The discussion of Duplicate Content just will not go away. So instead of hiding from it we are going to face it head on and completely destroy it. We all want to impress our friends at Google hoping to gain some favor with a great ranking so we will do what they tell us to concerning duplicate content. Google says to use an xml sitemap with a robots.txt file so that they may crawl your site better. It just so happens that we will use these exact tools to destroy duplicate content on your site.

An xml sitemap will list your sites urls for the search engine spiders to follow. They will then follow those links to the pages and begin crawling them for unique content. It’s at this stage that the spiders are starting the process of deciding to index the page or not. If they find that the content is extremely similar to content they already have indexed they may not include it in the search results. By controlling the links on your xml sitemap you can begin the process of weeding out any duplicate content on your site.

Creating a sitemap.xml file is as easy as pie. For the serious webmaster with a little working knowledge of Python scripts you can download Googles sitemap generator and install it on your server. You can get it here.  For the less tech savvy (me) I found a site that will let you build your sitemap for free (under 500 pages). They also offer a standalone version in PHP for $19.99 or $29.99 installed on your server. The site is XML Sitemaps.com and I think you will like their service. Here is another site with some good resources http://xmlsitemap.com/

The second part of our solution to duplicate content is a robots.txt file. While the sitemap.xml file will tell the spiders where to go, the robots.txt file will tell them where not to go. You can restrict or even deny search spiders with this file. You can also disallow urls with this function and Google recognizes and follows the directions of a robots.txt file. So if you have pages that contains content you know is duplicated throughout your site or the net you can put those urls in your robots.txt file.

Their is a ton of information on the internet concerning robots.txt files but you may as well start at the beginning and visit http://www.robotstxt.org/. You will learn everything you ever need to know about these files on that site. By directing the movements of the search spiders you can help to ensure the long term health of your website.

For WordPress users we have a very simple and extremely effective XML Sitemap plugin. I created this video to show you the settings I use to create my XML sitemap. Use the link above to grab the newest release.

Thanx and remember…Always strive to improve and success will follow
David Knops Jr
DKWebsites LLC

Duplicate content is BAD!!! So, what is duplicate content? Does it hurt my serp’s? Should I worry about duplicate content on my site? Questions like these are pretty commonplace on many seo and webmaster forums. All of these are legitimate and understandable questions. This article will answer those questions and clue you in on why this is especially important for WordPress bloggers.

Duplicate content can run rampant on an out of the box version of WordPress. Especially if you put a post  into more than one category. When you do this WordPress creates a unique url for each category that you put the content into. Also if you show the full article on the home page it will create the link for the homepage and for the post page. So as you can see, it is very easy to have duplicate content on most all blogs. Some WordPress users actually put every post into their own category and show only excerpts on the home page to help reduce this duplicate content CLUTTER.

Having duplicate content on your site can and will hurt your serp’s and that’s exactly why you should be worried. Reducing, or even better Eliminating, duplicate content will improve your site’s search engine results pages (serp’s), create a more user friendly site, and the spiders will frequent your site more often knowing that content on your site is unique.

So how do you know if you have duplicate content on your site? Well if you are putting posts into multiple categories then you are absolutely guilty. If not then good for you but people still need a way to gauge if this is an issue for your site or not. So we turn to Google and find that they have what is called Googles Supplemental Search. This is where they like to put duplicate content so that it doesn’t corrupt the search results.

If we visit Google and type in site:www.yourdomain.com it will return the pages from your site that it has indexed. That is a fast and easy way to tell how much of your site is being advertised on Google for free. All serious webmasters want to do the little things that will gain favor from Google. Anything to get better serp’s thereby increasing traffic. However, those are NOT the pages from the Supplemental Search.

You need to use this syntax site:www.yourdomain.com -view***
The pages it shows you there are from Googles Supplemental Search and represent your duplicate content. If there are lots of results for your site and your overall serp’s aren’t very good…this could be a big part of the problem. Now that we know how to find our duplicate content wouldn’t it be nice to totally eliminate it from our site? Look for my next Post “How to Kill Duplicate Content” for a surefire end-all to duplicate content!!!

Thanx and remember…Always strive to improve and success will follow
David Knops Jr
DKWebsites LLC

Website Marketing in today’s world is a challenging and most often confusing monster to tackle. You’ll need to utilize a wide range of internet marketing techniques to fully recognize your goals as a successful webmaster and marketer. Gaining the competetive edge is every marketer’s goal and there are many different ways to get there.

Analyzing your strengths and weaknesses is a must. You will want to concentrate your efforts on your strengths while building your knowledge on the things you are weakest at. I also suggest setting small, modest goals that are attainable so that you can build your confidence as you go. As you reach a goal that you have set, take a short period of time to celebrate your success, then set a slightly more complicated goal.

Sometimes it’s hard to know where to start to achieve the goals you have set for your website so I will talk about 5 things you should be doing to increase your site’s visibility.

1. Create Unique Content- Creating unique content isn’t as hard as it may sound. You should already have a solid background in your site’s topic and writing articles is a part of every successful marketer’s toolbox. When we use the term “unique” basically it means you should avoid having articles that have the same content in them. That doesn’t mean you should only have 1 article about “internet marketing” it just means you should break down the main topic and write about smaller aspects of your main topic. Simply put…MIX IT UP
2. Syndicate your Content- Don’t limit your content to being stuck on your site only. You can use RSS (Real Simple Syndication) to allow your visitors to subscribe to your content in an RSS reader or even by email. If you have video content then submit your video to any or all of the 60+ video site’s online. Submit your articles to the article directories. This is an excellent way to get your content seen by people who would not know your site even exists and allows other webmaster’s the opportunity to host your article on their site. When that happens you will also get a backlink to your site…which brings us to…
3. Link Building- This is a very important step in website marketing as it allows people to get to your site. This will also help you increase your site’s search results which will always lead to more traffic. I have found and use a service that has a free option and has helped my site’s search results and I highly recommend them to anyone with a website. You can visit them at www.linkserp.com. You can also comment on blogs to gain some backlinks and of course you can always ask a webmaster to swap links with you.
4. Use Social Sites- Participating in social sites has become very popular among marketers. You get the opportunity to share your expertise as well as make some new friends. The key to using social sites is quite simply…be SOCIAL. Share your knowledge as well as the sites you like to visit and visit the sites of your new friends and over time this will lead to more traffic and customers.
5. Check your Rankings- If you are working to improve your search results you need to know where you are if you plan on getting where you want to be. If you have a site then you have keywords that you want to rank for. To find out where you are in the search engine results pages simply search for your main keyword(s) and start digging through the pages till you find your site. Now you can start to focus your efforts on creating a website marketing plan that will allow you to achieve your goals.

While this is a short list of internet marketing techniques, this list keeps me pretty busy all by itsself. The key is to stay focused on your goal and not get sidetracked with a single marketing idea. Spread it out allowing time for a little bit of everything and the results will add up very quickly. So till next time…Happy Holidays and Happy Marketing for all.

Thanx and remember…Always strive to improve and success will follow
David Knops Jr
DKWebsites LLC