Before we get too far into the decisions we have made with BloggingZoom, we would like to sincerely thank everyone who offered a lot of really good insights about the copy/paste rule here at BZ. Some issues were brought up that we hadn’t considered before, and that really helped us to make good, informed decisions that will positively affect the future success of the site.
Since we plan on continuing to ask for advice and insight from the community, we would like to officially invite you to subscribe to the blog’s RSS feed. You can subscribe in a reader using that link, or you can subscribe by email by using the form at the top of the right sidebar. That way you will be able to be a part of any future discussions about the future of BloggingZoom and can stay up to date as we help you to learn how to use BZ more effectively.
Two Rules Discussed By The Community
For those that missed the discussion, we talked about two BloggingZoom rules:
- The rule that didn’t allow users to copy and paste their submissions.
- The rule that requires users to use a 350+ character description for their submissions.
Here are some of the stand-out points from the discussion:
- 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. - Steven Snell
- 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. - Frank C
- 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. - Court
- 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. - Shamim
- 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. - Elliott
- 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. - Elliott
- 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. - Steve McGrath
- 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. - Jeremy Hobbs
Copy And Paste Rule Change
From now on, we are going to allow people to copy and paste their descriptions. We don’t recommend doing this because it will remove most of the ability of your submission to get ranked. We’re comfortable allowing this to happen because it will not affect any of the submissions that have unique descriptions. Submissions that use a description that’s unique will have just as much ability to get ranked as they had before this change.
How Duplicate Content Penalties Work
In order to help everyone to understand exactly why we had the rule in the first place, we wanted to go over duplicate content and how it works. Please use the comments if you have any questions!
Google has a filter that checks content to see if it’s unique, or if has been published in other places online. If the content has been published on another website, Google has to try to determine which website was the original author of the content.
For example, let’s say that you created a post on your blog. Now this post was written by you, and was 100% original. Now let’s say that you take your post and submit that post to BloggingZoom. You copy and paste the first two paragraphs of the post, using it as your description. Google will eventually find both your blog post, and the submission page at BloggingZoom - those two different pages will both have some of the same content. This is called duplicate content, it’s content that is published in more than one place.
Now Google is going to try to determine who is the original author of the content. In theory, they should be able to know that your blog post is the original and that the BZ submission isn’t. In this case, your post will rank exactly how it normally would and the BZ page wouldn’t rank very well because of a duplicate content penalty. This duplicate content penalty will only affect that one page - these filters do not affect an entire site unless every single page of the site is duplicate content.
Even if Google is able to determine that your site is the original author of the content, this filter will still hurt most of you. Why? In most cases, BloggingZoom is able to get your content ranked in a better location than your site would be able to. We see time after time where a BloggingZoom submission is able to achieve a top 5 ranking in Google when the original post is clear back on page 10 or so. This gives you the chance at some really good traffic. A person comes to your submission in BloggingZoom, where they are invited to go check out the original post. If your BZ submission gets filtered because you copied and pasted the description, your post will still be on page 10 and your BZ submission will be on page 50 or so. Instead of getting the bridged traffic through BloggingZoom, you won’t get any traffic at all.
Why We Changed The Rule
Even though the rule was there to protect the best interests of the BloggingZoom users, there’s no doubt that it has been holding back the service. New people to BloggingZoom don’t understand the rule, and we have realized that this will continue to be an issue that plagues BZ.
Although the traffic that can be reached through search engines will continue to be a huge benefit of using our service, we also are positioning ourselves as a site that can deliver large amounts of burst traffic. This relies on our ability to find and convert new people to the service.
The speed at which the service is growing is making it more and more difficult to educate new users on the ins and outs of BloggingZoom. This means that new users will continue to be frustrated with rules that they consider to be a hassle. Allowing people to make their own decision on this issue will allow us to grow the user base of BloggingZoom without hurting anyone that already uses the service. Those educated in getting maximum benefit from the service will still be able to get the search engine traffic they could get before, in fact that benefit will grow as we get more users and a stronger site.
During this process, we have realized that we haven’t been delivering the education that people need to get the most out of BZ and we are dedicated to making a change.
350 Character Rule
Since we are going to allow people to copy/paste if they feel like it’s really what they want to do, we don’t see any reason to lower the 350 character rule. This will give them a shot at still getting ranked if there are enough comments on their submission.
Many people have asked whether we can add a counter to the submission box that allows them to know how many characters they have used. We have this feature in development and will be integrating it very shortly with quite a few other significant changes.
People On Both Sides Of The Issue
We were quite surprised to find that there are people on both sides of the copy/paste issue. A good percentage of the people that participated in the discussion wanted to keep the rule as it was, mostly because they were afraid that allowing people to copy descriptions would affect their submissions. As soon as it was explained that this doesn’t hurt the unique descriptions, most people said that the most natural decision would be to make it optional, educating people on why they should be using descriptions that aren’t copied and pasted.
