When neither site is affected by a duplicate content filter, it allows a user to pick up multiple spots in Google for the keyword they are trying to target. Many times a user can pick up two spots with their own site, and two more with BZ, giving them four shots at traffic to their content. If a duplicate content filter is triggered, that same user might not get any spots in Google for that keyword. In the best case scenario they will only grab one spot resulting in a lot less traffic.
Hard Rules Or Self-Governing
We realize that many of you would like to be able to copy and paste your submissions. This leaves us with a very difficult decision. Some of you simply want to be able to use BZ for burst traffic and don’t care as much about the ranking benefits that can be obtained with BZ.
The bottom line here guys is that BloggingZoom is a community and we are willing to give you what you want. If you want us to remove the copy/paste rule, we will. Without the rule, the decision would be left up to you to decide whether you want to take advantage of the organic benefits or not.
Please feel free to use the comments to let us know what you think.
~ Court
BloggingZoom Copy/Paste Rule - Please Give Us Your Thoughts | BloggingZoom…
Alright guys the time has come to make a decision on the copy/paste rule at BloggingZoom. I made this post on the BZ blog so that we would be able to get your honest thoughts on the issue. Please help us to vote this post up so that everyone can see it…
[…] Ultimately, we are going to go with what the community wants on the issue. Here’s the post: BloggingZoom Copy/Paste Rule - Please Give Us Your Thoughts. […]
For me, I think removing the copy/paste rule would be wrong…and it would end up turning BZ into just a regular burst-traffic social bookmarking service.
My thing is…at least right now, I’ve not seen “burst traffic” like with Stumble or Digg, so it’s not like making BZ only for that at this point in time helps me much.
I much rather enjoy the search engine results I think…
Although, I have to say…if this site DID get huge and burst traffic became more relevant, then I could see myself swayed maybe?
The one thing is that submitting to BZ gets tedious after awhile and sometimes I just don’t want to do it. Copy and pasting would make that easier, but it could also make it more pointless because of the lack of search engine results.
Thanks for your thoughts Mike. The issues you brought up are exactly what we’re trying to sort through. Either way, you will be able to write unique descriptions for your submissions and get the search benefit you have always had. No matter what we decide Mike you will want to NOT copy/paste your submissions if you want to get ranked well with them.
We know that more people will use BZ if we remove the rule, so we’re just trying to get an idea of what the people really want.
Bascially Mike we’re trying to decide how to get to the burst traffic in the quickest way possible. If this means removing that rule we’re going to do it.
Hey thanks so much for your thoughts.
The basic problem is that the majority of the people who are submitting to BZ don’t understand organic traffic and how power it can be. They’re used to Digg and SU and other social media where this isn’t a consideration. They aren’t likely to ever really understand why they can’t copy/paste or why they have to have a 350 character description. I don’t know how you could emphasize to them how important building organic search traffic is. Remember that many bloggers, particularly “Make Money Online” or metablogging bloggers, only see about 10% of their traffic from Google so it’s no wonder they don’t get it.
I’d say allow them to go ahead a copy/paste but strongly discourage them from doing so by directly warning them that their post and/or the BZ entry may be sent to the supplemental index if they do.
Hey Frank I sincerely appreciate your thoughts. You are 100% right, people don’t understand how important organic traffic can be and they really don’t understand if they have a ‘make money online’ site.
You may be right in your suggestion and we may do exactly as you have recommended which is allow them to copy/paste but educate them on why they shouldn’t.
As it stands, I get great traffic from Bloggingzoom, with 1 vote for an article, 32 votes for an article, front page, or not. Come on, hard is it, really, to come up with a 350 character unique submission??
In your actual article, you can’t keyword stuff like you can on your bloggingzoom submission. Take the time to really think about the advantages that Bloggingzoom, as is, does for you. If you’re not getting traffic from bloggingzoom, that tells you a couple of things:
*no one is searching for your keywords
*you’re not writting your submission with keywords in mind
*if you’re copy and pasting, then you’re getting hit with duplicate content penalty.
Burst traffic from bloggingzoom does nothing for me (never seen it). Google search traffic relayed from bloggingzoom makes me money.
Please keep the rules as is!!!
Shawn
Hey Shawn thanks for your thoughts. You obviously understand what BZ can ALREADY do for you - in all honesty most people aren’t catching on to that fact.
