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Content duplication has been a buzz topic in SEO for a while now. You can read about it til you puke and never have to leave WebProNews.com. It’s one of the modern webmaster’s favorite things to fret over and has been for at least two years.

Google doesn’t like duplicate content.  We all get that now.  There is still the lingering perception that there is some sort of duplicate content penalty despite repeated assurances from multiple Googlers to the contrary.  Maybe there is no penalty; maybe there is some sort of mechanism at work that webmasters perceive as a penalty… it really matters very little.  At the end of the day, if you aren’t showing up for your own content but somebody else is… you probably aren’t the happiest little webmaster.

As a result, syndication has been quite unfairly vilified.  Traditionally speaking, having a site link to your content has always been perceived as a compliment of sorts (Google certainly thought it was a fair indicator of quality). That said, syndicating content… having your great content actually picked up by a larger, more influential site was even better in a lot of ways.  The syndicated content was put right in front of a whole new user base without them having to click a thing.  Generally you also got a nice link back to your site to boot. If you produced a great piece of content, why not have it show up everywhere you possibly could?

Penalty or not, it is clearly the case that the site where content originates may not always rank best for that content.  Google wants to do their best to make sure they keep the content of their results pages as distinct from one another as they can. In short, Google doesn’t want to have a result page where 4 of the 10 results are all essentially the exact same article.

Here’s the thing though syndication is good.  It can drive traffic to your site.  It can establish your reputation and credibility within a niche and it can generate high quality inbound links.  If you are upset because the larger, more recognized and more popular site’s syndication of your content outranks your own then I’d have to say you might need to rethink that one a little bit.  So what if it does? You are there because you want to be exposed to the larger site’s community.  You want the links, attention, reputation and all the good things that go along with that don’t you?  Of course you do.  So if you do a search and find that the big site is number one on a good search query with your content, you don’t get upset – you say ‘yay’.

Why do you say yay? Because your super great content would never have that top position if not for the fact that Google found it on the larger more authoritative site. Sure, if it’s that good you can probably get a decent ranking but it won’t be as good.  Beyond the ranking, even if your site is #2 and the big site is #3 for the same article, guess which one is likely to get clicked thru more; the link to your site, which is not all that well known? Or the link to a site that somebody has heard of?

If you aren’t a household name or a recognized authority in whatever areas you are covering, the fastest way to build that reputation and credibility is to become associated with the brand that is. What’s the best way to do that? Get your name, your company and your link on their domain. Because at the end of the day the likelihood of you just outranking them on your own for similar subject matter is probably going to be a tough order.

Abby Johnson talked to Eric Enge from Stone Temple Consulting at SES recently about the syndication vs. duplicate content problem.  Eric has some great tips in the video for minimizing the negative aspects of duplication on a syndication model.  Three specific items he talks about are syndicating excerpts, including a no-index tag, and writing ‘alternative’ versions of your content expressly for syndication.  He also talks about how effective a syndication model can be.  One site he’d worked with increased their traffic by over 50% using syndication almost exclusively. 

Google is also working on some stuff to help us help them (isn’t that just awesome of them?).  Read up on their new cross domain canonical tag.  It’s new, none of the other search engines support it yet, and it remains to be seen how effective it will be, but it’s a start.  Whatever you do, don’t throw the proverbial baby (syndication) out with the bathwater (duplicated content worries). There is a lot of upside to an effective syndication strategy.

Related Articles:

> Duplicate Content Owners Catch A Break From Google

> Duplicate Content On Google, Bing, & Yahoo

> 10 Search Topics That Require Further Discussion

Amazon has released an iPhone app for the Kindle to over 60 countries. Now users in a total of 64 countries can read Kindle books on their iPhones and iPod Touch devices.

