Updated: November 15, 2011

Google, Bing and Yahoo cracked down hard on duplicate content starting December 2010.  Penalties hit hardest on February 24, 2011 in the Google Panda algorithm update.  Bing and Yahoo rankings followed suite.

How To: The SEO Tools and Process to Address Duplicate Content

Comparison SEO Tool

An SEO services client with which we work has developed multiple websites for different brands, but the client recycled the content.  Instead of writing 100% unique text for each website, paragraphs and sometimes whole pages were used universally across multiple websites.  They were getting away without noticeable revenue loss, so despite existing duplicate content penalties (though not actual penalties – more accurately wasting crawl budget and possibly dividing link juice) on interior entry pages, the client decided it was not a big enough priority to rewrite all the content … until now.

February search engine algorithm updates penalized entire websites that have pages similar to any other site that the search engine credits as the originator. Even if words are rearranged and the brand name is switched out, the Google algorithm is not fooled.  Google chooses one website as the originator and penalizes the others.

In late 2010, various rankings started to slip.  On February 24th, clients with duplicate or similar content across different websites saw a total drop off for #1 ranked keyword phrases.   Google guidelines for duplicate content indicate that the algorithm perceives these similar pages as  “deliberately duplicated across domains in an attempt to manipulate search engine rankings or win more traffic“.

By the way, these guidelines were [initially] updated March 20, 2011, less than a month after the [first] Panda algorithm update.

Systematic Process of Identifying and Addressing Duplicate Pages

If you are intimately familiar with your websites, like this search engine optimization consultant is, you already know which pages are similar and possibly causing duplicate content penalties. If you are an SEO agency taking on a new client with duplicate content issues, leaving it up to you to figure out where the duplicates are within their online properties, then you may need a few SEO tools to help identify possible duplicate pages. …continue reading this SEO article »

Have you decided to create a blog in addition to your main website?  Is it time for a company blog?

How you setup your blog is crucial for SEO.

1. Where To Install a Blog:
   - Subfolders?
   - Subdomains?
   - Separate Domains?
2. How to Integrate the Blog into the Main Website Architecture
3. Optimize Website Navigation Anchor Text
4. Optimize Blog Categories
5. What to Remove from the Blog

Steps 1 and 2 (concerning blog location and navigation) were discussed in a previous article on the 5 step process to setup your blog for SEO.  As a quick review of these two steps, the strategy for blog SEO is to integrate your blog within your main company website.  Typical blog architecture creates a strong web of interlinking.  Blogs also attract links from other blogs and directories.  The inbound links hit the web-like framework of interlinking and spread authority throughout the blog.  Search engines naturally view a blog as a tightly interlinked section of your website.  That is why, if you want your blog to benefit your main website, it must be actively interlinked.  That means, install it in a sub-folder of your main website, so link authority will count toward the domain, not toward a sub-domain or separate domain.

Step 3 is your first act of optimizing your blog using keywords.  Imagine if you were a s search engine starting at the top level of your website.  The first thing you read is the domain name.  Optimize it.  You might take a quick scan of the text near the top of the homepage, and then go right through the main navigation.  What do each of the links say in the navigation?  What is the file name of each page where they link?  The internet is too big to read every inch of every website, so you pull what information you can from a quick preview.  Using meaningful keywords in the main navigation anchor text and file names is only logical.  And its something every SEO consultant can agree upon.

This concept carries right into the next topic, optimizing blog categories. …continue reading this SEO article »

When addressing duplicate content for SEO, the subject inevitably comes to 301 redirects and URL rewrites. However, what do you do when a client owns multiple websites and decides to combine websites into one domain, or eliminate a website domain?  If content is left live on the old domain, it will duplicate the content on the new domain.  Google may think the new domain is scraping content off the old domain and use the Panda filter to penalize the entire new domain.

The usual answer is… 301 redirect the old website to the new website.

But How Exactly?

Here’s the problem that always happens.  They end up redirecting the homepage from the old website to the homepage of the new website.  But what about all the interior pages?  There may be hundreds of back links to interior pages that get completely wasted as soon as the old website is deleted.  If you are hosting on a Microsoft IIs server, you may be limited without installing ISAPI or some other rewrite module. However, if you are hosting on an Apache server, the .htaccess file gives you an extremely flexible means of handling redirects.

…continue reading this SEO article »

Do you create landing pages for your PPC ads?

Do You want to maximize their SEO benefit?

Being raised with a thrifty mindset and borderline hoarding tendencies, I am compelled to use every website asset to further SEO success.  This article will reveal to you:

1. How to know if your landing pages are causing duplicate content for organic search engines
2. How to eliminate duplicate content penalties
3. How to reclaim unused back links
4. Long term strategy to build organic traffic using your paid search landing pages

Are Your Paid Search Landing Pages Causing Duplicate Content Penalties?

A lot of clients don’t realize that their PPC landing pages end up in the search engine index.  If your landing pages have nearly identical content as each other or other pages of your website, they will potentially cause duplicate content penalties without you realizing.  Your website will not completely drop out of the search results, but those individual pages will waste resources (link authority, PageRank, crawl budget) that should go into other areas.  And, Google will remember that your website has useless duplicate pages, which affects your website’s overall profile.  Over the years Google has told us to disallow, redirect and apply canonical links to those pages.  Depending on how you address duplicate pages can hold back your potential for Google PageRank and high search engine rankings.