I personally don’t think that it’s that hard to write a 350 character description but for some reason a lot of people do. The burst traffic isn’t there yet, and part of the reason is that users get really lazy when they find out that they can’t copy and paste.
Leaving it up to people will solve the issue but it’s hard to determine whether this is what’s really best for the people - right now I honestly don’t know.
Just as an example. Today, so far, 31.57% of my traffic on my funny video site (www.masked-dispatcher.com) is from bloggingzoom.
Focus on your keywords, invite the visitor to continue to the main article, or come watch the video in my case, and keep it up! It’s in everyone’s best interests to follow the no copy paste rule!
I’m not sure I can add anything new to the conversation as I basically agree with what the guys have already stated. BloggingZoom isn’t about the burst traffic for me and never has been or I wouldn’t have been using it since day one when there wasn’t any burst traffic. I still can’t stay that getting to the front page brings in tons of traffic from BZ itself. I CAN say that BZ helps me get ranked in Google and that Google brings me traffic.
I guess I’m not clear on whether or not the copy/paste duplicate content thing will hurt everyone or just the people who do it. If it only hurts the submissions that are copying and pasting then I guess I don’t care as much. If people want to be lazy that’s up to them. If it’s going to hurt BloggingZoom in general and me in particular because of what they are doing then I would have to say that I’d rather that you not remove the rule.
At the same time, I don’t know how you can possibly continue to police it with any real success as BZ continues to grow at such an unprecedented pace. I think at some point there’s going to be so many submissions that there’s not going to be an easy way to know what’s copy and paste and what’s not.
I agree with Jason, if it only hurts THEM and not ME, then I don’t care.
However, if their duplicate crap kills the keywords for say LOST, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, which in turn hurts ME, than no way
AMEN to that!
That’s a really good thing to bring up Jason. Allowing people to copy/paste will NOT hurt everyone - it will only hurt the people that do it. No matter what we decide it will not affect you at all, unless you get lazy and start copying and pasting.
It is already almost impossible for us to police on this rule but we could develop a script that helped us with that. Right now there are so many people that hate the rule it might be worth leaving it up to them. That way everyone gets exactly what they’re going for and BZ can pick up users at a faster rate.
The more users we are able to get at BZ the better, and that’s why we’re trying to re-examine. More users in the end will help us to build more authority, and that will make the situation even better for people that use unique descriptions.
I personally wish that people would realize that it only takes like two minutes to write a unique description in the first place, but in all honestly that doesn’t seem to be happening.
I was a heavy BZ user before it got hacked. After that the copy-paste rule started being enforced rudely and my submissions dropped. Coming up with 350 original characters for submission of a new post to a social voting site is just not feasible. In my opinion this copy-paste rule will make bloggers harder than they want to, frankly, bloggers should not have to work that hard.
2 solutions:
- enforce the copy-paste rule strongly. eventually this will see a drop in the user base. except for the core BZ users others will slowly leave over time.
- limit original submitting content to 100 chars max. encourage users not to copy-paste (don’t say WARNING …). this should see the BZ community grow and become more popular.
Shamim thank you for your thoughts. I definitely understand what you’re saying and we want to ultimately give people what they want here at BZ - it wouldn’t be a community otherwise.
We are willing to let this rule go if that’s what the people want and I really do appreciate your point of view on this. Ultimately people that copy and paste will be hurting their own chances at getting organic traffic but we’re starting to realize that this decision might best be left up to them.
We hadn’t thought of lowering the character count and we will definitely consider that as an option.
Thanks again!
~Court
I like the 350 unique content rule. Do I understand that it can be a pain in the ass? Sure do. Some of my sites I’m not so worried about organic traffic or SEO from a standpoint that I am going to lose money.
However, I can tell you first hand that using the BZ 350 unique content rule has allowed me to stuff my submissions. This has allowed me to get my BZ submission to the first one or two pages of Google, while my actual site is still in the sandbox, or not close to the front yet.
I am getting a pretty good amount of traffic from BZ and Google searches, so I say leave it alone.
I would be swayed to say it doesn’t matter to me if, and only if, the duplicate content penalty would not affect my submissions. This would allow those who choose to submit copy/paste to do so without affect me.
