In some instances, pages containing duplicate content are filtered at the time search engine results are sorted, so there is no guarantee as to which version of a page will appear in results and which won’t. Duplicate content may even hinder some sites and web pages from getting indexed by search engines, and there are some cases in which a search engine crawler will stop indexing all of the pages of a site because it finds too many copies of the same pages under different URLs.

While content duplication is sometimes used in an attempt to manipulate search engine rankings to garner more website traffic, in most cases it occurs without ill intent on behalf of the site owner or webmaster. The following is a list of duplicate content scenarios that could be burdening your site.

Scenario #1: Ecommerce sites that include product descriptions from manufacturers, producers, and publishers

Product distribution websites often use text from the manufacturer or producer of the product as a description for the item on their own pages. With the addition of the product name, creator, manufacturer, writer, or recording artist appearing on the page, there is a considerable amount of duplicate content on pages that don’t originate from the same website. Here are some examples:

http://www.amazon.com/Sony-VGN-TXN15P-B-Notebook-Processor/dp/B000J43MR0
http://www.crowdstorm.com/Sony_VAIO_11_1_Widescreen_Notebook_PC_VGN_TXN15P_B+
2973.html
http://www.clearanceclub.com/products/6495-VAIO-VGN-TXN15P-B
http://www.provantage.com/sony-vgntxn15p-b~7SONN0UX.htm

Scenario #2: Printer-friendly pages

Many sites offer “printer friendly” versions of their content on different pages. Without the application of robots.txt disallow statements or meta “noindex” tags on these pages to keep search engines from indexing them, they may be indexed as duplicate content. See these samples:

http://www.constructionbook.com/xq/ASP/productid.5395/qx/printable_view_produ
ct.htm
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-details-print.asp?Ed
pNo=1556143&Sku=H24-PX849%20SB

Scenario #3: Websites that create session IDs

A session ID lets you create customized applications for a more personalized user experience, thus increasing the appeal of your website. A visitor to your site would be assigned a unique session ID which is either stored in a cookie on the user side or is propagated in the URL.

Websites with session IDs serve information in their URLs to track visitors as they go through the pages of that site. When search engine crawlers detect this tracking information they may index the same page several times under different URLs. A good example of this is www.staples.com.

Search engine guidelines advise you to allow bots or spiders to crawl your sites without session IDs that track their path through the site. While this technique is great for tracking individual user behavior, the access pattern of bots is entirely different. Since bots cannot always decipher URLs that look different but point to the same page, the use of session IDs may result in incomplete indexing of your site.

Scenario #4: URLs that include multiple data variables

When multiple data variables exist within a URL, this causes bots to crawl and index the same page under different URLs. Here are some examples of sites that show different data variables in their URLs.

http://www.homedepot.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?storeId=100
51&langId=-1&catalogId=10053&productId=100022126&categoryID=502813storeId=
10051

catalogId=10053
productId=100022126
categoryID=5028 http://www1.macys.com/catalog/index.ognc?CategoryID=30977&PageID=30977*1*24*-
1*-1&kw=Hugo%20Boss&LinkType=EverGreenCategoryID=30977

PageID=30977
LinkType=EverGreen

It is difficult for a search engine bot or spider to crawl the URLs listed above. If this scenario applies to your website, you may want to implement the mod-re-write server settings.

Scenario #5: Pages sharing similar elements

Some websites have elements that are very common from one page to another, such as title, meta descriptions, headings, navigation, and text that is shared sitewide. This can be a problem since bots might consider it to be duplicate content. Beware of this scenario if you own an ecommerce site that includes your brand name and information about that brand in every title on every page of your site. In addition, the use of content management systems that do not allow for distinct meta description tags to be placed on each page of a website can cause a similar dilemma.

Here are two well-known websites that use their brand names on every page:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com
http://www.officemax.com

These five scenarios represent situations in which search engine crawlers may perceive your website to have duplicate content. Although it is probably inadvertent on your part, you should take steps to resolve these issues to ensure that all of your web pages are properly indexed on the search engines.

