so as to have unique and original content for your site. This also works well for scraped content also. Many scraped content sites offer news. With the Similar Page Checker, you can easily determine where the news content is similar, and then change it to make it unique.

Do not rely on an affiliate site which is identical to other sites or create identical doorway pages. These types of behaviors are not only filtered out immediately as spam, but there is generally no comparison of the page to the site as a whole if another site or page is found as duplicate, and get your entire site in trouble.

The duplicate content filter is sometimes hard on sites that don’t intend to spam the search engines. But it is ultimately up to you to help the search engines determine that your site is as unique as possible. By using the tools in this article to eliminate as much duplicate content as you can, you’ll help keep your site original and fresh.

MSD can offer a range of copywriting services for your online and offline requirements. Contact us directly to find out more

Facebook is not the next Google. It is a whole new kind of phenomenon - not just a MySpace copy. There are opportunities there for the smart marketer.

Here are 3 reasons why you need to understand Facebook:

1. Applications You can build, or hire someone to build, little applications that Facebook users can add to their own Facebook pages. Custom applications can ‘go viral’, passing from user to user, very quickly. If a user ads, say, Ian’s Handy Widget to their pages, then all of their Facebook friends will see that one of their friends is now using the widget. They, in turn, may use it. After that, their circle of friends see it and do the same, and so on.

2. Blog import You can import your blog to Facebook. Then anyone in your Facebook circle of friends will see it.

3. Rubbing elbows Finally, this site offers a lot of opportunities to network and connect with lots of players in their given industries.

Learn about Facebook, folks. Sign up today, and spend a few minutes playing with it each day. It will pay off in the long run. Even if Microsoft buys them, this site has serious legs as a networking and marketing tool.

Source: Conversation Marketing

Lets start with a commonly misunderstood concept: Search engines don’t rank websites; they rank web pages.
Many people assume if they optimize their website for a number of keywords then all search traffic will go to their homepage. Actually the opposite is true; search engines look for relevant pages, not relevant websites. Search engines don’t just “think” in terms of your site as a whole; they mostly care about the page or pages relevant to the keyword searched for.

To optimize your site, instead of thinking globally, mentally break your site up into different parts and pieces. If you want to rank high for a particular keyword, you probably will need a separate page focused on that term if it is not relevant to your homepage.

Basic Page Optimization

Google looks for these things to identify the theme of a web page:

-Page Title: The page title is the text that appears in the blue bar at the top of your browser. Google uses the page title (also called the title tag) to identify pages and show users the relevance of the page. The page title also shows up as the link when a search result is returned. Keep title tags short and precise, between 8-9 words. Every page should have a different unique and relevant page title.
-Metadata: While meta tags aren’t as important as they used to be, including your main keywords in your page metadata can help Google differentiate between different pages.
-URL: The URL is the web address of a web page. Including relevant keywords in the page URL can help your rankings.
-Text: The content of the page should be relevant to the topic mentioned in your title tag.

Think of it this way: Being number one in the search rankings is important, but if you’re number two and you’ve optimized your content for the user, you’ll probably get more repeat visitors and sales than if you create pages focusing exclusively on getting better search rankings.

If you’re developing a new site, be sure your site is set up properly from the ground up. Make sure you can create title tags for each page, name each page with a separate URL, and include page specific metadata. The last thing you’ll want to do is to go back later and correct any basic site structure problems that you could have done right the first time.

Take Advantage of Internal Links
Internal links are links from pages on your site to other pages on your site. (In this case I’m referring to links within your text, not to navigation bar links.) You can improve your page rankings by linking directly to pages on your website by using one of your keywords as the link text. Google will follow those links and know your page is relevant for that topic. You’ve probably noticed Wikipedia uses internal links extensively; whenever a word is used that has a relevant article somewhere else on Wikipedia, that word gets an internal link.

Get Relevant Inbound Links
Inbound links are links to your site from other sites. Relevant inbound links are links from sites that contain content related to your site. If you sell computer hardware, an inbound link from a software site is relevant; an inbound link from a pet supply store is not.

Your goal is to get as many relevant inbound links as possible. Find sites that provide related products or related services that don’t specifically compete with you. Ask for an inbound link to the relevant page.

