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Archive for the ‘SEO’ Category

The Duplicate Content Issue Demystified

Thursday, January 7th, 2010

If you have your business website or a blog up and running, you have probably already heard the term “duplicate content” (SEO). If not, then here are some pointers that you need to know if you want your site to be on the “nice” list in *Google’s records this year.

What is duplicate content?

It is when you have several copies of the same content under different URLs (pages). For example, it could be a duplicate article on your own website, or a copy of your site’s article on a third party website. It happens often when people write for other blogs and then post the same content on their own site. It also happens if you don’t have proper blog settings on and your articles are posted under several categories, etc.

Why is duplicate content bad?

Imagine your Mom tells you a joke. Then you ask your Dad to tell you something funny, and he tells you the same joke. Then you ask your friend, and he repeats the same joke again. How annoying would that be? Google thinks the same way. It doesn’t want to show the same page in its search results several times, when people are searching for, let’s say, “different ways to fold a napkin.” That’s why when Google finds duplicate pages on the Internet, it decides which one has more value and then adds it to its index.

In order to decide which page has more value, Google will assess the site’s reputation. The site that has a better reputation in Google’s eyes will be indexed and will appear in the search results. The other duplicate page might or might not even be indexed after all.

How could it affect your entire site?

If you have a lot of duplicate content on your site, Google will slowly start losing interest in it. It might crawl your website less often, which will affect your organic ranking position in the long run.

That’s why you want to make sure that your content is unique, because that’s what Google is aiming for – to deliver valuable search results to users.

How much duplicate content is too much? When does it become evil?

No one knows how much is too much exactly when it comes to duplicate content. The general rule of thumb is to stay away from it as much as you can, and make sure that your content is as authentic as it can be. That being said, there are some situations when you cannot avoid duplicate content (e.g. you share your research results or white papers with your clients, etc.), and Google understands that. Just try to be as natural as you can, this is the main rule when it comes to Google.

Also if you do write for other blogs, you might want to consider saving a high-quality copy for your own blog and write a separate, simpler, shorter one for distribution.

Not sure if your site is in good standings with Google? Give us a shout and we will be happy to help you figure it all out.

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*By Google I really mean all search engines. Google is the biggest one out there, so I use it in my example.

Tags: Duplicate Content
Posted in SEO | No Comments »

Forget About Your Meta Keywords Tag

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

That’s right, none of the major search engines use the Meta Keywords Tag anymore. Yahoo has been the only engine that supported the tag, but last month they made it official and revealed it to the public that they are not using it for search results anymore.

So, how does this affect you and your website? It doesn’t really. It’s ok if you still have this Meta Tag on your site, but I just wouldn’t worry about it when creating new pages.

Just keep this in mind and use your primary keywords in the actual copy of your site, this is the best place for your keywords and phrases. Keep your text as natural as possible, stick with only ethical SEO practices and do not over-optimize your page with the same keywords, Google doesn’t like that.

Posted in SEO | No Comments »

What is SEO Monthly Management?

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

My clients often ask me what exactly monthly SEO management involves and why they need it, so I thought I’d write a quick post about it, in order to get a little bit more into details of the mysterious SEO management.

I am not alone if I say that SEO is not solely about optimizing your site. Quite the opposite actually, to make your site more search engine friendly (to rank higher and to bring targeted traffic), you (or your SEO consultant) will have to do a lot of work outside of your website. Off-site as they prefer to call it in the industry.

I know, it sounds strange but Search Engine Optimization is not 100% about your site, it’s actually only 25% about your site and the rest 75% is about your site’s representation or reputation if you want, on the web.

Yes, it is still extremely important to have your site in order, well structured and all, but this is only the beginning of your SEO journey, so to speak.

If you already have worked with an SEO specialist then you know (have heard) about title tags, meta tags and other fun stuff like that. This is usually done in the first/second step of your SEO project. The third and the most important step is the actual SEO management (monthly SEO if you will).

It’s three paragraphs already into the article, and not a word about the actual third step. Ok, here it is. This list will give you a better understanding of how it works.

Tops 10 SEO monthly initiatives (please add your thoughts in the comments if I’m missing something):

1)    First and foremost important initiative of your monthly SEO package is link building. It’s a very (and I mean it), tedious, and time-consuming task. I had a post about link building earlier, so make sure to check it out.
2)    Participation Marketing – social networking, social bookmaking, forums and chats, etc.
3)    Content development and distribution. Often involves writing articles on a related topic, or updating your site’s content. Press releases are also often used for SEO purposes.
4)    Going local. Adding your site to the biggest local portals and industry directories.
5)    Niche directories submission.
6)    Keyword research and maintenance (tracking changes of your keyword performance, etc.).
7)    Site traffic analysis.
8)    Site performance analysis.
9)    Keeping an eye on your competitors.
10)    Documenting, documenting and documenting again. It’s imperative to track the data for future evaluations.

