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We will send the script to your PayPal email within few hours,Please add FullContentRSS@gmail.com to your email contact.Expert publishing blog opinions are solely those of the blogger and not necessarily endorsed by DBW.
In this installment, I will discuss the disconnect between the number of pages crawled by Google (in this case, we used our own spider) for a website (and displayed in the SERPs), and the number of pages indexed (or the total number of site pages for that specific website). The ratio for crawl vs. index should always be as close to 1:1 as possible. The better the ratio, the better the search ranking. The worse the ratio becomes, the more chances there are of duplicate pages and, well, the more room for improvement there will be.
Again, I would like to thank all of the publishers for their participation in this assessment, and I hope it will be a great learning experience for all of us.
Here are the publisher grades for Pages Crawled vs. Pages Indexed:
Crawling with SERPsAs mentioned in my previous blog post, whenever we take on a new client at Biztegra, we start with a cursory website evaluation and crawl the site ourselves, just as a search engine spider would crawl it. This gives us information about the pages, links, images, CSS, scripts and other elements of the site that we then use in the evaluation.
For example: A site crawl for Xist Publishing, which publishes children's books on five distinct ebook formats, indexes over 8,000 site pages. A similar evaluation of Oldcastle Books, a UK publisher with several innovative imprints in its catalog, finds 134 site pages. Now, let's see what Google has to say.
A Google search for Xist Publishing brings back 885 search results, with 129 for Oldcastle Books.1 The ratio from indexed to crawled for Oldcastle Books is pretty close—remember, we want as near to 1:1 as possible. But for Xist, the search result is returning less than 1,000 SERPs. And if you click on the very last results page, you would realize that Google is only displaying 169 of those results. Why? What happened to the rest of them?
Doubling Your ContentWhen Google uses its spider to crawl your site for SERPs, it checks for unique page information, content that includes title and meta tags, page descriptions and page content. It also checks whether content within your website is duplicated across multiple URLs.
If duplicates are found, Google omits the doubles from the search results. It does this to prevent a long list of results that are similar, which would prevent the user from finding the link that they are looking for. The more duplicate pages, the greater difference between the ratio of crawled vs. indexed pages, which means a lower SEO ranking on Google.
Duplicates can include the following:
• Multiple pages that have the same titles, meta tags, page descriptions or content.• A book page that is indexed as three duplicate pages with the only difference being the format for purchase (print, ebook, printer-friendly).• Capitalization errors in the URLs that turn one site page into multiple pages that display the same content.• Having both the www.url and the non-www indexed, instead of just one or the other.
And it should be noted that the pages do not have to be 100 percent similar to be indexed as a duplicate. Pages that have only a 15-percent (or higher) difference may still be categorized as duplicates per Google's algorithm.
Now, following non-Internet logic, two pages should be better than one. Two similar advertisements in a magazine should double your chances of being noticed, right? Wrong.
Duplicate pages can be harmful to your website's health:
• The more duplicate pages you have, the greater chance that Google will see your pages as separate entities: different sites. That means that the metrics used to determine your SERPs ranking may be going to a different version of your site.
• Finding a duplicate page may confuse Google in finding the best one of your pages to rank in the SERPs vs. your competitors. If the page ranked has less impact than another page in your index, that user might choose a competitor's page over yours.
• Duplicate pages can split your "link juice," which is the essence of all SEO factors that go into your website's rankings. The more link juice you accumulate from SEO best practices, such as having a mobile-friendly site or using unique header tags, the better your chance for higher search rankings. Duplicate pages create a leak in your link juice, dropping SEO results from each and every instance of a repeated page or content.
• If Google thinks you are deliberately filling the web with multiple pages to manipulate their algorithm, they will view it as spam and lower your ranking accordingly. In extreme cases, they may remove your website from their index.
Mistaken Identity
Another instance of crawl vs. index upsetting your SERPs ranking is your website URL. Choosing your website's domain name is a part of your identity as an independent publisher, but there is a catch. While you can choose between the standard www address or one without the www, it is important to make sure that only one of them will be displayed to lead your customers to your website.
According to Google's guidelines for setting your preferred domain name as www or non-www, "If you don't specify a preferred domain, we may treat the www and non-www versions of the domain as separate references to separate pages." Basically, Google will view them as two separate sites. And when Google does this, it is essentially splitting the link juice between the two separate sites. Remember, don't spill your link juice.
