Content Professional Teams Up with Tampa SEO
Content Professional is pleased to announce its partnership with Tampa SEO, a prominent SEO and Internet marketing company located in Tampa, FL. We met with Tampa SEO through SEOmoz, the SEO software company and have evolved our relationship from there. Currently Content Professional is writing keyword driven, SEO-friendly content for many of Tampa SEOs clients to help them gain the attention of their prospective clients and the search engines.
Tampa SEO specializes in helping businesses locally and nationally connect with their clients through search, social media, pay-per-click, and email marketing campaigns. All of their SEO techniques are white-hat and ethical making them a great partnership that fits in well with the type of clients Content Professional enjoys working with. For partnership opportunities with Content Professional or Tampa SEO contact us today.
Addressing Duplicate Content for Writers
Duplicate Content
When it comes to writing for online publication whether it be for websites, blogs, press releases, articles and the like best practices suggest doing so with fresh content that is completely unique and original. When you don’t produce original content you get into what is called duplicate content issues, or content that is the same or very similar on different domains. This may not be entirely deceptive in origin but is often a frequent occurrence that search engines are looking out for. Although Google has not leaked the percentage of duplicate content on a webpage it looks for many estimates lie in the 80%-90% range.
It is important to recognize that websites that have duplicate content that is produced in a non-malicious manner aren’t a target for action unless the content appears to be deceptive and manipulate to search engine results. For example, a site that discusses various shoes may have different webpages with the same content with the exception of the color or the size of the shoe. This would be an example of duplicate content although Google generally does a good job of choosing which content to show in the search results. This doesn’t mean we would advise you to leave it up to Google to decide what content to choose or not to choose, and we explain the options you have below.
Inversely, if you have cut and paste content from another website onto yours this would be an example of duplicate content and may be a grounds for action. If the search engines have indicated that you have engaged in this kind of deceptive behavior your website may be completely removed from the search results. Thus is important to avoid this type of behavior and to attract the search engines with original content so that you stand out, especially in areas where your competitors have very similar or the same products or services.
Ways to Avoid Duplicate Content
For starters the key to avoid duplicate content is to write original, fresh content. As writers this doesn’t mean you can’t gather information from other websites just don’t do it verbatim. Plagiarism not a crime online but it is not going to help you in any way. Interpret things in your own words and consider your audience when writing. Content Professional always likes to use at least three different sources when researching and writing for clients to get a solid foundation of good information. We then take that information and formulate our own thoughts and ideas and always try to improve upon what everyone else has done. This not only makes you look like an authority but it also makes you more attractive to the search engines.
Outside of purely writing, there are things you can do on a programming level:
Use 301 redirects- If you have a page within your website that you know is getting hit for duplicate content set up a 301 redirect from that page to the original content page. They will no longer compete with each other and will positively impact their ability to rank.
Syndication Concerns- If your content is syndicated to other sites you risk duplicate content. If you do this make sure the other sites link back to your original content or ask the users of your syndicated content to use the noindex meta tag to prevent duplicate content issues.
Content Management Systems (CMS)- WordPress and Joomla sites for example often run into duplicate content issues because they often show the same content in multiple formats such as blog entries on the home page, an archived page, and in other pages within the same label. Make sure this is alleviated the right way.
Avoid blocking crawler access- This used to be a good option for duplicate content but Google has said that they no longer recommend web owners blocking crawler access to duplicate content on websites.
Utilize the rel=canonical tag- the rel=canonical tag tells the search engines that a page should be treated as if it were a copy of another webpage but tells the search engines the preferred page to index. This is similar to a 301 redirect however it does not redirect visitors to the new URL.
Resources
If you have been affected by duplicate content issues, have since corrected them, and feel your website no longer violates guidelines- you can submit your site to Google for reconsideration.
If you feel as if there is another website that is maliciously stealing your content you can file a claim and request removal of the other site from Google’s index.