1. Make calls to action stand out

What’s the most noticeable thing about a stop sign? Its bright red color? Its octagonal shape? Or the word STOP in all capital letters? Maybe it’s a combination of all three of these characteristics that makes a stop sign so unmistakable to drivers.

The same kind of logic should be applied to your website. Your “submit” or “buy now” buttons should stand out from the rest of your website, eliminating all confusion surrounding your call to action. With its ease of use and abundance of information, the Internet invites laziness and preoccupation. Don’t allow your users to become preoccupied while on your site. Give them clear, easy-to-follow instructions.

Simply brightening the color of a submit or buy now button can increase your conversion rate by several percent. Or perhaps try making it larger, with a unique shape.

2. Give visitors a warm and fuzzy feeling

Everyone likes feeling like they got a good deal, or the inside scoop on something. Web visitors appreciate saving money and getting valuable information not everyone is privy to. Indulge your visitors by making them feel positively about their decision to sign up for your services or purchase something from your site.

You can do so by telling them how much money they saved by shopping with you, or by letting them know that the services or information you are providing them can’t be obtained anywhere else.

If you offer free shipping, make that benefit stand out to customers. Remove any clutter around the positive message you are presenting. Some sites are clogged up with so many “benefits” they hide the true differentiator between them and their competition. Be sure to choose a feature that will set your product or service apart from your competition. Make that offer the most prominent on the page.

3. Don’t make them have to guess

Predictability can be a wonderful thing when it comes to the web. Luckily, it’s also an easy thing to establish on your website. Let your visitors know what to expect when completing your sign-up form, request for information, or other processes. Simply telling them how long it will take to get through the process can increase conversion to your thank-you page by 5 percent or more. For example, add “in one easy step” to your “sign up for our newsletter” above your website’s email sign up box. Quite simply, the more predictability and transparency built in to the process, the easier it is for users to commit their time.

Testing is essential for anyone who maintains a website. It’s the only way to know for sure what works and what doesn’t. It should be a manageable task if you start out by testing the basics and work your way into more advanced testing. You can learn a great deal about what makes your visitors tick by testing seemingly obvious things.

1. Send out the Web Crawlers
   Search engines use invisible “bots” or “spiders,” which are really programs or automated scripts, that browse (or “crawl”) the World Wide Web in a methodical, automated manner. Search engines use spidering as a means of providing up-to-date data. This type of technology is necessary because the rate at which people create new Internet documents greatly exceeds any manual indexing capacity. In fact, an estimated 20 billion web pages exist, and search engines have crawled about half of them.
2. Index the Pages
   After a spider crawls a web page, it makes a copy of it and adds it to its database. This process is known as indexing. With so many search queries submitted each minute, it is very important that search engines are steadfast in their index management so that they can search and sort billions of documents in fractions of a second.
3. Process Queries
   Search engines process hundreds of millions of search queries every day. When someone keys in a search term and clicks “Search,” the engine retrieves from its index all of the documents that match the query. It determines a match by finding the same terms or phrase entered into the search bar. Entering a multi-word phrase by itself can return literally millions of results, but entering that same phrase in quotes can greatly narrow the results, giving the user a more accurate listing of websites that relate to their particular search.
4. Rank Pages
   A very closely guarded mathematical equation, called an algorithm, is employed by each search engine to determine how to sort and rank search query results. This algorithm allows the engine to rank the most relevant web pages first, and the rest in descending order of importance to the user.

What You Can Do for Your Website: Avoid Speed Bumps & Walls

You may not know it, but you could be hindering or preventing your website from being crawled by search engine spiders. As spiders crawl the web, they rely on the architecture of hyperlinks to find new web pages and revisit those that may have changed. Complex links and deep site structures with little unique content may act as “speed bumps” in the process by slowing down the spiders. Even worse, data that cannot be accessed by web crawlers are really like “walls” in that they completely prevent your web pages from being ranked.

