Free Website Marketing Advice from Freelance Marketing Group, Inc.

Duplicate content is currently one of the largest problems on the Internet right now. In some way duplicate content affects you and if you are doing any online website marketing, this can really slow your campaign.

There are many places that we encounter duplicate content:

• old websites addresses that still display your website
• content on other websites that have stolen it from you
• and much more.

One of the most common versions of duplicate content comes when you actually have duplicate domains, I know, this doesn’t sound possible but it is. When your website hosting was setup, there is a good chance that the server will display your domain with and without the ‘www’ in the path (see below).

• www.yourdomain.com
• yourdomain.com

If you can do this and an exact version of your website comes up under both domain structures, then you have duplicate content.

This duplicate content issue needs to be fixed and it is actually not that hard to do. Install this simple script in your .htaccess file on your server:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomain.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [R=permanent,L]

* Note - be sure and replace “yourdomain.com” with the URL of your website.

This should be a simple little copy and paste that will save us a lot of problem in the long run.

Trevor Walter - Freelance Marketing Group, Inc.

What does website marketing and podcasting have to do with each other? Simple, podcasting gives your viewing audience an alternative method to receive information on new products, product updates, additional services you are offering, etc.

Podcasting is a relatively new technology developed by Apple, Inc. to give people a way to listen to just about anything via the iPod. From the iPod to iTunes, podcasting has really taken off and now, there are several good programs that can download and listen to podcasts.

Podcasting is now also going to be factored into the algorithms that drive the up and coming Google Universal Search, which is really designed to bring all forms of website marketing together.

Benefits of Podcasting for Website Marketing:

Since Google has decided that Social Network Marketing is an important form of website marketing, podcasting has moved its way right to the top of the list, probably because it is currently one of the most popular ways of disseminating information.

Basically what you do is create small radio shows discussing products or services you offer. Once these are created, they are converted to the podcast format, a logo or other form of artwork is attached and the file is uploaded to your site. Once it is on your website (probably under “news” or “press”), you submit these podcasts to the major search engines and podcast directories.

One of the great thing about podcasts is that you can actually make the logo or artwork associated with each podcast clickable. So, lets say you sell website marketing which includes link popularity, website optimization and pay per click management; if you are doing a podcast about the importance of link popularity, you can have your artwork clickable and take the listener right to the page of your site talking about link popularity. The same goes for any podcast you do - just link the logo / artwork with a page on your site.

From there, it is just a matter of time before you get picked up. With Google’s new Universal Search that will be launched later in the year, it is possible and probable that your podcasts (if properly optimized) will be picked up and
displayed as part of the standard search results. Of course, these will only be displayed if someone searches a keyword that your podcast is associated with and promoted for.

Trevor Walter - Freelance Marketing Group, Inc. 

Well, I suppose it was bound to happen sooner or later and it appears it is sooner. Over the next several months, Google will be implementing what they call ‘Universal Search’, a new way to search vertically for products or services you are interested in.

What is the difference between our current searches and the new ‘Universal Search’? Well, first off you won’t see a list of websites matching your search criteria, you will now see a combination of websites, video blogs, traditional blogs, Podcasts, images, maps, etc. Basically, your search will now return anything that is properly tagged with keywords related to your search.

The problem that I see with this method of displaying search results is that you will be subjected to things (blogs, video, Podcasts, etc.) that you don’t really care about. Suppose for a second that you are looking for Website Marketing services, you go to Google and type in Website Marketing, click search and voila, up comes the first 10 listings for your search. The problem now becomes apparent, you didn’t want to see home videos of some kid optimizing a website or listen to hours upon hours of Podcasts talking about optimizing websites. you definitely don’t care about images that someone has put up on their site with code in attached that tells the search engines this has something to do with Website Marketing; you wanted to see websites that offer website marketing services.

You see the problem? Google feels all of this extra content is relevant and should be displayed with each search but in reality, most people that want this other information go to search engines that specifically cater to blog searching, Podcasting searching, image searches, etc.

How will this affect you and the way customers find your site, products, services, etc.? Well, they now have a lot more ’stuff’ to work their way through before they really get what they want. This means that you are going to need to take a leap ahead in your current business technologies and start implementing some of these things such as Podcasts or blogs so that the search engines find you more relevant and want to list your site over sites that don’t use these methods.

The good news here is that we have some time to get these things implemented. Google has to work in phases if they want to get this up and running correctly, which gives us time to create a game plan. The other good news is that most of your competitors probably are not going to implement any of these new technologies anytime soon. That means you will jump ahead of them in search results.

Over the next several weeks, we will be sending out a some newsletters outlining plans to bring your site up to these new ‘Universal Search’ standards. Each newsletter will deal with a specific focus area (ie. blogs, podcasts, video), give you an understanding of what needs to be done and how it should benefit your site.

Trevor Walter - Freelance Marketing Group, Inc.