PLR Articles - Are They Worth It?

PLR articles are private label resell articles. That means that once you purchase the article / content you are free to resell it.

A common belief in SEO / Internet marketing circles is that if you purchase PLR articles you can then spin them (reword them) and make them unique enough to promote as your own without incurring any duplicate content penalties from Google.

The main problem I have with this is: How much of a difference do you have to make to an article / page / piece of content before it becomes unique in the eyes of the search engine?

Plus, if you are only rewriting it purely to get round the duplicate content filter, surely it isn't going to be saying much new that isn't already available ... therefore you're unlikely to get people linking to it ... and therefore unlikely to gain much benefit from it.

My other problem is probably more personal. You see, when I write an article I want it to have value and be genuinely useful to myself (as a reference) as well as a website visitor. Therefore I often find it difficult purely to switch a few words around and change a pre-written article.

Very often I'll end up scraping it and writing my own from scratch anyway .... so there's no huge benefit for me to buy PLR articles.

That said, I'm sure people will continue to buy them & tweak them & they will continue to evade the dup. content filter ... but shame on you! Bring some value to the web & your followers and they'll be forever greatful :)

Adam Gardner is a freelance SEO / Social Media Expert. Follow him on twitter @agseo or subscribe to this blog via RSS.

Phonat vs ATFC - Sleep Talk hits the Fan

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This one is simple, could help but feel that the brilliant Love Hits the Fan by Phonat needed some vocals ... Sleep Talk by ATFC fit the bill perfectly. Enjoy :)



Comments / Suggestions below please!

Google's new Layout : How it Affects You

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Google have just roled out a new layout with more in-depth search options down the left hand side of the page. The choices in this column aren't necessarily new, they've been available for some time.

Some of the options will already be familiar to users such as maps, videos, images & news since they've been available (and still are) along the top of the results page for a while now.

However the new additions to these search options are critical - they have been available for a while, but only if you went looking for them in the sub menus at the top of the results pages.

These new options include Blogs, Updates, and Discussions.

Blog Search

Google Blog Search (http://blogsearch.google.com) has been around for some time although people will notice it more now. If you want to find the latest blog post / opinion / review for a product or site then this is surely the easiest way to find it without specifically intending to use the blog search engine from the outset. If you needed another reason to start a business blog, surely this is it!

Updates

The updates option in the Google results pulls data from the real time search results (sites such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Google Buzz, etc.) It's now more important than ever to be listed in the real time search results - Get a Twitter account!

Discussions

This option returns results from the forums, Q&A sites & help sections. Helping out and answering questions in forums and message boards has always been a great way to get noticed and build a reputation in your industry, but now that there's a dedicated search option ... isn't it essential that you encorporate it into your online marketing strategy?

It's worth baring in mind that each of these options have sub-options to return and sort data by freshness (last 24 hours, last week etc.), length and also by location.

Therefore if you're running a local SEO campaign this could be a potential goldmine of relevant traffic!

Hyphens or Underscores? Which is Best?

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Another age old SEO / webmaster question ... should I use hyphens (dashes) or underscores in my page names eg. my-page vs. my_page.

Matt Cutts from Google states that it does make a difference as hyphens (dashes) are treated as seperators whereas underscores are not.

However he also says not to worry too much if your site is currently doing well, certainly don't go changing all your pages just because of this post. If it ain't broke, don't fix it!

But sure, if you're designing a brand new site structure, stick with hyphens - they look better and are easier (IMO) for people to remember and type (and they help Google to recognise seperate words).

A disclaimer: Like everything with SEO - just because this is currently the case doesn't mean it'll stay like this forever ... in fact this video was originally posted in February 2009 ... so they may have included underscores as seperators now too .... but I'd still stick with hyphens.

Paid Links & Buying Links

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Buying links or paying for links (which pass PageRank) has been officially forbidden by Google & is against their TOS.

That means that any links you buy or sell with the intention of gaming the search engines can potentially damage your site or even get it removed from the search engine's index.

Buying links isn't necessarily prohibited, Google rightly state that it is "a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results." and that "links purchased for advertising should be designated as such."

There are a few ways to do this but the most effective is to use the rel="nofollow" tag to tell the search spiders not to follow that particular link & not to pass any PageRank (reputation) along with it.

So, stop building sites just to gain PR & therefore to sell links & bring your online money making efforts into the 21st century!

Don't believe me? Here is Google's official stance.

Start Youtube Video at Specific Time

How To: Start a Youtube Video at a Specific Start Time

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Here's how to start a youtube video automatically at a given time. This method also works with Facebook embedding!

Find a video you wish to share. Copy the video URL (address) :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTG3FlEv4VQ

Now we have to slightly reformat the URL so that it becomes

http://www.youtube.com/v/aTG3FlEv4VQ

Next simply work out (in seconds) where you want the video to start. To start at 1 minute & 30 seconds, use 90 seconds & add this to the end of the new URL.

&start=90

So the complete URL becomes:

http://www.youtube.com/v/aTG3FlEv4VQ&start=90

Then simply copy and paste this into Facebook!

Autostarting the video

Automatically starting a youtube video is simple! All you need is another parameter tagged onto the end of the URL ... here's the code:

&autoplay=1

Where 1 is the number of times you wish the video to autoplay.

So to start the above video automatically at 90 seconds the complete address would be:

http://www.youtube.com/v/aTG3FlEv4VQ&start=90&autoplay=1

Enjoy!!

Number Google Search Results - How To

Individually Number Google Search Results

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So you know how to increase Google search results to 100. But what use is that if you only know that the site you're looking for in three-quarters of the way down the page?

This requires no additional plugins or software ... we're just creating a bookmark.

Individually Number Google Search Results for Internet Explorer

• Create a bookmark to any page. Name it something useful like (Number Google Results).
  


• Open Internet Explorer (IE)
• Select Favourites > Add to Favourites
• Right click the Favourite and choose Properties
• Input the following code in the URL box (it may give you a warning about Javascript - just ignore it).

To use, just search for something on Google then open the favourite menu and click the bookmark you created in Step 1.

Individually Number Google Search Results for Firefox

• Create a bookmark to any page. Name it something useful like (Number Google Results).
  


• Open FireFox (FF)
• Choose Bookmark this Page (or use Ctrl + D)
  
• Select Favourites > Add to Favourites
• Right click the Favourite and choose Properties
• Input the following code in the Location box.

To use, just search for something on Google then open the favourite menu and click the bookmark you created in Step 1.