Internet Business Blog

Private Label Rights material can be a great way of getting content and products that you can call and sell as your own. It can also be a great way to spend good money on a load of rubbish.

As I see it, there are two main problems with most PLR material I come across:

1. The quality of the written content is poor. A lot of what’s produced is from the hands of cheap labour and this usually means it’s sourced from countries where English is not the primary language. It is possible to have a board vocabulary and a good grasp of English grammar, but often you need to be able to think in a westernised way before you can write content that reads like westernised content.
2. It’s already been distributed across the Internet so you can forget about it being original content in the eyes of search engines. It also means that it’s usually no good for submitting to article directories because someone else will have already beaten you to it.

Both of these problems result in the need for a further investment of either time or money or even both as rewriting the content to some degree is required before it can be used to benefit you.

Why do these issues exist?

As happens with many maturing markets, as demand increases for PLR products, the number of suppliers also increases. As the number of suppliers increase, people start thinking a step higher in the food chain, moving away from the end consumer and towards supplying the suppliers instead.

For the end user, this means instead of getting material that’s been produced by their supplier and supplied to a limited number of people, they’re getting material that’s being offered by any number of suppliers to even more end users. Therefore, the chances of someone else already using the same content increases greatly because instead of having one supplier selling 100 copies of an article pack you might have several suppliers each selling 100 copies of the same article pack.

If you’re publishing the same content as hundreds of other people, whether or not you believe in duplicate content penalties will be irrelevant because you’ll still be competing for all the same keywords as the other publishers.

For these reasons, I don’t believe you should consider the majority of PLR material on offer today as ready-to-use.

What do you think of using PLR? Do you use it yourself? Are you happy with the quality of the written content?

Not so long ago, article directory scripts were sprouting up all over the Internet marketing scene along with promises of AdSense riches using nothing but other people’s content. Adopters had seen the success of the likes of EzineArticles, ArticleCity and GoArticles to name just a few and now was their chance to sit back for an easy ride on semi-autopilot.

What these adopters didn’t realise was that maintaining the type of article directory that authors and publishers would visit again and again took hard work.

First there was the set-up. Unless the directory was customised, it would look and function just like any of the hundreds of other directory based upon the same script.

Then there were the bugs. The people who had sold them their article directory systems were marketers and not programmers who appreciated the importance of concepts such as testing and maintenance. Their primary concern was to get their scripts developed as cheap as possible and ready to market as soon as possible. The signs were that the pent-up demand was about to be met by a wave of similar scripts so time was of the essence. Thorough testing would have only slowed things down and the rush was about to begin.

Of course, this eventually led to the inevitable; exploits. Like dominoes, the directories succumbed to the will of the web hosts who pulled down directory after directory as they were being compromised through the same weaknesses. Instead of distributing syndicated content they were sending out masses of spam and consuming large amounts of server resources in a runaway fashion. The fact that so many directories hadn’t been customised and so could be searched for by the default text made it almost too easy for the crackers.

Those who were determined enough to get their systems fixed or to seek out better supported systems were then faced with another hurdle; the articles! With so many people wanting to syndicate their content, owners of directories with even a whisker of PageRank would quickly become swamped with an endless number of submissions.

At first, the novelty of reviewing articles was enough to keep them going. Once this had worn off, the process of reviewing would become a chore that would ultimately culminate in a number of choices:

1. Open the flood gates and accept articles without a thorough review.
2. Abandon the directory for something less time consuming.
3. Stick with it. Perhaps even hire some people to carry out the review process.

It’s my opinion that most people who rushed into the directory business settled for the first two options. Those were the easiest choices, but also the ones that would sound the death knell for the directory. Publishers weren’t interested in empty directories or those filled with articles spun so many times over that they read like they were composed by soul-less machines. And genuine authors didn’t want to submit content to sites which wouldn’t result in their work being read and so all that was left was the automated, spun content submissions.

So, if you ever feel like complaining about article directories having quality requirements that are draconian, remember that maintaining an article directory isn’t easy and that maintaining a directory where people will keep coming back is even harder.

If the review processes are keeping your articles out then perhaps they’re doing their job as they were meant to!

Over on the right-hand column, you might notice I’ve rearranged some of the content boxes and added a new one called, Share the Love.

This new content box allows you to buy links on this very blog for just $5! That’s $5 for traffic, link popularity, link juice, link love, whatever you want to call it.

Only a maximum number of 10 links will be shown at any one time so when link number 11 comes in, link 1 will be bumped off the list (FIFO).

Thanks to Gary for supplying the EZ Linkz script.

You probably already know that search engines send out their spiders (aka robots) out to websites in order to index their content into their search databases so you should already appreciate the importance of having content that is easily accessible to spiders, but what do you do if you’re not sure how visible your content actually is?

Perhaps you rely on JavaScript, frames or multiple URL query strings to present content. How do you know whether your content can be easily read by search engine spiders?

If search engine spiders can’t get access to your website content then you can’t expect them to be able to return that content in search results. If organic search engine traffic is important to you then you must ensure your content can be spidered fully.

Here are some ways in which you can get an idea of what the spiders see:

1. Use a search engine’s cache in order to view your website pages as they’ve recorded them. If all of the content that should be on your webpages is visible in the cached pages then you know it’s visible to the spiders.
2. Use a text-based web browser such as Lynx to view your website. Click on the thumbnail above to see what this website looks like through Lynx.
3. Use an online text browser simulator to view your website.
4. Use a search engine spider emulator.
5. Search for content you want to check. If you can find it through a search engine then you know it’s visible!

Apart from actually using the search engines themselves, how accurate these methods are at representing what spiders see is questionable. Search engines are known for their veil of secrecy and search technology is ever-evolving. What search engine spiders can’t see today they might see tomorrow.  Sounds like the strap line for a horror movie…

Many people have a vocation in life; a conduit through which to channel their energy and focus. Sometimes, even the most unrelated paths can draw parallels. Spending time in online search engine optimisation (SEO) communities and having acquaintances who are religious has allowed me the opportunity to see some striking similarities between the two groups of people.

Now, you might not appreciate the similarities between the two subject matters right away, but consider the following characteristics:

• There are many different faiths or belief systems. Some beliefs are more popular than others, but each will have its own following of dedicated individuals who believe that things should be a certain way.
• The faiths don’t always get along with one another nicely and each may proclaim their own way of existence to be the one, true way to their goals/nirvana/holy grail/state of enlightenment.
• There is often a lot of internal debate about the interpretation of scripture by followers within a faith. Much of this debate is often futile as only the originators of the faith really know the consequences of your actions.
• For those who seek it, there are representatives in recognised positions to provide guidance.
• Each faith has a way of defining what is good and what is evil.
• There are calendar-based events to observe, events that are pivotal to any particular faith.

Am I describing religion or SEO?