For example: Greystone Books, a trade book publisher from Vancouver, essentially has two separate URLs: www.greystonebooks.com and greystonebooks.com. This means that Google is indexing both URLs, splitting the link juice between both and lowering the site ranking. Conversely, Xist Publishing has a main URL of www.xistpublishing.com. Anyone typing in xistpublishing.com will be redirected to the www version of the URL—keeping the link juice from being split.
I would encourage Xist to go even further than browser redirects by ensuring that non-www pages are not being indexed. This could be accomplished through setting the preferred domain name in Google Search Console or adding a redirect or a meta element to prevent those pages from being indexed.
There are a few ways to specify a domain name and keep your link juice intact:
• Go to the Google Search Console homepage and set your preferred domain name, www or non-www.• Set up a 301 Redirect, notifying the users that the page has moved and directing them to the proper page with your preferred URL.• Using your main site URL in your XML site index and submitting those elements to Google's Search Console.• Use the robots.txt meta element to prevent some pages from being indexed. However, be sure that those pages can still be crawled by the search engine.
Most organizations will need to get an SEO expert, developer or web server admin to do any of these, and to ensure they are done correctly. You are actually going to have to do a mini SEO migration to ensure you don't lose any of your rankings during this process.
Some Final Thoughts on Crawl vs. IndexResolving the ratio between the number of pages crawled vs. those that are indexed is a great first step to restoring your page ranking mojo and reevaluating your own website to find pages that are important to search engines (and customers) and to your publishing business. Think of it as a smart "spring cleaning" that streamlines your website for all parties.
However important, though, it is just one step. Revising duplicate content and URLs may require more assistance than Google support can provide, especially when it comes to recoding pages. Also, items such as page descriptions and meta tags may require both creative and pragmatic solutions for writing and organizing to prevent further repetition.
In the next installment, I will be discussing URL structure and site architecture. Until then, "May your link juice cup always be full and never overflow."
Is your site set to only show either the 'www' or non-www version? Let me know in the comments below.
1 This number may have changed since the time of the assessment.
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We will send the script to your PayPal email within few hours,Please add FullContentRSS@gmail.com to your email contact.Are you struggling to rank some keywords that should be easy? Are you having trouble attracting an audience to your site, even though you think you're offering some great information? If so, then maybe you should consider adding more long-form content.
To put it succinctly, long-form content can make you look like more of an expert in your field, increase the likelihood of engagement and sharing, improve your search engine results page (SERP) rank, and increase your audience; because of your content, you will be viewed as an "authority" on the subject. All of that works to your benefit and translates to better brand awareness.
What Is Long-Form Content?Long-form content is variously defined throughout the Interweb. However, the consensus is pretty clear on one point: If you're just looking to get past a 500-word mark so that the search engines take notice of your content, then you're not publishing long-form content.
My personal rule of thumb is that anything less than 1,200 words isn't long-form content. I'd advise to aim for over 1,500 words, since 1,200 is (in my opinion) the minimum. That way, you'll have a competitive advantage with the extra cushion.
But why not go all in? Set a goal of 2,000 words for your long-form content. I haven't published a post less than 1,000 words for some time. I am generally going for 1,500 to 7,000 words now.
A Recently Recognized BenefitThe benefits of long-form content in the digital sphere have only recently begun to gain recognition. Believe it or not, it was long believed that digital long-form content was a bad idea:
When readers started moving to the internet, media analysts thought long-form journalism was in trouble. Attention spans were going to shrivel. Readers wanted short, they wanted snappy, they wanted 140 characters and not much more (though a listicle on the side couldn't hurt). Who would want to scroll through an 8,000-word article on an iPhone screen?
Naomi SharpMany are now realizing that the inevitable "death" of long-form content was greatly exaggerated, and digital marketers are discovering that long-form content is extremely valuable for both users and search engines alike.
The SEO BenefitThe exact algorithm that Google uses to determine which pages should go straight to the top of the SERPs for a given query is, of course a mystery (at least, it is to everyone outside of a certain corporate headquarters in Mountain View, California).
However, curious engineers can tinker and experiment — as much as the search engines will allow them — to gain some insight about what ranks well.
Long-Form Content Ranks Very WellBack in 2012, serpIQ conducted a study involving more than 20,000 keywords. The results showed that the average content length of each of the top 10 results was more than 2,000 words. The average number of words for the content in the #1 spot was 2,416. For the #10 spot, the average number of words was 2,032.
That evidence is fairly conclusive. If you want your articles to rank well, consider using long-form content.
