Getting Articles Indexed - Content Syndication Questions

[tshears]

Hey Guys,

I am the online marketing manager for a network of websites that all rank very well in Google, but I'm having some content issues.

The problem is that unique articles on our site that are syndicated out to places like bloglines, newsvine, and etc are showing up higher than we are in SERPS for our own content, as well as sometimes us not showing up at all, or even the page never being indexed.

We currently don't have a very effective system at pinging google when we add new articles (our sitemap is too big (50,000 pages) to ping an entire sitemap every time) nor do we handle our RSS feeds in any fashion other than being able to sing up for them.

If I were to set up feedburner and syndicate the RSS feeds into a few popular syndication spots (looking for input of which to use) would it help my indexing and SERPS on the content?

Also, using Copyscape i've found many thiefs of our articles and would like to contact Google about getting credit for our content... How should I go about this?

Thanks in advance!

[beu]

Submit your feeds to:
http://pingomatic.com/

If you've freely distributed your content, you may need to enhance and expand the content on your site to make it unique. Be sure to include links to your site in syndicated content. If you would like to investigate your rights and/or legal action here is where to start.
http://www.google.com/dmca.html

[tshears]

EDITED - I just submitted all 15 of our sites to FeedBurner and I'm using the Ping Shot feature now... This should hopefully make a difference.

Is there anything else you recommend or any other settings in Feed Burner not used by default you would suggest?

[beu]

Sounds like you are on the right path and getting a lot "bang" for Free! Don't get me wrong, I would recommend anything and everything you can get your hands on but, there is that little issue called time. You could work 24/7 on a project like this and only scratch the surface.

At this point I would focus on publishing great new content at least twice a week if possible. By the way, your are using some kind of analytics and have a Google Webmaster Tools account setup for the site correct?

[tshears]

Hey Beu,

Maybe I should tell you a little more about myself. I'm the online marketing manager for a network of financial services websites (around 500,000 pages indexed on Google) and we rank on the first page for mortgage, mortgage refinance, and many other key terms.

We've got a full inhouse content production staff and we outsource at least 3-4 articles per week for our network, but it seems they've been wasting this 'juice' until now.

Our CMS system now publishes articles and syndicates them across our network (noindexing on non-original sites) and pings google with a new update (we JUST turned this on today). Once it pings google it updates the sitemap two days later, pinging all the services within Feedburner and at Pingomatic.

I'm just trying to make sure I don't miss a beat and all this great content we have from the past doesnt go to waste.

If you had hundreds of articles that never got indexed and are just sitting on your space, what would you do to get attention to them?

[beu]

Originally Posted by tshears

If you had hundreds of articles that never got indexed and are just sitting on your space, what would you do to get attention to them?

Has something been preventing this content from being indexed at your site and if so has that element been removed? (IE is the noindex on your site too and/or has this content been on your site)

You should be seeing at least some traffic with that amount of content. Keep in mind that xml sitemaps aren't a "silver bullet" and Googlebot still crawls the web the same way sitemap or not. Sitemaps may help Googlebot find or "know" about deep pages but good architecture is still key.

[tshears]

The noindex is only when the article is on a few of our sites at once (noindexed on the non-original). We are getting good traffic but not from the articles, only from serps on key terms.

Our structure is pretty good as well from what I know but I'll try to analyze this end of things as well.

One thing we could be doing better is correctly syndicating our articles (choosing the best sources to syndicate to) and giving credit accordingly to the original article location.

If you were doing this and had over 850 articles where at least 700 are not syndicated and the rest do not properly give source credit to the originals, what would you do? More importantly which syndication sites do you give the most value to?

[AussieWebmaster]

syndication models are not as important as getting the 700 plus pages of content into the serps....

you say you get traffic for a variety of key words... are they going to these artciles or to other pages already indexed (if to the articles then they are in the index)

[tshears]

We're getting a lot of traffic just to our home pages and application pages for key terms such as mortgage, mortgage broker, mortgage refinance, etc.

We're working on getting these articles into the serps and that's why i'm trying to define a proper syndication model.

[beu]

Originally Posted by tshears

We're working on getting these articles into the serps and that's why i'm trying to define a proper syndication model.

That is a great idea and you are on the right track!

High ranking sites with lots of content like yours should be almost entirely indexed on their own. Ranking for relevant keywords, well that is a different story.

Spiders go to work every day with one mission and that is to find your content. Search engines want to index your content pages but for some reason can't.

I'm trying to understand why you have so much content that's not indexed. More importantly, I'm concerned that something is preventing spiders from crawling your content because it's possible that such obstacles might impede spiders even with proper syndication.

Could you post the url?

[CarrieHill]

I'm no expert - but I WONDER if you published the info on your site for a few weeks before allowing it to be syndicated in full on other sites - would that help show you as the content owner - definitively?

This may not be a practical model, but it sounds like Googlebot is not seeing you as the "author" or "authoritative source" for all of these articles.

Like I said, I'm no expert - what do Aussie and beu think of this 'theory'?

[tshears]

Carrie, very good point. We've been going back and forth on this and have not come up with any real answer.

Beu I can give you an example of one of our sites that's indexing the least amount of articles. http://tinyurl.com/37f52l

[beu]

Originally Posted by CarrieHill

I'm no expert - but I WONDER if you published the info on your site for a few weeks before allowing it to be syndicated in full on other sites - would that help show you as the content owner - definitively?

