Here’s what to look for when it comes to hiring a good SEO agency…

A Website Doesn’t Exist Without SEO

Your business can have the best looking website out there, that’s packed with fantastic content – and still not receive any visitors. If your site isn’t search engine friendly, no one will even know that it’s there. Moreover, there are thousands upon thousands of websites in any given market. Without effective SEO, finding your particular website on the Internet can be like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Sure – programs like WordPress can make it easy for those with no technical expertise to create professional-looking websites. There are even special plugins you can install that will help with search engine optimization. But unfortunately, these plugins aren’t going to tell a website owner if he’s using the right keywords for his target market or how exactly to promote his website to ensure optimum traffic and conversions.

If this website owner doesn’t have the time or inclination to learn proper SEO best practices, he may be better off hiring an agency to do the work for him.  A good SEO agency can help this business owner to find the right words and phrases to use on his website to separate the buyers from the tire kickers.  The agency can even look at the website’s Google Analytics and other metrics to determine how to properly promote the site in the SERPs and how to adjust individual web pages to increase conversion rates.

In general, search engine optimization isn’t a process that’s done once and then ignored – it needs to be monitored and tweaked over time to make sure that the site is attracting the right visitors, and keeping them. Unfortunately, most businesses – especially small businesses where everyone has two or three jobs already – don’t have time for this type of ongoing project. In these cases, outsourcing SEO to a qualified agency helps save the company time and money by building an efficient, converting website that increases overall revenue.

The SEO is a Changin’

But beyond the time-saving advantages of hiring an SEO agency, it’s important to remember that keeping up with current SEO techniques takes an entirely separate amount of effort!

Search engine optimization techniques aren’t even close to the same as they were when the internet first developed as a place for businesses to attract new customers. In addition, with the launch of its Panda algorithm update in 2011, Google revolutionized the way keywords, links and other SEO techniques should be used on the internet.

Even for those SEO specialists working within the industry, it can be difficult to keep up on all of Google’s various changes.  For business owners and other non-professionals, it’s even more difficult to stay on top of what Google’s doing. However, the consequences for not adhering to the search giant’s most recent updates can be severe.  If Google deindexes your company website, you’ll probably wind up spending a great deal of time and money trying to back into Google’s good graces.

Outsourcing your business SEO needs can help avoid this hassle.  As many of Google’s recent changes have to do with keyword optimization, linking strategies and webpage optimization, a good SEO agency can help you navigate these latest sets of requirements. They’ll be able to help you make any necessary improvements to your site, both simultaneously improving your online results and avoiding the hassle of being penalized by Google.

Local SEO Is Just As Important

But just to add to the confusion, small businesses must be familiar with local SEO practices, as well as the online techniques needed to rank well in the traditional SERPs. If a business has local, as well as online customers, it needs to use local SEO techniques – which can incorporate Google strategies, using social sites such as FourSquare and even mobile strategies to help local consumers find both its website and physical location.

If you only conduct business locally, understanding and implementing these techniques becomes even more vital.  Given that nearly 80% percent of consumers conduct internet research before buying a product or service, it’s obvious why local companies must prioritize local SEO techniques that enable them to be found on the web.

But since learning local SEO requires studying an entirely new set of techniques, many small businesses find that they benefit from outsourcing these tasks in order to focus on more important areas of company operations. Hiring an SEO agency to take over local SEO can ensure that your business is found by both local and Internet customers through the appropriate use of linking strategies, keywords and tagging.  They’ll also be more up-to-date on the latest local optimization technologies – including both mobile and interactive applications – that can help make businesses easier to find.

How to Find the Right SEO Agency

If hiring an SEO agency to take over your business’s web and local SEO needs sounds like a wise use of your time and money, be aware that there are plenty of different aspects to consider.  For example, the agency’s expertise, strategies and past successes should be examined to make sure the organization is professional and competent.  It’s also important to understand the agency’s mission statement and how they deal with clients to make sure your final selection is a good fit for your business’s needs.

Here are a few of the specific questions you’ll want to ask when interviewing potential SEO agencies:

“Where are they located?”

An SEO agency doesn’t have to be local to be successful.  Some businesses like being able to have onsite meetings with their outsourcers to make sure everything is on track, although with today’s technology, online meetings can be just as productive as physical meetings.  As long as you’re comfortable working long distance and the agency you’ve chosen is well-qualified, dealing with an SEO organization located elsewhere isn’t a problem.

“How well do they communicate?”

Even a local agency can be difficult to work with if they aren’t good about communications.  While it isn’t reasonable to expect someone at the agency to answer the phone all the time, your agency contact should call back or reply to an email within a single one business day.  They should also have established methods for updating clients and receiving feedback to alter a project as needed.

“Do they stay current on new advancements?”

With the field of SEO changing consistently, an SEO agency needs to demonstrate that they stay abreast of changes in technology and techniques.  To determine whether or not this is occurring, look for whitepapers they’ve written, notes on social media sites about seminars they’ve attended or blog posts their employees have written about new techniques in order to find out how knowledgeable they are about their field.

“Is a long term contract required?”

Because SEO strategies need to be monitored and changed over time, you’ll want to find an SEO agency that you can work with in the long-term.  However, be wary of getting roped into a long-term contact if you aren’t certain your SEO campaign will achieve good results.  When looking for a new agency, start with a three-month contract to find out if they’re a good fit. This way, you won’t be stuck with ineffective consultants you can’t work with.

Because SEO is so important to internet marketing, it’s imperative that you use the newest and best strategies on your business website.  If you aren’t able to commit to learning these techniques yourself and implementing them on your website, hiring an SEO agency to carry out these best practices for you could wind up being a smart business decision in the long run.

Image: kandyjaxx

The eyes of the search engine spiders, on the other hand, are quite a bit more limited.  Despite all the effort you put into making your website’s design as attractive as possible, there are certain elements of your website that these automated programs simply won’t be able to process.

In general, the search engine spiders are limited to understanding the text and text-based features (for example, backlinks) on your site.  However, there are some SEO workarounds that make it possible for the search engines to understand and process non-text elements.  For more detail on how this occurs, let’s look at each of the different elements found on standard web pages, as well as how the search engines view and value them…

Element #1 – Text

As mentioned above, search engine spiders love text- based content.  They derive a number of different clues about your website’s theme and quality from these words, simply because text is the type of content they’re most easily able to digest.