"We are excited to make the Kindle for iPhone App available to iPhone and iPod touch users in more than 60 countries, allowing them to access the vast selection of the most popular books, all available wirelessly from the Kindle Store," said Ian Freed, vice president, Amazon Kindle. "The Kindle for iPhone App is the perfect companion for customers who own a Kindle or Kindle DX, and a great way for customers around the world to download and read books even if they don’t yet have a Kindle."

Amazon says that with the app, customers in over 60 countries will be able to: 

- Purchase, download and read hundreds of thousands of books available in the Kindle Store.

- Read the beginning of books for free before they buy them.

- Add and automatically synchronize bookmarks and last page read.

- Access their library of previously purchased Kindle books stored on Amazon’s servers for free.

- Choose from six different font sizes and adjust words per line.

- Add and view notes and highlights marked on Kindle and Kindle DX.

- Read books in full color including children’s books, cookbooks, travel books, textbooks and graphic novels.

Countries where the app is available include: The United States, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Estonia, Finaland, France, Greece, Guatemala, Germany, Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Malta, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, United Kingdom, Uruguay, Venezuela, and Vietnam.

Amazon says that in the coming months, they will be releasing Kindle for Mac and Kindle for Blackberry. Amazon’s Kindle reached record sales in the month of November.
 

Related Articles:

> Amazon Working on Accessibility Features for Kindle

> Amazon’s Kindle Breaks Sales Record in November

> Amazon Rolls Out Kindle For PC

The search industry has changed a lot since it was conceived years ago. The rate of change shows no signs of slowing down either. That’s one reason why it pays to keep up with the current trends and discussions surrounding the industry. One way to do this is through attending conferences. WebProNews attended and covered Search Engine Strategies in Chicago this week, and we’ve put together ten selections that can help you learn a thing or two for your own search engine marketing endeavors.

What do you think the most important topic in the search industry is right now? Discuss here.

1. A Black Hat Debate

There was an interesting discussion about the difference between "Black Hat" and "white Hat" SEO, and how their meanings change over time. This led to talk about Google’s place as the enforcer of rules.

Read here.

2. What’s Better: PPC or SEO?

If you’ve ever wondered whether you should focus your efforts on PPC or SEO, some experts looked at the pros and cons of both, which could help you in your decision. Of course using both is always an option, but does one fit your plan and budget better than the other?

Read here.

3. Ranking In Real-Time Search

Real-time search has been the subject of much discussion throughout the industry in 2009. Now the year is almost over, and Google has finally introduced its version right into its regular search results.  What does this mean and how can you optimize for it?

Read here.

4. The Future Of Online PR

PR tools change over time, but the principles remain relatively consistent. In the age of social media, many PR professionals have discovered just that, and many more marketers continue to do so as time progresses. That said, PR must still evolve to utilize the evolution of tools and go where the people are.

Read here.

5. Lessons from Political Social Media

Social media has changed politics. There’s no question about it. The last U.S. Presidential election really highlighted it, but you can expect that every election from here on out will accentuate that point further. Dan Siroker, former Deputy New Media Director for the Obama Presidential Transition discussed the topic at the conference and pointed to five lessons that should be taken away.

Read here.

6. Be Proactive to Avoid Duplicate Content Issues

Duplicate content is one of those topics in search engine marketing that comes up over and over again. It never really goes away. Though Google has come right out and said that it doesn’t exactly get you "penalized" in their search engine, there are still reasons it should generally be avoided in most cases (though there are exceptions). Experts discussed ways to better manage your content to avoid duplicate content issues.

Read here.

7. Small Businesses And Social Media

The big companies often make social media look easy, but let’s face it. Small businesses just don’t have the same resources. That doesn’t mean that small businesses can find a tremendous amount of benefit to using social media channels to connect with the customers and the general public. Need some advice?

Read here.

8. Moving Beyond Google

There’s no question that Google is a dominant force on the Internet. You can hardly ignore Google as a marketer or webmaster. Still, it’s not the only thing people use on the Internet, and it’s not the only way they find content, products, and sites. It shouldn’t be your only area of focus. At SES, some tips on moving beyond Google were discussed.