The theory that long-form content benefits search engine optimization (SEO) is corroborated by a hint that's been dropped on the Google Webmasters Central Blog. Pandu Nayak, technical staff member at Google and creator of the Panda algorithm update, posted the following:
Users often turn to Google to answer a quick question, but research suggests that up to 10% of users' daily information needs involve learning about a broad topic. That's why today we're introducing new search results to help users find in-depth articles.
That's a very suggestive hint that long-form content tends to rank well. Nayak also advised webmasters to use schema.org markup, authorship markup (the rich snippet for which has since disappeared from search results) and provide information about the company's logo when producing long-form content as a way to further increase the likelihood of a good ranking.
Long-Form Content Garners More Backlinks, On AverageNot only do the search engines seem to intrinsically love long content, but you'll find an additional SEO benefit from writing a couple of thousand words: more backlinks. Of course, those additional backlinks will help you rank with the SERPs, as well.
A study conducted by Moz shows a direct correlation between the length of the content and the number of backlinks pointing to it. It's further evidence that long-form content is great for SEO.
Still, Only Death And Taxes Are GuaranteedBefore you trot back to your content management system with this newfound knowledge, thinking with certainty that if you speed-type 2,078 words about how to lose 50 pounds in six weeks you're going to be in the #1 spot on Google's search results, keep in mind that you're not guaranteed to rank well just because you use long-form content.
The fact of the matter is that the search engine algorithms look at a lot of factors. I could, of course, go on about all the factors, but that is not really what this post is about.
Still, all else being equal, quality long-form content should increase the likelihood that you'll rank for relevant terms. And that's what it's really all about, isn't it?
Ranking your content for a particular keyword is a probability game. You increase your odds with long-form content. That's the only promise here.
Long-Form Content Can Increase Conversion RatesIf you're operating a blog that issues some type of call-to-action, whether you're looking to build your email list or sell something, then you'll find that long-form content can play a role in your conversion rate.
A Classic StudyThere's a classic case study that demonstrates the effectiveness of long-form content in generating more conversions. Highrise Marketing wanted to increase signups with its website. The company contracted out the conversion process to a couple of professionals who engaged in some split testing. They found that the home page with long-form content saw an increase in conversion rate of more than 37 percent.
Similarly, Crazy Egg saw its conversion rate increase by more than 30 percent with the use of long-form content. In that case, the longer-form content was about 20 times the length of its shorter counterpart.
According to the Crazy Egg blog: "The media would have us believe that people no longer have any capacity to concentrate. In reality, you cannot have a page that's too long — only one that's too boring. In the case of Crazy Egg's home page, visitors wanted their many questions answered and that's what we delivered."
Crazy Egg also produced a guide to creating long-form content that increases your conversion rate.
There's Nothing New Under The SunIt's not just in the digital era that long-form content works in marketing. You might be old enough to remember receiving direct mail solicitations that were pages long. Marketing professionals found that wordy pitches yielded better results.
For example, famous advertiser David Ogilvy once said: "All my experience says that for a great many products, long copy sells more than short… [A]dvertisements with long copy convey the impression that you have something important to say, whether people read the copy or not."
In that assessment, Ogilvy is backed up by Dr. Charles Edwards, former dean of the Graduate School of Retailing at New York University. He's quoted as saying: "The more facts you tell, the more you sell. An advertisement's chance for success invariably increases as the number of pertinent merchandise facts included in the advertisement increases."
In his book, Tested Advertising Methods, John Caples writes: "Advertisers who can trace the direct sales results from their ads use long copy because it pulls better than short copy… Brief, reminder-style copy consisting of a few words or a slogan does not pull inquiries as well as long copy packed with facts and reader benefits about your product or service."
That "longer is better" principle seems to hold true in online venues, as well as old-school advertising. If you're having trouble with a site that's giving you a stubbornly low conversion rate, employ some long-form content on the site, and see if that makes a difference.
Social Media Hearts Long-Form ContentOne of the best ways to draw in a large audience and increase engagement, as well as conversions, is to create content that's shareable on social media. Long-form content has historically outperformed its shorter content little brother in that metric, as well.
Neil Patel conducted an experiment with some of his own content on Quick Sprout, a blog that offers tips for digital marketers. Patel found that out of 327 blog posts he wrote, the posts under 1,500 words received an average of 174 tweets and 59 Facebook likes. The content that was over 1,500 words, on the other hand, received an average of 293 tweets and 75 likes.
That's just one example, but it was enough to persuade Patel himself that there's social media value in long-form content.
As many of you know, I run a popular blog on our agency's site known as Ignite Visibility University. After analyzing the posts, I was able to determine that when looking at our top 20 posts, 16 of them were over 1,000 words, one of them was over 800 and the remaining three were on very niche technical topics that almost no one had written on.