However, that doesn’t mean that all websites are built to optimize the text-based content they include.  There are a few specific things you’ll want to watch out for when it comes to making your text as cleanly written and easily accessible as possible:

1. Make sure text is visible to the search engine spiders.  Occasionally, snippets of code, embedded content or formatting inconsistencies can cause text to be hidden from the search engine spiders.  To get an idea of what these automated programs see when they land on each of your pages, use the Webconfs “Search Engine Spider Simulator” tool.
2. Use a text-based browser to check for additional formatting concerns that may prevent the proper indexation of your site’s content.  Lynx is one example of a browser that will allow you to view your website’s content without any additional features engaged.
3. Turn off Javascript in your browser.  Even text blocks that appear to be separate from script files at first glance may be hidden underneath Javascript elements from a coding perspective.  One quick way to check and be sure your site’s content isn’t obscured is to turn off Javascript within your browser to see if any of your text disappears as well.

Element #2 – Images

The concept of avoiding images from an SEO standpoint is fairly well-established, but to review – any text that’s incorporated into your images can’t be indexed by the search engine spiders at this point.

So say, for example, your site uses a graphical header to introduce your site’s name and tagline.  Be aware that, because they’re embedded in an image file, these words are no longer accessible to the search engines, which can be a big problem for your site’s SEO.

As an alternative, you can add text to your images’ ALT tag attributes, but this is no substitute for hiding either large chunks or extremely important pieces in your images.  Instead, stick to design options and graphic elements that enhance your site without steamrolling its ability to rank for your chosen keyword phrases.

Element #3 – Flash

Flash is another content type that often gets a bad rap for having a negative SEO impact.  And it’s true – just as with image files, any text you embed in your Flash files won’t be read or indexed by the search engine spiders.

Now, this doesn’t mean that you should avoid them entirely.  When used properly, Flash videos can be a great way to engage your audience and convey important points in an interactive way.  Just be sure to incorporate them in small, subtle ways and to add any relevant content from your videos to your site as text in other areas.

Of course, this doesn’t do you any good if you have a site that’s built entirely in Flash that you won’t be able to change any time soon.  If you absolutely must use Flash in a way that hides your text from the search engine spiders, use SWFObject2 code as well.  Essentially, according to Mike Arnesen of Swell Path:

“SWFObject2 is an open-source JavaScript library that can be used to embed Flash while also offering alternative content.  Basically, when a user visits a page with a Flash object that is embedded via SWFObject2, a script checks to see if the user can actually view the Flash content.  If the user can’t, alternate content is pulled up instead.”

While Google hasn’t guaranteed that they support this alternative, it’s still a better option than simply leaving your text hidden.  (Just don’t use this opportunity to serve up alternate content as an excuse to fill your site with spammy text!)

Element #4 – Javascript

As you might expect, using Javascript on your website has a number of different weaknesses from an SEO standpoint.  Although it can add important features that make your website more enjoyable to use, it can also hide your text from the search engine spiders, preventing proper indexing from occurring.

As with Flash, it’s important to serve up alternate content in order to protect your site’s overall SEO authority.  In general, there are two specific areas where you’ll want to be sure your Javascript codes aren’t overwriting your content – in your navigation system and within any user review system you use.

First, when it comes to your navigation system, be aware that although Javascript can produce some great-looking, interactive menu bars, it’s much weaker from an SEO standpoint than building your navigation system using HTML and CSS.  Although the search engines are catching up in terms of parsing and dealing with content stored in script codes, they still aren’t perfect when it comes to accessing links stored in this way and passing authority through them correctly.

Second, if you use customer reviews on your site (which can be a good way to increase visitor engagement and add relevant keyword mentions), be sure the specific app or plugin you’re using serves up an alternate view of the text found in your reviews to the search engines.  Most customer review plugins are built in Javascript, so if you use one without alternate content functionality, you’re limiting your exposure to potent long tail keyword mentions.

Element #5 – PDFs

Contrary to popular belief, the search engine spiders can access certain elements of PDF files.  While their overall “word-for-word” translation of these documents can be hit or miss, they are to read certain tags associated with your PDF files, including the title, author, subject and keyword tags, as well as your headline and image caption tags within the document.

For this reason, it’s important to pay special attention to the keywords you integrate into your PDF files as you create them.  While it’s unlikely that adjusting these factors alone will result in higher rankings, they’re one of the few opportunities you have to guarantee that the search engine spiders will see your chosen keywords – so don’t waste it!

Image: Jeff McNeil

Because new websites can be time-consuming and difficult to build, many small business owners simply outsource the entire process to a web designer.  However, this can get pricey, so it’s worth investing the time to figure out if you could handle the process yourself or if you really do need to pass the project on to the professionals.

To determine whether or not hiring a web designer makes sense for your next big web project, ask yourself the following four questions:

Question #1 – How tech/design savvy are you?

Building a website requires two different skill sets – the technical “know how” to get your site functioning correctly and the design awareness needed to make these new pages look good.

For this reason, the obvious first step in deciding whether or not you should work with a web designer is to assess your skills in these areas.

If you don’t know a thing about HTML, CSS or Javascript, or you’ve never made design decisions beyond choosing the paint colors in your home, it’s probably best to farm out the web design process to a professional.  Sure, you can learn these skills, but be aware that the time this will take is likely better invested into other areas of your growing business.

Alternatively, if you do have experience in both of these areas, you may be able to take on more of the web design process yourself.  Be aware that building an entirely new site from scratch may still be beyond your capabilities or the time you’re able to commit to the project.  However, having a baseline familiarity with these processes means you might be able to take advantage of a platform like WordPress or Intuit’s Website Builder, which will give you a starting place that requires only minor tweaking to launch.

Question #2 – What’s your budget?

Whether your lack of tech and design skills will prevent you from designing your own new website or you simply can’t commit the time necessary to do so, the next consideration you’ll need to make is the budget you have for the process.

There’s no way around it – hiring a website designer to put together your new site is always going to be more expensive than doing it yourself or working with a website design platform like Intuit’s Website Builder.

Just how expensive?  Although average prices vary by region and depend on whether you hire a design agency, a freelancer or an overseas designer, you’ll be hard-pressed to spend less than $1,000 on a very simple, five-page website.  If you anticipate needing more pages or interactive features (for example, ecommerce solutions or complex forms integration), it isn’t uncommon for business owners to spend $10,000-$50,000 or more on a new website.