Yeah Elliott you have described exactly why the rule was there in the first place. The honest truth is that we’re starting to realize that people want what they want and educating them is pretty difficult.
No matter what we decide Elliot, any duplicate content wouldn’t affect your submissions. It would only affect the submissions that are copied and pasted.
A decision to let people copy and paste will hurt the ability of those submissions to get ranked in Google, but wouldn’t affect anyone that took the time to create an original submission.
Court,
Thanks for that, and if you are certain that a duplicate content penalty wouldn’t affect my submissions, or the entire BZ site for that matter, then I would tend to believe that each person should have the right to decide for themselves what they want to do.
With that said, I will continue to submit keyword rich, organic search targeted submissions.
Just ’cause I’m greedy for that ad-clicking, affiliate commission earning organic search traffic that Google is throwing my way!
I don’t mind the copy/paste rule. I don’t understand that much about duplicate content, so I trust your judgement on this.
What I would like to see gone is the 350 character/4 sentence minimum.
For the record, I really enjoy BZ. This is the only place I’ve ever had 15 votes on one of my posts-lol That may not seem like a lot to some of you, but I was ticked pink.
Thanks for all the hard work you put into this!
Hey Joanne! Thanks so much for your comments. We will take that into consideration when we make the final decision.
The 350 character rule is very much like the rule for copying and pasting. It helps people to get more traffic to their submissions. The education of people on these facts has been very difficult and we want to help provide that education while still giving people what they want. That can be very difficult at times but we are going to keep working toward it.
Thanks so much Joanne, we will definitely take your thoughts into consideration!
~Court
Even if I understand the rule, I would prefer to be optional. Some of you are more able than me to write 350 characters. I must still translate it into English. Sometimes, my post is not big or I feel lazy thus don’t bother to submit it. Most of my traffic is from Google and BZ represent a few % only. But I will take it.
Also, I would prefer to have more bloggers in many fields than what we have now. For example, I wrote a piece about a nasty Virus that was zoomed only by me and did not have any visits directly from BZ. Yet, I got 336 visitors from Google during that time. I would not mind burst traffic from BZ.
If more bloggers can bring more authority so be it but make it optional. In that case, the 350 would not be needed but I will still invite people to read the rest on my blog.
You can still educate people to think SEO and that can be useful for certain post.
Hey Steve! Thanks for your thoughts and we will take what you’ve said into consideration.
In the end Steve, we want BZ to be as useful as possible and we want people to be able to use it easily. Really Steve, this discussion is about what will bring more users to BloggingZoom so that we do have people from more industries.
Sorry, I had trouble and had to restart
Yes Court, more people(readers) and bloggers should be the main goal for the long run.The site is easy and dropping the rule would make it more blogger friendly. I’m sure that more would come in and eventually some will be more SEO aware thanks to you and Vic and start to use the description better.
Just 2 examples for the “cut and pasters” that might read this using my virus post.
If you go into Google and search for “smitfraud virus heat”(no quotes), my post is the first, my main page is second and BZ is third. So, I have the 3 top spots for now. I did wrote an original description.
If I take “best buy drop HD-DVD”(no quotes), then I come second . Would I be first if I had submitted this to BZ? Thus having a backlink from BZ made me first? I don’t know.
2 examples, 2 results
I noticed so far than many commentators are known to me and more SEO aware. I just hope that Cut and Pasters and readers would see this and contribute to the discussion. But for me, the final choice must be to the blogger and like you wrote, it’s only them that are being penalize.
You might send a mass email but don’t make Vic write it. Some don’t like errors in official BZ email Sorry Vic, I could not resist.
Seriously, it’s important that people read this.
There’s no doubt that it’s a lot better for the submission to have original content. Thanks a million for a great example of this. I guess the fact remains that some people don’t care about the ranking benefit and just want to use BZ to get the burst traffic which is still building… I guess we have to decide how much it would hurt us to not have their participation.
Court, until very recently I myself didn’t understand what the problem was, but now I do and it matters a lot.
While Stumble Upon has been much better than BZ at bringing in heavy traffic for various posts for brief periods, I’m much more interested in increasing search engine traffic (and subscribers). Since I’ve been doing my best to follow you and Vic’s advice about keywords and other things, my seach engine traffic has greatly increased and I’m actually making money on my blog.
