The next thing you know, the site does not rank on any search engine and you turn to a SEO company to see what can be done. After implementing SEO tactics, if your site is still not ranking when searched organically, you may have the great problem of duplicate content.

Many times, companies that create Web sites tailored to particular industries (such as Internet Dental Alliance and Mentor Solutions) use template site layouts and content. All of the information filling your Web site about your procedures or services are not unique and are most likely being used for another client somewhere in the country and what’s worse: it may be used for another client in your area.

In a market as small as New Orleans,  you may still rank on the first page of Google – along side your competitors – in spite of the duplicate content. This is the case for certain New Orleans dentists that have used Internet Dental Alliance to create their Web sites: City Park Dental Care (neworleanscosmeticdental.com), Today’s Dental Cosmetic and Family Dentistry (cosmeticdentistneworleans.com) and  NOLA Dental Care (cosmeticdentalneworleans.com). However, there still has to be a winner and a loser and the winner in the search for  “Cosmetic Dentist New Orleans” is City Park Dental. (Click to enlarge.)

Superficially, all these sites look somewhat different, but they all have a similar structure. Although, there is not duplicate content on every page of these sites, the two dentists above that offer the Invisalign procedure do enter the duplicate content zone. Check out their sites:

City Park Dental Care

NOLA Dental Care

In some ways, the sites are different visually,  but the images are the same and, most importantly, so is the text. The problem of duplicate content has nothing to do with plagiarism, by the way, but search engines can tell when content is duplicated and will grant authority to a site through a varying combination of factors including which has the “original” content, which is has an older domain, or which the greater number of authoritative inbound links. If scales don’t shift in your site’s favor, then you will be pushed down the rankings, especially if your market is highly competitive.

Though there are several factors that deem a site “authoritative,” any way you search for it, NOLA Dental Care does not rank as well as City Park Dental Care for the invisalign procedure. In this case, the only solution is to rewrite and completely restructure the page and its content to increase in rank.

Search Influence Account Manager, Eva Moran, recommends that business owners or staff members write their own unique content capturing their particular voice, sentiment and expertise on the subject and then passing it off for optimization review.

Also, you may think twice before using a service that guarantees you (and everyone else!) an effective Web page. It is worth investing on a Web site that isn’t generated from a template to avoid duplicate content and gain visibility on search engines.

For more information on duplicate content in other situations, Google has some great insights here.

When I was starting out in SEO, I was so confused by what the best practices were and I remember at my first search conference a speaker (I want to say it was Matt Cutts but it probably wasn’t) started explaining the “hats”. There are three different hats a SEO can wear and each color represents how clean they are with their  search engine tactics.

Nice Hat.

White Hat SEO

A simple way to explain white hat SEO is making content for people, not search engines. Instead of worrying about keyword density and h1 tags, you worry about visual appeal and readability. When I think of white hat SEO I usually visualize my mother trying to start a website that is highly revelant to her demographic (middle-aged women who like enjoy natural food receipes, spiritual sessions with lightly muscled tan men, and designer leather handbags). She’s not worried about the order of keywords or what the h1 tags should say – she just wants to make a site that people like her will love. In fact, most professional SEOs aren’t white hat. If a SEO firm promises you page one listing and they say they strictly adhere to search engine guidelines, don’t believe it.

To be effective at optimizing a site, you have to be conscious of how search algorithms work and how you can manipulate them to give your client the best results. In today’s search hustle, there is no way achieve first position in Google (because frankly it is the only search engine anyone cares about) simply by creating great content and having well designed site.

Black Hat SEO

What is exactly is black hat seo? “Black hat SEO attempts to improve rankings in ways that are disapproved of by the search engines, or involve deception,” according to Wikipedia.

At the beginning of my search marketing career, I always believed black hat SEO was the most effective way to rank well. It’s fast and highly effective. However I soon realized that cloaking content on the page and creating link-spamming bots got me to the top, but I always fell further than I had previously and would get flagged.

Search engines are smarter now and most legitimate businesses stay clear of these tactics. So if a search firm is suggesting you “hide” the h1 or use deceptive redirects, they likely have dealings with overseas internet pornsites or contact form spam for clients.

