How To Use Wayback Machine To Find Free Content
If you’re tired of producing content for one of your blogs, or if the subject is, well, getting a bit boring, you can boost your site with adding old, de-indexed content that can be repurposed.
In basic terms, someone has, in the past, built a website or blog, written content and then not bothered to renew the domain. So, that website will eventually be de-indexed from the search engines and be lost.
What we can do is dig out that content and re-use it for our own websites. This can be a gold mine of content that will not be duplicate content in the search engines eyes.
We can then use it as-is or add more keywords making our websites ‘fuller’. I wouldn’t necessarily use this content as my main articles, but more as a filler.
Is it ethical to use someone else’s hard work? I think so. But if you really want to be transparent, you can always add an attribution (if you can find one) inside your post.
We need only 3 or 4 things to do this…and a bit of time digging.
Let’s Begin.
Depending on your subject, you may only find one piece of content or, be lucky, and find a whole website of content. You may also find zilch!
The Wayback Machine Method
First we need a subject. And in this case, I’ll use a Clickbank niche.
The Manifestation niche is quite an interesting one. No one knows for certain if it works, but I can say if you can see positivity in all things then good things will come to you. It’s quite logical if you can keep that positive mindset going 24/7.
Of course, that’s where it can break down because, in all honesty, who can be feel positive in every situation? But, I know of a handful of people who have been able to get things they want simply by having a devoted mindset to the positive. Unfortunately, I don’t possess the same mindset. I’m a bit of a negative creature, to be honest, so I attract things the other way!
Anyway, enough of all that…let’s look for a Manifestation Product on Clickbank with this criteria.
- Initial Sale at least $27
- Gravity between 10-30
- New-ish product
- Decent Affiliate Tools
- Appealing Sales Page
After setting the criteria, I found ‘Total Money Magnetism’ and after looking at the affiliate tools, it looks pretty good. It even has a brandable PDF for you to use, as well as banners and keyword ideas.
It has a gravity of 13 which is low, but means we might catch one or two sales as the competition isn’t too high, which will be a bonus as we’re only after content for our website.
I would ignore the Average sales figures here…$408.38 seems ridiculously high. I would be happy with a $27 pay-out every now and again. Remember, this is just acting as a filler for your ‘Manifestation’ niche website. You may have a different niche for your blog, but the actions are the same.
So, that’s the Product/Subject sorted. Grab your affiliate link from Clickbank and save it to notepad along with the affiliate page URL and Sales Page.
Next we go and see if we can find some content that might be able to go with our product.
Using Ezine Articles To Find Expired URL’s
Ezine Articles has been around for donkey’s years and has a ton of content within its site. Go to the front page and put a key word in the search box…in this case ‘how to attract money’
Clicking search brings up over 84,000 articles. The very first one, I note, is from 2012. This might reap some results, so I click on it.
When someone writes an article for Ezine Articles, they are prone to put a URL at the bottom of their content which is a link to their website. If the link is not linked we can look at it. What I mean by unlinked is the URL not being underlined. It means Ezine have taken the link out because the URL is dead. If there is a line under the link, it means the website is still indexed and alive.
So I click on the Article and scroll down to the bottom and low and behold a dead link!
I might have gotten lucky here as the link [http://www.the-law-of-attraction-works.com] no longer works.
I copy the link into notepad and head over to Wayback Machine.
Using Wayback Machine To Find Content
This clever website holds millions of pages from the net and if we’re lucky, the URL I’ve copied has been saved.
I search and yes, it’s been saved 18 times. I then click on the 2012 block and wait for the Wayback Machine to go to work. There are several dates to choose from, I click on June 9th.
I prefer to go back later rather than earlier as sometimes the later dates can reveal differing results.
Once Wayback Machine has completed the check, we see an article with an index of links to the left. This could all be good content.
I copy a chunk of text and head over to a Plagiarism checker and paste it in. I then click the Blue Check Plagiarism button and wait.
The Plagiarism Checker For Uniqueness
Small SEO Tools is a great free resource for us to use. The one I use most is their Plagiarism checker. It’s pretty accurate and saves going through Copyscape if you’re on a budget.
There are quite a few advertisments on this page, but after using it a few times, you will know where to put the text and which button to press.
As you can see below, this article brought in a result of 79% unique, but I’m sure we can do better than that? I like to see at least 90% just to be on the safe side. You can see where the text is plagiarised by clicking the red Compare button (on their site) to the plagiarized text. In this case there were quite a few websites with the same content as this piece of pasted text.
Let’s go back and have a look at those other links in the article on the Wayback Machine result.
I click on the Manifest Money blue link which brings up another article. I copy this and head back to the plagiarism checker, paste it in and click the button.
Well, fancy that! 100% unique.
I can now copy the whole article from the Wayback Machine and use it in a post, along with any others I find on that de-indexed website.
I can add a few keywords relating to the Clickbank product, including any giveaways they offer, and index it, Facebook it, Twitter it and Ping it. Include some inner links in the post, alongside a couple of links to good authority sites and I have a post that’s taken around 30 minutes to find.
SEO the images, add a few Keyword Headlines and phrase and we’re done. We now have a content for our websites and, as a bonus, a possible affiliate commission or two.
Voila! New Content For A New Post!
Of course I was rather lucky with this example as sometimes it can take a few hours to get usable content with this method.
You may find a whole website with lots of glorious content if you dig deep enough that you can build a whole niche site with.
Yes, it’s kinda cheating and I’ve only done this with one or two websites that I own. You can’t beat writing your own content and putting your personal stamp on your articles, but if you’ve grown a little tired of writing about the same stuff, take a break and try this method for a few posts.
I always put the articles I use through Copyscape just to make sure they are unique, but that rarely brings up any conflicts. It happened once to me, but the website was dead, it was just on the cusp of being de-indexed. But it’s better to be safe than sorry.
I hope you can see this as a little tool to combat writers block too. Some days we just don’t feel like creating content, or maybe we’re struggling for ideas. But it’s important to keep publishing content so that your website (money earner, remember) doesn’t go cold.
You are a Moral Blogger and saying immoral ways to get the free content. Lol
Just kidding. Dont be serious.
Heh-heh! I get your point, but I prefer to see it as giving the old content a new lease of life. Giving it a second chance after it was abandoned and left for dead like an unwanted puppy.
It’s how I roll.:)