SEO News: Matt Cutts Say "A Little Duplicate Content Won't Hurt Your Rankings"

Duplicate content is always a concern for webmasters. Whether it's a website stealing content from another site, or perhaps a website that hasn't taken an active role in ensuring they get great unique quality content on their site, being duplicated out of the Google index is a problem.

In the latest webmaster help video from Google's Matt Cutts, he addresses how Google handles duplicate content, and when it can negatively impact your search rankings.

Matt Cutts started by explaining what duplicate content is and why duplicate content isn't always a problem, especially when it comes to quoting parts of other web pages.

It's important to realize that if you look at content on the web, something like 25 or 30 percent of all of the web's content is duplicate content. … People will quote a paragraph of a blog and then link to the blog, that sort of thing. So it's not the case that every single time there's duplicate content it's spam, and if we made that assumption the changes that happened as a result would end up probably hurting our search quality rather than helping our search quality.

For several years, Google's stance has been that they try to find the originating source and give that result the top billing, so to speak. After all, Google doesn't want to serve up masses of identical pages to a searcher because it doesn't provide a very good user experience if they click on one page, didn't find what they're looking for, and then go back and click the next result only to discover the identical page, just merely on a different site.

Google looks for duplicate content and where we can find it, we often try to group it all together and treat it as of it's just one piece of content. So most of the time, suppose we're starting to return a set of search results and we've got two pages that are actually kind of identical. Typically we would say, "OK, rather than show both of those pages since they're duplicates, let's just show one of those pages and we'll crowd the other result out," and then if you get to the bottom of the search results and you really want to do an exhaustive search, you can change the filtering so that you can say, "OK, I want to see every single page" and then you'd see that other page. But for the most part, duplicate content isn't really treated as spam. It's just treated as something we need to cluster appropriately and we need to make sure that it ranks correctly, but duplicate content does happen.

Next, Cutts tackles the issue of where duplicate content is spam, such as websites that have scraped content off the original websites or website owner suggests republish a lot of “free articles” that are republished on masses of other websites. These types of sites have the biggest problem with duplicate content because they merely copy content created on other websites.

It's certainly the case that if you do nothing but duplicate content, and you are doing in an abusive, deceptive, malicious, or a manipulative way, we do reserve the right to take action on spam. So someone on Twitter was asking a question about "how can I do an RSS auto blog to a blog site and not have that be viewed as spam," and the problem is that if you are automatically generating stuff that is coming from nothing but an RSS feed, you're not adding a lot of value, so that duplicate content might be a little bit more likely to be viewed as spam.
There are also cases where businesses might legitimately end up with duplicate content that won't necessarily viewed as spam. In some cases, websites end up with duplicate content for usability reasons, rather than SEO. For the most part those websites shouldn't worry either

But if you're just making a regular website and you're worried about whether you'd have something on the .com and the .co.uk, or you might have two versions of your terms and conditions, an older version and a newer version, that sort of duplicate content happens all the time on the web and I really wouldn't get stressed out about the notion that you might have a little bit of duplicate content.

Cutts does caution against local directory types of websites that list masses of cities but serve up empty listings with no true content about what the user might be looking for, as well as sites that create individual pages for every neighborhood they service, even though the content is the same as what's on main city web page.

As long as you're not trying to massively copy for every city in every state in the entire United States, show the same boilerplate text which is, "no dentists found in this city either," for the most part you should be in very good shape not have anything to worry about.

Bottom line: as long as your duplicate content is there for legitimate reasons (e.g., you're quoting another website or you have things like two versions of terms and conditions), you really shouldn't be concerned about duplicate content. However, Google certainly can and will take action against sites utilizing duplicate content in a spammy fashion, because they aren't adding value to the search results.

Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2319706/Googles-Matt-Cutts-A-Little-Duplicate-Content-Wont-Hurt-Your-Rankings

SEO Update: What To Do If Your Website Was Hit By Penguin 2.1?

Will the Penguin Damage or Hurt?

Google lately launched information about the newest in a sequence of junk battling criteria up-dates that the look for massive has applied since 2012 under the ‘Penguin’ name. This time they have marked the upgrade as Penguin 2.1. As with all Penguin criteria up-dates, many incoming promoters are frantically verifying their web page positions right now to discover out if they have been hit with any charges from this new upgrade.

According to Google’s head of web junk, Matt Cutts, about 1% of all queries will be affected by the Penguin 2.1 update, which is quite a bit more than with past minimal Penguin update. So will it effect search results of your site?

What’s Penguin all About Again?

Penguin was presented as a part of Google’s look for criteria that tries to discover sites that are position well in search engines look for because of spam link-building methods. If Penguin recognizes your web page as using spam methods for enhancing positions, you will get punished and your look for engine outcomes positioning positions will fall, possibly by a lot.