We sincerely appreciate all of the opinions that were given, no matter which side of the issue they were on. We honestly learned a lot during this process and can see that BZ will be a much better service because of the decision that was made. We will be that much closer to delivering the burst traffic without taking away from the search capability we already have.
Please feel free to use the comments is you have any questions or concerns, our top priority is helping you to make the most of our service.
~ Court
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
Since day 1, BloggingZoom has been a bridge that can help people to get search traffic that they couldn’t get otherwise. There are a lot of users that have taken advantage of this and have been able to grow their blogs at a rate that wasn’t possible before the birth of BZ.
When Vic and I were first talking about BloggingZoom, we decided that we wanted to create a place that provided two sources of traffic for bloggers:
- Search - BZ’s authority for keywords is already established and many have taken advantage by using it as a bridge to push traffic to their sites.
- Burst - We knew that the day would come when BZ would have the user base to deliver large amounts of burst traffic to the sites that reached the homepage.
Up until this point, BloggingZoom has been in a growth phase and we have been gathering new users at a remarkable rate. The traffic and user base of BZ are now sufficient to start providing good blogs with a significant amount of burst traffic. Since the beginning of BloggingZoom, we are averaging over 70 posts per day that reach the homepage. There isn’t really anything wrong with this, but at that rate the highest quality posts move too quickly to get the exposure they deserve.
In order to give our users the opportunity to get A LOT more burst traffic, we have decided to increase the amount of zooms it takes to reach the homepage to 15. This will significantly increase the value of the real estate on the BloggingZoom homepage for the quality posts that in the past would disappear far too quickly. Posts that get the 15 zooms within 10 days will be promoted to the homepage.
It’s Time To Get Social
Guys now is the time to dig in by making new friends in BloggingZoom. The opportunity for growth just increased for everyone and new BZ friends can help you to take advantage. A post that reaches the homepage will now get a lot more traffic than it used to and your friends can help you to get there.
Some of you already have the networks to make this possible, and some of you don’t. If you don’t, it’s time to strap up and make it happen!
~ Court
Two main reasons why we do not allow copy paste. First reason is for the benefit of both Blogging Zoom and you as the blogger. Every time you copy and paste your content in a submission let it be here at Blogging Zoom or any other social voting site you are giving yourself and Blogging Zoom a duplicate content filter penalty with Google.
Second reason was not an issue but we knew it would become and the day has arrived. We wanted to provide the bloggers and HTML editor in the submission form so they can make their submissions more attractive. Now we had to turn the editor off because people still not either because of serious laziness or simple ignorance are still making copy paste submissions and in the process pasting HTML mark ups that are not compatible with our theme, in return it breaks our side bar.
For the next few days until the full upgrade is done the editor will be off and we will be monitoring all submissions. One warning will be given, if the following submission after the warning is a copy paste submission we will be forced to BAN the URL from Blogging Zoom.
This rules including the 350 character minimum are for the benefit of both the blogger and Blogging Zoom. Because of this rules we are growing at a rapid pace. All the bloggers that are following this rules are getting 10 times more traffic then those that are lazy and do a copy paste.
We ask you to please follow this rules. Not only are you hurting yourself with the copy paste but also fellow bloggers that do follow the rules but are also penalized with a site wide duplicate content penalty.
Blogging Zoom is heading toward one day being a much stronger site then Digg and any other social voting sites. If you need proof of this look at our Alexa vs Digg we are month ahead in traffic for the same time of Digg. If you want to be a Power Zoomer and grow with Blogging Zoom please help the community.
How to Install this plugin.
1. Download Blogging Zoom Button.
2. Unzip and open bloggingzoom-vote-button.php
3. Save and upload to your Wordpress plugin folder (/wp-content/plugins/)
4. Go to your Wordpress admin panel and Activate this plugin.
How to use this plugin.
1. Write this code < !--bloggingzoom--> to your post. REMOVE SPACES
2. Or click on Blogging Zoom button when editing on post menu (non rich text editor)
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Social Bookmarking RELOADED - Add the social bookmarks services’s icons to your articles in your blogs in order to submit them easyly. Plugin based on Apostolos Dountsis one now with Blogging Zoom added.
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In order to best help you to get the traffic you deserve, we have made some major plans for this blog including:
- Most importantly - lessons on how to pull the most traffic possible from Blogging Zoom itself. In order to make this service work for everyone, we want to disclose as much information about BZ as we can.
- Topics to help you better your blog: SEO, SMO, copywriting, WordPress, PPC, relationship blogging, reputation management, etc.
- Interviews and guest appearances from bloggers who have reached the highest levels of blogging.
I would invite you to let me know as you have questions and concerns and look forward to pushing traffic to each of you. 