Read here.

9. How Marketers Can Find Success Via Search

Search is getting harder for marketers all the time. Search engines frequently change how they deliver results. Google has really driven this point home in the past week with the announcements of personalized and real-time search. Search marketers have to constantly adapt. Still, there are some things that never change. Experts discussed how marketers can find success with search in one session at the conference.

Read here.

10. Optimizing for Mixed Media Search Results

One of the ways search is getting more challenging for marketers is the inclusion of mixed media search results like Google’s Universal Search. Google sometimes delivers news search, image search, blog search, local search, and other kinds of results (now real-time results) in SERPs, and while this can be great for users, it also means less focus on organic search results. That means as a search marketer, you really can’t ignore the mixed media result being pulled.

Read here.

As always WebProNews conducted a number of exclusive interview at the conference. These will be posted over time, so check the WebProNews Video Blog frequently. Here is a taste of what we have live so far:

Conferences like Search Engine Strategies and others frequently provide great discussion about topics that WebProNews readers care about. That’s why we attend so many of them. We also like to extend the discussion that takes place at the conferences to our readers. That’s why we encourage you to comment on our articles and extend the conversation even further.

Share your thoughts on any of the ten topics mentioned above.

After all is said and done Rupert Murdoch may still be seen as the sly old fox that really knew best. Many bloggers and journalists have pounded the insanity of Murdoch’s suggestion that News Corp publications might strike an exclusive indexing deal with Bing and delist itself from Google’s search engine.

However, what if Murdoch was really only talking about the Wall Street Journal and not all News Corp publications? Then the idea might actually make a lot of sense.

According to Compete.com WSJ.com already receives the largest percentage of its traffic from Microsoft’ (18.74%). This is contrary to many sites which typically receive the majority of their referrals from Google, often many times more than what Microsoft delivers. Yahoo provides another 6.3% and since Bing will likely be owning Yahoo’s search business that means Microsoft is actually delivering 25% of the Wall Street Journals current traffic. 

If Rupert Murdoch can get Microsoft to pay possibly as much as $50 million or more a year to lose just 11.5% of his Google traffic sent to WSJ.com the deal makes a lot of sense.

According to Hitwise Google and Google News combined deliver approximately 26% of WSJ.com visitors. However, even with this larger percentage (vs. Compete’s) Hitwise notes in a blog post why this might not be as much of a traffic loss as it appears:

Analyzing Google search terms driving traffic to the Journal, the top 100 terms accounted for over 21.6% of all Google search traffic to WSJ.com. Of that 21.6%, 13.4% were navigational or brand searches (e.g. "Wall Street Journal," "WSJ," "WSJ.com" etc…). Even if Murdoch decides to block Google, these navigational search queries will most likely remain intact.

Of the remaining 8.2%, the majority of searches were for stock quotes, and general business related searches. Most specific news related searches fill-out the long tail of search queries. While the Journal may lose traffic if it ceases to cooperate with Google the loss may be less then anticipated.

From Bing’s perspective Wall Street Journal exclusivity not only differentiates Bing from Google but it could also help change its image as a more consumer focused search engine. The Wall Street Journal is the most read business publication in the World and this deal could go a long way toward modifying Bing’s consumer image in the minds of business executives.

After all, a click resulting from a B2B oriented search term usually demands a premium price, which could help offset Bing’s cost of paying Murdoch for exclusive inclusion.

Update: Two more publishers have come out with statements indicating their possible desire to de-index from Google as well. Read more here …

Update 3: Twitter is now telling me that I am part of a beta test group for the retweet features, so I guess it is no longer on hold.

Those who are part of the test get the following message:

Hi there, you’re part of a beta group receiving this feature, which means you may start seeing retweets in a new way. People who don’t have this yet will see your retweets prefaced by "RT".