Question #3 – What do you envision in your final site?

Obviously, if you don’t have this kind of money, a website design platform – which lets you customize your own template web designs – may be a better choice.  These solutions are usually much less expensive than professionally-created custom designs and take significantly less time to construct than learning to code on your own.

However, they do have limitations.  Most website design platforms offer only a certain number of templates, and the features they integrate are often limited.

If you’re only planning a static content website, this might not be an issue.  But if you envision a massive ecommerce engine built to rival Amazon.com, a website design platform may not give you the features and flexibility you need.

For this reason, it’s important to spend some time brainstorming what exactly you envision in your final website.  Even if you’re planning to start small, how do you see your site growing over time?  Which website features are essential to achieving these goals and which integrations can be put off until your website is earning a profit and able to sustain its own upgrades?

Another important issue to consider is scalability.  If you plan on starting small, but growing your website into a much larger, thriving web business, it may make sense to invest in the services of a website design professional upfront so that your site can be built on a framework that can be easily grown, instead of being transferred from platform to platform over time.

Question #4 – How much time can you dedicate to the design process?

Finally, it’s important to consider how much time you’re able to devote to the website design process.

If you’re reading this article, you’re probably not a professional website designer.  So whether you’re a small business owner trying to develop a website for your offline company, an internet entrepreneur or simply someone putting up a website for personal purposes, it’s worth keeping in mind that you’ve got a hundred other things sitting on your “to do” list.

Your time is valuable, which is why this element should be considered as a critical part of your decision on whether to hire a website designer or work with a website design platform.

For example, suppose you’re an accountant putting up a new website for your practice.  Because your website needs are relatively simple, you get a quote from a designer for a new custom site for $1,000.

Since that’s a pretty big chunk of change, you decide to save the money and learn website design yourself – it can’t be that difficult, right?!  After slogging through coding and design tutorials, you’re able to get a site up and running with about 40 hours of time invested.  Unfortunately, if you typically bill your clients at a rate of $85/hour, you’ve effectively just spent $3,400 on your site – losing time and money over the professional designer’s quote!

Of course, an alternative scenario is that, instead of learning coding and design from scratch, you decide to use an established website design platform.  Although there’s an upfront cost to using the service, your relatively simple needs mean you’re able to get a professional-looking site up with just a few hours of effort – saving both time and money.

Clearly, there are a number of different factors you’ll want to take into consideration when it comes to determining how to move forward with your website’s design or redevelopment.  Although there are advantages and disadvantages to hiring a website designer versus doing everything yourself (or making use of a website design platform), the exact decision that’s right for your business will only become apparent after thinking through these four questions.

Image: oberazzi

Unfortunately, the web’s search engine spiders don’t care about how skilled you are in the technical arena.  What they care about is the content they can read on your pages, so if you aren’t utilizing both basic and advanced SEO techniques on your website, you risk being indexed and ranked for the wrong words – or none at all!

For this reason, it’s important to familiarize yourself with SEO techniques and to implement SEO best practices to the best of your abilities.  Fair warning – the following three topics may seem complex.  However, if you invest a little time in reading more about them, you should be able to implement them in a way that makes sense for you and your website.

Let’s get started!

Technique #1 – Canonicalization

Canonicalization sounds tricky, but it’s not that difficult to understand.  Essentially, there are a number of situations that can cause content on your website to appear on multiple URLs.  These instances can cause your site to be indexed improperly or to trigger duplicate content filters, in which the search engine spiders must determine which version of your content (if any) to display in the SERPs.

The easiest example to understand is that your website can be accessed from both “http://www.mysite.com” and “http://mysite.com”.  If you have inbound links pointing at both of these URLs, they’ve likely both been indexed by the search engine spiders, which can lead to complications in terms of how link juice is passed and how your site appears in the SERPs.

Similarly, if you use a platform like WordPress (which dynamically creates category and tag pages that display your articles in multiple locations) or a service that adds tracking or session IDs to your URLs (for example, “http://www.mysite.com/file.php?var1=value&mysession=123”), the search engines could be indexing multiple copies of your original articles.

To prevent these situations from influencing where and how your site is ranked in the SERPs, consider implementing the following best practices:

• Use a 301 redirect (which we’ll get into next) to ensure your site is indexed at either the “www” version or the “non-www” version of your domain name (not both).
• Build any external backlinks using the same URL structure you set with your redirect.
• Use caution when building your site to ensure all internal links are structured the same.
• Add the rel=”canonical” tag to your pages to specify which URLs should be indexed by the search engines.  Be aware, though, that this is only a suggestion – the search engines are not required to adhere to the URL preferences you specify with this tag.

For more recommendations on how to handle canonicalization issues, take a look at the following resources:

• 8 Canonicalization Best Practices in Plain English
• What is Canonicalization?
• About rel=”canonical”

Technique #2 – Redirects

Deploying proper redirects on your site follows a similar principle as canonicalization.  That is, if you move content on your website (or from one website to another), you’ll want to be sure the search engine spiders are properly informed of the move and able to find and access your content in its new location.

There are two types of redirects that are commonly used in web development: 301 and 302.

301 redirects are permanent redirects.  Using this specific code tells the search engines that your content has been moved permanently and should be indexed at its new location.  301 redirects have the advantage of passing link juice and accumulated SEO authority to your content’s new home, which makes them incredibly valuable from a search perspective.

302 redirects, on the other hand, are temporary redirects.  A 302 redirect tells the search engines, “I’ve moved this content temporarily, but it will be back.  Please don’t attempt to redirect SEO authority away from my original URL.”

In most cases, you’ll want to use 301 redirects to control how the search engines index moved or deleted content.  To learn how to deploy this type of redirect correctly, check out the following articles:

• Redirection SEO Best Practices
• URL Rewrites and Redirects: The Gory Details (part 1 of 2)
• URL Rewrites and Redirects: The Gory Details (part 2 of 2)

Technique #3 – Schema.org microdata

Microdata – which sounds significantly more complicated than it really is – is a language that’s used to add supplementary tags to your site’s HTML in order to provide more data to the search engine spiders and result in the creation of “Rich Snippets.”

