You have duplicate content when: you have more than one version of any page you reference any page with more than one URL someone plagiarizes your content you syndicate content And it’s a problem for two reasons: Duplicate content filter – Let’s say there are two pages of identical content out there on the Web. …
Create a sitemap page containing a list of text links to every page in your site. Link to your sitemap from the footer of every other page. (Your sitemap page is not the same thing as an open format / Google sitemap. Open format / Google sitemaps ). If your site has a lot of …
Google shows different search results to different people, depending on where they’re searching from. This is particularly true of shopping-type searches for goods that are likely to be purchased in person (as opposed to online). For example, if you Google “bank” in the US, you’ll probably see Bank of America at number 1, whereas if …
If implemented, maintained and promoted appropriately, a blog can be an incredibly powerful way to boost your ranking. Probably the most powerful. Blogs allow you to quickly and easily add lots of keyword rich content to your site and update that content regularly, while at the same time attracting backlinks and visitors. All the things …
Search engines don’t read like humans. We actually make sense of the individual words and their combinations (phrases, sentences, paragraphs, pages, page hierarchies, etc). We even read between the lines and take all visual design and aural elements into account. Search engines aren’t that sophisticated (even Google – although it’s getting there!). In fact, they …
Search engine bots don’t use websites the way you and I do. They need your site to be designed and built in a particular way. If you don’t do it right, you can severely hamper your search engine presence. Development checklist There are quite a few web development dos and don’ts to remember. Here’s a …
Stop! Before you do anything, you need to know what words you want to rank for. And that means finding out what words your target customers are Googling when they’re looking for products or services like yours. These are your ‘keywords’. Only when you know them, can you target them. (That’s a fancy word that …
Before launching into an explanation of SEO, let’s talk a bit about search engines. I’ll assume you know what search engines are, and what they’re used for, and start, instead, with some facts that illustrate why they’re so important. Why are search engines so important? The Internet is the world’s second most commonly used medium …