Wearing a black hat isn’t a good look for any professional SEO.

Gray Hat SEO

Those who wear gray SEO hat, largerly obey search engine rules but know that in order to beat a competitor, you have to bend the rules. You can think of gray hats SEOs as risk takers who were once white hats but decided getting a little dirty never hurt anyone. They practice the necessary precaution, they develop highly relevant content and webpages, but they use some darker methods to ensure the highest possible ranking.

Whether the SEOs uses link schemes or aggressive keyword stuffing, most search internet marketers are gray hats. It’s just the nature of the beast. Being a white hat only gets you so far and once you’ve put on the black hat you might as well start all over again because you’re going to be banned.

Bottom line, you have to be successful but be aware of the repercussions, you have to take risks… and that’s why gray hats exist.

Image from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nationaalarchief/

Basically, what he’s saying is link building is the process of creating inbound links to your site from other sources. There are a variety of  link building strategies one can use to accomplish this, some of which include article submissions, directories, newsletters, and back links. In fact, just look above for an example! By linking to Mr. Lewis’ article, we’ve just strengthened his site and maybe even drove a little traffic there as well.

For those of you reading who may not be familiar with the SEO process, I may have just confused you more than I helped. So let me put it this way: Link building is incredibly similar to body building. Don’t believe me? Through following these exercises, you add strength to your website and bulk up your legitimacy and visibility.  Didn’t think I could do it, did you? Yay puns!

Just as focusing your workout to target specific muscles will increase body mass, focusing link building from relative sources will increase your site’s exposure and visits. The submission of articles to outside sources is one of the easiest ways of doing this. Make it relative to your site, throw in a few keywords that link to specific pages, and you’re on the fast track to becoming one of the strongest sites on Google!

Another way link building is beneficial is that it makes your site seem like a valuable resource. With enough links, your site could be the first to appear in search engines, just like a body builder is the first person people ask to help them move furniture.

...or be their state's governor.

The more your pages appear in places other than your own site, the more exposure it’ll receive, which makes it appear more legitimate. It turns your site from just another pale, puny face in the endless crowd to a bronzed, powerful, incredibly hard to miss shaven gorilla.

Don’t think you can do it all on your lonesome, though. Body builders need spotters to make sure they don’t drop dumbbells on their dumb bell, and reciprocal links serve the same purpose for you. These are basically agreements between two sites to link back to each other, like a partnership of sorts. This will not only add legitimacy, but you’ll surely get a few views directly from the other site.

So that’s link building in a nutshell!

**Note to body builders** Please don’t take my insults seriously. No harm intended. Please don’t beat me up! Seriously, it wouldn’t be any fun. I look like this guy:

Thanks to d_vdm and Marcus Q for the great pics!

For some reason businesses are hesitant to jump on the social media bandwagon. It’ll never make sense to me because even if you don’t believe in its power, your customers do!  By simply adding a little prize for the mayor or a special for just checking in, you are almost guaranteed loyal repeat customers looking to catch a deal. It’s a game for these people! Make your business the board!

2. The Rise of SMB Reputation Management

With the rise of social media, small businesses are now able to get their name out there as effectively as the big chains, and for a much smaller price than they’re paying for their marketing too! Check out this blog post for a huge list of SMB reputation management services.

3. Citysearch Plans Reputation Mgt Offering

In keeping with SMB reputation management, Citysearch is now offering a fixed-fee service through CityGrid. Check out this blog post and the interview mentioned in it for more information.

4. Yellowbot Offers Reputation Tool Too

We’re just crazy about small business reputation management here at Search Influence, so here’s another post about yet another service, this time offered by YellowBot! These blog posts are a fantastic resource in helping decide which service- if not ALL of them- is right for your business.

5. Google Maps: New Guidelines for Dealing with Multiple Listings & Duplicate Listing Removal

As much as we love Google Maps here, we don’t hesitate to call attention to its faults. This post gives a few tips on how to check for – and delete – duplicate listings for your business. We had to learn the hard way about the penalties they impose for duplicate listings. Save yourself the headache and check out this blog about duplicate content and how to rectify the problem before it’s too late!