When you think about the tags included in traditional HTML, it’s easy to see where some major deficiencies lie.  Typically, the only tags found in your site’s code include the body tag, title tag, meta description tag, heading tags and a few others.  While the search engines are able to capture the data stored in these tags, they occasionally run into challenges analyzing this information qualitatively.

For example, suppose you built a website reviewing the popular movie, “Avatar.”  Your initial code might look something like this:

<div>

<h1>Avatar</h1>

<span>Director: James Cameron (born August 16, 1954)</span>

<span>Science fiction</span>

<a href=”../movies/avatar-theatrical-trailer.html”>Trailer</a>

</div>

And while the search engine spiders will be able to tell that you’ve written a page about the word “Avatar”, they can’t conclusively determine from this limited text whether your content is about the movie or about online profile pictures.

By adding Schema.org microdata, we can add extra information within our website’s code to instruct the search engines on how to process and index this content.  In the following example, the sample code shared above is modified with the “Movie” schema tag, which informs the search engines that what follows is content based on a movie called “Avatar”:

<div itemscope itemtype ="http://schema.org/Movie">

  <h1 itemprop="name">Avatar</h1>

  <span>Director: James Cameron</span> (born August 16, 1954)</span>

  <span Science fiction</span>

  <a href="../movies/avatar-theatrical-trailer.html">Trailer</a>

</div>

Not only does this Schema.org microdata help our sites to be indexed more appropriately.  When integrated correctly, sites marked up with microdata become eligible to use “Rich Snippets” (basically, SERPs listings with additional information) in the search results pages.  These snippet enhancements can result in an increased clickthrough rate from the SERPs, making the time needed to mark up a website with standard microdata well worth the effort.

The following image shows two SERPs listings that are fully marked up with Schema.org microdata and two that are not.  If you wound up on this results page, which result would you be more likely to click through to?

To learn more about the different Schema.org microdata tags, as well as how to implement them on your website, check out the following resource articles:

• Schema.org – Getting Started Guide
• Why (And How) You Should Use HTML5 Microdata
• How to Use Rich Snippets

Again, although these concepts may initially seem overwhelming, they’re worth learning (or outsourcing to a web development professional) in order to prevent negative SEO impacts from occurring on your site.  By being proactive about managing more complex SEO issues, you’ll avoid penalties or the incorrect indexation that could hind your website’s rankings in the natural SERPs.

Image: Lynn Friedman

According to popular legend, if you post content to your site that too closely resembles articles on other web pages (whether unintentionally or purposefully, through the misuse of PLR content, manufacturer’s product descriptions and other stock text), the Googlebot will tag your site as a scammer, assess a penalty, and downgrade your rankings in the natural search pages.

But with the amount of content on the web today, is this really something you need to worry about?  Let’s take a closer look at what duplicate content is and whether your site could be subject to penalties from including this repetitive text…

First of all, it’s worth pointing out that duplicate content can be caused by a number of different scenarios:

• Copying and pasting content from another person’s site to your own (as described above)
• Having another person copy your unique content and paste it to his own site (called “scraping”)
• Copying manufacturer product descriptions “as is” when reselling products from a third-party merchant
• Repeating product description section headings multiple website pages (for example, “Specifications” or “Sizing Information”)
• Using forums which render multiple versions of your pages on display (particularly in mobile environments)
• Having a “printer friendly” version of your content pages available for users
• Using an ecommerce site structure that allows products to be displayed on multiple pages
• Making use of proxy browsers which store multiple versions of your site

Really, only a few of these examples represent malicious intent (in the case of spamming).  Most of the time, the inclusion of duplicate content on websites is harmless in nature – if the site owner even knows it’s occurring at all!

And given that there’s rarely a negative intent behind instances of duplicate content, would it really be fair to punish webmasters who are doing their best to supply a feature rich environment for their users?

It wouldn’t – and fortunately, it doesn’t happen.  The Google Webmaster Central Blog sums this up nicely, saying:

“Let’s put this to bed once and for all, folks: There’s no such thing as a “duplicate content penalty.”  At least, not in the way most people mean when they say that.”

Essentially, the article confirms that while there is no penalty assessed automatically for the benign instances of duplicate content described above, the search giant does reserve the right to penalize sites that violate its Webmaster Guidelines.  There are three specific instances referenced where this may occur:

• The creation of multiple pages, domains or subdomains with substantially relevant content,
• The use of “cookie cutter” affiliate pages provided by affiliate programs and used by multiple program participants, and
• Sites that do not add value beyond promoting affiliate products.

This makes sense.  Google’s primary goal is to provide its users with the best possible search results, and it stands to reason that a group of several sites all displaying the same content can’t meet this need.  To keep people coming back (and to keep its advertising revenue up), Google must filter out these lower-quality results, and picking up on duplicated content is one of the ways it’s able to do so.

However, the fact that Google doesn’t automatically issue a duplicate content penalty to repetitive articles doesn’t tell us how it does handle these situations.  And indeed, the second half of the Google Webmaster Central blog quote referenced above (“At least, not in the way most people mean when they say that”) seems to leave open the possibility that Google does, in fact, factor content uniqueness into its algorithms somehow.

A post in the Google Webmaster Tools help section regarding duplicate content issues arising from malicious scraper sites does a good job of clarifying how the search engine handles these instances:

“Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results. If your site suffers from duplicate content issues, and you don’t follow the advice listed above, we do a good job of choosing a version of the content to show in our search results.”

The key to understanding how duplicate content is processed lies in the final sentence of this quote.  When the Google search engine spiders are confronted with repetitive text, instead of automatically issuing a penalty or decreasing a site’s rankings, they use a separate process to determine which version of the duplicate content should be displayed in the results.  This causes most of the duplicate content instances to be filtered out in favor of one (or more) selected version(s) which will appear in the SERPs.

To determine which instances should be filtered out and which pages should remain, the Googlebot applies a series of filters that mimic its overall ranking algorithms.  For example, this process might look at:

• The number of backlinks pointing at each instance of duplicate content
• The overall authority of each domain hosting instances of duplicate content
• The amount of unique content residing on each site besides the duplicate content

Google claims that these filters do a good job prioritizing content creators over malicious spammers, but mistakes do occur.  Even if your SERPs rankings aren’t suffering as a result of scraper sites, be aware that even benign instances of duplicate content (for example, multiple cached page versions or duplicate links) can lead to increased bandwidth usage, possibly slowing down or crashing your site.