Update 2: Twitter says on the Twitter Status blog, "We’re working on a few problems related to the ongoing rollout. These should be resolved quickly and it will be back on for those who had the Retweet feature previously. And we’ll then continue the incremental rollout of this feature to everyone."

Update: There is an interesting post here from Twitter CEO Evan Williams, which talks about how the retweet button works, and why Twitter is doing it the way it is.

Original Article: Back in the summer time, Twitter announced that it intended to add a retweet option to its service and the API. Twitter is now rolling out the feature to a small percentage of Twitter users.

"You may remember that we shared the mechanics of this feature with developers a while back so they could think about how to work it into Twitter apps," says Twitter Co-founder Biz Stone on the company blog. "Now we’re ready to start trying it on Twitter. The plan is to see how it goes first with this small release. If it needs more work, then we’ll know right away. If things look good, we’ll proceed with releasing the feature in stages eventually arriving at 100%."

If you are a regular Twitter user, it’s pretty much a given that you know what retweeting is, but Stone describes what the button does to those in the dark. "Retweet is a button that makes forwarding a particularly interesting tweet to all your followers very easy," he says. "In turn, we hope interesting, newsworthy, or even just plain funny information will spread quickly through the network making its way efficiently to the people who want or need to know."


The Impact of Retweets

Retweets have already been a great way for content and updates to go viral. Now as the actual feature rolls out, that should only increase. Read this article for a look at the pros and cons of retweets (there are more pros).

Now that retweeting is becoming an actual feature of Twitter, you’re going to want to keep in mind the tweetability of your content. Shéa Bennett, who writes the blog Twittercism, came up with a helpful equation for maximizing retweet potential. We talked about that here, but basically what it boils down to is leaving enough room in a tweet to accommodate what others will add to it as they retweet it.

This means keep titles short (at least in the tweet). For example, if you use some form of "tweet this" button on an article that automatically fills out the Twitter form with the article info, make sure there are not too many characters taken up. As you’re probably aware, Twitter only allows for 140, and that’s not very many. Keep in mind the "RT," hashtags, usernames, etc.

Tweaking Twitter Trends

In another piece of Twitter-related news, the company also announced that it is experimenting with improvements to trends that will help users find more relevant tweets. They say they’re working to show higher quality results for trend queries by returning tweets that are more useful.

"The improvement won’t be very noticeable at first, but this is a small step toward unearthing more value in search and getting you more relevant results," says @JennaDawn.

This means you will probably see less spammy trending topics popping up, which should benefit anyone who follows the trends.

Related Articles:

> An Equation for Getting More Traffic from Twitter

> Wonder What Percentage of Tweets are Retweets?

> More to Retweeting Than Meets the Eye for Businesses?

Google has used its Insights for Search tool to provide some data about consumers’ searching behavior when it comes to things like discounts, free shipping for the holidays, coupons, and promotional codes.

Unsurprisingly, there is an uptick in searches for all of these things, indicating that this is the stuff consumers are after for their holiday shopping. Such data serves as a great indicator that e-commerce businesses should be providing this stuff if at all possible. Without such deals, online businesses stand to lose out on sales to competitors that do offer them.

According to Google, 87% of consumers plan to take advantage of price discounts or sales this holiday season and 73% plan to take advantage of free shipping.

"Though not all retailers offer free shipping, discounts, or other rebates, know that these value propositions resonate with consumers so begin thinking about how your company or product is providing value and incorporate that messaging into your online marketing campaigns," says Eric Lopez of Google’s Retail team. "Consumers are eagerly looking for a reason to buy from you."

Searches for coupons have been growing this year, even more so than last year when the recession was at its worst level. According to Google, 68% of consumers report that they plan on taking advantage of coupons this season. The same goes for promotional codes, which has increased (as a query) by as much as 55% year-over-year.

"With growing interest, ensure you are advertising your coupons, coupon codes, and promo codes to capture increased search volume," says Lopez.