6. It’s MayDay for Yellow Pages Sites

An early-May change in Google’s algorithm affects the way massive websites are indexed. While this probably doesn’t affect your site directly, it may affect a site that you’re listed on, a site on which you may be counting for a quality link. If you have a basic listing on a large directory site, the page on which you’re listed may not be viewed as authoritative by Google. In that case, you could then speak with the advertising department of the site and look into options about getting an enhanced listing with unique, rich content that is more likely to be indexed, viewed highly by Google and give a strong link back to your site.

7. Google Algo Changes Drop ‘The Other Shoe’

This post from Greg Sterling references the same update to the Google algorithm as Andrew Shotland’s does above, but makes the point that directories with content-rich listings will prevail over directories with simple listings of phone numbers and addresses.

8. Effective Online Marketing Messages: How to Pace Yourself

This one comes straight from Search Influence’s own Nick Fidanza. A few weeks ago he wrote a comical blog post about when online marketing messages are ineffective, with the promise of a follow up on how to avoid the outcomes mentioned in the first post. While we could go on for days about how to properly send out online marketing messages, we decided to keep it simple this time. Check out these 4 guidelines to plan out and pace your messages.

9. Google Lists Top 1,000 Sites On The Web & Then Lets You Advertise On Them

This Search Engine Land post mentions brand-new-yesterday features available to online advertisers in Google Adwords. These features are thanks to advertisers and users like you who have allowed Google to be privy your site’s analytics data and/or your personal searching and website viewing activity.

10. Evil Conversion: When Optimization Goes too Far

That’s right, we agree – there is such thing as too much optimization. Sandra Niehaus provides three vivid examples of consumer purchase experiences that, through over optimization, could end up causing the customer to navigate away from the site before converting or worse, turning the customer away for good.

1. GoogleSpeak – “We currently do not support the location” = Banished?

As much as we love Google Maps… it’s got a long way to go until it’s a fully reliable business tool. It works perfectly for many, but some businesses end up with a problem-laden listing or market and just can’t seem to get it straightened out. If you’re a small business struggling to get your business details out there, you are not alone! Stay tuned for future posts on how to manage it!

2. ComScore: Now 30% Browsing Mobile Web

ComScore’s finding that approximately 75 million people are surfing the web on their mobile phones proves the importance of the tool mentioned in the link above. With the Maps application available for all Andriod, Blackberry, iPhone, Palm, and Windows Mobile, that means it’s available to 97% of smartphone users as of February 2010.

3. Facebook Posied to Enter the LBS Game

From the company who only first turned a profit just over 6 months ago, comes another reason why their long-awaited IPO is going to have investors running to Wall Street when it finally comes up. If you haven’t heard of LBS, or “location based service,” you certainly will soon, and you’re probably already using one: Google Maps, Foursquare, and soon 400 million people will be using one: Facebook. It seems they’ll be integrating advertising like no other into their location-based status updates that will roll out later this month.

4. Three for Thursday

Mobile seems to be the hot topic this week… Tom Martin details three mobile services or overall ideas that will help some daily tasks just a bit easier: ordering and paying for your lunch via your mobile, the location-based app answer to Craigslist’s “Missed Connections,” (too bad I’m not single), and a possible solution to trying to schedule a call with a potential client on your boss’s jam-packed schedule, which has proven itself a challenge lately.

5. Buying Yelp Reviews is BAD for Business

There’s been a lot of talk about proper social media use these days. Yelp seems to usually be at the center of such discussions. This blog by fellow Search Influencer Amy Arnold shows the varying degrees of small businesses’ attempts to “buy” reviews and if you should or shouldn’t do it.

6. How to Use Facebook for Business and Marketing

What would a collection of internet marketing posts be without a mention of how to create a fabulous Facebook Page that everyone will want to visit?? Tamar Weinberg explains here how while the typical Facebook user really is on there only for personal use, it is possible to sneak a little marketing in here and there.

7. Linkbait: The Most Linked to Articles

Trying to get links back to your site or blog? Often even the most well constructed posts don’t get all the linking attention they deserve. The SEO Doctor shares some research he found about some of the most linked-to blogs AND shares the golden resources and tools he used to conduct it.

