content marketing

Duplicate Content Is Bad For SEO

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Why Copied Content Is a Big No-No with Google

In today’s online business environment, your web design and SEO strategies have to be top notch to remain competitive. Previously ignored issues like copied content can no longer be taken for granted and failure to take immediate action can mean a long and arduous road ahead for your online business. Duplicate content is bad for SEO.

You already know how important good content is to your site. It drives visitors to your site and converts them into leads, thereby bringing in huge profits. There are many helpful tips available out there for anyone who wants to write quality content. Nonetheless, many people still assume that copied content is good for their website. But the truth is that copied content is a big no-no with Google and the content world as a whole.

Why Duplicate Content Is Frowned On By Search Engines

There are numerous reasons why you should avoid posting duplicate content on your site. One of the main reasons is that you will never be a trustworthy source for clients who are always looking for unique, high quality content. Your readers want to see that you are an authority in your niche market, and if you are regularly copying your content or articles, you will be hurting your reputation.

Other reasons duplicate content is bad include:

Google Wants High-Quality Unique Original Content

Plagiarism is a big word with bigger consequences in today’s content world. The work of Google is to index and provide as much unique content as possible, presenting a variety in the results. For example, imagine searching for a business such as a plumbing service. If the plumber serves many locations and all the locations had a single web presence with the same content, then you won’t get variety within the search engine results when it comes to business services. What you are actually searching for is a variety of plumbing services that you can choose from.

Duplicate Content Will Put Your Site on Google’s Naughty List

Google will actually reward your site for having high quality, original content. However, it will punish it accordingly if you have duplicate content. Using the same article from the internet throughout your website, or even copy-and-pasting content from another website can greatly hurt your Google rankings. It is true that a website can have good rankings throughout other search engines, but still not reach anywhere in Google results. A search using a reliable plagiarism checker can help determine whether the content on your site is being used on other online sites or directories.

Copied content will make your website look like an illegal business, even if you’re a legitimate one. This is because that’s something trolls and spammers are doing on a daily basis. They copy and paste everything on a website in an attempt to stay relevant.

Google has been at the forefront of the fight against duplicate content and any content that looks deceptive or manipulative is penalized. When writing content, your aim should be to stand out from your competition and gain trust in the market. You want to write content that is helpful and engaging for your visitors to attract clicks, interactions and sales.

When you use duplicate content, however, you run the risk of losing even your most loyal visitors and not converting your leads. Copied content will keep your site hidden and your competitors will be seen by potential customers, instead. Duplicate content does not only harm your authority on Google, but it also harms your domain value, so don’t be cheated into thinking that it is a way of saving some money.

Avoid Duplicate Content And Enjoy The Benefits Of A Trusted Site

You may have tens or even thousands of pages on your site and just thinking about writing content for each other them can be frightening. However, the truth is that you have to do it if your seriously want to rank well in Google. If you don’t know whether or not your site has duplicate content, you can use a reliable plagiarism checker to make the job easier and faster. You should make sure there is little or no copied content on your site.

If you are looking for high quality, original content to replace the existing duplicates, then it may be time to hire a copywriting service. This will help you get professionally written articles that you can use to get rid of duplicate content on your site.

local seo

Geolocation Tactics For Local SEO Success

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Learning to Love Geolocation – Smart Geolocation Tactics for Marketing Success

If you want to increase your website conversions and boost your online sales, you need to target your customers where they live. Geolocation services allow you to do just that, and in this age of smartphones and mobile devices finding your customers where they are is easier than ever before. Often referred to as geo-fencing or geo-targeting, the ability to target your audience close to home is a game changer.

Consumers have reached a certain comfort level with geo-tracking and geolocation services, and most leave these services turned on when they shop, run errands and take care of the necessities of daily life. That means you can use geolocation to find the customers most likely to need what you have to sell.

local seoTaking advantage of geolocation is a great way to boost the bottom line, but success is far but guaranteed. Your competitors are working hard as well, and staying ahead of those competitors has never been more important. Here are some tips you can use to improve your results and boost your website conversions.

Use the Exclusionary Principle

Geolocation lets you know where your customers are, but it also allows you to know where they are not. Geolocation is very much a double-edged tool, and smart companies have learned to make the most of the exclusionary principle.

If you run a bar or club in a university town, your normal target audience is probably the students who go there. Throughout the semester, you can use geolocation services to find those students and entice them with drink specials, low-cost food and other goodies.