NewsWhip also found that long-form content is the most shareable. The company noticed that one of the most widely shared articles in its study was a transcribed speech by author Neil Gaiman about the importance of reading. That article contained a whopping 3,535 words and was shared more than 220,000 times.
Tips On Long-Form ContentWhen it comes time for you to produce long-form content, here are a few tips you might find helpful.
All Content Shouldn't Be Long-Form ContentEven though long-form content is a great way to establish your site as an authority on a particular subject and to help you rank better, you shouldn't publish everything as long-form content. Some subjects don't require lengthy content.
For example, if you'd like to share a viral video on your website that you think will draw in an audience, there's no reason that you need to post 2,000 words explaining the video. For those types of articles, follow Shakespeare's maxim and recognize that brevity is the soul of wit.
Avoid The MiddleIn fact, it seems you're better off using content that's one extreme or the other in terms of length. Either use very short content that can be quickly digested by members of a busy society or use long-form content that's considered the "go to" source for a specific subject.
According to Kevin Delaney, the editor-in-chief of business news site Quartz, articles that range between 500 and 800 words are least likely to be successful. As a result, he's encouraged either short form or long-form content — but nothing in between.
Remember: Quality Over QuantityKeep in mind that while it may be tempting to sacrifice quality for an excessively verbal article, you should resist the urge to do that. Your readers won't appreciate a great deal of "fluff" in your articles just to meet a word count. That, to me, is the worst thing to do.
Also, if you try to rush through a long-form piece to save some time, you might end up with an excessive number of typos and grammatical errors. The search engines may notice that and penalize your site accordingly. That was one of the hardest things for me to learn, because I like to create content so quickly. But it is better to be patient.
You Can Make Long-Form Content A Quick ReadIf you're interested in appealing to the ADD and/or busy set with your long-form content, you can do that.
For starters, use subheadings to make your content scannable. You're reading long-form content right now, and yet you'll find that it's easy to digest the important points quickly because of the headings.
Also, consider offering a summary of your article at the very top. This is the "Daily Mail" approach, and it's a fantastic way to give your readers a chance to get the gist of your article without reading the whole thing. Just click on any article at The Daily Mail, and you'll see a bullet-point summary of the piece at the top.
Finally, also consider breaking up the monotony of a long-form article with images. It's best to use relevant images specific to the subject of the article. However, it's also great to use memes whenever possible because they add humor to the content and allow people to get a quick sense about the content of a subsection.
If you're having trouble producing long-form content because you're typically a very concise writer, consider producing a listicle. That's an article that's also a list (think BuzzFeed), such as "23 Reasons to Love the Caribbean."
You'll find that long-form content almost magically appears when you're writing a listicle, and it's easy to hit that 2,000-word mark. You'll also have the benefit of creating content that's very scannable and friendly to busy people.
Wrapping It UpIf you're looking for a tactic to get a struggling website off the ground, and you haven't yet created any long-form content, why not give it a try today? You'll likely find that you reach a wider audience and establish the site as an authority on a particular subject. That, in turn, is going to build brand awareness online.
But keep in mind, long-form content still needs distribution, a keyword strategy and a great title — otherwise it won't get you there.
Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
About The Author John Lincoln is Founder and President of Ignite Visibility, a premier online marketing company committed to the highest level of service and strategies in the industry. Throughout his career, Lincoln has worked with hundreds of websites, ranging from start-ups to household names and has won awards in SEO, CRO and Social Media. In addition to his role at Ignite Visibility, Lincoln teaches a quarterly course at the University of California San Diego on Digital Marketing and Analytics. (Some images used under license from Shutterstock.com.)Buy AutoTrafficRSS script now for $27 only!
We will send the script to your PayPal email within few hours,Please add FullContentRSS@gmail.com to your email contact.Search Engine Optimization or as it is known by its abbreviation, SEO, is a very important aspect of internet associations. It is an activity requiring a lot of planning and organizing. The goal is always to increase traffic to a website. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done. There is a lot of information available online concerning search engine optimization (SEO). Thousands of books and millions of articles have seen creation concerning this very crucial activity. However, few are able to explain what it is all about in simple terms.
Success on the search engines
The design of search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and others is in such a way that they bring out results based on the keywords that have been searched. The measure of success on these search engines should be whether your website is present on the first or second pages of a keyword search. Making it to page one of a Google search will happen in one of two ways:
The person searching is extremely specific as to what they are looking for There are is a lot of traffic towards your website
The second option is always the best. It is easier as well. Few people will be specifically searching for your website and you cannot force them to- anyway. This is why it you need to get in touch with a reliable Utah SEO company to help you out.