Since I’ve finally come to understand the problem with duplicate content, it’s really no big deal to write a brief keyword targetted description of the post, in order to get the greatest benefit. Since it won’t hurt BZ or me personally if people continue to copy/paste, I say let them do it if they so choose and deal with the results on their own.
What about “keyword stuffing” though? If doing that is harmful to bloggers rankings, wouldn’t it also harm bloggers to keyword stuff in their descriptions too? Bold typing keywords is helpful, but I’m not clear on keyword stuffing.
Hey Lin!
Thank you so much for adding your thoughts to this discussion. Many people have no idea Lin that StumbleUpon was founded in 2001. We know that they are a lot better at delivering burst traffic right now and we are implementing a plan that will ultimately allow us to catch up to them. Since they are 7 years old, they are obviously in front of us.
BZ right is already providing an amazing SEO benefit and in this short time it’s truly remarkable. The long-term possibilities for BZ are almost scary.
Placing the keyword in the description a few times will provide a good benefit Lin, but that really isn’t the bad kind of keyword stuffing. The bad kind of keyword stuffing is when you load the posts with loads of keywords in a way that doesn’t make sense to a reader.
I think the ideas of making it optional, but lowering the required text count from 350 to like 100-200 would be ideal…
Again, as long as the dup content penalty doesn’t affect keywords for everyone.
With 100-200 required, it makes it easier to write whatever you feel like writing…long, short, etc.
Yeah Mike we’re going to have to take that into consideration. That would give us another SEO issue because 100-200 characters doesn’t give you enough to rank in Google.
Since lowering the character count would also hurt people’s chances of getting ranked we’ll have to weigh the pros and cons of that.
Court, you could put a character count(like the old 250 box) or a checkbox so those that want a post to be SEO optimized can be warned that 350 characters was not reached. By default, it could be off or be a parameter in the user’s profile.
Steve this is in the upgrade it should be up by next week. We have had some issues and we are sorting them out as soon as they are fixed we will upload all the new upgrades.
Great!
But I was referring in the case you decided to not force the rule.
Nice to have the count for those pesky post that are harder to make a new description
I think some of the choice comes down to what kind of site BZ wants to be. I think the 350 rule is frustrating, but removing it undermines the original purpose of BZ. I don’t think 350 is that much, an if you can’t come up with 350, than maybe the post isn’t substantial enough to actually submit.
Yes, removing this rule and/or reducing the number will potentially increase the user base, but it might also invite unwanted posts. BZ isn’t digg or SU, it is unique. I like the philosophy behind this site and the rule.
I leave it up to you and Vic. I believe you guy know better. BZ has seen great success under your control. Although the masses may get upset; the masses aren’t always right.
I would suggest that you, Court, send out an email to the BZ users to explain the concept better. You’re a very good teacher and speak well. I think if people understood the purpose better, they’d be more accepting. I was turned off from this site some because of the emails from Vic. (no offense to him meant) People need a clear, polite, and professional explanation. I don’t think some of the BZ email communicate to the users as well as they could.
Justin thanks for your comments! The 350 character count rule is kind of a separate issue, but we will of course consider the ramifications of removing that as well.
Removing these rules really won’t undermine the original purpose of BZ though Justin. You will still be able to submit your longer descriptions in order to get a ranking benefit for yourself. The only people that would be affected would be the ones that use shorter descriptions.
Either way Justin we will try to communicate better with everyone that’s involved with BZ because we can see that this is hugely important.
Do Not Allow Copy & Paste.
Its kinda like this. When I was in the Army everybody got an Army Achievement Medal (AAM) every time they left a duty assignment, that was until I got to Frankfurt. It was there that I learned about dilution. See, when everybody gets one, then it doesn’t really mean anything, even less to the ones that really earned one.
The analogy is simple. There are PLENTY of places to go paste the first paragraph, or whole post for that matter. The point is not whether you CAN or not but whether you SHOULD or not. And if everybody starts doing it here then the total value of the site is diluted into obscurity…along with any juice I might have gotten by trying to ADD VALUE not just post count.
So there’s my $.02 … for what thats worth.
-Thom
Hey Thom it’s worth a lot, thanks for your insight. We will keep listening to see how this plays out.