For this reason, it’s important to be aware of any potential duplicate content issues that may exist on your site, as well as to remedy them as quickly as possible to prevent any negative effects from occurring.  Even if you aren’t actively scraping content from other websites, you might be surprised to find that the structure of your website is causing issues in this regard.

To identify any instances of duplicate content that exist on your site, use tools like Google’s Webmaster Central or Blekko.com.  Then, if you do come across any issues, take the following steps to minimize any negative impact these instances could be having on your site’s performance or rankings:

• Re-write any content on your site that’s been tagged as unoriginal.  This is especially important if you’re using manufacturer stock product descriptions – since only a few instances of this content will be allowed in the search results pages, you limit your ability to get ranked by including this text.
• Use appropriate redirection codes.  Moving content on your site can lead to unintended duplicate content filtering, so be sure to implement proper 301 redirects when changing article locations across your pages.
• Be consistent in your linking.  Because link structures play a tremendous role in how users access your content and how the search engines navigate your pages, pay special attention to the way you build your links to be sure they’re consistent across your site.

The Google Webmaster Tools help section offers more tips for managing potential duplicate content filtering, which can be useful if your site is experiencing negative consequences as a result of similar text.  However, for most webmasters, these tips won’t be necessary.  Following website architecture best practices and publishing good, unique content should be enough for most people to avoid any negative impact due to duplicate content penalties.

Image: miguelavg

But what should you do when these priorities conflict with one another?

Let’s look at an example to see how and why this might happen….

Suppose you run a website that sells high end, custom women’s shoes under the brand name “Tootsies”.  You’re new to the market, and although you don’t have the name recognition of some of your larger competitors, you’re confident that your product will speak for itself – if you could just get it in the hands of a few buyers!

At this point, you have a few alternatives.  You could go the SEO route and identify a few potential keyword phrases in your niche to target.  For example, after conducting your keyword research, you might find that potential visitors in your demographic are entering the SEO keyword phrases, “top quality high heels” and “best leather heels” into the search engines most frequently.

By structuring your website around these keywords, you could increase your rankings within these particular results pages, generating traffic and interest to your website.

On the other hand, building your website around these generic phrases doesn’t allow you to build up the Tootsies brand.  Ideally, you don’t want to rely on a few high SERPs rankings to be responsible for the bulk of your traffic – search algorithms change every day, and it’s entirely possible that a future implementation could knock your site out of the top spot and put an end to your natural search traffic.

From a business standpoint, you don’t want to rely on search rankings either.  You want people to fall so deeply in love with the Tootsies brand that they come back to buy again and again, while recommending your site to their friends and family members at the same time (both of which occur when you’ve built up a solid brand).  With this in mind, you might decide to optimize your website for the keyword phrase, “Tootsies shoes”, but there’s just one problem with this – no one is searching for this phrase yet!

Because your brand is new, your branded keyword phrases have little to no search volume.  Even if you were to snag the top spot in the SERPs for these words (which, frankly, shouldn’t be that difficult!), it wouldn’t matter to your bottom line, as no one is using these phrases in the search engines to find you yet.

As you can see, this interaction between SEO and branding can present a potential challenge for website owners who are trying to figure out how to best optimize their pages in order to bring in traffic and revenue.  If you’re feeling stuck about how to proceed with your website’s marketing strategy, consider the following advice on balancing SEO and branding on your pages:

Step #1 – Analyze Your Website Goals

First of all, it’s important to note that not all websites need to focus on both branding and SEO.  Although both of these pursuits are valuable, a website doesn’t need to have both marketing models in place to succeed.

For example, consider the way a site like Twitter developed.  At the time, no one was searching Google for “ways to share mini-blog posts”, but the company’s brand was strong enough to create this need in the marketplace.   Alternatively, consider a business like Lowes, whose brand is strong enough that the company doesn’t need to worry about optimizing its pages around branded keywords.

On the other hand, if you’ve only recently launched a website and are in the process of determining which product lines will perform most successfully for your audience, it may not make sense to start building your brand until you know more about how your business will look down the road.  Investing time into optimizing your site for a particular brand doesn’t make sense if you think there’s a chance you’ll change your branding down the road.

However, this doesn’t mean that the “branding versus SEO” debate is an either-or situation – in fact, most websites will find that a balance between the two pursuits works best in terms of capturing visitors in the short term and creating business stability in the long term.  What’s important is that you understand what you want to achieve with your website, as well as which type of promotional method will best help you to meet these goals.

Step #2 – Analyze Your Current Position

The next step in determining how much of your energy should be dedicated to SEO versus branding is to understand your site’s current position.  To do this, ask yourself the following questions:

1. How much traffic does my website currently receive?
2. Where does this traffic come from?
3. How established is my brand within my industry?

If, for example, you determined in Step #1 that a combination of SEO and branding will work best for your business, take a look at your analytics data and your keyword research to find out how your site is performing.  If you see that most of your traffic is coming from SEO keywords, you might decide to focus more of an effort on your branded keywords until that aspect of your marketing plan levels out.

Based on your stated goals and your existing site performance, try to nail down a ratio of how you’ll spend your time – for example, promoting SEO keywords 75% of the time and branded keywords the remaining 25%.  These figures don’t need to be set in stone, but having concrete guidelines will help you to ensure your marketing strategies are on track.

Step #3 – Launch and Reevaluate Your Strategy Over Time

As your website grows and changes, you might find it necessary to adjust the ratio you set in Step #2.  If, for instance, you’ve settled on a brand that your customers are responding well to, you may find it worth your time to invest more heavily in promoting branded keywords.  Again, be sure to consult your website’s analytics data to determine how people are finding your site and how strong of a penetration you have in both SEO and branded SERPs.

For this reason, it’s a good idea to revisit your existing data and your proposed marketing strategies every few months or so.  By doing this, you’ll ensure that your website receives the best balance of both free traffic from the natural search results and the long-term benefits of having an established brand within your industry.

Image: almcorona

That said, Google Analytics has one major weakness – its data is reported on a daily basis, not in real-time.  For most of your website analytics needs – including determining your overall bounce rate or top content pages – this isn’t an issue.  However, there are a few key areas where having access to real-time website analytics data can make a big difference in your site’s overall success.