8. Is your blog chasing numbers or dollars?

Your blog may be attracting readers, but is it attracting them in such a way that they want to buy your product of service? Mack Collier points out something we’ve probably all committed as SEOs. Sorry, potential customers, we’ll be sure to dial down the use of the search lingo!

We’re not the only ones who love to share the knowledge we come across. See below for Matt McGee’s round up of the best posts in April, and Search Engine Land’s SearchCap, a daily collection of posts.

9. Matt McGee’s April ’10: Best Search/Marketing Posts

10. Search Engine Land’s SearchCap for May 6, 2010

All I’m saying is I don’t know why more of you weren’t there. As far as I’m concerned this was a big time win for anyone in attendance. I got some great tips from the speakers and an equal amount of good stuff from the attendees, some of which will be the focus of future posts.

I had the pleasure to sit on a panel with 3 really smart guys: Gib Olander , Michael Jensen

of SoloSEO.com and Stephen Espinosa of eLocalListings. I’d had some experience with Michael and Stephen prior and I highly recommend reading their blogs.

So, for anyone who’s interested, here is my presentation:

I promise, I’m going to document more of the great stuff I picked up over the next few weeks

Update:

TinyURL.com now allows you to customize your tiny URL. I used the phrase: Cheap Links Timecop hd

The Flyboys video

I just saw this – I’m sure others have written about it since its publication but I must have missed it somehow.

Finally, the document we’ve all been asking for!

Google has released the official Google SEO Starter Guide.

More to come when I have a chance to read it in depth.

All it needs is a reference to link-building like the old webmaster guidelines.

Since I’m clearly not going to get to the proposals I had on tap for tonight I thought I’d go ahead and document a recent client experience I’ve been talking to a few folks about.

I’ve told this story a few times recently in support of our use of call tracking numbers.

There’s an old joke “Half of my marketing budget is wasted, if only I knew which half”.

For anybody who doesn’t know, call tracking is not a new idea. Yellow Pages have used them forever they called them RCF (remote call forwarding) numbers. Essentially a call tracking number is a number which routes calls to the main business number for the purpose of tracking incoming calls. Typically, these are assigned to an ad or campaign to gauge their effectiveness.

I believe in Return on Investment! If what we do doesn’t make money for our clients they should stop paying us. The good news is we make them money and they continue to pay

But, part of what we do includes helping them understand which of their marketing (ours or otherwise) is worth the money.

We have been blessed to attract a significant number of clients within a high value vertical market. As you might imagine, we’re not the first and so many of our clients are already spending in directories and portals.

Some of these are expensive.

One of our clients was paying $20,000 / year for placement in one of these directories.

And they questioned the value.

So, we recommended the installation of call tracking numbers on their web site both for general web traffic and for referrals coming from this one directory site. After a few months we had the data we needed.

We developed a simple system that would automatically switch the phone numbers displayed on the site depending on the referral source. So, if a visitor arrived from this one site they saw a different number, calls from which were tracked.

To be clear, we did this on their site. Using simple PHP and Javascript we avoided mirroring their site and the only change was the phone number.
After 2 months we made a decision…

They had gotten 4-6 calls a month from referrals from that one site…

They shut it down and now have 20 K a year to put into more effective marketing.

We use call tracking numbers on a number of sites, both for general information and for comparative analysis. This however was a special case, and it was great to be able to help our customer stop wasting money.

Call tracking numbers are inexpensive and easy to set up. If we’d paid 10X as much for the numbers it would have still been worth it when we saved our client 20K.

This is an answer both to Miriam and to current and future clients wondering about our process.

What this post will not cover:

• Managing offline conversion (I’m working on a case study for this)
• Effective map spamming techniques (If I knew, I wouldn’t tell – “first do no harm”)

So, here we go!

Most of what we know around here comes from years of testing in the local space on behalf of yellow pages publishers.

Yellow pages are in decline and usage is moving online. In response to this, Google, Yahoo, MSN and a hundred other folks small businesses never heard of are trying to connect local searchers to local businesses.

I believe that small businesses need to control their own destiny. They give up this control whenever they pay someone else who has a vested interest in outranking them.