I would make it optional, while stating clearly on the submit page what the advantages/disadvantages are. Another step that might help is putting a character counter in the box. That, at the very least, would make it easier for the ones that are trying but are frustrated with the rule.
For it to be a true ‘community’ effort, I think you have to let the decision be up to the site’s users. Otherwise it just looks like ‘Court and Vic’s site that they let other people use, so long as they use it their way.’ Even though I know you’re trying to help (because I follow your individual blogging efforts), people that stumble in may see it as being too restricted; especially the ‘look what my cat did today’ kind of bloggers that could give a rip about SEO, PR, and all of the other acronyms.
Should you leave it the way it is, or decide to heavily enforce the rule, I think you’ll end up with a more refined version of Sphinn. Only people that are SEO savvy will be using the service, and casual bloggers will be looking elsewhere. And there are plenty of places for them to go.
Personally, I want to bring back the copy paste function. I’m sure its been recommended, but please drop the 350 character limit!
Google seems to find favor already with BZ. At least with the way it is set up now. Many of my submissions make it to the top listing on Google through BZ. I do not see that type of response from SU or Digg. Would allowing the copy and paste effect Googles decision to favor BZ? I believe it could.
I think if the copy and paste rule was implemented it would diminish how Google views BZ.
I believe it should stay as it is.
I don’t mind the no copy/paste rule, but I do think it lowers the number of submissions that BZ receives. I think most users will be willing to take the time to do an original writeup for their own content, but less people will be willing to take the time to submit the content of others. Ultimately, I stand in the middle of the issue and could be swayed either way. The no duplicate content is one of the unique qualities of BZ, but in order to get to the places that you want to go with BZ I think you will need a lot of active users that submit not just their own content, but also the content of others. I think this might be hindered by the rule.
Thanks for your insight! The hassle of submitting the content of others is something that I haven’t thought a lot about and I’m glad that you raised that question. It’s definitely something to think about.
My comment is going to be short and sweet - I like the SEO benefits BZ provides. Originally I didn’t understand why we couldn’t copy and paste, but I wasn’t thinking. Now that I know, I’ll never do it again. BZ is unique because it’s so well-optimized and I think users should be able to take advantage of that. If they’d rather miss out because it takes two extra minutes to write something original, then their loss.
Hey Tay! Thanks for stopping by and letting me know your thoughts!
I don’t understand the problem. Cut and paste obviously isn’t any good for either party, so why would anyone complain? It takes me no more than a minute to type a description that isn’t copy and paste, while including keywords. 350 characters isn’t very much at all. What is that, like 70 5-letter words (including spaces)?
Many of my posts are ranking in the top 10 (even #1) for certain keywords. Guess which posts rank right below or right above them? You guessed it, the BZ submissions.
If someone wants burst traffic, they should be using Digg or StumbleUpon. BZ doesn’t provide a huge amount of burst traffic (yet). It does, however, help to push a post higher in the SERPS. And that, my friends, is what BZ is all about.
I’m conflicted right now RT because we want to make BZ a place the does deliver burst traffic. We really need it to be a place the can deliver both and so I’m seeing two sides of the discussion. I’m still not 100% sure where I stand on the issue though.
Court and Vic - I think you should stick to your guns with this and not allow copy and paste. When I first read about BZ one of the main draws was how it would help you rank in the search engines and I think you should stick to your mission. 350 characters is not a big deal. It is 4-6 good long sentences and if you can’t come up with this you are just lazy. Not only will it help you rank with different keywords you get a chance to practice different writing styles.
Hey Rookie, thank you for your comments! If the search engine benefit was at risk, we would even be bringing this up at all.
Allowing people to copy and paste won’t hurt the site in general, it will only affect the submissions that are copied and pasted. The reason we’re considering this is that people will only be hurting themselves if they opt for the lazy route.
I personally agree that the 350 character rule is pretty easy to follow, but if you read what people say in some of the forums about BZ you would be able to see that there are a lot of people that disagree.
Submitting to BZ is more difficult than other sites, but the benefits are definately there. I’ve seen good rankings on many posts. Keep the rule. Sets you apart.
Love your work.
Steve
Hey Steve! Thank you for letting us know what you think. No matter what, you will still be able to get that benefit from BZ by submitting your unique descriptions.
