Duplicate Content

One of the biggest problems that we see every day with prospective clients is duplicate content. I can't tell you how many LASIK practices’ websites have exactly the same content as one, two or hundreds of other websites. In most cases, the duplicate content can be seen on pages describing a specific type of operation or condition. Other practices’ websites use the exact same words to describe the same topic.

Why does this happen? First, there are a number of website development services that use database generated websites that use the exact same copy for multiple websites. In many ways, these firms are the worst. They know that the duplicate content is hurting their clients' ability to be positioned on the search engines, but they do it anyway.

The second reason for duplicate content is that the practice themselves wrote the content for the website and the surgeons who wrote it took the easy way out and copied the content from another site - or many other sites - that they found on the search engines.

Why is duplicate content a problem? While this may not seem like a problem from the perspective of the consumer, it is a big problem from the perspective of the search engines. Consumers, who are looking for a doctor to handle their potential surgery, are not likely to do a careful comparison among several - or several hundred - websites to try to figure out which ones copied content from other websites vs. which ones researched and wrote the content themselves. Even if they found the duplicate content, they probably couldn't figure out who wrote it first. Anyway, they are looking for a surgeon in their market and don't care if another surgeon in another market has the same content on his or her website.

The search engines do care, however. First, the search engines index millions of web pages every day. The search engine algorithms specifically look for duplicate content and discount the websites and webpages that have it. Also, since they have so many pages relating to the same or similar content in their indexes, they know which one came first and they penalize or discount the pages that copied it.

So what do you do? First, don't hire a website development firm that does not promise to write original content for you. Does this mean that they need to be experts in your specialty? Not necessarily, but it doesn't hurt. It certainly means that they have to be aware of the problem and have content writers on staff.

Finally, after the website has been written. Try running the copy through CopyScape. In fact, try running some of the websites they show you through Copyscape. You'll quickly figure out if they know enough to avoid the duplicate content problem.

Dan Goldstein
Page 1 Solutions

Search Engine Marketing Scams and You

An informational series for the curious- part 2

The Internet is a vast place full of information, resources and, sadly, scams. Search engine optimization is a valid, useful tool to help boost rankings of legitimate companies and businesses. However, some companies are deceitful in their tactics. They can lead to loss of site credibility, loss of site aesthetics, and most of the strategies can leave your website banned from the search engines.

In this second article in a short series, “Search Engine Marketing Scams and You,” I reveal some illegal or unethical tactics and suggest alternatives. In order to make the World Wide Web a more reliable source of good, relevant information, Search Engines have started banning such activities as:

Link Farms

It has become more obvious recently that incoming relevant links to your website can help with website ranking. One marketing “technique” to avoid is participating in link farms. Link farms are created exclusively to increase a site’s link popularity. The more links you have going to your site, the more credibility is given to your site by the search engines. However, with link farms, sites whose links display on your site often are not relevant to your website topic. Search engines can recognize links that do not lead to relevant content and will disregard the link. It is becoming common for search engines not only ignore the spam type link, but they will often punish the sites found there.

Link farms can hurt your credibility and damage your ranking. As appealing as it sounds to “shoot to the top of the search engines,” real search engine optimization takes time. Try asking some professional associations that you are a member of or ask colleagues to add a link on their site to yours. These are just a few ways to get to the top of the search engines without cheating.

Noël Otten
Account Manager
Page 1 Solutions

Search Engine Marketing Scams and You

An Informational Series for the Curious- part 1

The Internet is a vast place full of information, resources and, sadly, scams. Search engine optimization is a valid, useful tool to help boost rankings of legitimate companies and businesses. However, some companies are deceitful in their tactics. They can lead to loss of site credibility, loss of site aesthetics, and most of the strategies can leave your website banned from the search engines.

In this short series, “Search Engine Marketing Scams and You,” many deceiving tactics will be revealed and alternatives suggested. In order to make the World Wide Web a more reliable source of good, relevant information, Search Engines have started banning such activities as:

Hidden Text

Some SEO companies try to manipulate results by hiding text for the search engine spiders to read. They believe this action will increase their key word density and bolster their rankings on the search engines. Designers can hide text by changing the color to match the background of the site, so it is not readable by the public, but is by the search engine spiders. The trick to finding hidden text is to highlight blank areas of the page and if hidden text is present, it will be exposed when highlighted.

Most importantly to note, the search engines have adapted to this sketchy technique and will penalize entire websites because of it. When searching out an internet marketing firm, ask them if they use hidden text. Ask them if they have references for you to talk to, and lastly make sure you feel comfortable contracting with them. Ultimately, scams, including hidden text are out there and you have to be careful. Hidden text is a tacky, unscrupulous way to try to achieve good website positioning and the risks most certainly outweigh the potential benefits.

Noël Otten
Account Manager
Page 1 Solutions

Back to Fundamentals

Choose the Right Domain Name

Those of us in the web site marketing business spend countless hours testing and discussing what Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL et al consider being desirable web content in order to achieve the best search result positioning for our clients. This immersion in the latest search engine algorithms and nuances makes it easy for us to lose sight of the overall “marketing” component that is in our charge.

More savvy web site marketers recognize that once a prospect enters our LASIK clients’ web sites, the goal is to keep them there and ultimately to compel them to inquire about the products or services being offered. Relevant, informative and original web site content remains the best way to accomplish this.

But efforts on both counts are futile if despite achieving great search result positioning, prospects do not “click-through” to our clients’ sites in the first place. This is likelier to happen if a client’s competitor’s site’s domain name is more relevant to what a prospect is looking for as he or she is scanning even among the top search results.

One way to make the domain name relevant is to include the most desirable keyword (or key phrase) in the domain name itself. There is also an ever so slight optimization advantage to this approach.

If our client’s trade name is recognized locally or among likely prospects, or if it happens to be descriptive of the product or service our client offers, another approach would be take advantage of this “branding equity” by using it in or as the domain name. But there is a tendency for our clients to want to use their trade name as the domain name anyway, and we should advise against this if doing so does not make sense. The web marketer should put him or herself in the prospect’s shoes and carefully consider if he or she is more or less likely to choose a search result with a particular domain name.

Choosing the right domain name can be critical to the commercial success of a web site. This is reflected in what some domain names are being sold for in the domain name “resale” market. It is always a good idea to list and compare our client’s competitor’s domain names as part of our overall competitive research.

But we should not despair if our client is in a competitive market with apparently few remaining domain names, or with attractive domain names selling at prohibitive prices. First, there are many techniques to incorporate keyword(s) into a domain name, including the use of sub-directories, sub-domains, .net, .us or .biz extensions, and dashes (-‘s) in the domain name (as in www.santafe-lasik.us). Please note that one common denominator in spam web sites (pills, porn and casino) is that they often have more than one dash in the domain name. From an SEO perspective, it is wise to share as few characteristics with such web sites as possible. Thus, we should try to refrain from recommending the use of more than one dash in the domain name if possible.

It also behooves a web marketer to encourage registering domain names a competitor may want to register, even if the names need to be purchased. This may seem somewhat aggressive, but is simply an investment in a competitive advantage, the lack of which could end up hurting our client’s business.

Choosing the right domain name is not a trivial matter. A poorly chosen domain name can clog the sales funnel resulting from even the biggest budget and otherwise skilled web marketing campaign.