This argument sometimes leads us to counsel against paying for inclusion even when there’s traffic to be had from that source. And it always leads us to be skeptical… and to test (see upcoming post on managing offline conversion).

In working with local small businesses we believe the following to be self-evident:

• Expectation setting is the hardest part
• Local SEO is long tail SEO (long tail: more specificity leads to higher likelihood of conversion)
• “Low value” links are still valuable links

We work with clients with monthly budgets of $99.00 to $9,900.00 and more. In every case, it’s important to realize that even small results can have a big impact when the expectations are right.

And, amazingly enough we have been able to obtain #1 rankings for our clients’ “money” phrases at even the lowest budget levels. It just sometimes takes time (expectation setting is key).

Working with service businesses with a local focus we find we can leverage the long tail nature of local search to deliver ready to buy customers.

Here’s the great news: given the long tail nature of local service searches, link-building becomes less challenging.

Even low value, free inclusion, directory links can have significant value.

Not everyone needs Yahoo! directory and BOTW to win. For local businesses targeted inbound links in abundance can make the difference.

Two examples:

These two are indicative of our small business clients. We have a package for them. It fits their budget and they get results.

It should be obvious these aren’t giant budgets or super-competitive phrases. We have clients who are after those too, but their budgets are MUCH larger, the cost of their links greater and the variety of technique infinitely more.

So, to answer the question, our lower budget clients are still doing great in local SEO with a comprehensive package of what some would consider “low value” links.

It’s an oversimplification, but I always say it’s about 2 things, content and links. With those two, lather – rinse – repeat until you move on up. The more competitive the market, the more you have to repeat.

If you’ve been contacted by SEO Matrix please give us a call. Â We’ve learned that the way they prospect is by calling people who are spending money on online advertising. Poltergeist II: The Other Side move

Most of our clients come by referral. Â We can help you too (and in most cases for much less than SEO Matrix).

We have spoken to a few SEO Matrix cold-call recipients and would love to speak with you too.

Call (504) 208-3900 today.

Original post follows:

Just a quick post to talk about a call I just got from SEO Matrix. Al, from SEOMatrix was kind enough to call and begin to educate me about their services.

Normally I would just sit tight and listen for the competitive value (in the interest of full disclosure, we have used telemarketers and will continue to do so). But, I started poking around their site, got a little more educated and asked a few questions.

My first question for SEO Matrix was “what kind of guarantees do you offer”? And I got a good answer, that they don’t like to over-promise, which let Al into a discussion of the fact that SEOMatrix’s employs only “white hat” techniques. So, for whatever reason that’s where I lost my cool.

Again, I was trying to maintain so I could get a sense for what they were saying to see if it had value when we go back into cold-calling (w/in 30-60 days).

I just couldn’t do it. Why? It offended my sensibilities and I said so. I told Al, that the average consumer of his product doesn’t know what “white hat” is, and that it’s irrelevant to their needs. I then expressed my frustration that he hadn’t even looked at our site — this in itself was funny because he responded that he thought we might do PPC (Note: the title tag includes “Economical SEO”).

In any case, I don’t think they’re Traffic Power, but it would seem they’re not making a great name for themselves in the market since this is the #4 Google result for SEOMatrix

• download Fighting Words

.

I’m still trying to pinpoint what set me off. It was one of several things:

• The pricing was silly high
• The caller didn’t even realize he was calling an SEO (even though he knew the company name and was looking at the site)
• The language used was a combination of buzz words and gross oversimplification (my favorite pseudo buzzword: Hard Hat SEO)
• They call themselves an “Ethical Search Engine Optimization Company” — like they’re the only ones

I don’t know, if we have one goal, it’s to de-mystify this stuff. If nothing else the presence of competition, good or bad, validates the business.

I’ll come back and fill in some of the blanks. I just wanted to get this down while fresh in my mind.

—

Due to the inflammatory nature of some of the earlier comments I’ve decided to turn off all comments on this post.

If anyone has issues or questions (especially those of you who gave of your time to post a response) please feel free to contact us directly wscott@searchinfluence.com / (504) 208-3900.

I would also like to draw your attention to my post on Swine Insemination.