Uniqueness, Duplicate Content and the Supplemental Index

[John Scott]

A minute ago I was asked in a PM why I do not recommend article submission as an SEO tactic.

First off, article submission may be useful, not for SEO, but for website promotion, if those articles are submitted to high traffic sites that actually drive traffic.

However, most article submission services and article submission directories are simply spamfests. They accept any odd rubbish, and then websites owners, hundreds of them, place those rubbish articles on their rubbish sites in an lame attempt to pick up "long tail" keyword searches.

However, some article submission does drive traffic. For example, submit a high quality article to SEOToday and it might drive some traffic. But then, the selectivity is there, and 99% of rubbish submitted will get rejected. That makes a huge difference.

The other you have to ask is, if you have a high quality article, why give away that content for free? You should think about putting it on your own site and reap the benefits - links and traffic.

Now, on to uniqueness and the supplemental index. First:

Originally Posted by John Scott

A lot of folks think that Supplemental Index is a bad thing because pages relegated to the supplemental index do not drive traffic.

I believe the supplemental index is almost wholly pages with non-unique text, and Google’s motivation for creating another index for that has more to do with filtering (devaluing) links from those pages than it is with keeping those pages out of their search results pages.

Google’s algorithm is still 95% link based. When you are a search engine that is driven by links and manipulated by links, it is in your interest to restrict link weight distribution authority. Google has smartly done this by devaluing link weight from non-unique pages (read: supplemental index); I am guessing that they also devalue non-unique links.

So, for those who need it spelled out, automated linking is out. Unique links count more. Unique anchor texts, unique contexts on pages with entirely unique text.

Non-unique = bad, very bad.

Unique = good, very good.

Source: Internet Marketing Blog.com

Google is going after duplicate content, and placing it in their supplemental index, in order to diminish / block the passing of link juice from spammy duplicate content.

Duplicate content, such as article submission spam and automated web directory submissions (which use the same description & title for hundreds of directories), has been used for years by SEO's and these are the same SEO's who are now complaining about lost rankings.

Supplemental index = duplicate content = no link juice.

Article submission for SEO is just another form of spam. Google knows it, and has reacted.

[woodcs82]

Thanks John that really helped out! I'll look for your PM soon.

Every time i come here i like this forum much more. I appreciate how active you are here.

[John Scott]

Originally Posted by woodcs82

Thanks John that really helped out! I'll look for your PM soon.

Every time i come here i like this forum much more. I appreciate how active you are here.

We aim to please

[IndigoBlack]

Yeah, I figured this out some time ago which is why I stopped submitting articles to article directories. I figured I could do better by keeping my writings on my own sites.

However, I have decided that I will do guest blogging on other blogs when the opportunities arises. I figure the blogger gets a unique article added to their site for free and I get some traffic and link backs. Win/Win.

[factoring]

I have a question for you. I submitted an article to ezine. It is now ranked in the top 30 sites for my main keyword.

I am still in the sandbox. Won't that help me?

Side Question.
I wrote this article previously and put it in my blog. Should I remove it from my blog because of duplicate content?

[John Scott]

Should I remove it from my blog because of duplicate content?

Yes.

[alfie]

Sorry John,

how about writing unique content and then submit it to, let's say, top 5 article directories (those really reviewing your article)?. If the content is not on your site, there's no direct duplicate content, I guess it's not going to harm...I hope

Thank you

[IndigoBlack]

Originally Posted by factoring

I have a question for you. I submitted an article to ezine. It is now ranked in the top 30 sites for my main keyword.

I am still in the sandbox. Won't that help me?

Side Question.
I wrote this article previously and put it in my blog. Should I remove it from my blog because of duplicate content?

From what I understand as long as it was indexed on your blog first you will not be penalized for duplicate content.

If you submitted it to the article directory first and then put it on your blog it would benefit you to revise the article so that it is different enough from the original to be considered a different article.

[woodcs82]

i appreciate all the input here.

[temyong]

Hi, john thanks for another tip that you gave. It really help me lot.