Beware of the Following “Speed Bumps”:

• URLs with 2+ dynamic parameters; i.e. http://www.url.com/page.php?id=4&CK=34rr&User=%Tom% (spiders may be reluctant to crawl complex URLs like this because they often result in errors with non-human visitors)
• Pages with more than 100 unique links to other pages on the site (spiders may not follow each one)
• Pages buried more than 3 clicks/links from the home page of a website (unless there are many other external links pointing to the site, spiders will often ignore deep pages)
• Pages requiring a “Session ID” or Cookie to enable navigation (spiders may not be able to retain these elements as a browser user can)
• Pages that are split into “frames” can hinder crawling and cause confusion about which pages to rank in the results.

Beware of the Following “Walls”:

• Pages accessible only via a select form and submit button
• Pages requiring a drop down menu (HTML attribute) to access them
• Documents accessible only via a search box
• Documents blocked purposefully (via a robot meta tag or robots.txt file)
• Pages requiring a login
• Pages that re-direct before showing content (search engines call this cloaking or bait-and-switch and may actually ban sites that use this tactic)

In order to avoid the above pitfalls and ensure that your website’s contents are fully crawlable, be sure to provide direct, HTML links to each page you want the search engine spiders to index. Remember to make every page of your site accessible from the home page, since the home page is usually the place spiders begin their crawl. It’s also a good idea to add a sitemap to your website in order to increase its navigation.

Latent semantic indexing…sounds pretty complicated doesn’t it? In actuality, there’s really not much to it. LSI is a search engine’s ability to identify synonyms and related terms for a keyword, and to identify pages as being related if they contain those similar terms. So if someone were to enter the search term “marketing,” the results that appear would include web pages that incorporate the words “communications” and “media” as well as those that contain “marketing.” In fact, the pages that contain the former don’t even necessarily have to mention the word marketing at all. The search engines will automatically make the connection between the words.

An important step in the indexing process, LSI not only records which keywords a document contains, but it also examines the document collection as a whole, to see which other documents contain some of those same words. According to LSI methods, documents that have many words in common are considered semantically close, and ones with few words in common are semantically distant. When you think about it, human beings might also classify a document collection using a method very similar to LSI. Unlike humans, the LSI algorithm doesn’t understand anything about what the words mean…it simply notices patterns, which can make it seem astonishingly intelligent.

Any good copywriter would naturally incorporate words into a website’s content that relate to the subject at hand. The trick is not to over do it, adding so many keywords and synonyms that the copy begins to sound robotic and nonsensical. Because that sort of practice is transparent to website visitors and search engine spiders alike, it is certain to drive traffic away from your site and likely to get it penalized by the engines.

Latent semantic indexing (or similar technologies) can also be used to look at the link profile of your website. If all your links are heavy in a few particular phrases and light on other similar phrases then your site may not rank as well.

You can determine which words are related to your keywords by searching Google for search results with related terms. Do so by entering a “~” into the search bar directly in front of your search term. For example, to find words related to race car, you would key in “race car.” You’ll find results that include not only race car, but also racing, track, and NASCAR.

Another option is to look at variations of keywords suggested by keyword suggestion tools. You can also try writing a page and use the Google AdSense sandbox to see what type of ads they would try to deliver to that page. And still another way of determining related keywords is by reading the page copy and analyzing the backlinks of high ranking pages.

The lesson to be learned here is that while you’re concentrating on carefully incorporating your keywords into your website copy, don’t ignore the synonyms that correlate with those keywords. Your website will benefit from the conscientious eye of a skilled SEO copywriter…but keep our LSI tips in mind when writing your own content.

Individuals in the 18-35 age range are several times more likely to turn to the Web for information on their surroundings than they are the YellowPages or even 411 information providers. That demographic is widening daily as folks of all ages are going online more than ever before. With the rising popularity of handheld PDAs, it’s probable that local search engines will soon become the most relied upon providers of information on local businesses.

While it is not necessary for a company to have a website in order to take advantage of local search, some businesses invest in basic websites consisting of just one to five pages and list them in the local search engines. For example, let’s say you own a hair salon in White Plains, NY. In an effort to increase business, you decide to have a template website created that provides some background information about your salon, its services, hours of operation, and some pictures of your salon and examples of your work.

Once your website is complete, you list it with a few of the leading local search engines. The benefit is that when someone visits one of these sites looking for a “hair salon in White Plains NY” the person will find your website, have the ability to see what kind of services you offer and other important information about your business, and will hopefully follow up with a visit or phone call your establishment.

