Case Study: Ranking with High SERPs Using Duplicate Content
November 14, 2007
Haha, I Copied Your Content…
And Ranked for it Googledammit! That’s right, on the 31st of October I decided to play a little trick-or-treat experiment with the SERPs for technology news. If you recall, I’d announced the launch of Yahoo Messenger 9 Beta, which is still being downloaded compliments to all the bells and whistles Yahoo has added.
So here’s the story : I barely wrote 5 lines of my own unique content with the rest copied from my good friend Saad from Sizlopedia, and from Amit Aggarwal’s post on the same topic at Digital Inspiration. Amit caught on right away and hinted that I’d copied his post, and I informed Saad from Sizlopedia over an instant messenger conversation.
Folks, just to stress my point, I’d copied about 85%-90% and remixed the content between the two posts, and even gone as far to take Amit’s screenshot from his post.
The Results
Google picked up on the post within about 3 hours, and I started off on the 2nd page in position # 16 relative to all other posts for the term ‘download yahoo messenger 9 beta’. I’ve also ranked on the 1st page for similar permutations of these keyword phrases, although this is the one that send me the most organic traffic.
Between October 31st to November 12th, I received 91 extremely targeted unique visitors, who stuck around DailyMoolah for much longer than any other visitors from an alternative referral source. In fact, they spent an average of 19:02 minutes on this blog, with a 30.77% bounce rate. On average these users also went through 4.24 page views/visit which is double the average of all the visitors to this blog.
The TakeAway
Let’s get a few things straight - DailyMoolah dot Com is a blog about making money online, seo, blogging tips and wordpress. It is not a technology blog and perhaps never will be. I have not had any financial gain from copying this post although I did gain some valuable insight on the way semi-competitive terms are ranked for even while presenting clear duplicate content.
As of now, I am in #6 for the term ‘download yahoo messenger 9 beta’ a little behind my friend for Sizlopedia. Take a step back and think about this scenario on a grander scale and you’ll understand why the effort sploggers take are well worth it.
My notes to Amit and Saad: I’m sorry if I’ve offended you by copying your content. As a blogger, I realize how difficult it is to write compelling and unique content and am equally offended when someone rips off my post. This was done with the sole intention of demonstrating an SEO case study and nothing else
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Posted in SEO, Sneaky Tactics
A Toronto Based Serial Entrepreneur and Internet Marketer
November 14th, 2007 at 11:54 pm
Sneaky bastard! Very interesting article. I hope your friends aren’t too pissed at you!
Rich
November 15th, 2007 at 5:42 am
And now you have accepted that you copied content, maybe Google listened. Your ranking slipped to number 9 for download yahoo messenger 9 beta.
And btw what is the timeperiod set for top commentors? For more than 1 month now, I am the top commentor. You really aren’t giving much incentive keeping limit more than a month to reset top commentator list. Check that.
November 15th, 2007 at 5:44 am
Problem at Your comment form, it showed the following error:
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SELECT cat_ID AS ID, MAX(post_modified) AS last_mod FROM `wp_posts` p LEFT JOIN `wp_post2cat` pc ON p.ID = pc.post_id LEFT JOIN `wp_categories` c ON pc.category_id = c.cat_ID WHERE post_status = ‘publish’ GROUP BY cat_ID
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Please fix this.
November 15th, 2007 at 8:36 am
Sneaky works, it is amazing what we all do for Google. By the way I was a little more than challenged by your audio Anti Spam word.
November 15th, 2007 at 1:14 pm
@ Nspeaks - Time period has been reset to 1 week. I’m having some major database connect issues that I’m not sure how to deal with… I’ll get someone who knows about databases to fix it shortly…sorry for the inconvenience
November 15th, 2007 at 6:51 pm
Dev,
This is a very interesting post. Stumbled!!
November 16th, 2007 at 7:45 pm
lol I don’t have the nuts to do that, but I commend you. Just look at EzineArticles.com They have thousands upon thousands of articles that appear on many other sites and they still get #1 spots for competitive terms.
It really all comes down to authority. If your page is of a higher authority than the other, yours will outrank it.