Online Marketing for Local Business
Posts tagged SEO
Duplicate Content Is Not A SEO Crime
14 years
by admin
in Uncategorized
“Duplicate content” refers to the same article being published on multiple pages online. This term is usually associated with how the various search engines perceive an article that is published on many sites online.
There is some misunderstanding about how search engines regard identical content. Many people, including some webmasters, will tell you that duplication of your copy or content on various websites will hurt your SEO, not improve it.
And while this may have been true at one time, in 2010 it’s a myth.
Google does NOT punish an author, copywriter or website for having an article published on more than one website. This is because the whole goal of article marketing is to have your article republished or cited on as many sites as possible.
Search engines don’t regard it as being a bad thing to have a piece of content published on multiple sites, though they will most likely only show a couple instances of the article in their search results.
Most online publishers or article directories are ok with duplicate content as well, provided that you are the exclusive copyright holder of the copy. That’s because the entire purpose of these directories is to provide free reprint articles for news aggregators, website owners and ezine editors. When an article is published on a directory, the end GOAL is usually that the article be republished on other websites.
This is not to say that there are not a few directories that prefer to be the first website to publish your content. Check the editorial guidelines at the article submission site to see if the site has such a rule.
It should also be noted that when talking about identical content on the web, you mean the same copy on DIFFERENT websites. Submitting duplicate content to the SAME publisher is still a no-no. This is a different scenario than the one above, because no publisher wants to receive duplicate feature stories or articles. Your articles may discuss the same topic or topics repeatedly, but publishers want authors to submit articles that are fresh – completely new to their site.
Keep it Fresh!
14 years
by admin
in Uncategorized
There are a number of important reasons why you should be keeping the content on your website fresh. The most simple, and critical, reason is to keep your current and future visitors engaged and interested in what you have to say. Stale content, such as promoting a sale or talking about an event that took place 6 months ago, has the potential to really “turn off” visitors to your website.
Another important reason for updated content that I reference a lot with clients is the SEO value that it can provide. Simply put, search engines really like to “see” fresh, new content (text, graphics, charts, video, downloads, etc.) on a website.
They figure that if someone is taking the time to continually add new stuff to the website, some of it is probably fairly relevant information or data, and probably deserves to be ranked higher than a site which is rarely or never updated.
Providing updated content can also support good customer service within your organization, be necessary for regulatory or legal reasons, or help you maintain company/brand reputation, among others. Bottom line, you need to keep your website fresh! And if you don’t have the time, energy or skill to maintain a regular blog or create updates for your webpages, find someone who can help. Even a relatively small investment can pay big dividends down the road.
(Need some ideas for what to write about? Here’s an older post on how to “re-purpose” old marketing materials…)
Top 10 Plugins For WordPress
14 years
by admin
in Uncategorized
If you already have a blog, chances are that you are using WordPress as your platform. If you’re not, you should be. There are many reasons as to why WordPress is the most popular blogging platform on the Web today.
In terms of Internet marketing and getting rankings, WordPress offers the most search engine friendly blogging platform in addition to being very user-friendly. The other great thing about it is the number of plugins which you can add to your blog.
If you are not sure what a plugin is, it basically adds new functions to a WordPress blog. A plugin is essentially a program written in the PHP programming language that adds a specific set of features or services to the WordPress blog. All you have to do to add a new feature or service to your blog is find a relevant plugin, upload it to your plugin folder and then “activate” the plugin on the dashboard. It’s that simple.
That being said, there are literally thousands upon thousands of plugins out there (most of them are free) and if you are a newbie, you may get tempted to add as many plugins as you can to your blog. The bottom line is that you only need a couple of them to get your blog going. In order to help you with which plugins to choose, I’ve chosen the top 10 WordPress plugins that you must have.
Editorial Note: Most of the plugins mentioned below can be found by searching the WordPress Plugin Directory. The rest can be easily found by doing a Google search.
1. Akismet
Don’t you just hate people leaving spam comments on your blog? I certainly do, and if you dislike such comments appearing on your blog, the Akismet plugin automatically filters them for you. I don’t have time to deal with spam and I hope you don’t either.
2. All-In-One-SEO Pack
If you are looking for the ultimate plugin to transform your blog into an SEO optimized blog, then this is the one. It’s easy to use and before long you can be ranking for your keywords.
3. MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer
If there’s one thing you don’t want, it’s for the blog to be banned from ping services. When you update or edit your blog, you automatically send a ping to let them know that your blog has been updated and that the changes need to be indexed. However, you can get banned from ping services if you end up doing this too often. In order to avoid this from happening, you need to use the MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer plugin.
4. Remote Database Backup
Whatever you do on the Web, you need to have backups. Backing up data is one of those things that people don’t take seriously until a site failure happens to them. This plugin helps you backup your WordPress blog at any time.
5. SEO Smart Links
This cool plugin allows you to automatically link keywords and phrases in your posts and comments with corresponding posts, pages, categories and tags on your blog. Furthermore, you can set up your keywords along with their own matching URLs. A must have if you want the maximum SEO benefit for your blog.
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6. Sexy Bookmarks
This allows your readers to submit your articles to numerous bookmarking sites on the Web. A must-have in the era of social media. Get your Sexy Bookmarks plugin today.
7. Frame Buster
This plugin will thwart any attempt to load your site in a frame. Optimal for getting images to rank on the search engines.
8. Google Sitemap Generator
If you want Google to index all the pages on your blog as quickly as possible, then you need this plugin. It allows you to create a sitemap with a clíck of your mouse.
9. CommentLuv
This plugin allows your visitors to comment while adding a link to their own blog post. This will encourage them to comment and in combination with the Akismet plugin can get you genuine and informative comments on your blog.
10. WP Backlinks
This plugin allows you to track the links going back to your blog. For SEO purposes, you want as many links back to your website as possible, but at the same time, you want them to come from reputable and legitimate sites. The WP Backlinks plugin gives you the ability to control and verify this.
If you go ahead and add the plugins featured on this blog, you can be ready to start dominating the Web with your blog. Keep in mind that it’s the quality and frequency of content that you add to your blog that will determine its success. My hope is that you have found this article about the top 10 wordpress plugins on the Web very useful.
About The Author – Martin Sejas is a top Internet business consultant in Sydney who helps people achieve their dream of having an online business. For those living in Australian, register for a free consultation at www.marketingadvice.com.au.