Several local search engines have popped up during the past couple years, with the most prominent being Yahoo! Local, Overture Local Match, Ask Jeeves Local, and AOL Local Search. Other sites like CitySearch and AOL’s Digital City have been in on this action for well over a decade now.

Overture’s Local Match allows advertisers to target customers in specific regions or local areas. They can select a geographic area surrounding their business (a radius ranging from 0.5 to 100 miles) and bid on keyword phrases relating to their products and services. The payment structure for Local Match is on a cost-per-click basis. In other words, the advertiser pays the bid amount after a prospect clicks on the advertiser’s listing. In addition to Yahoo Local’s free listings, they also offer Enhanced Listings that allow advertisers to pay a monthly fee in order to provide additional information such as the company’s tagline, a business description, promotional offers, photos, and testimonials.

Local search is especially helpful for those who do research online and plan to buy offline. Searchers have the ability to gather the information they need to visit local businesses for the product or service they are interested in. In addition, for those companies that have intricate e-commerce websites, local search caters to the individual who wishes to shop online, but wants to know that the business they are dealing with is nearby in the event they need to return an item or have a customer service issue.

An estimated 10-20% of searches contain local modifiers that can be interpreted as the user seeking some type of local information. When bidding on local search terms, it is important to understand the user’s intent. The goal is to provide the user with highly relevant results, in this case geographically targeted and pertaining to their specific key word or phrase.

Every new website is subject to the Google sandbox, otherwise known as age delaying. The sandbox is the virtual place Google puts new websites before it deems them eligible for decent search rankings. Although this age delay varies from site to site, on average new websites with new domains must wait six months before they will be allowed into Google’s coveted Top Positions club.

While it can be frustrating, there is a very good reason for the existence of the sandbox. Google has adopted this procedure as a way of sorting out good quality websites from those that employ blackhat practices like link buying, duplicate content, and keyword stuffing. This new site probation period ensures that such practices will not be tolerated.

Since you cannot avoid placement in Google’s sandbox, we’ve put together some tips you can follow to help minimize the damage to your new website with a new domain. While there are several unethical methods in use, we list only ethical advice that complies with the policies of Google and the other search engines.

Create valuable content and good links. Along with the passage of time, nothing can help you reach the tops of the major search engines better than quality website content and good links from reputable sources. Make sure your website copy is original and informative, and that each page of your site contains different content. In addition, a slow and steady buildup of good links will bring you the best results. Links from .edu, .gov, and .mil domains might be beneficial, as those domains are usually exempt from the sandbox filter.

Launch website pages as they are created. Rather than waiting until your entire website is complete before launching, it is better to make a couple of pages live first and add to your site as you go along. These will set the time clock in motion, resulting in your site being further along in the waiting period as it is developed.

Buy old or expired domains. Since the sandbox effect has a greater bearing on new sites on new domains, you may want to consider buying an old or expired domain and launch your site there.

Focus on less popular keywords. You might avoid being sent to the sandbox by peppering your website with keywords that are less popular in your industry or category. Since the popular keywords are the ones most people strive for, the wait for rankings with these words is generally much longer than it would be if you focused on the less popular keywords. You can simultaneously get your site listed for less popular keywords while waiting to get to the top for the most profitable keywords.

Don’t forget about the other search engines! While Google may be the most popular, there are other search engines out there that either do not have a sandbox, or that penalize new sites for a much shorter time. So do your research and plan your SEO efforts to include other search engines as well.

Wait patiently. By following the advice above and waiting patiently for time to pass, you’ll be well on your way to escaping the confines of Google’s sandbox. Be sure to avoid any attempts to fool Google…so-called “sandbox tools” will not only keep you from bypassing the filter, but they can only make your situation worse.

When they were first introduced to search engine marketing (SEM), many marketers believed that with this innovative new concept, web marketing could be handled solely through the use of technology, and that human interaction wasn’t necessary in producing successful online campaigns. However, after results fell short time and again, these marketers were forced to take a second look at their original ideas.