Being hit by Penguin can be terrible for your web page, especially if you depend intensely on look for traffic for lead generation.

What to do if Your Website Was Hit?

If your statistics show that your web page positions have considerably decreased since Oct 5th, you might have been punished by the Penguin 2.1 upgrade. If this is the case, you want to act fast. Get rid of any bad back-links using Google’s Disavow device, or other weblink trimming methods. For the long run, move away from concentrating too much on producing back-links. Instead you should create top quality material and provide an excellent consumer encounter. This will help with normally gaining hyperlinks to your website.

Even after eliminating spam hyperlinks you still might not see your website restore from a Penguin hit though. In the past we’ve often seen that sites that are hit by Penguin don’t restore after cleaning up their act until the next Penguin upgrade.

So what Penguin 2.1 means to incoming promoters is that Bing is not done battling web junk just yet. Concentrate on making a top quality website, with excellent material and an similarly excellent consumer encounter and your possibilities to succeed in the long run incoming marketing game will considerably increase.

Internet Marketing News: SEO vs PPC

Medical SEO vs Medical PPC: A Search Engine Marketing Overview

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a form of internet marketing that involves the promotion of websites by increasing visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs). It provides the opportunity for potential new patients to find your medical organization online when conducting search queries using search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc). It is a very popular and profitable marketing strategy for healthcare organizations, but you must comprehend the difference between its two components: Search Engine Optimization and Pay-Per-Click advertising, Below, I discuss the two strategies and offer some of the benefits and limitations to each.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): SEO is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine’s “natural” or un-paid (“organic”) search results. The higher you rank, the higher you appear on the search results pages, the more exposure your brand gets and the more visitors/traffic your web pages will receive. There are a variety of ways to improve a ranking for a search result, but most involve the content that exists on the website. Including keywords in a web page’s meta-tags and page descriptions is important because of what the search engine’s algorithms are programmed to identify. The biggest influence to a ranking is going to be how well a website’s content matches the search query. Adding keywords you want to rank for in your content, as well as continually providing new and unique content, will improve your ranking when search engines “crawl” the website (“crawling a site” refers to an Internet bot that systematically browses the world wide web and existing web pages, typically for the sole purpose of indexing search results). Updating content requires the search engines to frequently and continually crawl the site.

Benefits: One benefit to implementing an SEO strategy for generating referrals is that it provides a level playing field for all competitors in the market. Your ranking cannot be influenced by out-bidding a competitor and is based on the content that exists on your website and your website’s domain authority. Domain authority is a measure of the power of a domain name and is one of many search engine ranking factors. Creating or optimizing content for maximum search results can be a very cost-effective marketing strategy that can have long-term results. Another benefit to SEO is that you can target specific keywords that potential patients may be using in search queries. Adding these keywords or phrases to your website’s content will boost rankings and visibility. You are also able to target new potential patients at the local level; using local modifiers with phrases such as “Florida Hand Centers” or “New York City Vein Care”.

Limitations: SEO does have some drawbacks. First, SEO is a long-term strategy that takes time to implement and even more time to see ranking improvements. A website will not jump to the top of the rankings a day after adding keywords to your content. It takes time for the search engines to continually crawl a website and determine there is a fit between your content and the search query. It also takes time to build your domain authority so that you can outrank your competitors on similar search terms. SEO requires a continued dedication to providing new and unique content (such as blogs), which take time to write and a level of commitment that many may not be able to provide. For targeting purposes, SEO realistically (unless you have a very large SEO budget) only targets ‘local’ keywords like ‘Miami knee replacement’ (as ‘national’ keywords like ‘knee replacement’ are simply too competitive to achieve page 1 rankings). A good SEO strategy should only involve targeting 6-10 keywords/phrases, leaving many other searched terms or keywords unaccounted for in your online marketing strategy. Lastly, when evaluating SEO success, it is important to peel away (e.g., not include) any visitors that come from ‘branded’ searches (searches done on your physician or practice names), as these visitors generally found you (initially) via other means (e.g. are existing patients, found via offline advertising, etc.). Branded searches often make up 70-80% of organic visitors, but add little incremental value.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising: PPC advertising is an internet advertising model used to drive more traffic to websites. Advertisers typically pay the publishers (Google, Yahoo, MSN, Bing, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc…) when their ad has been clicked by a web user (Cost-Per-Click or CPC). Typically, advertisers will bid on specific keywords or phrases that are relevant to their target market, with a combination of the highest bidders and the most relevant advertisers garnering the top spots in paid search results. Paid advertisements are typically seen as the first three spots of a search result (usually having a beige/gold background) as well as along the right hand column of a search result page. PPC campaigns will have a strong enough ROI as long as you have a high enough procedural value on the specialty you are promoting.