Consider any of the following advantages to see why adding a real-time analytics program to your website data reporting services is a “must do”:

Advantage #1 – Track Visitor Movement Through Your Site

One area where real-time analytics shine is the ability to track the movement of readers throughout your site.  Although Google Analytics can show you common entry and exit pages that visitors use to navigate your site, you aren’t able to track their full paths or see them in real-time.

Why is this important?  Well, think for a second about how much valuable information you’d gain if you were able to follow visitors as they moved through your site.  If you noticed several visitors clicking away from one page after brief visits, but spending much longer on other pages, you could conclude that the content on this page isn’t meeting your visitors’ expectations.

Using real-time visitor paths through your website to understand “average time on page” (versus overall average time on site, as reported by Google Analytics), you could take action to improve under-performing pages and make your website more appealing to your visitors.

Advantage #2 – Evaluate Promotions as They Occur

Another area where real-time analytics can be especially valuable is when monitoring new promotions you’ve released on your website.

For example, say you’ve just launched a new sale that’s only running for a few days.  With this limited window, you may not have time to run A/B split tests in order to determine whether you’re using the most engaging headline or whether you’ve placed your promotional message in the best possible place on your site.

But while you can’t generate split testing data that quickly, you can use real-time analytics programs to monitor user behavior on your website.  By looking at your past sales data, you should have a general idea of your approximate average conversion rates – aka, how many of your visitors participate in your promotions by becoming buyers.

Using real-time analytics, you can determine at a glance whether or not visitors are acting on your sales message at the level you expect.  If you aren’t seeing results that are comparable to your past promotions, you can take action and change different elements of your sales display – without having to wait for Google Analytics’ next-day reports or time-consuming split test results.

Advantage #3 – Maximize Social Media Presence

Finally, consider using real-time analytics to improve the results you get from your social media activities.

As an example, say you’ve just launched a new post on your business blog and have set up your favorite Twitter automation tool to release tweets advertising the article at three specific times later in the day.  If you tracked the traffic generated by each of these messages in Google Analytics, you’d only see the total number of visitors from Twitter for the entire day.

Instead, by monitoring your traffic levels using real-time analytics, you would be able to see which tweets bring in the most traffic, providing valuable data about the times your readers are most active on social networking sites and what types of promotional messages they respond best to.  Capturing this data will help you to better structure social media marketing campaigns in the future in order to achieve the best possible results.

Alternatively, suppose you’ve made it a goal to attract viral traffic to your website by promoting your content on Digg, Stumbleupon and other social sharing sites.  If you’re lucky enough to hit the front page of one of these sites, you’ll want to know it immediately in order to best leverage these new visitors.  For example, if you see a spike from social sharing site traffic on your real-time analytics program, you could quickly throw up a special opt-in form, welcoming visitors from these sites and enabling your email list to grow substantially.

To get started with real-time analytics, you’ll need to install a third-party script like Clicky or Piwik.  Although Google Analytics is reportedly adding real-time data to its services, this rollout hasn’t happened yet and there’s no clear launch date in place for this addition.  Until these features become standard on the default installation of Google Analytics, you’ll need to look elsewhere in order to get the real-time data you need to power website improvements.

Check out each of the following programs for your real-time analytics needs:

Clicky – Clicky is a popular real-time web analytics program that provides a wealth of information to users, including the ability to monitor specific visitor actions across your site, segment these visitors into useful categories and gain insight into detailed elements of social networking promotions.

Clicky offers a free version for sites receiving fewer than 3,000 daily page views, as well as paid plans at a variety of levels that offer premium features.  Installation is simple and involves either adding a program-specific plugin or pasting a piece of tracking code to each page you want to track.

Piwik – Piwik is an open sourced real-time web analytics program, meaning that it’s free to install and use on your website.  But lest you assume that free products must be lacking in features compared to their paid alternatives, be aware that Piwik offers a huge variety of tracking tools that can be used to generate real-time web data.

For example, Piwik doesn’t just track basic stats like visitor counts or time on site.  Instead, it offers advanced goal tracking features, ecommerce integrations and website interaction data that are similar to Google Analytics, but with the added benefit of real-time reporting.  It’s a great alternative to consider if you aren’t getting enough information out of your existing web analytics program.

Whether you decide to use one of these programs or one of the many other real-time analytics programs offered today, the bottom line is this – if you aren’t tracking your website stats in real-time, you’re missing out on a tremendous opportunity to optimize your site.  By understanding how your website visitors are behaving in real-time, you’ll be better able to create successful promotions and marketing strategies tailored to their needs, improving your overall website results.

Image: GrapeCity

Mistake #1 – Making Decisions Based on Gut Feeling

There’s no doubt that building and promoting a website is a complicated process.  At every step of the process, you’ve got to make decisions that influence how successful your website will be – from the colors you choose to highlight specific features on your site to the words you select to promote new products.  However, one of the biggest mistakes you can make when marketing your website is to make these decisions based on “gut feeling” instead of solid data.

To get this all-important data, you need to install a program like Google Analytics and actually pay attention to what it has to say.  Data from this program can, for example, tell you which of your pages are the most popular and which traffic sources result in the highest conversions.  Using this valuable information to guide your decisions will ultimately be more effective than simply guessing at which changes will make the biggest difference in your website’s bottom line.

Mistake #2 – Not Split Testing Your Promotions

Another important way to use data to drive decisions on your website is with split testing – the process of comparing site element variants against one another in order to conclusively determine which version is more effective.

As an example, say you’re launching a new promotion and want to determine if a banner reading, “Buy Now and Get Free Shipping” or one that proclaims, “Buy Now and Get 20% Off” will result in more clicks through to your advertisement.  Using a split test program, you don’t have to guess at which one will result in the most sales – you can actually run the two side-by-side to figure out which type of promotion your customers will respond best to.

The data generated from your split test campaigns can be extremely valuable in informing both your current and future promotions, but you’ll miss out on all of these benefits if you make decisions based on gut feeling alone!

Mistake #3 – Ignoring the Importance of Long Term Goals

Once you’ve started using Google Analytics (or a related website data-tracking program) and split testing software to generate the web data needed to make informed decisions about site-wide changes, use these capabilities in order to set up measurable, long term goals.

