A Scraped Article Beat My Ranking

19 replies
  • SEO
  • |
Can anyone explain how this may have happened?
#allowed #article #copy #outrank #website
  • Profile picture of the author bobcarlsjr
    different meta tags for the article to rank for they keyword? did you include "protect yourself from tire kickers" in the meta tags your own website?
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    • Profile picture of the author bobcarlsjr
      just did a quick check on google.. i think i see the problem.. i think the site in question you are talking about is wykweb?

      anyway, their onpage seo optimization is as good as it gets.. everything is there.

      the link from google to your article however.. doesn't even point to your article.. it points to your website's sitemap.xml......... u better check through your website..
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      • Profile picture of the author bobcarlsjr
        for the phase "How to Protect Yourself from Tire Kickers." however, the link from google is to your ACTUAL article and not your sitemap.xml..
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  • Profile picture of the author lrdc
    Domain age maybe ?
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  • Profile picture of the author Kung Fu Backlinks
    What you've begun is content syndication. Sounds like you've only allowed the one site to do it. Google is seeing only one reprint of your article, so there isn't a lot of authority being generated for your there. Their entire site is being seen as the better info source. I'd experiment with the following:

    1. Syndicate that identical post to as many places as you can, including pdf sharing. Make sure your link is in each posting - I would link directly to the article and your root domain. Add in an embedded video and image when possible, having a clear link from the image and the youtube video to your root domain and article. Ping them.

    2. I'd then bookmark the article on your own site. You can even later bookmark the article on other blogs if your control them. You should also look into retweets and facebook sharing of your article.

    3. If that didn't do the trick, I'd see about doing the same to other related articles on your site. Eventually, you'll start to look like the authority.

    This is pretty much what I do for my sites and it works wonders.

    Hope that helps.
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    • Profile picture of the author SUPER Louie
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      • Profile picture of the author iAmNameLess
        Originally Posted by Louie Sioco View Post

        Most probably not. DA isn't a big factor when it comes to these things.
        I have to disagree... I think domain age is probably one of the more overlooked factors. What about PR of the home page? What about backlinks TO the article? Maybe your on page SEO is lousy. There are a ton of possibilities.
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        • Profile picture of the author SUPER Louie
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          • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
            Originally Posted by Louie Sioco View Post

            But I also checked the other site. They don't even have a meta description.
            The meta description plays basically no role in SEO in Google.

            I always build pages without the meta description. So does Wikipedia. There's a good reason for that.
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            • Profile picture of the author SUPER Louie
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              • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
                Originally Posted by Louie Sioco View Post

                Google sometimes uses meta description, and in some cases they use the content itself. Matt Cutts confirms this.

                What's a good reason for not having a meta description? I don't think I've heard of this one before. Do tell MikeFriedman. I'm interested in knowing
                Google pretty much ignores the meta description when it comes to rankings. In fact, they will often override what a webmaster has put there and use what their algorithm feels is more relevant to the search being performed.
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                • Profile picture of the author yukon
                  Banned
                  Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

                  Google pretty much ignores the meta description when it comes to rankings. In fact, they will often override what a webmaster has put there and use what their algorithm feels is more relevant to the search being performed.
                  Exactly!

                  OP, If you skip the meta-description tag, Google will customize the SERP description based on the exact search phrase, not just the phrase you think delivers traffic.

                  This puts the most optimized SERP description directly in front of the traffics eyes.

                  Then you can get into some really cool things called jump-links, like what wikipedia does for most of their ranked pages. This takes the custom SERP description to a whole new level. With jump-links you can basically create a bunch of relevant text snippets per page & also get an extra hyperlink inside the SERP description.

                  Beats a single meta-description tag any day of the week.
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          • Profile picture of the author dburk
            Originally Posted by Louie Sioco View Post

            DA does play a part in SEO. But in this case, the content is copied the weight is on the content isn't it?
            I disagree. My testing has shown me that Domain age is not a factor, however age in index is.

            Originally Posted by Louie Sioco View Post

            Both pages are PR0. The other domain is PR3, while mine is PR1.
            You cannot see the real PageRank, it is not displayed. You can only see "toolbar" PR which is a snapshot taken at some point in the past.

            Originally Posted by Louie Sioco View Post

            OnPage SEO is probably lousy, I just checked it lol. But I also checked the other site. They don't even have a meta description.
            From my experience it is always the page with the highest relevancy score that ranks the highest and the only time the PR is a factor is when the relevancy score is equal.