I like it the way it is - no copy/paste. Reducing the character count may be a good compromise. But allowing copy/paste will definitely invite spam. I used to follow another site and have watched the quality of the submissions go downhill, perhaps because it is too easy to submit.
I am also a big fan of the search engine benefits that BZ provides. It is unfortunate that not everyone understands that.
Being the BZ copy/paste police must be an impossible job - but you could let the community police itself and encourage members not to zoom posts that are copy/paste.
Hey Neena! Reducing the character count would actually hurt the submissions much more than the copy/paste factor so it’s a lot less likely that we’ll change that. We are still going to think about it though and I really appreciate your thoughts on this issue.
Policing the copy/paste really is pretty difficult, and most of that work has been falling on Vic. Sure, we could develop a script to help and then ask the community, but that would make the whole thing more complicated and would create some other issues that we would have to work out.
Thanks Neena!
I think a lot of people are missing the point that was made very early in this discussion.
I am a fan of the No Copy & Paste rule…at least I was. I was drawn to BloggingZoom because of its ability to help me get listings in Google and by using the descriptions I have done incredibly well. Anyone that says it is not feasible to create a 350 character description for every post is either ignorant and/or lazy because I have submitted 261 articles to BZ and have done a description for every single one of them.
Having said that, however, Court made it clear that the Copy and Pasting by others does NOT hurt those of us who want to use the descriptions to help our articles and posts do better in Google. I think then, this has become a case of No Harm, No Foul. If we are not harmed by those that do not want the description requirement then what is the point of having the REQUIREMENT? Especially if the requirement is a hindrance to building BloggingZoom?
I think the thing to do would be to figure out a way to make sure that new users were well educated as to the benefits of the description when they first sign up. One option might be to notify people with a warning window or something when they try to submit an article with less than a 350 character description informing them that the description will not help them in Google and maybe pointing them to a page that describes the benefits of the description. They would then be allowed to continue to post without the 350 character description.
This might also be set up as some sort of user option to be turned on or off so that maybe I could make sure that the system warns ME if I try to submit something with less than the necessary 350 characters. I would still be able to submit it if I wanted but at least I would be warned.
With such a system everyone would win. Those of us who want to get the Google benefits would and those who don’t care wouldn’t have to worry about it.
Am I missing something?
I am new to BloggingZoom. Maybe i have a misconception of ho this works. I have not been privy to earlier discussions or posts made by Vic or Court. So bear with me as I try to understand. My original thought of BloggingZoom is that it was similar to Digg, and a bit like StumbleUpon, but with a more open community focusing on bloggers…….etc.. So, understand that with that in mind “new” users might think that the traffic is derived in the same manner…via a voting process. The only residual traffic from stumbleupon comes from much of the networking aspec and users stumbling other users stumbles — oold or new. That is why there is usually little to no residual from Digg. Digg users are normally front page or group focused. I don’t expect to get any SERP benefit from either of these sites. I only expect eyeball exposure from Digg or SU.
I thought traffic from BZ came from a similar voting system as SU or Digg. In that context restricting cut and past and requiring a 350 character unique description is definitely a limiting traffic.
But from what i have read here today. My “perception” may be changing. But, I am not sure I fully understand. So any help would be great. Here is how I now understand traffic to flow from BloggingZoom.
1. Basic traffic from the voting system. Meaning that the more Zooms you get the more direct traffic you are likely to receive.
2. Submissions to BloggingZoom are setup in such a way to trigger Google to index the post page faster.
Now, I have a fairly strong understanding of “organic” traffic. But, I fail to understand how BZ fits into this process. And because i do not understand how BZ fits into the process. How does BZ act as a “Bridge” to the search engines?
Wow a lot of typos. Sorry.
Edit: Last paragraph should read:
Now, I have a fairly strong understanding of “organic” traffic. But, I fail to understand how BZ fits into this process. And because I do not understand how BZ fits into the process I do not understand the no copy / paste rule or the 350 character rule. How does BZ act as a “Bridge” to the search engines?
Basically it’s a bridge to YOUR blog because when you post a blog, then add it to BZ, that submission gets indexed like a BLOG POST, so if you use the same keywords and title and all that, it will rise high in the search engines, much like your blog post, and people will find it and then click through to your site.
I’ve had a few occasions where a blog post or two of mine, plus two submissions to BZ, ended up with me owning the top four spots on Google for the keyword search I had going on.