Suppose you want your website to make more sales.  That’s a great start, but how exactly will you quantify this?  Exactly how many sales do you want to make each year?  Which traffic sources do you want to account for these sales?  What specific profit margins are you hoping to achieve?

By knowing exactly what you want to accomplish, you’ll be better able to align your actions in order to bring about your desired results.  Simply deciding to “increase sales” doesn’t give you much to go off of, but if you say that you’d like to increase sales from Facebook traffic by 50% within the next six months, you’ll be better able to come up with a concrete strategy for achieving these objectives, as well as put the necessary benchmarks in place to ensure your progress is on track.

Mistake #4 – Not Targeting Appropriate Keywords

Too many business owners put up web pages without a thought in the world for the keywords they’re targeting.  But given the potential free traffic that can be achieved by targeting the right keywords and optimizing your pages well enough to get ranked highly in the SERPs, failing to target the appropriate keywords puts these site owners at a major disadvantage.

So what does the “right” keyword look like?  Your specific results may vary based on the scope of your business and the amount of effort you’re willing to put into getting your site ranked.  But be aware that no matter how great your new website is, chances are you aren’t going to be able to get it ranked well in the Google SERPs for highly competitive keyword phrases like “lose weight” or “make money online” without years and years of effort.

Instead, target locally-oriented keywords (for example, “best Chicago pizza”) or long-tail keywords (ie – “lose weight with ab exercises”), both of which will be less competitive and more likely to result in high SERP rankings.

Mistake #5 – Failing to Optimize Your Pages

Once you’ve chosen a set of keywords to target, don’t just hope and pray that Google will pick up your site and rank it on these specific SERPs.  Instead, optimize your pages smartly, in a way that Google and the other search engines will understand.

A few of the steps you should take include:

• Integrating your target keyword into your meta tags, headline tag and body content
• Including your target keyword in your page URL
• Building back links to your page that use your target keyword as the anchor text

For more information on the specific steps you should take, check out our tutorial on “Essential On-Page SEO Techniques.”

Mistake #6 – Ignoring Your Social Presence

The level of activity you maintain on popular social networking sites – including Facebook, Google+ and Twitter – has never been more important than now.  While it used to be that these sites simply represented a good opportunity to get your marketing messages in front of prospective customers, it’s now widely acknowledged that “social shares” of your website’s content could improve your SERPs rankings.

According to Neil Patel, founder of web analytics giant KISSmetrics:

“Based on [statements by Google and Bing], you can assume that social media plays a role in influencing the search engine results by giving preference based on the authority of the author and the number of times a piece of content is shared on social networking sites.”

When you pair this understanding with the recent launch of Google’s Search Plus Your World (which has had a similarly major impact on social injections into the traditional SERPs), one thing is clear.  Your social presence matters more than ever, making it imperative that you invest time in building and maintaining your presence on the top social networking sites.

Mistake #7 – Expecting Overnight Results

Yes, your website looks great and the information it provides is top-notch compared to your competitors.  But just because a website is good doesn’t mean that it will be subject to a flood of frenzied traffic the second it opens its doors.

Instead, be aware that website traffic takes time to build (unless you go the PPC route and begin buying traffic right off the bat).  The search engines need time to index your content and decide where it should fall in the SERPs, and your prospective customers need time to find your site and identify it as a better alternative to others on the market.

Don’t lose sleep if your website only gets a handful of visitors at first, but don’t sit back on your laurels either.  Invest time in promoting your website effectively and, before you know it, you should have the flood of excited customers you’ve been hoping for.

Image: csulb gal

Unfortunately, this mindset is all too rare in the digital world, where content theft is a rampant problem plaguing many websites.  In some cases, the unauthorized sharing of digital content occurs simply because site owners are not familiar with copyright policy, which automatically grants full copyright authority to the content creator.  When you consider how many times you’ve simply pulled a picture from another site to use in your personal documents, it’s easy to see how pervasive this mindset has become.

But in other cases, content theft occurs due to more nefarious purposes.  There are websites out there that profit by “scraping” content from well-intentioned blogs and posting it to their own pages, where they generate revenue through advertising dollars.  In these cases, no attempt is made to provide attribution to the original author – the content is simply stolen and used “as is” on other websites.

As you might expect, seeing your content stolen and used in this manner can be quite frustrating for the business owners who have invested time and energy into generating their own content.

But what can you – as a single business owner treading water amidst a sea of scam artists – do to protect your content and ensure that your copyrighted materials aren’t used unlawfully?  Or, to look at the problem from another angle, is it even worth your time and energy to go after these spammers?

We’ll address the second concern later on in this article, but for now, let’s look at the process by which content scrapers are caught and prosecuted.  Clearly, the first step towards bringing these scam artists to justice is to find out if and when content theft is occurring on your website.  After all, if you don’t know that content theft is occurring, how can you stop the situation from happening?

The easiest way to determine if your content is being stolen is to use a tool like CopyScape, which compares the content on your website to the text found on other sites and highlights matches based on similar words.  If you decide to make content theft prevention a part of your website strategy, visit the CopyScape site about a week following the launch of each new post on your site and enter the post’s link into the site’s search tool to uncover matches.

Keep in mind that the company’s free tool isn’t 100% accurate, so you may also find it helpful to take advantage of their premium scans, which allow you to compare blocks of copy from your site across even more websites for a small fee.  Or, if you’d rather take a “hands off” approach to the monitoring process, take a look at the company’s scanning service, which will automatically check the content on your site for matches across the internet.

Hopefully, when you run these searches, no scraped results will turn up, meaning that your content hasn’t been stolen and you’re free to go about your business.  But what if you do find matching results that indicate your posts and articles have been scraped?

If you decide to go after the websites using your content improperly, the first step is to send a polite email to the site owner asking that your content either be removed or credited properly with a link back to your site.  Remember, most people online aren’t familiar with digital copyright law, so these site owners may be unaware that they’re using your content inappropriately.  Before you jump to conclusions about whether or not your content has been maliciously appropriated, give the site owner in question a chance to rectify the situation.

To find the site owner’s contact information, visit his or her main site – most websites these days have a “Contact Us” page which will give you the necessary details.  If you aren’t able to find the webmaster’s contact info on the site itself, conduct a DNS lookup, which should give you the email address stored on file with the domain’s registrar.