Benefits: There are a few major advantages to PPC programs. First, with PPC, you are able to see an instant impact. Once you determine which keywords/phrases to target, your program is visible on search results. If you are looking to drive referrals and have immediate results, PPC is a great fit as a marketing strategy because you don’t have to wait three to six months to begin seeing the results. Another benefit to PPC is that you can target both local and national keywords, exposing your brand to more web users. Lastly, with PPC, you can target anywhere from 300-1000 keywords/phrases for your campaign, leaving no stone unturned when it comes to uncovering new patient opportunities.

Limitations: Some of the drawbacks to running successful PPC campaigns, like SEO, is it requires a significant time commitment with constant ad optimization, results tracking and analytics. There are over 20 different targeting methods that can be used when running a PPC campaign and if you don’t have the experience managing these types of campaigns, things get overlooked. Professional advertisers typically create numerous ads (often over 100), carefully select keywords (100s or even 1000s), geo-target/geo-optimize, target non-English languages, optimize for different devices (tablets, mobile and desktops), manage quality scores, schedule ads to optimal times, and monitor click-through-rates (CTR) and conversions in order to have a successful campaign. For a PPC campaign to be successful, it often requires someone managing it that has a certain level of expertise, experience and attention to detail. Unattended, PPC campaign costs can spiral out of control without showing any improvement in results.

When determining what form of online marketing strategy to implement for your healthcare organization, few strategies can compete with the ROI and exposure generated from search engine marketing. Both PPC and SEO need to be a part of your online medical marketing strategy if you want to maximize your organizations exposure to new patients. The problem is the time commitment and the experience level it involves to run these types of programs successfully. Those organizations who embrace both strategies are going to be extremely visible online (showing in organic as well as paid search results) and be top of mind when patients begin looking for treatment of their specific condition.

Read more at http://www.business2community.com/online-marketing/medical-seo-vs-medical-ppc-search-engine-marketing-overview-0604135#6DmwgvOL719ITSLe.99

3 SEO Tips: Way to Increase Website Traffic and Business

3 Sustainable SEO Tips: Why Recover From Google Updates? Don't Get Hit!

We've all been there at one point or another. Shoot, you may be going through one of the five stages of Google grief right now.

This summer was a tumultuous one for Google algorithm updates. Since the beginning of May, we've gone through seven of them, each varying in severity, but the public outcry has been consistent: A group panics, some remain calm, and the Interwebz explodes with "How to Recover" posts.

Wouldn't you love to be in a place when you laugh in the face of Google algorithm updates? These tactics could help you get there.

1. Focus On Your Branding, Not Your Ranking

Look at the results for "flat screen TV" and tell me what the listings have in common. Do it. I'll wait.

They're all brands.

That's where search engines are going. They're favoring real company stuff over stuffed keywords and one-way links, and you don't have to be a household name to do it. It means doing things like:

•     Sponsoring local events and community involvement.
•     Giving away content (and maybe the occasional iPad) for free.
•     Paying attention to what your users want and giving it to them.

Perhaps the big brands do have it easy, not because they have the household name, but because they were around before everyone started freaking out about links, title tags, and keywords. They were doing things the right way that got them exposure – well, most of them anyway – and when things went online, that did too.

2. Give Users a Good Experience

It's impossible really hard to have a good website that ranks well for a long period of time if it doesn't give your users a good experience. If people like your website, they come back. They share it.

We know Google is making a push where a site's quality is more important than the number of links pointing to it:

In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by creating high-quality sites that users will want to use and share.

While that's still largely subjectively – How exactly do you define "high-quality sites," Google? – and I hate giving guarantees when it comes to search, there's one thing I'll rest my laurels on: Your website will always be "quality" if it gives your users a good experience.

Incorporate user experience consulting into your search and digital engagements. This includes things like:

•     User research.
•     User testing.
•     Split testing.
•     Conversion rate optimization.

Visual Website Optimizer is a great tool for split testing because it allows you to make layout styling changes without needing a developer, which, if your agency is like mine, is harder to get your hands on than Google's actual ranking factors. You can also set up usability testing through there if you don't have in-house resources for a full user test.

But this isn't just about giving users a good experience on your website because, before they even make it there, they're likely interacting with you someplace else first. Think about the links they're seeing of yours, how you look in SERPs, your Facepook posts, your graphics, everything: If you were a user, would you click on them?

