Will My Blog Posts Get Google Traffic If I Use PLR Articles?

When it comes to buying or using PLR articles THE number one question is "will my blog posts get Google traffic if I use PLR or will Google penalise me for duplicate content?"

Most people have a real fear of the duplicate content penalty. So, they will tell you two things: 1) never use PLR, and 2) always be 100% original.

I'm not most people...

This article is not PLR.

But it is also not 100% original either.

Nothing in this article has been copied. Well, except the quotes, of course. But even so, it is only 86% original.

Is this normal? Yes. Will Google penalise me for it? No!

So, why is it not original? Because there are 4.2 billion pages on the internet and 129,864,880 Books in the World. It would be impressive to write 1000 words, on a relatively common topic, and not use the same combination of words as someone else, somewhere in the post.

But, what about PLR articles? They are different, right?! Or are they? 

The most important thing you need to understand is that Google works by giving people exactly what they want or need. It doesn’t matter if someone spends 5 weeks writing a 10,000 word blog post, or an hour re-writing 1000 words. If people are more interested in the topic of the 1000 words, Google will prefer that purely because people search and click.

The number one misconception about PLR is that it is rubbish and is not authoritative. Of course, this is true for some PLR, but absolutely not all of it.

My recommendations is always to use PLR as a base for the content you want to deliver. If you do this, your PLR acts as a foundation, upon which you build the content up into something people will really enjoy - or learn from. You do this by using images, stories, and facts.

If you want your PLR blog posts to get google traffic, you will always need to put some work into it. But I can say for absolute certainty that if your content is good, Google will not care if it is PLR or not.

4 duplicate content and PLR articles myths

Let's have a look at some myths surrounding PLR and duplicate content. Then I'll share some tips to to help your blog posts get Google traffic.

1. PLR is duplicate content and will hurt your ranking

You've probably heard that duplicate content can be flagged by Google and you can get punished with a low ranking, or worse, get blacklisted!

The truth is that syndicated content happens all over the web. Just visit any news website and you will see that they copy content from other sources word-by-word and their ranking doesn't get penalised.

Duplicate content becomes a problem when the volume is really big. And this could happen with PLR. Although, it is a low(ish) risk as the PLR article would have to be used in exactly the same way by a lot of websites! Or in exactly the same way, multiple times, on your own domain.

However, if you edit and personalise your content, it will stop being the same as what other websites share and you will have no issues with duplicate content or ranking.

2. PLR is low-quality content and won't rank On google

PLR content comes in all shapes and sizes. Some is created by dedicated experienced professionals, and some is done by what are basically underpaying content mills. Ideally, you will only purchase content from smaller high-quality suppliers.

Even if the PLR content you're starting with is not the best, you should always edit it to make it work for your needs, add your voice, and improve the content. All this editing could easily transform low-quality content into high-quality rankable posts Google will appreciate.

3. PLR doesn't sound natural and has keyword stuffing

This goes back to the quality of the PLR you purchase. Natural speech and keyword use are encouraged by Google. More and more people are moving into real language search queries and voice searches, so you do want your content to sound natural.

If the PLR content you are working with doesn't sound the way you would say it, edit it! You should be editing PLR anyway. One of those things you should change is the voice: make the text sound as if you had written it. A good way to go about this is by rewriting one sentence at a time. Once you get used to the process, you can switch to doing one paragraph at a time. And before you realise, you'll be a pro at it!

The bottom line is that if you want to use PLR articles, you can. If you want your blog posts to get google traffic, you need to edit them.

4. PLR means everyone has the same content and my website won't stand out

First off, a lot of people buy PLR but never use it. And I mean a lot. I've tested this:

I bought a very popular bundle of articles last year - about 300 sales. I then waited 3 months before I checked one of them for originality. I got a score of 82% original, without editing. This means no one was using it. Well, one person had used 2-3 lines of it.

But even if you rewrite and edit your purchased PLR, you could see yourself posting content that is similar to your competitors'. While it is almost impossible to share 100% new ideas and knowledge all the time, it is possible to show your creativity when using PLR.

The best way to avoid doing what everyone else is doing is to repurpose your PLR. Instead of using the PLR in the format it came in, change it into something else. For example, a report could become an informative video. Or a collection of social media updates could become the titles of an autoresponder series.

Be creative and learn to see beyond the original format.

4 tips to help your PLR blog posts get google traffic

1. Keywords, keywords, keywords

There are many free and paid tools to help you research keywords. It doesn't really matter which one you use, as long as you do some research.

You want to find related keywords and the keyword difficulty as a minimum with whatever tool you choose to use. Other options are great, but if you're just getting started those two are more than enough.

Once you have your keywords, use them:

• add keywords to your title
• add keywords to your opening paragraph
• pepper keywords throughout the post

But don't go overboard! Keywords stuffing is not good for SEO or ranking. You want your text to sound natural like you're talking to a friend, not like an infomercial!

My favourite keyword tool is Mangools' KWFinder

2. A picture is worth a thousand words

The bulk of your post is made up by the text, but don't forget to add other kinds of media too: photos, videos, graphics, slides, infographics.

Google searches are not limited to text only, if you don't include a variety of content you will be missing out on a lot of potential clicks!

3.Quality over quantity

Posting regularly is important, I won't deny that. However, the quality of what you post is more important. If your time only allows for 3 short basic posts or 1 long in-depth post, always go for the in-depth option!

No one really knows how long a post has to be to rank well, and Google probably changes the number over time anyway. But as a rule of thumb, you'll want to make your posts at least 800 words.

4. Don't forget the behind the scenes

URLs, tags, categories, meta descriptions, image names, and image captions all play a part on Google's ranking algorithm. Add your keywords to them and make sure they are just as informative as the text of the post itself.

Links that come into your page are also important. And while it's hard to get someone else to link to your content, you can give yourself a boost with internal links.

If you have got this far, you're obviously interested. But you're probably thinking "well, she sells PLR, of course she'd say this".

I also use PLR articles. I've used them for years. 

Some of my blog post do not get any Google traffic at all - nor would I expect them to. But I do have several posts that started life as boring PLR that rank for multiple high ranking keywords and bring in lots of traffic everyday.

So, will using PLR articles stop you ranking on Google? 

Honestly, no. Well, only if you don't try and make them great.