If that is the case…people who search for that keyword see my links in the top four! Huge!
Hi Mike,
Thanks for the reply. That is exactly how I thought it would work. Obviously having the top 4 rankings is huge. And you should be congratulated for it. So, what you get from BloggingZoom is strategic positioning on the SERPs. There is nothing wrong with locking up as many spots as possible. I guess this would be more beneficial for more “long tail” type keyword phrases. I can definitely see the benefits.I can also see why you would want unique content with each entry.
Honestly, now that I have a clearer understanding, I think changing the rules will change the dynamic you seem to be trying to achieve. If you find common middle ground and loosen the rules for those people that are more social mavens and still enable those that want to take advantage of the SEO benefits, you may have a clash of cultures.
Thanks
Beau
From what I’ve been reading here, this is what we should do:
1. Allow Copy and Paste for people who just want burst traffic and don’t care about google. Doesn’t hurt the rest of us, so what do we care?
2. Reduce the minimum characters allowed for those that don’t care about getting on Google…they just want burst traffic…
3. Put a counter up for those of us who WANT to put in 350 characters so we get on Google.
This way we:
1. Open ourselves up to getting a lot more users who just want to submit stuff, thus actually creating some “burstable” traffic down the road
2. Still allows those of us who want to use this for Google juice like we should.
Thoughts?
Mike your solutions are very close to what we have decided to go with. Thanks so much for some great advice! We’ll have a post up today that will let people know what we’re going to do.
[…] During the last month or so, I tested a new rule on The Contest Winner and yesterday, BloggingZoom asked if they should change something on their site.The timing is good for this […]
Frank and Jason have made some good, valid points about this whole issue as well as some others. Here’s my two cents from Johnny-Come-Lately:
1. Allow Cut and Paste for those who feel they can’t cook up a 350-character summary of their posts. It won’t hurt the rest of us who takes the trouble to write it out. We have to remember some of them are not groomed to be wordsmith. In newspapers or magazines, we would call this 350-character thing a “standfirst” which is usually placed before the beginning of a feature article to give readers a quick summary of the article before they dive in to read the rest. The “standfirst” acts as a teaser to lure the reader into the article and is original in the words used to describe the article.
2. Allow the summary to be from 250 - 350 characters. That will make life easier for those who can only manage up 250!
3. Continue to educate those who have yet to understand the whole issue and not following the new rules. Again, what they do - duplicate content and all that warts - won’t hurt the rest of us.
4. The bottom line: Gain more members, not lose them.
Cheers!
Keep the rule! What amuses me the most is that those who keep complaining about it on blog comments use way more than 350 characters to do so anyway. So what stops them to submit here on BZ? In the end it will eliminate the dreamers who simply don’t want to write a few sentences to submit their posts.
This whole worry about dupe content is misplaced at least as far as the site who’s news you’re picking up as long as there is a hard wired backlink to the content. More to the point a snippet pulled from any site will not be picked up as dupe content anyway. Where did these myths come from?
DB
David you are wrong the facts are that the algorithm has problems picking up the original authority on a given moment of the text string such is that Matt Cutts at the last Pubcon gave a seminar on this same subject and the fact that G is still looking at ways on how to deal with this same issue. If you have any knowledge you will remember that supplemental index was in part established to deal with this type of issue. Example BZ has gained enough authority to get about 70% instant indexing after the ping if your site does not get instant indexing the BZ submission would actually get indexed first making the submission the duplicate content. Now eventually the algorithm should pick it up and make the adjustment but then again the algorithm is supposed to do many things that it sometimes does not do.
[…] Ultimately, we are going to go with what the community wants on the issue. Here’s the post: BloggingZoom Copy/Paste Rule - Please Give Us Your Thoughts. […]
Okay. Point taken. You’re talking in terms of the initial round of pinging rather than any persistent effect. I had assumed that a snippet culled from a page would be considered the same as a thumbnail image in the long run and won’t end up being the page that ranks. Maybe that’s wrong too. Stick with what’s good for the websites if that is the case!
db
Thanks David we opted for leaving the decision to the blogger even though we will keep trying to inform bloggers on better SEO techniques but I am sure in your blog you probably have felt that sometimes people just do not listen. Again thanks for the feedback.