Get to the top fast
There are several SEO companies all over Utah. Each of these companies has some service in place that will come in quite handy for you. As aforesaid, the goal is to get to the first page of a search result line-up. Getting to the top can be extremely fast if you choose a company that offered SEO services. The cost of these services will definitely prove to be worth your while.
One thing that you will love about SEO companies is that they are always up to date with the latest news in their field. You can do SEO on your own but then you have to keep up with the ever changing principles of search engine optimization. If you are looking for a guide on SEO, you can easily get one from these professionals.
Stay at the top
It is one thing to get to the top and totally another different thing to remain at the top of the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). An SEO company that has the experience will be of great help if you want to stay at the top of the result's pages. For starters, it will keep up with the search engines and their changing rules. The experts will also set up marketing campaigns on social media and other platforms to make the traffic heading to your website even more.
Simply put, the services offered by SEO companies are very good and convenient. Several companies offer SEO services. If you are in Utah, you should not have a problem getting access to any of these.
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Travelzoo, a publisher of travel deals that also works as a search engine, recently put out a series of videos, #tzootips, focused on things like the best time of year to travel to Thailand, the cheapest night of the week to stay in a hotel, and when to fly to avoid delays. In their own way, the videos are predictive, answering the kinds of questions consumers would search on Google.
"There's always push and pull with information," says Justin Soffer, vice president of marketing at Travelzoo. "A lot of what search is, is people pulling - meaning they're looking for something specific. What videos are doing is more of a push, telling people what to look for and showing them things."
Related articlesHe adds that video is generally more personal than written content, since viewers are able to see and hear someone. That makes video particularly persuasive, which adds to its value in the search space, in addition to giving Travelzoo a boost in authority.
"Say someone saw [the video about the best day to stay in a hotel] and then next week, they want to plan a trip with their friends," Soffer says. "Maybe they otherwise would have chosen to go Friday or Saturday, but after seeing that video they changed their search to Sunday night. It's a very persuasive platform to share information and that impacts search activity as well."
Greg Jarboe, president of SEO-PR, believes that video can enhance predictive search. In order for search marketers to best leverage it, he recommends going on Google Trends and checking out the evergreen search terms.
"When you're putting together a campaign, it doesn't hurt to know if my search term here is one that has legs," Jarboe says. "If I'm going to create video around something - and if someone searches for something you've got, shame on you if you don't have a video that tells them you've got it - I want people to find it, not just when it goes up but next year too."
Ryan Johnson, director of search at Chicago content agency Imagination Publishing, also believes video can enhance predictive search but in a different way. Johnson thinks video can be indirectly beneficial, since it can give you a rankings boost, as Google tends to prioritize sites with rich media. In addition, the increasing popularity of both voice search and how-to videos intersect at predictive search. The way most people talk, they're more likely to ask Siri or Cortana a question, rather than make a statement.
That query increases the likelihood of a how-to video being at the top of the SERP. Johnson adds that many search marketers seem to be moving toward problem-based searches.
"The move toward problem-based searches seems, at least in part, to be predictive, and tied to the idea of people thinking about how they search for things," Johnson says. "You wouldn't use video to look up the best electronics store in Chicago, but you would use video to ask, 'How do I do something?' or 'What does this do?'
"Moving forward, you're probably going to see more video content being written for predictive search, and more and more YouTube videos come up in searches," he adds. "The nature of video and the way in which people use video gives you an advantage."
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The article discusses how The Custom Content Council recently carried out a survey among CMOs and 90% of them responded that custom-made and valuable content improves audience attitude.
"We want to create a positive image of your business," states Clwyd Probert, author of the article and founder of WhiteHat SEO. "We Create and Draw Natural Links from Authority Sites. We come up with highly valuable content and this makes it easy to bring in links from authority sites."
The article continues to relate how a large number of SEO providers will just focus on the technical aspects of SEO such as links, traffic, rankings, and SERPs. It then notes how WhiteHat SEO will address more than the technical stuff because they actually understand their clients' needs.
"This is essential as your partner choice will have a big influence your online presence," stated Probert. "They have to consider your marketing goals when they are designing strategies. All the effort they put in should be directed at attaining your company's objectives. So the company you select to manage your online marketing should be able to design a plan to help you achieve success on the internet which can only happen if the provider take the time to understand your marketing and overall business objectives."