Marketers are now learning that words like “autopilot” and “set it and forget it” are no more than advertising ploys used by companies that simply don’t understand what it takes to manage search effectively.

The new belief is that for SEM to live up to its promise, it is time for a completely new model – the 80/20 rule of search. The idea behind this rule is that:

• 20% of the success of a paid search program is rooted in technology; and
• 80% of the success of a paid search program is derived from a human component.

20% – Technology’s Role in the Process

There are three areas where technology is crucial in search engine marketing:

1. Gathering and sorting huge amounts of data from numerous engines. This includes information on impressions, clicks, number of conversions, and dollar value of conversions. All of this gives us the ability to capture information for every keyword/search engine combination.
2. Calculating important ROI metrics based on the data collected such as ROAS (Return On Advertising Spend); CTA (Cost To Acquire); CPL (Cost Per Lead); and CPO (Cost Per Order).
3. Producing a wide range of reports, including top-level summary reports, detailed trend analysis, grouped keyword analysis, and individual keywords.

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The Other 80% – The Role of Human Intelligence

The 80% human component in the equation consists of marketers who interpret data and market conditions to make the best possible bidding decisions. These qualitative contributions involve developing expansive and relevant keyword sets as well as call-to-action marketing communications. They also include creating succinct landing pages that meet the expectations of search engine users and set consumers on the conversion path.

Keyword Development
Automated tools can certainly offer ideas for keyword development, but intuitive thinking is an essential factor in developing a robust keyword list. Just a few of the various issues to consider are product and brand names, synonyms, misspellings, singular and plural forms, features, benefits, and competitors.

Search Term Copywriting
Writing ads for search engines involves a combination of art and science that cannot be emulated by technology. One must adhere to the strict rules enforced by search engines while still drawing the reader in with a tempting promotion. Successful ads accomplish two goals: 1) encourage customers to click on your ad rather than your competitors’ ads, and 2) discourage non-qualified consumers who are not interested in your product or service. This task is not easy given that it must be achieved with three lines of text and no graphics.

When the proper marketing communication strategy is applied, the highest quality site traffic is delivered to your website with the greatest likelihood of conversion.

Destination Page Analysis
One of the biggest and most frequent errors made by companies in paid search engine marketing is consistently sending all searches to their home page or to pages that are totally irrelevant to the search term. Today’s web-users expect relevant information when they click on an ad, and when they do not receive it they quickly move on to their next option, which is usually your competition.

Review of Multiple Variables When Making Bidding Decisions
Each company must establish its own complex set of rules in making bid and position decisions. It is important to remember that being #1 isn’t always the right choice; often times dropping down in position makes more sense. Bid setting is not just about price, it’s more about relevant position. There are multiple variables that must be reviewed prior to making bidding decisions. Marketers must analyze the types of competitors listed above and below them on a search engine, the various marketing messages of competitors, the ROI effects of raising bids and conversely, of lowering bids, they must perform a historical position analysis, and they must consider the impact of affiliates, resellers and other third parties.

Conclusion
While the all-technology solution for paid search is clearly enticing because it involves less work and seems more cost-effective, the reality is that today’s technology is only capable of covering 20% of the requirement for an effective campaign. Technology is limited because it relies solely on quantitative factors and is unable to consider qualitative factors such as consumer search intentions, marketing copy triggers, and irrelevant landing page content.

That’s why it is imperative that the other 80% of a successful SEM program includes the human element. The result is a powerful combination of the complex intelligence of the human brain and cutting-edge technology. Apply this rule in your online marketing endeavors and you’ll soon benefit from the truly extraordinary power of the web.

www.yourdomain.com
yourdomain.com
www.yourdomain.com/index.shtml
yourdomain.com/default.asp

However, search engines view the above URLs as different pages. Web servers see each URL differently and treat each independently, therefore each of the above URLs could display different content if desired. When a search engine attempts to “canonicalize” a URL, it seeks to choose the best page to represent the website.