Check Google for your landing pages by searching…

site:yourwebsite.com/landingpage.php

A lot of times I find duplicate versions of the same landing page in Google or Bing, the only difference being different strings in the URL.  The URL may have some random looking string at the end such as ?src=W4THMJHWWZRP. Because these have different URLs, the search engines assume they are supposed to be different pages. They may have identical content with only slight differences. Unfortunately, search engines are penalizing you for duplicate content in the organic results.  You can turn this around to your advantage!

So the first thing you’re probably wondering is how do these pages find their way into the Google or Bing index?  You don’t have any links to them, they are complete islands, pages hosted on your server with no links from any part of your website.  So how does Google find them?

Easy… someone else landed on the page from your PPC ad and created a link to the page.

Here’s the proof.  Once you find a page in a search index using the “site” search above, check that page for backlinks. Go to Yahoo Site Explorer and enter the URL for the page. Make sure you click “Inlinks” and chose the drop down “Except from this domain”.  Here you will see other websites that link to that landing page.

How to Eliminate Duplicate Content Penalties

Some people would say to use your robots.txt file to disallow search engines from listing those pages in their results.  For a long time, this has been the standard way of addressing duplicate content.  However, there is always the potential for other websites to link to your landing pages.  Even if you don’t see back links in Yahoo Site Explorer, there may still be back links not shown (search engines just refuse to show you everything they know and there’s nothing we can do about it), you need to plan on the possibility of people creating links in the future.  Using the robots.txt to disallow a page with potential back links does not let you take advantage of potential back links.

How to Regain Unused Back Links

Every back link you have is one more that your competitor may not.  …continue reading this SEO article »

If you already have a Google Places page, and your listing appears when you zoom into your location on the Google Map, but how do you get it to rank higher for the initial search?

…continue reading this SEO article »

It makes me laugh when I see statements like this:

SEO copy software – The Death of Search Engine Optimization

Reciprocal link building became widespread by webmasters and SEOs in the 90′s and continues today.  Some people do it manually one link at a time, while others use automated programs to search prospects, contact them, check for the back link and publish the reciprocal link.  Some internet marketers sell reciprocal link building software while others sell against it. In some cases it will get you penalized by Google.  But in other cases, you can find websites that dominate their targeted keywords whose backlinks are filled with insestual reciprocal links. You may wonder…

• “If I trade links with someone who emailed me with a reciprocal link offer, will it hurt or help me?”
• “Can I use a reciprocal link building program without penalizing my website?”
• “I think its OK if they link to me, but should I link to them?”

…continue reading this SEO article »

Keyword density analyzer that actually lets you find the density of a particular keyword phrase on your site, compared to your competitor’s site. Most keyword density SEO tools just give you a list of words they find on the site and the particular webpage you request.

If you already know what keywords and phrases for which you want to rank, then the task is to reverse engineer those sites that rank at the top of the SERPs for your chosen keyword phrase.

This keyword density tool allows you to compare your keyword density of a phrase on your webpage against your competitor’s page who ranks above you.

However, beware of keyword stuffing…

…continue reading this SEO article »

Yelp reviews is a vital component of 3 steps for local search (or map search) optimization.  The existence of Yelp reviews, good or bad, cements your business into the local/map search results.

This video tutorial shows the basics for using Yelp business tools.  However, leveraging yelp for local search optimization can be simplified to 3 steps.

…continue reading this SEO article »

5 Strategic Decisions to Get the Most Out of  Automated Blog SEO

When it comes to blog SEO, everyone talks about title tags, meta tags, search engine friendly URLs (slugs, permalinks, whatever you want to call them)…  That’s all pretty common stuff and there’s plenty of information about the WordPress SEO plugins to help you find them and set them up.  But here’s the most important thing that no one tells you to consider – website architecture.  This is closely related to silo linking, but MUCH more powerful.

Medium Blue Search Engine Marketing clients are sent my way when they need a little extra above and beyond ideas, technical recommendations and help for their organic search engine results.  Clients look to our search engine marketing consultancy for advice, but make their own ultimate decisions on optimizing their website.  The trend I’ve noticed is that most people are uninformed to a certain level of SEO information regardless of what their consultant recommends.  The most common unknown is the magnitude of missed opportunity not optimizing their website architecture.  And this is the biggest opportunity for setting up your wordpress blog so that it’s automated SEO feeds optimization for the rest of your website.

…continue reading this SEO article »

At today’s SEMPO Atlanta PPC event I had a chance to ask all the important SEO questions with a Yahoo representative (who’s name unfortunately escapes me).  With the joining of Yahoo and BING, it was common knowledge that Bing Microsoft organic search results will power the Yahoo search.  But how will the result add up to Google?  How will Yahoo search experience change?

As an SEO professional, I know Yahoo search algorithms are noticeably more sophisticated than those of BING.  However, Bing has flashy rollover previews. Will Yahoo share search technology with Bing? …continue reading this SEO article »