The article continues to further explain how WhiteHat SEO will also perform things such as establishing Google+ authorship, improve site and URL structure, take full advantage of Social Publications and Social Media and provide Search Engine Tag optimization.
Whitehat SEO Ltd. personalises their approach to SEO projects allowing them to provide guidance, clarity and the opportunity to move their clients far ahead of competitors while drawing from established systems in delivering services, as well as keeping up with recent trends and developments in the industry.
To read the article, visit www.whitehat-seo.co.uk.
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If you have never encountered one of these dark souls, count yourself lucky; for those of us who have, quotes from industry studies and promises of top rankings aren't going to be enough to win the day.
Thankfully, years of experience have taught me a few ways to break through common pushbacks (e.g., "IT has got it covered," or "We would get that traffic anyway.") or persuade those with the general preference to spend on other channels (like SEM or print).
AnalyticsLet's start with the most obvious method of converting non-believers before we work toward the less conventional methods. Analytics data sits at both the beginning and eventual end of all cases for SEO investment.
At the very least, SEO advocates should absolutely arm themselves with:
Even with these numbers in hand, there are those who are not swayed by the organic channel's traffic and revenue contribution.
As noted in the opening paragraph, it's more common than you think for people to say that those numbers are from branded traffic the site "would have gotten anyway" or that any/all non-brand organic traffic and revenue is granted purely at the whim of Google (and whims are something you monitor but don't invest in).
Google Search ConsoleSometimes, getting information straight from the horse's mouth can help convince decision makers that SEO warrants investment.
Messages/WarningsThere's no better evidence that action is required than Google telling you they're not happy with your site.
Go into Google Search Console and check Messages and/or Manual Actions (under "Search Traffic") — any warnings there? Go to Crawl > Crawl Errors — is the site full of broken pages? Go to Search Appearance > HTML Improvements — lots of duplicate or missing title tags or meta descriptions?
All of these fundamental issues, when called out by Google, can help spur action. This approach is particularly effective for the "IT's got it covered" pushback line.
SEM Cost Of ClicksUsing the Search Analytics "Queries" report within Google Search Console, retrieve a list of keywords driving clicks over the past 90 days. Export the data to a spreadsheet and remove branded keywords.
What's left will be a list of non-brand keywords that are not attributable to brand searches driven by TV or print campaigns. Arguably, these are attributable to SEO investment in the past.
Take that list of non-brand keywords and clicks and run them through Google AdWords Keyword Planner tool to get a Suggested Bid. Clicks multiplied by Suggested Bid = the approximate the value of that SEO traffic if you had paid for it via SEM.
You can make an even better case if you can hone that list of non-brand keywords down to ones the SEM team gave up on because of bad SEM ROI.
Dissect The SERPThe methods above may be ones you've already explored or that the non-believer has ignored. Although a numbers-based argument should be enough to make the case, sometimes it takes an approach that speaks to the decision-maker on a more visceral level.
Careful dissection of what appears within search engine results pages (SERPs) can be an effective means of doing just that.
Branded Search ResultsDo a quick search of your brand name — or your CEO's name — and note the results returned that are not under your company's control. Seeing negative information or competitor pages on page one of the search results may motivate your non-believer to invest in reputation management (which is, ultimately, an investment in SEO).
Presence Of LocalMany people outside of SEO do not realize how much the SERP has changed in the recent past. A huge number of searches — even those that do not include geography like a city or state name — return a "local pack" and local business listings.
This is particularly true for mobile search. If your brand has a brick-and-mortar presence but has not invested time and resources in local optimization, this can reveal a glaring hole in your ability to serve online and offline customers.
Presence Of Answer BoxesSearch Google for a popular question about your products or services. It's likely an answer box will dominate the top of the non-paid search results.
Like the previous suggestion for showing local dominance over the SERPs, seeing that traditional organic listings have been replaced with optimized question/answer content may spur an "aha" moment in your non-believer.
Presence Of Influencer ContentJust as local listings and answer boxes have drastically changed the scope of SEO activities, the prominence of influencer-based content within organic rankings has also grown over the past few years.
Conducting a complete SEO campaign and controlling organic listings for your brand's top search terms now means that forging relationships and distributing content must be a part of your team's tactics. Just because your website has a good technical foundation and top landing pages are optimized does not mean it's time to funnel budget elsewhere.
Competitive Share Of VoiceI've worked with many attorneys in the past. One particular client pointed to a competitor at the top of the SERPs and said,
"He's an idiot. How's he up there?"