The simplest way to discover if you are experiencing this issue would be to perform a search using part of the content found on your homepage. If more than one result appears on the search engine result pages, you may want to correct the issue using a 301 redirect on your web server. The 301 redirect will instruct the search engine as to which URL you desire to be “canonical.” In addition, this 301 redirect will permanently readdress to the specified URL, as seen in the sample below:

When a user types this address into their browser:

www.yourdomain.com

The 301 redirect will redirect any request to the specified address:

www.yourdomain.com

I have seen countless websites displaying the same content on two or more different URLs. Search engines penalize websites that feature duplicate content, causing problems and poor performance for the site owners in obtaining organic rankings. Ironically, most website owners aren’t even aware of this problem and if they are, they don’t know it pertains to their sites.

SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of arranging a website’s content in a way that makes it a) easy for search engine “spiders” to read, and b) dense with topics your consumers are searching for. Spiders, also known as robots, are the computer programs search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN use to navigate web pages, index their contents, and add them to their databases.

The outcome of all this busywork are the search results pages you see when you submit a search query on Google, Yahoo, MSN, or any of the other numerous search engines that exist. Have you ever wondered why some sites rank higher than others? When you look at a search results page, generally the first items you notice are the “Sponsored Links,” or paid advertisements. We’ll talk about those next time; for now let’s just focus on the results that appear naturally.

The search engines use a complex algorithm to determine which websites are ranked the highest on their results pages. The natural, or organic search results, are ranked as a result of each website’s content. For instance, if you submit a Google search for “moisture meter,” the first organic result that appears on the page is www.moisturemeterstore.com, which just so happens to be one of our clients. Two reasons this site appears first is due to the number of occurrences of the phrase “moisture meter” on the site and the positive linking structure that exists there.

Keyword density

First let’s talk about the density of the phrase “moisture meter” on that website. Because the site’s main purpose is to sell moisture meters, we identified that as a key phrase for SEO purposes. We then developed website copy that was rich with that key phrase, but that was also logical and not so repetitive as to make visitors and spiders want to leave the site as quickly as they arrived. It is also important that each page has unique content, because as much as redundancy would be mind-numbing to visitors, spiders are wise to this tactic and they have methods in place to penalize websites that attempt to “trick” them.

Positive link structure

Now why don’t we address the positive link structure we created for the site. Good link structure helps visitors and spiders navigate your site with ease. If you click on the first product that appears on the website’s home page, the Tramex Encounter Plus, you’ll land on a page that provides all the details about that moisture meter. Notice the URL that appears in your web browser at the top of the page. This is how it appears:

www.moisturemeterstore.com/moisture_meter_M254.shtml

The first thing to point out about this URL is that the words “moisture meter” appear in it twice. The second point is that it is very logical. It begins with the website’s name and continues on to moisture_meter, which is the type of product you are viewing, and ends with the model number of the product. The simplicity of the link not only makes it easy for a visitor to write down if they want to come back to that page later, but also makes it very search-engine friendly.

In addition to the simplicity of the link, each significant page on the website links to the other significant pages of the site. For instance, from the Tramex page you landed on it is very easy to find your way back to the home page you originated from. Just click on the “home” icon in the navigation bar or click on the company logo in the top left hand corner of the page.

In addition to key phrase density and positive link structure, there are numerous other techniques that are incorporated into a good SEO program. Some of them include URL canonicalization, link acquisition, site maps, 404 pages, website architecture, hosting, title tags and meta description tags. We’ll explore those more advanced techniques in future articles.

But wait.before you go, we’d like to leave you with some astounding statistical data regarding SEO.

• 77% of adults who research online before making a purchase use search engines.
• 54% of small businesses currently use SEO.
• Four out of five Internet user sessions begin at a search site.
• 93% of consumers worldwide use search engines to find websites.
• Three out of four of those surveyed said their main vehicle for traversing the web were search engines.
• 33% of users think that a company with top rankings on a search engine is a leader in its field.
• 17 out of 20 qualified visitors to a website are driven through search engines.
• 55% of all Internet purchases begin with a search engine. 93% of these users do not look past the first two pages of results.

All of these percentages and statistics add up to the fact that SEO is a valuable tactic for any company to take advantage of. It increases visibility, brand awareness, and ROI. Hopefully you’re on your way to establishing a keen knowledge of the search engine optimization process. We’ll see you next time!