Check Out Your Competitors
Search for your keywords and check out the pages that rank highly. How many times is the keyword used in the text? How is the title tag written? Which keywords are in the URL?

You can also see how many inbound links your competitors have. On Yahoo, enter the text “link:www.(nameofsite).com” and you’ll see all inbound links to that page. Those same sites may also be willing to link to you. If multiple pages ranked in the top 10 have links from similar sites, go after getting those links first – those sites are probably trusted sources.

Get Your New Site Noticed
Google will eventually find your new website, but you can speed up the process. The best way is to get inbound links from trusted sites; when Google crawls those sites it will follow that link to your site – and you’ll get noticed.

Above All, Consider Your Visitors
Google looks at a variety of factors for ranking your pages. Content is important, but don’t add new content just to get Google to visit.

At the same time you’ll get a sense of how well your entire site is performing. If you have 400 pages and only five are indexed, you likely need more inbound links and optimization on the non-indexed pages.

Then make intelligent changes to improve your page rankings. Change your title tags. Change the content so your keywords are featured. Add internal links where appropriate. Get more – always get more – relevant inbound links.

Rinse and Repeat
Search engine optimization is an ongoing process. To drive traffic to your pages, make improving your site an important part of your weekly routine. Get your basic site structure right, keep collecting relevant inbound links, and provide good resources for your users… and the search engines will love you.

Chris Bennett is the President and Founder of 97th Floor, a leading edge SEO Firm specializing in Search Engine Optimization, Reputation Management, Social Media Marketing and Blog Optimization.

Back in the day it was a challenge to have your own website. Completing your first webpage was a feeling not unlike doing your first oil change. Using your physical and mental muscles to complete what was a formidable task pumps adrenalin like few other experiences.

Now days nearly everyone has a website. However, for those of us who are focused on building an Internet business, just having a website is not nearly enough. That’s where a CMS, or Content Management System comes into the picture. And that’s what Joomla is all about.
Joomla is your friend and will soon, if you’re really serious about growing a business, be your very best friend. I hasten to add, I am not trying to sell you on Joomla so you’ll buy the system from me. It’s not for sale!

Joomla represents a brand new application of open source code. This means you can use it without paying a dime for the system. You don’t need to know what that means because there are dozens of forums with thousands of friendly folks waiting to answer your questions and get you up to speed.

Joomla is a brand new open source CMS that began its rise toward Internet supremacy in 2005. Following a steady course of development and expansion Joomla is now a primary system for literally thousands of developers and companies. Adding us neophytes to the mix makes this a system that is impacting the lives of millions of Internet businesses.

Joomla is working in many different applications for as many different users. There are those who use it for personal pages. There are business web pages, newspapers, newsletters, magazines, Government portals and much much more.
Joomla now has more than 100,000 on its development team throughout the world. More than 40 languages are supported and the numbers continue to explode.

Joomla has its own working groups, much like Microsoft, but different. Its main, core team has subgroups that work through a group leader for continuity. The infrastructure is simplistic and the processes are smoothly established to ensure stability.

Makingspaces Design prefers Joomla for all websites it builds on a CMS platform. For more information, go to the official website, or contact us

First of all, what is a Content Management System? A Content Management System, or CMS for short, is an application designed to facilitate the creation and management of content. Whether or not you may need a CMS solution depends on the size of your website, the amount of traffic you receive, your skills as a web master, the number of users who will be adding content to the website, and many other factors. The content of a large website can be very difficult and tedious to maintain if a content management system is not used. Most CMS solutions will store the content in a database in an organized fashion. The administration interface of the CMS should provide an easy way to manage the content. On the other hand, a CMS solution for a small website may be overkill. A website with a small number of pages is easy to maintain, but may need a content management system solution as it grows. A content management system can be an easy solution for a webmaster who lacks the necessary skill set to create their own website. Most CMS solutions contain a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor. The editor allows for the creation of website content without HTML or other website specific knowledge. Makingspaces Design use a variety of CMS solutions depending on the job at hand. For a majority of our websites, we use Joomla CMS, as it is easy to use, flexible and well supported.