I laughed and explained that (particularly in 2005) Google didn't know that he was an idiot. All Google knows is that his website has good, optimized content that's highly relevant to the search term.
This impressed upon me that no matter how logical or statistics-driven non-believers may be, they often have an innate desire to beat the competition and hate to see someone out-ranking them that they feel does not "deserve" to be there.
My best piece of advice to those having trouble in getting or keeping SEO budget is to build a list of non-brand keywords and compile a Google organic share of voice report to show which competitors have the most top listings for that group of keywords.
Your non-believer is likely to clearly see that "pretenders to the throne" have more visibility than his/her brand. This play on competitiveness (and to a certain extent, ego) is often a big motivating factor in funding SEO activity.
It's no secret that revenue generated and numbers showing potential upside are often enough to secure budget for ongoing SEO activity. In some cases, though, you may encounter a decision-maker who doesn't believe SEO is worthy of investment.
I hope the advice above will give you a few alternative means to approach these non-believers, secure the budget needed and show the value of the organic channel. What advice (or war stories) can you share?
Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
About The Author Clay Cazier is Vice President, Search Strategy for PM Digital, an integrated marketing agency. Clay's resume includes more than 15 years of web development, search engine optimization and content marketing experience on both the client and agency side, including successful ventures in healthcare, travel, legal and retail verticals. At PM Digital, Clay's role is to lead brands in the formulation of optimization and content plans to be executed in a joint effort between PM Digital and clients' marketing teams. This not only requires deep technical knowledge but the ability to spot search trends and communicate the opportunity in a way that inspires C-suite executives to act. Clay graduated in 1996 from Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi with a BA in Philosophy (Summa Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa) and a BA in Biology (Magna Cum Laude). His search marketing experience built over the years was solidified more recently by completing Rutgers University's Social Media Mini MBA in 2010. Af ter living and working in the New York/New Jersey area for 16 years, Clay and his family have recently moved south to help grow PM Digital's South Carolina office. (Some images used under license from Shutterstock.com.)Buy AutoTrafficRSS script now for $27 only!
We will send the script to your PayPal email within few hours,Please add FullContentRSS@gmail.com to your email contact.Sites which scrape and copy content from other websites are often able to outrank the original source, as the examples in this post will demonstrate.
These "content thieves" are able to do damage to the original site's rankings, causing a loss of search visibility, potential sales, and leads.
The examples here call into question the effectiveness of Google's handling of content scrapers. At the moment, Google seems to be unable to recognize the original source of content consistently. This is a real problem for content creators.
In advance of PI Datametrics' talk at last week's Brighton SEO conference, we devised a test to see how easy it was to disrupt another site's rankings by copying their content.
Related articlesIn this post, I'll look at the results of these tests and discuss what publishers can do to combat the problem.
Note: these examples are from Google.co.uk.
Can Copycat Sites Outrank the Originals?The original idea for the test came when PI noticed the volatility of a client's search rankings.
After some investigation, they found the cause was content thievery.
Example 1: Journeys by DesignJourneys by Design is a site that offers luxury African safari holidays. It has produced some well-researched content for its pages such as this one, which was written specifically for Journeys by Design.
However, this copy was lifted word-for-word and used by another website that also offers safari holidays.
It has also been copied by at least three other sites, such as this one:
In theory, Google should recognize the original source of the content and ensure that the copycat site doesn't rank above the original for related searches. Yet that hasn't happened.
The chart below shows the search rankings for the term "mountain gorilla's nest" over an eight month period. The blue line shows the rankings for Journeys by Design. The other lines are from the sites that copied the original content.
We can see that the original site has ranked most consistently for the term over this period, but also that several of the copycat sites were also able to rank at various times.
Although the most significant fact is that these copycat sites also outranked the original, causing Journeys by Design to slip down past position 100 for days and weeks at a time.
This obviously has commercial implications, as searchers looking for safari holidays would be unable to find the site with one of its target terms, thanks to the copycats.
The TestHaving noticed this, PI decided to set up a test to see how easy it would be to rank for stolen content.
Generally speaking, the copycat sites are categorically more weak because they have fewer links and less valuable content - apart from that which was lifted from elsewhere.
Does this mean any weak site simply steal content from stronger rivals and outrank them?
Example 2: EconsultancyTo find out, PI took an interview on PPC strategy that was posted on Econsultancy - my old site - and placed it on their own Intelligent Positioning blog. The content was copied word-for-word, with their permission.
When searching for the article title, we can see that the copied version briefly interrupts the original's search position.