3. Preserve Your URLs

Outside of breaking news, old URLs will rank the best. While 301s and canonicals are heaven sent for SEO professionals, they strip out a fraction of equity, and in this day and age, even the smallest amount can make a huge difference.

Unless absolutely necessary – like you're dealing with a site architecture that's been picked apart and puzzled together so many times that it's one hot mess – keep your URLs the same. When you add new features to a product or update your service offerings, do it on the same URL.

Apple does this with each new release of the iPad or iPhone. When they launch an update, it goes to /iphone/ or /ipad/; they don't create entirely new URLs for the product they're promoting and instead shuffle the old version to a new URL. This means you're launching a product with some equity already built up.


Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2289835/3-Sustainable-SEO-Tips-Why-Recover-From-Google-Updates-Dont-Get-Hit

Panda Update 26: Google Makes It Formally Valid for SEOs

Today I read a post on Search Engine Land news blog, that possible Panda update was rolling out, one that seemed to be “softer” in nature than the earlier updates, where large number of webmasters who were basically hit by the algorithm are now hold out for recovery.

Google has confirmed a Panda update is rolling out and this precise update is “more finely targeted.”

As you may recognize, Google told us new Panda algorithms are being pushed out monthly over a ten day duration. Google’s Matt Cutts did imply there was a bit of a postpone in pushing out their monthly Panda refresh by reason of they wanted to enable signals that would soften the algorithm a bit.

Panda Update 26, July 18, 2013 (confirmed)

Google confirmed that a Panda update is being released and said:

"In the last few days we’ve been pushing out a new Panda update that incorporates new signals so it can be more finely targeted."

Readers can find more information about Panda Update 26 on twitter also by following:

Google Confirms #Panda Update Is Rolling Out: This One Is More "Finely Targeted" by @rustybrick http://t.co/P7wC0o0mMz

— Search Engine Land (@sengineland) July 19, 2013

Google News: Upgrade Satellite Imagery for Google’s Mapping Products

Good news for Google maps users, form now you can see more clear views in Google maps. All business which use Google maps for increasing and locating there business, people who use Google Maps APIs for find places in their devices that all get more benefit by this new update.

Some Images with Improvement:

Central Papua, Indonesia: before and after.

Saudi Arabia: before and after, showing increased agricultural expansion

"Today we're launching new satellite imagery for Google’s mapping products. This stunning global view is virtually cloud-free and includes refreshed imagery in more locations—giving you an even more accurate and comprehensive view of our planet's landscape. Read More at Google Official Blog...."

SEO Updates for Experts and SEO Basic Info for Beginners

Latest SEO Update:

Panda Dance [June 11, 2013]

While not an existent Panda update, Matt Cutts made an important clarification at SMX Advanced, informing that Panda was still updating monthly, but every update rolled out over about 10 days. This was not the "everflux" many people had expected after Panda #25.

"Payday Loan" Update [June 11, 2013]

Google declared a targeted algorithm update to take on niches with infamously spammy results, particularly mentioning payday loans and porn. The update was declared on June 11th, but Matt Cutts suggested it would roll out over a 1-2 month period.

SEO Basic Info for Beginners

What is SEO and why is it important?

You no longer need to be an Einstein to know SEO. We all know by now that Search Engine Optimization aka SEO is a process of structuring a web page in such as way that it can be found, read and indexed easily by the search engines. However, these days it not just limited to that...SEO has acquired a broader outlook and it now also focuses on not just attracting the search engines but also the web searchers.

So, why SEO?

Its SEO that makes your site attractive enough for the web users and the search engines. Your website gains better visibility on the Internet through various campaigns executed by a good SEO service provider.

Now, if you say that you already have your website mentioned on your business card and that you've already advertised it in the concerned newspapers and magazines, then think twice. Do you really get the attention that you expected from the crowd? Well, not always because there are people who might not read the same newspapers or magazines you've published your ad in and your business cards only go out to the people you meet. But when we talk of a website, if expect to reach out to a wider audience...nationally and internationally, isn't it! That's where SEO steps in to make your site visible to all in an instant over the Internet, it helps you to gain the attention that your business requires.

It is an SEO expert who scrutinizes your website prepares a report and on the basis of this report, they plan and execute the devices that will help in bringing your website page rank higher on the search engines. Now you may ask, why is it essential to rank higher on the search engines? This is because 60% of the clicks that users make goes to the first page of their search on any search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and so on. This makes it all the more important for you to display your site on the very first page for your particular business so that more people can view you.

There are various methods that an SEO expert employs to get your website in the top searches with several SEO tools such as finding relevant keywords, making the content on your site search friendly, link building, PPC, Google Adwords, indexing your page etc. All this helps in pushing your web page gradually and steadily up on popular search engines.