[zokiii]

John,

are you sure that google devalues links from pages which are placed in supplemental index ?

This is something new for me ...

If you link those pages from some other sites, you get those pages out of supplemental and then google count those links

[tdd1984]

Originally Posted by John Scott

A minute ago I was asked in a PM why I do not recommend article submission as an SEO tactic.

First off, article submission may be useful, not for SEO, but for website promotion, if those articles are submitted to high traffic sites that actually drive traffic.

However, most article submission services and article submission directories are simply spamfests. They accept any odd rubbish, and then websites owners, hundreds of them, place those rubbish articles on their rubbish sites in an lame attempt to pick up "long tail" keyword searches.

However, some article submission does drive traffic. For example, submit a high quality article to SEOToday and it might drive some traffic. But then, the selectivity is there, and 99% of rubbish submitted will get rejected. That makes a huge difference.

The other you have to ask is, if you have a high quality article, why give away that content for free? You should think about putting it on your own site and reap the benefits - links and traffic.

Now, on to uniqueness and the supplemental index. First:



Source: Internet Marketing Blog.com

Google is going after duplicate content, and placing it in their supplemental index, in order to diminish / block the passing of link juice from spammy duplicate content.

Duplicate content, such as article submission spam and automated web directory submissions (which use the same description & title for hundreds of directories), has been used for years by SEO's and these are the same SEO's who are now complaining about lost rankings.

Supplemental index = duplicate content = no link juice.

Article submission for SEO is just another form of spam. Google knows it, and has reacted.

I'd haev to agree 100 percent

[Rankenstein]

Originally Posted by zokiii

If you link those pages from some other sites, you get those pages out of supplemental and then google count those links

That's right - supplementals will emerge into the main index if you give them better page rank. So says Matt Cutts.

[John Scott]

Originally Posted by Rankenstein

That's right - supplementals will emerge into the main index if you give them better page rank. So says Matt Cutts.

If low PR got them there in the first place. If dup content got them there, I doubt more links will change that.

[Rankenstein]

Oh, no question that supplementals are pages Google really aren't bothered about, but the reasons why vary. Dupes go straight in. I wasn't even thinking about the topic of the thread, just what zokii said.
So yeah, quite right.
Cutts was even saying he's got loads of pages from his site in supplementals.

[zokiii]

Originally Posted by John Scott

If low PR got them there in the first place. If dup content got them there, I doubt more links will change that.

Try to link those pages from some trusted places and you will see that they were moved to main index

I assume that you know all this.

[zokiii]

I'm very interested in this thread

John,

look what Matt Cutts said on seomoz :

duplicate content doesn't make you more likely to have pages in the supplemental index in my experience. It could be a symptom but not a cause, e.g. lots of duplicate content implies lots of pages, and potentially less PageRank for each of those pages. So trying to surface an entire large catalog of pages would mean less PageRank for each page, which could lead to those pages being less likely to be included in our main web index. I'm not aware of an explicit mechanism whereby duplicate content is more likely to be in our supplemental results, but I'm also happy to admit that as supplemental results are different from webspam, I'm not the expert at Google on every aspect of supplemental results.

Your opinion ?

[John Scott]

Your opinion ?

My opinion is that duplicate content gets you into the supp index.

[nhebb]

John,

I think you right on the money. Last year I looked at a few of the top article submission sites. Then, I looked for their top producers - the writers who had written a lot of articles. I visited their sites, and they typically sucked all the way around. The content was bad, the PR was low, the backlinks displayed by Google were low*, and their Alexa wasn't anything spectacular.

I was immediately turned off to article writing. I'm no lover of writing, so when I do it I'd rather stick the content on my site.

[* Re Google back links - I know Yahoo is the tool to use for this, but I've always assumed that if the links are quality, eventually a certain percentage will show up on Google.]

[flora]

When I started my first site the received wisdom was to use article syndication for backlinks. The links that I got really were not worth the effort because recently I found out how to check the supplemental index and those pages were lurking there!