The Importance of Image Optimization in Web Design
Image Optimization
Many SEO professionals think that the only purpose of images in web design is to make a site more attractive. Unfortunately, this idea is not entirely right. While it is true that people usually opt for images to enhance the overall appeal of the site, fact is that they can also help you to get more traffic.
Retailers can increase their traffic by implementing SEO techniques that focus on images and videos. Unfortunately, many professionals are unaware of the importance of image optimization and use poorly named pictures in their sites.
Here are few SEO tips that you can consider to enhance your site’s popularity and rankings in the major search engines.
File name is crucial
The file names should be informative, descriptive, and rich in keywords. However, do not stuff excessive keywords in the file name. Rather, use one or two keywords. Implementing this technique is crucial because it will help the search engines to determine relevancy. If your website contains information about blue Apple iPods, for example, do not opt for image name such as 00104.jpg. The reason is that the crawler will find it difficult to understand what the picture may contain. Rather, using an image name such as blue-apple-ipod.jpg is a good idea.
Avoid making the file name too long. Placing four or five words in the file name can be a great idea. According to suggestions by Google, do not put images in random folders throughout the site. Rather, incorporate all images in a single folder.
Remember that many content management systems provide uploaded images with ineffective names and incorporate them into folders with equally unwanted names. Therefore, you may consider the idea of modifying the software. This will help you to achieve desirable naming and folder structures.
Opt for descriptive alt text
Alt text or tags help search engine crawlers to understand what the image contains. Keep the alt text under 140 characters and avoid stuffing it with keywords. If you want to use the image as a link to another page, ensure that the alt text is relevant to the text of the page being linked to.
Pay attention to the surrounding content
Did you know that the surrounding content of images play a crucial role in determining its rank in the major search engines? Of course, you cannot put anything in the surrounding text and expect the site to achieve great rankings.
Surrounding content should contain valuable information and be relevant to the images. If the surrounding text of a page contains 200 or more words and includes useful information, there are high chances that the site will achieve better rankings. You may even consider incorporating a caption that describes the image.
Apart from implementing these SEO techniques, using the right image is crucial as well. Attractive images can enhance the style quotient of the site and encourage people to share the pages. Flickr and iStockPhoto are good sources of free and paid images. Implement these SEO techniques intelligently and soon, visitors will be flocking to your site.
This has been a guest blog by Webguru. Webguru has been a pioneer in the field of website design and graphic design services since 2005. If you are interested in posting a relevant guest blog, please contact us.
Content Production: Google Gives Us Things to Do, Bing Offers Things to Avoid
Effective Content Writing
As our friends at Google and Bing begin to help us by offering tips on what kinds of things they are looking for our SEO directives must adhere to their word. In the latest offering Bing has provided us with a list of things to do and things to avoid when producing quality content. Although Bing is generally not the target of most SEO’s ranking decisions it can still be a good source of driving traffic and I always say that it is good to get it where you can.
To sum it all up Bing mentions two critical components of producing quality content by their fair standard. The first is creating content that is high quality, engages the user, and answers any and all questions they may have. The second measure is the search engines themselves. The example Bing uses is sites that have content similar to other websites such as Ecommerce sites and common product descriptions. Not having original content means Bing doesn’t find you flashy enough and may not index you.
Here is the list of things Bing says to avoid when producing content:
Duplicate content – don’t use articles or content that appears in other places. Produce your own unique content.
Thin content – don’t produce pages with little relevant content on them – go deep when producing content – think “authority” when building your pages. Ask yourself if this page of content would be considered an authority on the topic.
All text/All images – work to find a balance here, including images to help explain the content, or using text to fill in details about images on the page. Remember that text held inside an image isn’t readable by the crawlers.
Being lonely – enable ways for visitors to share your content through social media.
Translation tools – rarely does a machine translation tool leave you with content that reads properly and that actually captures the original sentiment. Avoid simply using a tool to translate content from one language to the next and posting that content online.