In your initial email to the site owner, be polite, but firm, informing him or her exactly what content has been used inappropriately and what resolution you would like to see.  If you would like the site owner to remove the content altogether, be clear about your expectations.  Or, if you’re comfortable leaving the content “as is” with an attribution link, specify a date by which the link should be added.

In many cases, this initial contact will be enough to bring about the resolution you’re looking for.  However, if the website owner fails to get back to you – or worse, adamantly refuses to remove the plagiarized content – it’s up to you to decide whether or not to take further legal action.

The next step in the process of resolving copyright disputes involves sending the site owner a DCMA notice, which details your claims to the content’s ownership in accordance with digital copyright laws.  This notice can be sent directly to the site owner or to the website’s hosting provider if you aren’t able to get a response from the webmaster.  In many cases where content has been maliciously stolen, web hosting providers may be more helpful than the site owners themselves, as these providers don’t usually like the idea of having scraped content hosted on their servers.

If, after taking all of these steps, you still aren’t able to come to a resolution, you’ll need to contract the services of an intellectual property lawyer to take the case further.  Copyright cases like these can result in major judgments in your favor, but be aware that getting there isn’t a cheap process.  Even though default judgments against copyright infringers can be claimed for hundreds of thousands of dollars, be aware that it may cost $50,000 or more in legal fees to prosecute a content scraper.

When you see your content being copied, it’s up to you to determine how far you want to take these proceedings.  In many cases, the time and cost associated with pursuing legal recourse may not be worth it for your business.  As frustrating as it may be, it’s sometimes a smarter choice to let copied content go un-avenged in order to prevent your legal battles from overwhelming other aspects of your growing business.

However, another thing to keep in mind is that having your content scraped may not have any negative consequences for your business in the first place.

As a business owner, the value you provide to your customers comes from your unique products and service offerings – not just the original content you provide on your company website or blog.  As long as you continue to provide exceptional value for your customers, they’ll keep coming back to your site, regardless of where else your content may be duplicated online.

Image: s_falkow

According to Google, “Search has always brought you information from across the web. Now, search gets better by including photos, posts, and more from you and your friends. When signed in with Google+, you’ll find personal results and profiles of people you know or follow. You can even expand your world by discovering people related to your search.”

The new tool essentially displays results in three ways:

• In your recommended results — If you enter the name of someone who has a profile on the Google+ social-networking site into Google’s search bar, a link to that person’s profile will appear as part of your recommended results. Here, blogger Corbett Barr’s Google+ profile appears if you search his name in Google:
  
• As an enhanced search result — Entering certain queries into Google will turn up “personal results,” which appear above the traditional top 10 results. Click on the Personal Results link to pull up any images, places, posts, or articles tagged by contacts in your Google+ circles that relate specifically to your search term.

• As a recommended related person or page — When you type specific phrases into Google, people or pages that the search engine deems to be related (according to the information shared inside Google+) may display to the right-hand side of the traditional search results, as seen with the generic query for “music” below:

As a website owner, each of these possibilities should be intriguing to you. For example, say you’re trying to break into a competitive SERP, such as the one that appears for the keywords “lose weight” or “make money online.” You could spend years — and thousands of dollars — trying to get your site to creep up the traditional rankings. Or you could simply ask a prospect to include you as in their circles on Google+, which could be enough to get your site recognized right away.

Obviously, there are some limitations to Search plus Your World. In order to have any of these personalized results appear, your readers need to have and be signed in to their Google+ profiles, which aren’t nearly universal at this time. And, even if your customers are on Google+, you’ll need them to add you to their circles in order to have your content appear as a personalized result in most cases.

However, there’s no doubt that a system that gives you this many opportunities to break into the traditional SERPs has potential. To get the most out of Search plus Your World, follow these steps:

Step 1: Build and maintain an active presence on Google+.

Yes, it’s frustrating to have yet another social-networking site on which you’re expected to maintain a public profile for your business. However, given the tremendous potential of content shared on Google+ to find its way into the traditional SERPs, we believe that this one is worth the extra effort.

Fortunately, setting up a profile on Google+ is easy, although you are currently unable to build profiles under your business name (Google recently changed its sign-up process to include the manual review of established pseudonym accounts). To sign up, simply log on to plus.google.com with your Google account. Once you’re in, you’ll be able to add people to your social circles and fill out profile information that will help Google associate you with specific search queries.

That said, don’t just set up your profile and stop in once a month. The people who stand to benefit the most from Search plus Your World are those with the largest networks of followers. To attract these followers, you need to post authoritative content to your profile regularly, so that you’ll be recognized as an expert in your field and, thus, worthy of following.

Step 2: Encourage people to follow you on Google+.

Beyond posting regularly to your Google+ profile, encourage readers on your website to follow you on the social network. A few of the places you’ll want to consider doing this:

• At the end of every blog post (potentially through the use of a social sharing tool)
• On your “About Me” page
• In your profiles on other social-networking sites
• In any email marketing communications
• On any mobile marketing tools you use

Again, the people with the largest social networks on Google+ and the highest perceived authority in the eyes of Google (as based on profile activity and recognition) stand the greatest chance of being recognized as a “personal result” or “related page” on Google search results pages.

Step 3: Follow Google’s established procedures to increase your chances of getting noticed.

Google offers a number of ways you can communicate directly with the search engine to tell Google where you feel your content should be shared. For example, in order to appear as a “related page,” Google allows you to set up a Google+ page and tag it with relevant keywords and search phrases. Then, as you become more active with Google+ by posting about your tagged keywords and sharing relevant content, you’ll increase the odds of Google sharing your page as a related option in the SERPs.Going through all of the effort to build, maintain, and promote a Google+ profile may seem like a lot of extra work, but taking the time to do so could result in some major benefits in terms of how visible you and your website are in the natural SERPs.

According to P.J. Fusco in Search Engine Watch, “Google search has historically been about finding the best results for the many. Google Search plus Your World is about finding the best results for you. Now, ‘you’ are the enterprise. That is to say, each individual [who] uses Google+ represents a new opportunity to have digital content produced by or about your enterprise discovered and shared among immeasurable circles of friends.”

Think of the work involved in building your Google+ following as an opportunity to be seen more frequently in the SERPs, and you’ll quickly see why these efforts could be as important as traditional SEO in 2012 and the future of personalized search.

Image: meaneame comunicacions