Tag : duplicate content

  • Internal Linking Best Practices to Help Boost Rankings

    Posted May 31st, 2010 By in Internet Marketing, Link Building, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) With | 3 Comments

    When putting together a website, it’s important to think about optimizing your internal link structure to make sure it’s as search engine friendly as possible. A lot of the time, the potential of internal linking is overlooked in favor of other SEO factors, focusing mainly on the specific pages and not looking at the website as a whole.

    When structuring your website, you want to be making it as clear as possible to the engines what pages are most important, what categories exist and what subcategories lay under these. This effect is often done through the initial navigation and via the use of breadcrumb link trails. This is also usually backed up by a sitemap listed in hierarchical order or priority calculation with XML sitemaps.

    Another thing that is often overlooked is using the full URL when linking to internal pages (i.e, <a href=”http://www.mirnabard.com/2010/05/9-steps-to-reduce-scraping-and-catch-blog-post-theft/”>). Many times the relative URL is used, (i.e., /category.html). The effect this has on rankings hasn’t quite been determined, but what is for sure is that if any of your content is picked up by scrapers, you will have a full link back to your website.  This helps the page to avoid getting penalized for duplicate content.

    Anchor text is important when linking to your internal pages. Often the benefit of this is overlooked, but don’t forget that these are controllable and important links that can tell the search engines a lot about your website. SEOmoz has an interesting post about internal linking.

    Another key thing to consider when looking at internal linking is PageRank sculpting, making sure that your website links well to the most important pages is vital. Think about how the search engines are going to look at your website. What pages do you want to make sure they find and understand are important?

    By following these steps and making sure newer/deeper pages are well linked to with targeted anchor text from already established pages, you can help to give them a boost in the SERPs.

    Guest Author: Ben Hook, a search engine marketer and owner of UK based search engine optimisation company, Navaro.

  • 9 Ways to Reduce Scraping and Catch Blog Post Theft

    Posted May 11th, 2010 By in Blogging, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) With | 15 Comments

    Content scraping or theft is when original content is stolen from a blog to republish on another blog or site.  This is considered to be plagiarism or copyright infringement, but since the Web is not completely regulated yet, scraping has become an extremely common problem.  Although, this process can be done manually, normally it is done by automated software programs that allow content to be easily scraped from any blog.

    Blog Post Theft

    Blog Post Theft

    Some people practice scraping to intentionally harm others, but some do not know they are actually creating harm.  If the original content is published on other blogs or websites, it can cause duplicate content issues, especially if the copied content out-ranks the original content in the search engines (See my blog post on duplicate content).

    I have experienced this problem myself in the last few months, and I have let it slide because I know people who copied my posts meant no harm.  Although I appreciate and encourage sharing of content, there are netiquette rules that should be followed (I will cover this topic in a different post). (more…)

  • Ask Mirna: Will My Blog Be Penalized for Duplicate Content?

    Posted Apr 28th, 2010 By in Ask Mirna, Blogging, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) With | 7 Comments

    Ask MirnaQUESTION:

    “What is the impact on your blog rankings if you take some of the blog posts and repackage them as e-zine articles? Effectively, you are using the content twice. Will my blog rankings be penalized? If so, how much?” — Rob B.

    ANSWER:

    The duplicate content penalty is used by Google and other major search engines to control spam, but not entirely for the reason you are asking about.  Here is what Google says on their webmaster blog:

    “Duplicate content doesn’t cause your site to be penalized. If duplicate pages are detected, one version will be returned in the search results to ensure variety for searchers.”

    The major search engines look for quality, unique content to list in their rankings.  Their goal is to minimize the amount of duplicate content  in their index so searchers do not get frustrated.  If you include your blog posts on other sites, the search engines may choose to include the site with the most inbound links and may not include your blog in their index. (more…)

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