Skipping proofreading – when you are finished producing content, take the time to check for spelling errors, grammatical mistakes and for the overall flow when reading. Does it sound like you’re repeating words too frequently? Remove them. Don’t be afraid to rewrite the content, either.
Long videos – If you produce video content, keep it easily consumable. Even a short 3 – 4 minute video can be packed with useful content, so running a video out to 20 minutes is poor form in most instances. It increases download times and leads to visitor dissatisfaction at having to wait for the video to load. Plus, if you are adding a transcription of your video, even a short video can produce a lengthy transcription.
Excessively long pages – if your content runs long, move it to a second page. Readers need a break, so be careful here to balance the length of your pages. Make sure your pagination solution doesn’t cause other issues for your search optimization efforts, though.
Content for content’s sake – if you are producing content, be sure its valuable. Don’t just add text to every page to create a deeper page. Be sure the text, images or videos are all relevant to the content of the page.
For help creating quality content hire the help of professional SEO content writers to get the competitive edge your business needs.
Search Engine Optimization vs. Pay-Per-Click Advertising
SEO vs PPC
There are reasons for and against choosing either pay-per-click advertising or search engine optimization. In the end it all depends on which better suits your website design and which will bring you the most success without emptying your bank account.
Pay-per-click advertising is an Internet advertising model used to direct traffic to websites, where advertisers pay the hosting service when the ad is clicked. PPC has its benefits; most importantly you can receive traffic quickly this way. You are also able to monitor your charges and stop them before they get too expensive. This can give you a good idea of how successful your product has the potential of being. If you received a lot of clicks during the PPC advertising, that is a good sign that you could be successful, but on the flip side if few clicks are registered, this business might not be a good idea to invest in.
For these reasons PPC advertising is considered most useful when starting a new business or product. You can not only find out how well you could do with PPC advertising, but also which keywords you need to target and which products are the most popular. However, PPC advertising can become expensive when the website begins receiving a higher volume of traffic, costing anywhere from a hundred to several thousands of dollars a month.
SEO is the act of improving the visibility of a website or webpage in search engines through the use of natural or un-paid search results. Search Engine Optimization is not a quick way to get traffic to your website. However, it is considered the best long-term way to increase the amount of traffic your website receives greatly.
In deciding between SEO and PPC one must contemplate what it is they want out of their website. Making a list of short-term goals and long-term goals will help and knowing the overall goal of the website is crucial. While PPC is good for short-term goals and for giving insight into how well the website could do, it is not as good of a choice as SEO when it comes to long-term traffic and overall success. This is mainly because it will begin to cost more and more as the traffic is increased when paying by the click.
Sitemaps Prove Vital in Search Engine Discoverability
A search engine needs to store and access information about your website in order for people to find it when they search the Web. If the search engine does not have the necessary information, it cannot return links to your site, resulting in less traffic and fewer potential customers.
It is simple to use a search engine to find links to pages containing information you are searching for, but what seems simple in this case, is actually quite complex.
Suppose a person types "organic farming" into the search box of a search engine, and hits return. The search engine now wants to find a site with "organic farming" content and, at the same time, it does not want to return unpopular sites. If the search engine were to list the unpopular sites people would not be satisfied with it and would simply use another search engine.
Each day trillions of pieces of new information are added to the Web. For this reason search engines are constantly crawling through the Web using Web crawlers known as spiders to index websites and log content as they travel from website to website via existing links.
A spider uses an algorithmic process: computer programs determine which sites to crawl, how often, and how many pages to retrieve from each site.
There is some content that a search engine cannot find or index by crawling. Videos are a good example in that a search engine cannot watch a video and log content from it. In order to index this content, sitemaps were invented. A Sitemap is a protocol used to tell search engines about Web pages that are available for crawling, essentially enabling the search engine to find the pages on your website that might not have been discovered without a sitemap.
Following the fundamental rules of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) when building your website, will ensure that you are off to a solid start. Correctly implementing a sitemap will further aid in getting the content that normally would not be indexed by a spider, indexed. This will allow search engines to find more content from your website and thus allow more searches to list your site as a result, hopefully on the first page.
Valid HTML Enables Search Engine Optimization
A valid HTML code is crucial to your web site's search engine optimization campaign. The validity of the HTML code is something often overlooked by webmasters, even though it is a pinnacle aspect of website promotion.
Most Web pages are written in HTML. It is the building-block and the predominant markup language for Web pages. HTML is
structured much like a language. With its own vocabulary, syntax, and even grammar, HTML has a specific standard it must adhere to in order to be valid. If this standard is not reached the code can be considered invalid HTML code.
Like any language, HTML constantly changes, making it more complicated to master. It has become increasingly harder to not make mistakes as HTML has become a relatively complex language.
One of the reasons the HTML code is so important is that search engines have to read it in order to find relevant content to the search. If there are errors in your HTML code, search engines might not be able to find the content on the page.
Additionally, search engine spiders obey HTML standards and if your website is not compliant to them they cannot index your website. If the spiders must cease in the indexing of the website, all data collected to that point will be lost.
Although most major search engines can work through some minor errors in HTML code, something as simple as a bracket missing can result in the website not being listed in a search engine, making attention to detail vital.
A good suggestion is to complete the HTML code for your website and then have it verified online. There are several sites that do this for free and guarantee their work to be accurate and true. Having the capability to verify the HTML code before your website is submitted to a search engine will ensure the website is indexed properly.
Valid HTML code makes it easier for search engine spiders to index your site. Making sure that all mistakes in your HTML code are corrected will give you a better chance of being found on a search engine and bring more people to your website, enhancing your business.
Keyword Research with Free Software
Finding effective software for any application can often be a timely and costly endeavor. There has long been a stigma that free software is far inferior to expensive software purchased on the internet.
Using free keyword research software is a plausible choice for keyword researching and there are many different choices and types of programs to choose from. Some software is free, for only a trial period, and then begins directly charging thereafter. Others are completely free and available from well-known companies such as Google.
Keyword research tools work like search engines; a word or phrase can be entered into a search box and after clicking, a list of keywords are displayed, revealing how often the word or phrase is searched over a given span of time. Google AdWords’ keyword research tool lists results for both local and global searches monthly. This tool also rates how competitive the topic the word falls in could be. Website seobook.com, offers a similar keyword research tool that combines the results from several major keyword research programs. The SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool displays the results from Google AdWords, as well as limited results from some paid keyword research programs such as WordTracker.
A different type of free keyword research tool can only be accessed using Mozilla Firefox as it is not compatible with Internet Explorer; PPCWebSpy is an add-on tool for Mozilla Firefox. It can be downloaded and used for free. Similar to other free keyword research tools, PPCWebSpy displays results from several sources.
Some programs offer free trials for short periods of time, giving the user time to decide if the program meets their specific requirements and also enables the user to obtain results before they have paid for the product. SENuke offers a free trial period of 14-days before monthly fees are assessed, and WordTracker offers a 7-day trial period. These programs offer more options than the standard free keyword research tools available; however, they are only free for a short period of time.
Google AdWords’ keyword research tool, The SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool, Wordtracker, The PPCWebSpy add-on for Mozilla Firefox, and SENuke are all exceptional keyword research tools that provide the Internet marketer with results enabling them to improve their products. Although different in design and structure, these tools are all very effective and are a great addition to any work involving keyword research. The above mentioned tools are all among the higher rated keyword search tools available for free on the Internet. With a company such as Google backing the tool, Google AdWords’ keyword research tool is tough to beat. Providing real-time accurate data on keywords and their popularity, AdWords’ tool is both easy to use and dependable.
There are a few things to remember when choosing a free keyword research tool;
- Never give out personal information in order to use or download a program for free (usually your name and email will suffice)
- Never give out credit card information before you decide to purchase a program
- Always verify that the company is legitimate before you trust them with your work
Remembering these tips will save hassle and stress and ensure a reputable tool is used.
Search Engine Optimization Etiquette – Keyword Stuffing
Search engine optimization is defined by Wikipedia as “the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the "natural" or un-paid search results.” Making a website more visible to its target audience is crucial to success and business owners put high value on a highly visible website.
Keyword stuffing is a technique used to overload a web page with keywords. Web designers do this so that search engines will perceive the page as being relevant in a web search because the more times keywords appear on a web page the more relevant the page will appear. This allows web designers to get an edge on honest businesses. As a search engine optimization technique, keyword stuffing is considered to be unethical and search engines may even ban a website that is caught keyword stuffing.
There are several different methods of keyword stuffing. One such method is to simply insert repeating keywords within the keyword tag so that the keywords are not seen by the user but are scanned by the search engine. A simpler method is to insert the keyword over and over again on the web page and simply blend it into the background, making it invisible to the user unless they highlight the text. Known as invisible keyword stuffing, this method is one of the most utilized methods on web pages today. Placing the keyword text behind an image so it is not visible is another method that is widely used by web designers. Most keyword stuffing techniques are easily detected by major search engines today, making it extremely difficult to get away with.
In order to ensure keyword stuffing is not utilized, web designers should use keywords in regards to SEO. The keywords should be properly used and relevant in the content. While it is alright to optimize traffic to a web page using keywords as much as possible in the text, keywords should only be placed in provided areas of HTML. The last thing a web designer wants is for their web page to be banned from a major search engine like Google or Bing. While SEO can greatly improve a web page’s chances of being found by potential customers, it should never be abused or dishonestly represented. SEOs choose not to utilize keyword stuffing because it is unethical. While there are several different techniques available to an SEO, all techniques used are effective and ethical.
Hiring a Professional Article Writer
Hire a Professional Content Writer
Hiring someone to write content can be a bit of a risk, but a risk that can be invaluable. In fact, hiring someone else to write could be a very wise decision for a company or business to make.
Like any other decision, hiring someone to write content or articles should be a thorough and thought-out process. A bad scenario would be to invest money, only to find out the writer was not as good as he said he was, and his content was not good enough to get picked up by search engines or get republished. There are three factors that should be considered before hiring someone else to write content:
- Being a true expert. When hiring someone else to do content writing, the company should consider whether or not anyone knows as much about the topics as they do. Perhaps their business is unique or it is in a specialized category. That would mean finding someone who knows as much as they do may be difficult. On the other hand they might not have sufficient knowledge about certain subjects and do not feel confident in writing about them.
- Time constraints. Is there ample time to complete a professional article? Knowing the topic and becoming an expert is crucial. Lack of time to do research will result in a decline in quality. The worse the article is, the less traffic it receives.
- Costs vs. Gains. The cost of hiring an article writer is cheaper than traditional advertising and providing information is a great way to draw more visitors to a website. People frequently search the web for interesting articles. There are many possibilities when it comes to writing and the sky is the limit.
Investing in article writing when these factors are addressed will frequently pay off in the end.
Having general information about a topic relevant to the website’s topic is a great way to attract customers. If someone is searching for anything on organic farming on a search engine, the odds are they would be interested in information on organic farming. Deciding if it is the right choice to pay someone to write content or to do the work themselves is often very complicated for a company owner. Choosing to have someone write content for them is probably a good idea if they:
- Are not a subject matter expert on the topic being written.
- Do not have the time to invest in writing a professional article free of error.
- Can find a price they can afford.
Keeping these simple factors in mind will surely help any company make the right decisions as to whether hiring someone to write for them is the best choice.
Recent Blogposts
- Content Professional Teams Up with Tampa SEO
- Addressing Duplicate Content for Writers
- The Importance of Image Optimization in Web Design
- Content Production: Google Gives Us Things to Do, Bing Offers Things to Avoid
- Search Engine Optimization vs. Pay-Per-Click Advertising
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