However, if we search for a more generic term, like "PPC strategy," the content thief is able to outrank the original, as shown by the red line.
It seems that Google didn't know which one should rank for a while, with positions swapping for a few days, but the copied article won out in the end.
As I write this, the copied article sits at number 25 in Google, and the original is nowhere to be seen.
The same test was carried out using ClickZ content. In this case, we used a guest post by Bryan Eisenberg on web form optimization.
Again, the content was copied word-for-word, with an image featuring a note to explain.
The results of this test are interesting. For one thing, it didn't interrupt ClickZ's rankings as much as in the two previous examples.
After the article was copied, the original still ranks reasonably consistently for the phrase "online web form optimization".
The odd thing is that the copied version also ranks in the top three positions for the same term, at the same time.
If you look closely, you'll notice the dips in early September correspond to the peaks in ClickZ's search rankings. It is having an effect on ClickZ's position, but not as much as we might have expected.
However, the troughs from August 20 do correspond to the peak of another site: Bryan Eisenberg's blog.
Bryan published his ClickZ post in full on his own blog, and had been enjoying some decent search visibility for the same search term. Although, this was before the copied article was published.
Bryan's post has virtually vanished from the SERPs for this term, and now it's replaced by the version copied from ClickZ for the test.
At the moment, the copycat version outranks the original ClickZ version, taking second place on Google U.K.
Meanwhile, the ClickZ article is five places below, and Bryan Eisenberg's version isn't even in the top 100 positions.
So once again, the copycat site is able to disrupt the search rankings of the original content producers, outranking them for periods of time.
Once the copied version has been removed from the PI blog, I expect that ClickZ will return to the top two or three positions on Google. What happens to Bryan's version of the post remains to be seen.
As I mentioned before, these tests were carried out on Google U.K. (with more will follow using .com) and the differences between U.S. and UK are interesting.
For example, while the IP blog was able to disrupt Bryan Eisenberg's U.K. rankings with its copied content, it didnt have quite the same effect in the U.S. SERPs.
It did rank for a short time, but my guess is that a combination of the other two sites' authority and their U.S. location knocked it back down.
Also, Bryan's version of the post continues to outrank ClickZ, yet Google still allows both versions to rank highly.
Why Does This Matter?Content is very important for achieving SEO goals, though it does indeed have a life beyond the search engines. The ideal article is useful, providing value for readers over time while retaining high search visibility.
After taking the time, thought, and energy to work on composing a complex article, it's rather annoying to find that another site can simply steal it and reap the SEO benefits.
This underlines the importance of monitoring the performance of your content long after pressing the Publish button. Closely monitoring your site's performance enables you to take action against the copycats.
In addition, it also has implications for things like product copy used across multiple sites, which is something I'll look at in more detail in a future article.
What Should Sites Do?There are a number of measures that sites can take:
In addition, the Bryan Eisenberg example provides a lesson for sites accepting guest posts. It's worth ensuring that guests don't republish content in full on their own sites as this may effect your own rankings.
In my experience, I've found it's better to ask them to publish extracts and point back to the original, thus avoiding this issue. Or ask them to use the rel=canonical link to indicate the original post.
What Does This Tell Us about Google?One obvious conclusion is that this is an area where Google needs to improve. When copying of content is allowed to work like this, then it provides an incentive for the scrapers to use this tactic.
It did introduce a Scraper Report form last year, inviting examples of copycat sites outranking the originals.
It's now closed, which suggests the purpose of the form was to gather examples to help Google improve its algorithm.
More broadly, Google's method of dealing with this issue is inconsistent. For instance, in the 'PPC strategy' example earlier in this post, the original and copycat sites swap positions frequently, as if Google isn't able to determine which is the copycat site.
As PI Datametrics' Jon Earnshaw explains:
Having content stolen can be an extremely frustrating and costly issue. It looks like there is a flaw in Google's algorithm when it deals with duplicate content.
The best thing to do is track your terms and see if others are harming your site. You can only see this flipping of positions if you have daily URL tracking. If you see unexplained fluctuations, then digging deeper, ultimately you can report the abuser to Google.
In SummaryThe examples here tell us that copied content can be a real issue for sites, which will be losing traffic and potential sales through no fault of their own.
It also tells us that content thieves can win. They may not be able to rank consistently, but they can reach high search positions simply by cheating.
In the long-term, I'd hope that Google's handling of copied content improves but, in the meantime, sites do need to be aware of this problem so they can take the appropriate action to minimise the damage.
Btw, it's worth checking out Jon's slides from Brighton SEO.
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