My take from what she said is that the content in question has been published but, for some reason it's not being indexed and that she wants to use syndication to solve the problem.

What I'm saying is that what ever is blocking the content now may block syndicated content.

[CarrieHill]

From the original post

The problem is that unique articles on our site that are syndicated out to places like bloglines, newsvine, and etc are showing up higher than we are in SERPS for our own content, as well as sometimes us not showing up at all, or even the page never being indexed.

That's why I suggested holding content on your site for a few weeks before syndicating it - but there may be a more technical reason for this.

[beu]

Originally Posted by CarrieHill

or even the page never being indexed.

Ownership verification is easy:

"If you syndicate your content on other sites, Google will always show the version we think is most appropriate for users in each given search, which may or may not be the version you'd prefer. However, it is helpful to ensure that each site on which your content is syndicated includes a link back to your original article. You can also ask those who use your syndicated material to block the version on their sites with robots.txt."

http://www.google.com/support/webmas...n&answer=66359

In addition I suggest making a slightly different version to host on your site.


That said, none matters if your content at your site isn't being indexed. Personally I'd address that problem first.

[tshears]

Great info both of you. I really appreciate your feedback.

With all of the above topics covered from getting my content verified by Google, getting links back to our original articles from syndicated sources, and increasing the indexing on our own site (which should be influenced by linking back from the syndication points) I think my understanding is clear for what needs to be done.

Did you notice any problems on the site I linked you to that would prevent the article content from being indexed?

Also, in making a different copy, what practices do you recommend? How much rewriting, changing of links, and title changes?

[beu]

Originally Posted by tshears

Did you notice any problems on the site I linked you to that would prevent the article content from being indexed?

Let me have a look and I'll get back in a few hours

[beu]

Originally Posted by tshears

Did you notice any problems on the site I linked you to that would prevent the article content from being indexed?

In answer to your question, YES there is at least one critical and major issue that seems to be currently blocking ALL spiders as well as users and potential publishers from reaching your syndicated content. (see "Bad news" below)


Bad news:
1. Currently some issue is causing broken links in each and every article in both iGoogle as well as Google Reader. I haven't really investigated the source but this issue MUST be addressed ASAP. The issue involves duplication of the domain name in every URL resulting in every link landing on your "Page Not Found" page. As a result content is not accessible to Feedfetcher, Google's Googlebot for RSS. Login to iGoogle and/or Google Reader and you'll see every article contains "Page No Found" links similar to the URL below: (notice the duplication of your domain name)

http://www.paydaycashadvanceloans.bi...s-congress.asp


2. Though not as devastating as the issue above, XML is very strict and in most cases it should validate. There are a number of errors that should be fixed to insure maximum compatibility.

http://feedvalidator.org/check.cgi?u...rss%2Frss.aspx



Good news:
At the same time, you might be doing a little better than you think you are! There are 15,000 pages indexed, so that is good news.

http://www.google.com/search?q=site:...fe=off&start=0



Suggestions:
1. One thing you want to do for sure ASAP is allow "Auto-discovery" for your RSS. By adding the following "meta tags" (depending on what RSS and/or Atom feeds your offer) in the head of your HTML document, you'll make feeds easier for users to subscribe to via a "subscribe icon" that automatically appear in any modern browser's address bar. (replace "type / URL" with the your FEED URL. Several types of feeds can be included but any and/or all are optional)

<link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="Atom 0.3" href="ATOM .3 / URL" />
<link rel="alternate" type="text/xml" title="RSS .92" href="RSS .92 / URL" />
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS 2.0" href="RSS 2 / URL" />

<link rel="pingback" href="PING-BACK / URL" />


2. I would also suggest "prefetching" your site's site map (not xml sitemap) so as to make it as easy for engines to find as possible. To allow prefetching place the following "meta tag" in the head of your HTML document:

<link rel="prefetch" href="http://www.paydaycashadvanceloans.biz/site_map.asp">



3. Content "versioning" doesn't seem applicable in your case. Hard to tell for sure as currently there is no content. If you have back links in your content it should be fine. ONE POINT, be sure all of the URLs in syndicated content are absolute (http www and so on) and not relative (/folder/page.html) as relative URLs at another site will not refer back to your domain.



A few issues to consider:
- As they are, your TITLEs are quite similar. If possible I'd try and add a little variation in your TITLEs.

- I would consider moving all style elements to an external css if possible.

- Your meta descriptions are very similar. Adding a little variety wouldn't be a bad idea.

- Obviously this is a template but, content at georgia/savannah.asp & georgia/atlanta.asp are quite similar. In fact the first paragraph is the same. You might consider multiple templates to be sure "same state" pages don't contain identical content.

- Since you are targeting cities by name, you may consider providing users with information that is unique by city. It's really easy to add maps, local weather information and or other city specific information.

Hope that helps

[tshears]

Thank you very much Beu. That was a wealth of knowledge all at once and I couldn't appreciate it any more. I was aware of a few of theses issues but you definitely uncovered a few as well.

I'll keep you posted on how things are going.

[JohnW]

I admit I don't know much (at all) about content syndication, but one way of dealing with stuff that gets published in lots of places in addition to the main source is to make the dupe copies of it be an image of the text instead of live text, and of course make the image a link etc.

Does anyone know if it is possible to syndicate content as images this way?