Google’s data reflects that of Deloitte’s, which found that about a quarter of consumers will shop primarily online this year and many are using the Internet to find special offers, with 44% expecting to use a coupon they get online.

In fact, that study had a lot of interesting statistics that online retailers may want to consider before it’s too late. Read here.

Related Articles:

> Holiday Shoppers Turning To Social Media And Internet

> Google Gears Up For The Holidays

> More People Plan To Shop Online During The Holidays

 In what is becoming not so unusual, a celebrity announces news on Twitter in order to beat the mainstream media. Late today actress Elizabeth Taylor announced to her 156,673 Twitter followers, "I am going into the hospital to have a procedure on my heart".

Read from the bottom…

1. Any prayers you happen to have lying around I would dearly appreciate. I’ll let you know when it’s all over. Love you, Elizabethabout 3 hours ago from web
       

2. It’s very new and involves repairing my leaky valve using a clip device, without open heart surgery, so that my heart will function better.about 3 hours ago from web
    

3. Dear Friends, I would like to let you know before it gets in the papers that I am going into the hospital to have a procedure on my heart.about 3 hours ago from web

We talk a lot about social media marketing – using social networks like Facebook and Twitter to market brands and drive traffic to sites. There is no question that these can be effective tools for doing both of these things.

As time goes on, it may become helpful or perhaps even necessary to use these tools for actual e-commerce. The common thinking behind social media marketing is that you don’t want to be too sales-pitchy in your conversations, and in some ways that is still very true. However, while social media is largely about conversations, it’s not only about conversations.

As time progresses, social media becomes a lot of things to a lot of people. We’ve reached the point where social networks are simply "where we hang out" online. People are not only having conversations. They’re sharing pictures. They’re playing games. They’re looking for information. They’re using social networks to help them make purchase decisions. Sometimes this is through conversation. Sometimes it’s as simple as being a fan of a brand’s Facebook page and receiving timely updates.

Has social media ever led you to an online purchase? Tell us about it.

Facebook has virtual currency, and is starting to open up possibilities for transactions for physical goods. Facebook Connect has just been made easier for webmasters to implement on their sites. That’s huge. As people spend much of their time on Facebook, they are pretty much relinquishing a certain amount of trust to the social network, whether they realize it or not (and whether they should be or not, but that’s another issue).

If your site is plugged into Facebook via Facebook Connect, and they can log in to your site to make purchases just by being logged into Facebook, they may not find themselves as concerned with security issues. Security concerns have long hindered the true potential of e-commerce, and as a result, plenty of trustworthy e-commerce sites have likely missed out on tons of sales, just because of the distrust of the method of purchasing in general.

Now I’m not saying that Facebook Connect is a sign of security. In fact, some might even suggest that it damages security, simply based on the fact that Facebook is often associated with security issues. I’m just saying, users are always signed in to Facebook anyway, and if they see your site is connected with Facebook, they may have no problems signing in with their Facebook info.

"Facebook Connect would allow you to go to a Website like Dell.com and authenticate yourself using your Facebook profile, allow your identity to be known and access your friends so you could spark up a chat," says Paul Dunay, Global Managing Dir. of Services, Social Marketing with Avaya in an interview with eMarketer. "So I could say, ‘Hey, Jeff, I’m looking at this new fancy laptop or this netbook. I heard you bought something. Would you recommend this to me?’

"So you could almost take your friends shopping with you. That is the potential with this example," he adds. "We’re in a period now where we’re all starting to get comfortable with Twitter and get comfortable with using Facebook and LinkedIn and a lot of these other tools, and now we’re about to expand." 

You want to stay relevant in real-time searches to stay current in people’s minds as well. It’s simple branding. That doesn’t mean you have to send out excessive tweets promoting your product. It is information that Twitterers often seek, and by simply discussing information, you’re brand is still visible, even if that information isn’t directly related to your brand. Read this for ways to optimize for real-time search.