When school is out for the summer, however, those loyal university students will be gone. That means targeting another class of customers until class is back in session.

Prioritize Prime Locations

Marketing is all about striking the proper balance. Casting too wide a net can mean wasted money and effort, while making your target too narrow could mean losing out on customers and sales.

When it comes to optimizing geo-targeting, it pays to prioritize the  best locations. Over time you will get to know which locations perform the best, and spending your limited marketing dollars targeting those areas is one of the best ways to improve click-through rates and ultimately sales as well. That may mean raising your bid for those prime locations, but the results will be well worth the extra cost.

Improve Your Results with Paid Search Ads and Location-Specific Keywords

Paid search is not always the best marketing choice, but this technique can really improve local results. Using a combination of location-specific keywords and paid search can make it far easier for your target customers to find you – and that is good news for them and for you.

Examples of location-specific keywords are nearly endless, ranging from things like “Cleveland area gyms” and “Italian restaurants in Chicago” to “coffee shops near Union Square” to “hotels near the White House.” By using these location-specific keywords and testing your results, you can fine-tune your marketing and boost your conversions over time.

Local SEO -Remember To Own Your Home Market First!

Reaching your customers where they live, play and work has never been more important. The popularity of smartphones means that today’s consumer is always connected – and always ready to buy. The companies who are best able to reach those consumers and provide them with what they need are the ones most likely to succeed. By using smart geolocation practices, you can be that successful company and see your profits soar.

seo wireframe

Silo Site Structure For Success

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Silo Your Site Architecture

Silo Site Structure: What The Structure Of Your Website Should Look Like

Search engines have evolved, your site architecture needs to evolve too! Silo site structure is one way to improve your website performance. The engines with their bots and crawlers track the organization structural patterns of your sites. The secret here is to have your website structured naturally and logically as if you were writing a thesis paper with topic and subtopic, introduction, main body, and epilog. The purpose of such a structure is to make it easy for the website user to navigate your site. Make sure that you’ve organized content in a meaningful way.

Remember that you can always rewrite your online content so change and experiment with different keywords and key phrases over time to produce the best results for your online business. Consider building a couple of websites to see which version of your online content ranks better and faster.

sitemap-silo-exampleSilo sites are sites that are organized structurally to boost the main landing page in the search result pages by proper information on the website that links back to the landing page which is optimized for the primary keywords. The content of your site should be valuable to the end user however quantity is not as important as one might think. Constant updates of content are not necessary since the engines do not factor in the updates in the algorithm behind the intricate workings of search engines.

The crucial factor to ranking is to keep close attention to how your content is organized and linked on-site and off-site. You can easily create a silo site by making a plan of your SEO content for the webpages of your website. First, you need to focus on long-tail keywords and expanding on those long-tails with additional keywords and phrases. These keywords are the skeleton of your silo site. A silo site is like a thesis on a specific topic that expands with sub-topics which all link back to the main topic to support it and rank it in the search result pages.

Silo Site Structure For Success

The aim of a silo site is to rank higher for your main target keyword with all the secondary articles with long-tail keywords and wordings that all link back meaningfully and in an organized tier structure to the primary keyword optimized landing page. The long-tail keywords of your site are the waves that push your main keyword up in the search result pages. Remember that you still need backlinks from other sites in your niche that link back to your silo site. Silo sites will always rank longer than non-silo organized sites due to the changing landscapes of the world-wide web.

seo whiteboard

Little Used On Page Optimization Tactics

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Least Known On-Page Optimization Techniques

These little used on page optimization tactics can significantly increase your organic traffic when added into your overall grassroots SEO strategy.

1. Readability level

Readability level is a measure of how easy or hard it is to read a webpage. Internet users range from young primary school pupils to retired and elderly people. If your webpage language resembles that of a legal document, how many users would read and understand it? Many would have to sit with a dictionary and still have doubts. Therefore as you write, consider the readability level of your articles and make sure that they are easy to read and understand. Note that Google arranges search results according to reading level scores among other factors. Use a reliable tool to weed out spelling, punctuation, vocabulary and grammatical errors.

2. Embed content related videos

The human mind can remember visual information more easily than text. Videos increase the average time that users spend on a webpage. Consider if you embed a 2-minute video in your article. Some users will watch that video and also spend time to read the article. This means that the average time spent by a user on that particular webpage is increased. The good thing about sites on which visitors spend more time is that Google gives them a lot of importance. So before you publish an article, check for interesting videos on popular video sites like YouTube. You should only embed videos that are directly related to your content.