            Meta description is not a ranking factor for Google. So the fact that they have no meta description does not directly effect the relevancy score of their page.
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            • Profile picture of the author SUPER Louie
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              • Profile picture of the author dburk
                Originally Posted by Louie Sioco View Post

                @dburk

                True since PR is only updated 3-4 times per year (most of the time, the true PR is invisible). But Google just recently updated it's PR (today I believe). So it's pretty accurate.
                Hi Louie,

                I guess it depends on what you mean by accurate. Real PR is much more granular than what is displayed in the toolbar 10/x display. Real PR includes what would have to be represented by fractional values, which obviously isn't displayed on the toolbar data. Toolbar data is far from precise, while real PR is very precise. So, while you see a toolbar displaying 10/0 the real PR may actually be 0.16528, and your competitor might have real PR of 0.37659.

                From my experience it is always the page with the highest relevancy score that ranks the highest and the only time the PR is a factor is when the relevancy score is equal.

                Originally Posted by Louie Sioco View Post

                So, are you saying that the site's Domain PR is main reason why my site was outrank? Would that mean that if they copied all my articles, they would rank higher than me?
                No, I am not saying that. Google ranks based primarily on relevancy score. PR would only play a role in a situation where 2 pages have the exact same relevancy score.

                Originally Posted by Louie Sioco View Post

                They only changed the title. If you type 'how to protect yourself from tire kickers.' I still get the top spot.

                You think the title plays a big role in this?
                Yes, the page title is probably the single most prominent relevancy signal of all of the on page elements.



                Originally Posted by Louie Sioco View Post

                Meta description is not a ranking factor for Google. So the fact that they have no meta description does not directly effect the relevancy score of their page.

                It's not directly a ranking factor. But relevancy is part of their ranking factors. Meta description sometimes is part of relevancy.

                But yeah, I see your point.
                The meta tags play no direct role in ranking pages for Google. One could argue that there is an indirect role that influences CTRs on the SERP, which could indirectly influence ranking.
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  • Profile picture of the author iAmNameLess
    Not weird at all. I have an article directory for testing using 100% duplicate content. Google doesn't care about duplicate content, regardless of what you nuts might believe.. what they care about is relevant content. If duplicate content is something that gets filtered out, how would news websites exist and rank well?

    Anyway... they out SEOd you, thats all there really is to it. It isn't a conspiracy, no one is out to get you, you aren't punished by the big G... you just got out SEOd.
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  • Profile picture of the author SUPER Louie
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      Originally Posted by Louie Sioco View Post

      The biggest question that's been bothering me though is how is it possible that a copied content can outrank the original content.

      Google has preventive measures for this. Don't they?

      No they do not. They are perfectly fine with syndicated content. Happens all the time. Look at all the news sites posting the exact same articles from the Associated Press.

      The site in question just did a far better SEO job.
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  • Profile picture of the author DynaPass
    IMO, age is a part of the algorithm that cannot be duplicated and is an exponential factor. It is not everything but when push comes to shove it does have a lot to do with PR and how internal linking passes it. PR comes with age, not from age but with it.
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      Originally Posted by DynaPass View Post

      PR comes with age, not from age but with it.
      I'm sorry, but no. Age might affect a site's rankings. It has nothing to do with PageRank. PR is a measure of the quality of incoming links. Nothing to do with age, content, etc.
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    • Profile picture of the author iAmNameLess
      Originally Posted by Louie Sioco View Post

      DA does play a part in SEO. But in this case, the content is copied the weight is on the content isn't it?

      Both pages are PR0. The other domain is PR3, while mine is PR1.

      OnPage SEO is probably lousy, I just checked it lol. But I also checked the other site. They don't even have a meta description.
      No, the original content doesn't get additional points. The other domain being a PR3, likely is able to get more flow to the page your article is on.

      BTW, marketsamauri is great and everything, but don't believe every source and every product out there that says something is true. There are many theories out there, best to just test it all for yourself before believing what people think they might know.
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      • Profile picture of the author SUPER Louie
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        • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
          Originally Posted by Louie Sioco View Post

          Thus, Google's duplicate content filter.
          This has nothing to do with duplicate content. It is not duplicate content in Google's eyes.
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          • Profile picture of the author SUPER Louie
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            • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
              Originally Posted by Louie Sioco View Post

              But then, how would you explain the example that people would have a thousand results for the same article?
              Stuff like that happens.

              There was one niche I was once involved in that I had the same article taking 17 of the top 30 spots in the SERP. It was the exact same article on different sites.

              As far as Google is concerned, duplicate content is the same content appearing excessively on the same domain.
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  • Profile picture of the author SUPER Louie
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    • Profile picture of the author bobcarlsjr
      u guys have to understand that seo is not just about 1 thing at a time.. google looks at the WHOLE picture to rank a site, that's why it's called an algorithm.

      yes, you have the original content, you posted first.. but IF google rank pages like that (example):

      content: 40%
      domain age: 10%
      pr: 10%
      backlinks: 20%
      onpage seo: 20%

      then you get the full 40 marks for content.. but the other site gets 60 marks.. so they will still outrank you.

      above % figures and criterias are just an example, not to be confused for google's algorithm
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