Also be sure to watch this video where Sheila Dahlgren of Adobe gives some predictions for the e-commerce industry, which include behavioral targeting and personalization tactics.

What role do you think social media will play in e-commerce in the future? Share your thoughts.

Google has been criticized by some in the past for not featuring 9/11 doodles on the home page on the anniversary of the attacks on September 11th. Google is, however, pointing to a site from the company’s official blog, that invites people to "share their experiences of 9/11 and its aftermath in an effort to preserve the memories of that time."

The site is called Make History, and utilizes Google Maps Street View and Google’s App Engine. People can submit their photos/videos of the site of the World Trade Center attacks, the Pentagon, and the site of the Flight 93 crash, as well as their stories.

The site was created by the National September 11th Memorial & Museum in partnership with design firm Local Projects. 

Bing and Ask both have up 9/11 memorial images, and there is an iPhone app called 9/11 Numbers (via RWW).

Doug Caverly of WebProNews, who also writes regularly for the NYC Tower site, has a new piece up today. Read that here.

As you’re probably aware, the plan for the deal between Microsoft and Yahoo that dominated many of the headlines this summer, is for Bing to take over Yahoo search, in terms of algorithmic ranking. Basically, Bing will handle the back-end, while Yahoo will handle the front-end design of the new Yahoo Search. That should be happening next year sometime. Are you ready for Yahoo’s switch to Bing? Share your thoughts.

With Bing taking over Yahoo Search, webmasters are going to need to evaluate their need to address their own sites with regards to optimizing for Bing. While optimizing for Bing is generally a good idea anyway, those who see a good deal of traffic from Yahoo Search, are going to want to give this some special attention.

Presumably, it doesn’t matter if you rank well in Yahoo now, if you don’t rank well in Bing. At least it won’t matter when the change comes. If you’re ranked number 1 in Yahoo, but you’re on the 7th page in Bing, you’ve got some work to do.

iCrossing Search Strategist David Shapiro gave some good advice in a recent blog post. To summarize, he said if Yahoo is driving a significant amount of traffic to your site, you need to determine what keywords you rank well for in Yahoo, but not in Bing, and before next year, you need to work on raising these rankings. He also said you need to determine which Yahoo terms you rank 6-10 for that may return "Quick Tabs". 

"With the way Bing displays search results for these queries, ranking 6-10 is significantly less valuable," says Shapiro. "Bing returns the top five results for the primary keyword you entered, then displays the top three results for up to five related terms, providing a list of 20 possible listings for the user to select."

"If you currently rank 6-10 for any of these keywords you should work on building links to move up into the top five, and focus on achieving top three results for the terms that Bing has chosen for the Quick Tabs, especially considering these terms are more targeted and likely convert better," he adds. 

There are differences between Google and Bing, but Microsoft’s stance on SEO isn’t all that different than Google’s. There are different algorithms at play, but both like quality, relevant links and good content. In fact, if you’ve optimized for Live Search in the past, you should be happy to know that Bing’s not that different from that either.

"There have been no major changes to the MSNBot crawler during the upgrade to Bing," Microsoft says in a Bing white paper (pdf) for webmasters. "However, the Bing team is continuously refining and improving our crawling and indexing abilities. Note that the bot name hasn’t changed. It will still show up in the web server access logs as MSNBot."

Do yourself a favor and read that white paper. As Shapiro says, you would also do well to make sure your sites are listed with Bing Webmaster Tools. He also suggests that in some cases, it may be a good idea to increase your paid budget, just to circumvent any lost organic traffic in the transition period.

There is a good chance you are getting a lot more traffic from Google than from Yahoo, so if that’s the case, luckily you still have that going for you. In addition, social networks like Twitter and Facebook (not to mention blogs) are driving a lot of traffic to websites as well.

Read this for more tips on optimizing for Bing. On a semi-related note, you may also find this article on getting more traffic from Bing’s Image Search useful.

Are you concerned about losing Yahoo traffic once it switches to Bing? Tell us.