3. Reader comments and reviews

Readers will leave comments on a website if they found it helpful. Comments are important in helping Google to understand the context of a website. Thus go through the comments, look for and approve those that contain your target keywords. Comments that contain one or two keywords are very valuable because they add up to the content of the article. This will consequently increase the organic traffic to your site.

4. Internal linking structure

Internal site linking or sidebar linking involves adding a link to a webpage from the sidebar. Creating a sidebar link that points to an internal article is a form of interlinking that is fully supported by Google. A site wide link is such a valuable interlink because it has the potential of drawing traffic from all the other webpages of a website. Thus you should have an increase in organic traffic of the webpage that the sidebar link points to.

On Page Optimization Beyond The Basics

Using the above on-page optimization techniques will go a long way in helping you capture more organic traffic from your competitors.

content marketing

7 Ways To Use Content Marketing

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Seven methods that can help increase your customer base through content marketing

Creating and marketing your content can be one of the best and quickest ways to promote your business. As a matter of fact, if you can compose a to-do list containing just seven items, then you can easily compose an article that can help you maximize your customer base as well as profits.

Listed below are seven methods that can greatly increase your business from published articles through content marketing.

1 – Article content can in no time place you as a professional within your industry.

We all know how powerful the written word can be. Crafting informative articles will separate you from your competition. You will never have to convince your readership that you are an expert on the subject. Your articles will do that for you, due to the fact that well-published articles will always increase your “credibility”.

2 – Articles can advertise your business 24/7.

The moment your article is published on the internet is like having a salesperson do the selling for you. You now have your business advertised 24 hours, 7 days a week, 365 days a year to an international audience.

3 – A single article can be utilized in a variety of ways.

This is known as leverage. A single article could be used for a free report, as an incentive, featured in a newsletter or blog, transformed into a book, and countless other ways.

4 – Articles can be used to spread the news in regards to your business and products.

5 – Promoting articles is painless, effortless and economical.

This is especially true in comparison to other means of marketing online. Remember, there is no cost to you when it comes to writing an article. There is also no cost to have it listed on article directories. Consider what it really might cost if you had to pay someone just for the exposure.

6 – Well written articles can help in building your mailing list.

Whenever you have a few articles under your belt, you then have the potential to gain attention from the masses of prospects out there. It’s important to continue growing your business in order to keep traffic as well as new prospects coming to you.

7 – Article marketing makes it possible to stay connected with your customer base while selling more products.

Use Content Marketing To Stay “Top Of Mind” with Your Audience.

Remember, it normally takes eight contacts or more for turning a new prospect into a customer. Well written articles enable you to stay connected with new prospects while providing them with useful information.

social media

Secrets of Landing Page Optimization 

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Landing Page Optimization Secrets

Here are some strategies that will help you achieve success in landing page optimization:

landing page optimization1. Clearly state the value of your offer

A visitor who does not know what you are offering will not care to continue reading your content. A landing page whose value proposition is not clear will turn people off. Therefore, let your audience know the benefits of spending time on your website. Clearly inform them why they should read what is on your page. Your landing page should convince visitors that they are in the right place. As you do this, avoid commanding statements and focus on giving value to your visitors.

2. Avoid commanding, pushy and arrogant headlines

Your headlines will determine if visitors will be convinced to continue reading or press the ‘back’ button on their browser. A good headline should convince visitors that it is worthwhile to stay on your webpage. Pushy, arrogant and commanding headlines will turn visitors off. Too much hype on your headlines is also not necessary. Let the value of your offer be clearly and honestly stated in your headlines. Always use friendly and welcoming words.

3. Be specific about your offer

Capture the attention of every visitor by being specific about your offer. Use bullets or numbers to list the benefits that target audience should expect from your website. This will guide your reader’s eye and demonstrate your offer in a tangible manner. Win the trust of your visitors by stating your offer in a specific and self explanatory manner. This will encourage them to continue reading and interact with your website more. Exaggerated claims and false promises will annoy your online visitors.

Implement the above three strategies and see your online marketing efforts improve drastically. Your offer will be more compelling to the target audience, thus increase your conversion rate. Figure out what you want your visitors to do and then make it easy for them to so.