I added all the InterNACHI articles www.nachi.org/articles.htm to my site and consumers keep finding me. Since the beginning of the year the addition of the articles has increased the traffic to my site nearly five fold.
My website is www.mtnhighinspections.com
Looks good Janette , lots of information. did someone help you with your site or was it all you?
Great job, Janette !!! 
And congrats on your 1st post to the MB, *after over 4 years!!! *What’s up with that?? :twisted:
Jeff
Nice site Janette.
Janette might not post too much but I always see her at the Denver NACHI meetings and also at the Colorado Springs meetings sometimes.
She is very involved.
Looks good. What kind of traffic volume are you getting?
Of course including your site link in your signature and posting regularly in the public sections of the forum can help SEO too.
I’m sure she just had a spike from this thread also… 89 views, so far. 
Be warned only post articles that you perform inspections for or you will get some very weird requests. Some times they work too good, especially if somebody else does not have that article list on their website yet.
Last month, due to some unusual sinkhole activity in Guatamala…I got 16,000 new hits and 20,000 individual page reads.
Wierd.
You are quite lucky as Google does not like duplicate content. OK, they hate it. You are experiencing what I believe is a temporary surge until Google catches on which can often take quite a while. Not saying you did anything wrong, but I would at least go back and modify the top, middle and bottom of all the articles with your own unique content.
Case in point. I knew of a home inspector who used white text to (try) and hide the fact that his primary keyword was on his home page in a hundred different places. What happened? For a short while he was at the top of the SERP’s. Then he got banned for life.
Erol is incorrect about duplicate content, although his old wives tale may have been true many years ago. Imagine how many exact duplicate versions of the U.S. Declaration of Independence exist, word for word, on the internet. If I thought there was any truth to the rumor, being the @$$hole that I am, I’d commission our IT Department to write a script to make 500 exact duplicate websites for every non-member’s site.
Every member who adds www.nachi.org/articles.htm to their inspection websites reports dramatic increase in traffic that only increases over time.
I agree but know original content will help SEO more.
Most people do not have time or should I say talent to add all original content to fill their websites and being able to add NACHI articles is a blessing to that majority.
There is no reason to fear adding content but it would be wise to change up the words to avoid any duplicate penalty .
Personally I would use the articles as a template and totally rewrite.
Janette, what searches is your site coming up for? I posted 2 articles directly from Google’s site last month on how overwhelming your site with copied content (which your site is doing as it was a lot more duplicate content than original content) will not help your rankings.
Nick, let me rephrase what Erol has said. Having copied content won’t hurt you, but it won’t help your rank at all. Having the constitution as a single page among many on your site means you have lots of other original content. What will keep you down is when 75% of your content isn’t original. Google; Denver Home Inspector and check out DenversBestHomeInspector.com , a NACHI member using our hosting and is #2 for a city with over 1 million people (Google Brooklyn Home Inspector and you’ll find 2 NACHI members on the first page in cities with over 2.5 million people). You’ll notice almost all the content is original. I can give you dozens of other cities and none of them have sites with overwhelming duplicate content. I only post this as I want to see guys succeed, not be held back.
Dominic, will modifying the articles like Erol suggested improve the rankings or will google ‘sense’ it is a copy of another article?
Jason, you’re talking about two different things. He is discussing site ranking which is how the search engines perceive your site and you are mentioning how the public ranks your site. These are two different things.
For your site to rank when someone types in a search request, they must type in the right word for your site to come up. It’s about relevance to what they are searching for. If your site is the same as everyone else’s, then your relevance will fall because everyone has the exact same information.
For those that do not have significant content for the search words that people use, and you are the only one copying the articles in your area, a search for: "Boulder Colorado move in certified inspection"will increase your hit because you matched “move in certified” which you are increased in relevance because of “Boulder” and “Colorado”.
So if you’re the only one that copies the movie and certified article in Boulder Colorado you will get the hit without any problem.
However, when you just type in “movie in certified inspection” you may be on page 1009!
Unless however, you add relevance of your own in reference to the movie and certified inspection program.
if the search engine finds you have additional information in Association with the copied article, it may make you more relevant.
My personal view on copying any information or content style even is that people read the same old stuff over and over again every click they make on a new website in their search. How many times do they want to read the same thing?
As you pointed out, they will see the the similarities of all the sites they click and may keep on clicking until they see something more original that actually addresses their concerns beyond simply finding a home inspector.
Dom, like all geeks 
, is rank-centric. Rank is simply one way to generate traffic. Rank doesn’t pay bills. Traffic does. In particular, consumer traffic. www.nachi.org/articles.htm generates consumer traffic, which is what Jan an Jim and others (as they’ve explained) have been enjoying since adding the articles to their sites. Nothing wrong with rank though (rank very much helps generate traffic) and Dom is the King of improving rank. But traffic leads to clients.
Google can sense 4 words together and tell you what site they came from (I have software that does the same). But as long as you rewrite parts of it then Google is not going to look at it as copied content. Nick has given NACHI members permission to change their articles which is perfect. You want to integrate your search words when possible as David mentions (and David is another one of our users on page 1 for dozens of phrases). Maje the content fit your area. Work in your city names, home inspections and pretend you’re in high school and do a rough rewrite.
Nick, I agree but disagree.
granted, There are many ways you can use your web site.
However,all of my jobs this year above $2000 per job came from website searches.
The fact that they can find me, and the fact that what they are looking for is on the website is what makes the phone ring and does in fact hey the bills.
I am not totally disagreeing , because I embed at least a link to sites like NACHI.
What I do notice all too often is specifically with home inspectors that offer thermal imaging and use everyone else’s images and videos on their website. You don’t think the client has memorized all those pictures from the big guns like Fluke and Flir?
You’re not marketing yourself, your marketing another industry leader.
If the reason is because the scans you take don’t look as good as the ones from other sources, maybe you should consider your position in TI.
You’re not selling the thermal imaging concept, you’re trying to sell yourself and the services you offer.
Correct, the articles can drive traffic if you modify them so Google see’s them as new content. Most guys aren’t the greatest at coming up with new content so the fact that InterNACHI provides these articles is gold. But you do have to put a little work into rewriting to make them worthwhile. Since a particular website host loads every NACHI article available there are automatically around a thousand sites with the exact same 50+ articles on it if you don’t change yours.
While Jan’s site looks great, it’s not optimized well at all (I’d be happy to help you Jan, just let me know). For a 6 year old site it should be on page 1 of Google but I can’t find it for Denver or surrounding areas.
It’s Alexa rank, which you know about well is over 15 million. A site that’s visited 2-3 times a day will be in the 2-3 million range. Amazon Alexa
You must be ranked on the first page of Google, and really in the top 5 slots or you won’t get any traffic. Clients called 2-3 inspectors max. If they can’t find you, they won’t be calling!
Nick, I have to agree with David. I have a Nachi article about pull down stairs that gets tons of hits, but the phone doesn’t ring unless the site is on page one within the first three listings. I am getting the traffic that the article provides, but when I bounce around page one to the fifth or sixth listing I get nothing.
Dominic you’re killin me. Quit giving away all the secrets.
Listen folks, the Interweb is waaay overcrowded with HI sites. Unless you already have a strong ranking site, you should just forgo building and optimizing a website and work on print advertising or just stick to generic pre-authored site content. There’s really no point in putting any real effort into your website…
You will also make it easier for me to hold/improve my current ranking.