So, as you can see, SEO is so much more than just optimizing your site. It seems like an SEO professional nowadays (and probably has been for a while now) is your online good-will ambassador (of some sort), so choose one wisely. ;)

Posted in SEO | No Comments »

What Is Link Building And Why Do I Need To Care About It

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

Link Building is a process of obtaining links to your website from other sites. These links are often called “back links” or “incoming” links.

Why are back links so important?

Back links are determining your site’s popularity so to speak. Simply because if people are linking to your site, then it shows that your site is useful. Google and other search engines count all the back links and assign a “popularity rank” to your site. A page (or a site) that has the most number of incoming links will have the highest rank. The more popular your site is, the better your ranking position (position on the search results page) will be, and it’s as simple as that.

One of the most important factors to take into consideration when you acquire back links to your site is that you don’t want any link; you want links from reputable websites. For example if you have one link from a well established government website and your competitor has 10 links from his friends’ blogs that no one is reading, then your link will overweight his 10 links. (It’s obvious that it will be much more difficult to get a really good link from a government site than from your buddies.)

Link building is a long and tedious process. It involves countless hours of search to find that ideal linking partner who will agree to link to your site. If your site has unique content and it brings value to the online community, people will want to link to your site without you even asking them, but to be honest with you, for this to happen you have to have really, really good (unique) content. It’s more difficult if you have an e-commerce site. You have to be very creative in your link building strategy.

Link building is usually offered as a part of an ongoing SEO Monthly Management Package by SEO companies.

Give us a call for a free SEO evaluation.

Tags: Link Building
Posted in SEO | 1 Comment »

Why do I need to hire an SEO company?

Monday, September 28th, 2009

Small business owners are all about saving money by trying to do everything (including SEO) by themselves. And, hey, I can totally understand and relate, but here are some reasons why and when you better off investing in hiring a professional, instead of diving into learning the basics of Search Engine Optimization.

SEO Scenario #1

First of all let’s determine what kind of business you own and what your goals are. Is it a small operation that brings you some additional income, keeps you busy and gives you an opportunity to learn new things? Well, in this case, doing your own SEO probably is a very good idea. If you have time and desire, you can learn SEO. And by time I mean, that you are ready to patiently wait when your site, maybe one day, will finally appear in Google. See, SEO is a long and tedious process and it takes time for a site to start ranking well, and if you are going to take your time learning all the SEO tricks, it will take even longer. Although what you could do to get you started is to get an SEO assessment of your site, to see where you stand and what needs to be done. This will help you to get on the right track, and you could continue your SEO journey on your own.

SEO Scenario #2

You are a small business now, but you have plans to grow and to become a not-so-small business one day. You do not have an official marketing budget, and you are not sure if you need SEO at all. A simple example of how SEO works is that if you have a site, you must optimize it for Search Engines, like Google, Bing, Yahoo!, etc. so they know and understand your site. The thing is with the number of web sites being launched every day, Google has too much work to do, to crawl all of them. That’s why by making your site more SEO (meaning Search Engine) friendly, you help Google to index and to show your site in its search results faster. And if you don’t have your site optimized, then it’s like applying for a job, and not bringing your resume with you, or going to the airport and forgetting to bring your ID. You have your ticket, but have no ID. So, you can’t really use your ticket until you show your ID. Think of SEO as your site’s ID in a certain way.

By hiring an SEO company you will make your site visible to search engines and will attract more targeted traffic and more clients. A knowledgeable SEO company will create a proposal for you explaining how everything works and what initiatives they are going to undertake. This is where your skill of being able to delegate comes into place. As a small business owner at times it’s hard to delegate, as you are so used to doing things yourself. But this is exactly it – a small business mentality. In order to grow you need to utilize all resources that are available to you, so you can concentrate on actually growing your business and not on learning SEO.

Posted in SEO | 1 Comment »

Keywords Meta Tag – Does It Really Matter?

Sunday, September 27th, 2009

This is an oldie but goodie. SEOs of all calibers have been discussing this one for a while, and I see this questions again and again on SEO forums. Should we use keywords meta tag or should we drop it all together. The truth is Google is open about it, they say that they don’t use keywords meta tag for the search purposes at all. On the other hand Bing says that they do use it. Although it’s not the most important ranking factor, they still recommend utilizing it.

So, I guess it’s up to you to decide if you are going to SEO your site for Google or for Bing, and others.

Here is Mat Cutt’s video on this topic: