Avasoft Blog

Duplicate content, a.k.a. plagiarism, is never something you should tolerate on your own website.  In internet terminology Google defines, “duplicate content” as “substantive blocks of content within or across domains that other completely match content or are appreciably similar.”

It’s important to understand that duplicate content refers to pages that are exactly the same.  Even pages with quite a few similarities usually don’t cause alarm bells to go off with Google and the other search engines.  Avoiding duplicate content can be as simple as changing the order of the paragraphs around, but the most important thing to remember is that you don’t want a lot of duplicate content on your site because it will harm your search engine rankings.

Of course avoiding duplicate content is about more than just making sure that your website does not have articles and content copy and pasted from another site.  There are some forms of duplicate content that most website owners don’t even think about, such as:

• Discussion forums that have both a regular and a mobile version of the same site
• Pages with items for sale in your retail store that are linked with multiple distinct URLs
• Web pages that have printer-only versions of the same content on the page

When Google indexes pages, the filter will essentially choose one version of each page to list.  Sometimes the pros at Google will see that there is a lot of duplicate content within a search engine listing that was meant to take over the majority of traffic for a particular keyword.  The search engine then adjusts and lowers the rankings of sites that seem to be a copy of earlier sites.  Sometimes these sites are completely removed from the Google index so that they will never show up in search results.

Assuming you’re not just out to copy the work of others, here are some things you can do to protect your site’s search engine ranking:

• Canonicalization and site indexing – tell Google which version of your website or duplicate content you want included in the listings, whether it’s the printer-only version or the main page.  This can be done via the Google Webmaster Tools.
• 301 Redirects–You can redirect the search spiders and users to the right version of the page via .htaccess files or the administrative console.
• Consistency – Internal linking among your pages should be consistent rather than utilizing more than one version of the same page.
• Top-level domains – Make sure the URLs you use for your site have country specific extensions, like .uk for the United Kingdom or .ca for Canada, etc.
• Proper syndication – When syndicating your content on other sites, include a link back to the original article and ask those who use your article to use a no index meta tag so that their site won’t be indexed in the search engines.
• Cut down on boilerplate repetition – You don’t really need copyright information on each page.  Just link the copyright mention to a separate page that has complete information.
• Don’t publish pages until you have content for them – Publishing placeholder pages before they have content creates a lot of duplicate blank pages on your site.  If you must do this, use no-index meta tags to prevent web crawlers from indexing them.
• Adjust your content management system.  Remember that blog postings may appear in more than one place on your site, depending on how your content management system works.  You may be able to make adjustments to minimize this, thus reducing the amount of duplicate content.
• Combine pages that have similar information – If you have several pages with content that is similar, look at making those into one page instead of having separate pages with similar content.

You probably won’t be able to get around all of the issues relating to duplicate content, so for the pages you can’t do anything about, you can mark them in a way that lets the crawlers know they are duplicate content.  In the past, Google recommended blocking crawlers from actually finding the duplicate content, but this can be damaging because it causes the crawlers to treat them as separate pages.  Instead, use the rel=”canonical” link, a URL parameter handling tool, or 301 code redirects.  You can also use Webmaster Tools to change the crawl rate setting for your website.

If in spite of your efforts, your page is still removed from search engine rankings, read over the Webmaster Guidelines to find out exactly why.  Once you fix the problems, you can submit a request to have your site included in the rankings again.

Sometimes you may find that another site is actually copying your site in some way.  If this happens, it’s likely nothing to worry about with your search engine rankings.  However, if you do notice the duplicate content causing problems, a DMCA request will allow you to attempt to get that content removed by claiming that you own it.

Avasoft will take care of all your website needs and help you make sure that there’s no duplicate content lowering your search engine ranking.

When you enter a keyword on the search engine, the information someone sees when your site shows up in the search engine is called a snippet. A snippet is Google’s automatic creation of the titles and descriptions that are associated with your site.

Where does the snippet come from?

Google uses various features of your site to automatically create a title and description for each page on your site.  In addition to the content that’s actually on the page and other links to it on the internet, the search engines also use the meta tag’s information to help determine how to describe your web page.  For sites that don’t provide meta tag information, Google uses any information that’s available from the page content.

Of course having meta descriptions that accurately reflect what’s on your site can improve your click through rate. It creates a better experience for the user by allowing them to find what they are looking for much more easily.

Webmasters who are familiar with the traditional method for using slashes in URLs know that if there’s a slash on the end of it, usually it was a directory, while a URL without a slash on the end was typically a file.

For example: http://avasoft.net/aboutus/

Vs. http://avasoft.net/aboutus

However, this is no longer necessarily the case.  There’s no reason to keep doing it this way because Google treats them both exactly the same.

Don’t Confuse Your Users!

The biggest problem some webmasters face is when they make the two example links about lead to completely different information.  Visitors to your website don’t want to have to figure out what’s going on because most of them never knew such a distinction ever existed.

In order to avoid confusion, it’s best to make both URLs lead to the same content.  One of the URLs should be the actual page, and the other one should redirect to the main version of the page.  This cuts down on duplicate content within your site.  The less duplicate content you have on your site, the easier it is for the web crawlers to crawl it.

If your site already contains both the slash and the non-slash version of the URL and both have the same content, it’s not a huge problem though.  Google’s indexing process will figure it out.

Setting Up Your Website to Serve Just One Version

If you do decide that you want to change your website for more efficient crawling, then it’s pretty simple to do.  First, understand that it’s only necessary for a change if you have the slashed and the un-slashed version of each URL on your site and both are returning a 200 code, which basically means that they both deliver content successfully.

Here’s how to get rid of the duplicate content:

1. Decide whether the preferred version of the URLs is slashed or un-slashed on the end.  If you’re using a directory structure, the traditional way would be to use the slash on the end, but you don’t have to.
2. Make sure that your internal links all direct to the preferred version you chose.  Double check the sitemap to make sure it uses the preferred version only.
3. Implement a 301 redirect from the other version of the URL over to the preferred version.  If for some reason you can’t use a 301, consider instead using rel-“canonical”, which works just like a 301 in terms of Google’s indexing.
4. Use Fetch as Googlebot in Webmaster Tools to test the 301 configuration and make sure both versions of the URL are behaving the way you want them to.  The preferred version should send back a 200 code, while the duplicate should send back a 301 code to redirect to the preferred version.
5. Use Webmaster Tools to check for crawl errors.

Avasoft is your best source for business website design.  Give us a call for all of your webmaster questions and to get help organizing your site for best optimization.

When Google rolled out its Panda algorithm change, a number of other changes were also rolled out at the same time.  This resulted in business website owners frustrating on what solutions they should take to recover their ranks.  Google is constantly changing its ranking algorithm to improve search results for its users, but that doesn’t mean that every website owner has to be constantly analyzing these algorithms.  That would lead to madness!  Instead, Google recommends that website owners focus on the quality of their site rather than the algorithm that result in their search ranking.

Website publishers love to develop sites that are very graphically appealing and full of videos and other content that can take a while to load.  The issue with this is the fact that this can completely kill your search engine rankings.

The Value of Speeding Up

Google now uses the speed of your website to determine how high it should be placed on its search engine rankings, and they did it just by tinkering with the search algorithms just a tiny bit.  Studies have shown that people spend more time on sites that load more quickly, so it just makes good business sense to ensure that your website is loading very rapidly.  In fact, having a site that loads faster even cuts down your operating costs, so it is vital that you make your website as speedy as you possibly can.

Of course a multi-lingual site is one that provides information in multiple languages, while a multi-regional site targets people in more than one country.  It’s possible to have one or both of these situations in place on your site, but understanding the “language” of these types of sites is essential if you want to put them to work for you.

It’s important to realize that while building a single language website in a single country does present a few problems, those problems are multiplied when you include other countries and languages.  You’ve got to create alternate versions of your site for other languages, and you probably want different versions targeted at each country.  After all, what appeals to users in one country may not appeal to users in another country—even if they speak the same language.

Having video on your website is a great way to showcase your business, but videos cause a few problems for business owners who do not understand how they work.  After all, it’s one thing to run a business and quite another to manage a website.  Learning the three best practices for having video on your site is the key to using this medium successfully.

Moving your website seems like it’s as easy as taking down the old site and setting the new one up at your new address, but it’s not that simple.  One of the main concerns you have is making sure that you keep your search engine rankings and transferring them to your new domain.  In order to make this happen, there are several things you can do to prevent a “File not Found” error from opening when users click on a link that should lead to your site.

1. One of the most common reasons for a site migration is changing the name of your product or brand.  This should be done in two steps.  Start by moving your current site to the new address.  Save the redesign of the site until after you see that it has made a smooth move to the new address.

Having your site indexed is the only way your customers will be able to find you through the search engines. So what does it mean to have your site indexed? It basically means that the major search engines have discovered it and stored a listing of the site’s keywords to use as a reference directory. Google, Yahoo! and the other major search engines all send out their web crawlers on a regular basis to search for new websites that they haven’t found before. These crawlers take note of the keywords that are used on the sites so that they can direct search engine users to places that have information on the topics they are searching.

If your site is very new, then it probably won’t be indexed yet because the search engines simply haven’t found it yet. The search engines have a way of finding your site on their own. You could also choose to take a few minutes and simple report your site to the three top search engines: Google, Yahoo!, and Bing.

Everyone rants and raves over the value of content when working towards the best search engine optimization practices. However, really getting the most out of your site actually depends on much more than that. Search engine optimization also means a website with a good, logical structure. After all, how can your site benefit from visitors if they have a hard time finding what they need to see while they are on it?

Levels Mean Better Search Engine Optimization

The most effective approach to creating a structure that is search engine optimized is to begin with a high level and go down from there. The top most, or highest level should be very broad, covering general topics or categories. This gives visitors an easy way to find a starting point. Not only will human visitors have an easier time navigating your site, but web crawlers will, too. This type of search engine optimization helps ensure all pages are properly indexed.