Duplicate content is an issue that’s common among many sites. A question that I hear frequently is, “what makes content duplicate to Google”? Google states, “Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar”.

You may have heard of duplicate content before, however, many site owners are not aware of the ways in which duplicate content can occur. Typically we see duplicate content created unintentionally, but we’ve also seen it deliberately created. On sites where it is not created in a manipulative manner, there are rarely penalties by the search engines. Instead, there is something that is often referred to as a duplicate content filter. This is where the search engines filter out duplicated pages so that they can provide the searcher diverse search results.

When search engines filter out duplicate pages, you as the publisher of the content have little control over which url or domain is displayed in the search results. That being said, I think it’s important to identify a few ways that we often see duplicate content.

1) www and non-www versions both index-able by the search engines. This is probably the most common occurrence of duplicate content.

• http://example.com/
• http://www.example.com/

2) Inconsistent link references throughout the site.

• http://www.example.com/page/
• http://www.example.com/page/home.htm
• http://www.example.com/page/index.htm

3) Different navigation paths.

• http://www.example.com/Samples/Browse/Things/Big/Small/index.php
• http://www.example.com/Samples/Browse/Things/Small/Big/index.php

4) Different sort orders.

• http://www.example.com/Samples/Browse/Things/Big/Small/index.php
• http://www.example.com/Samples/Browse/Things/Big/Small/index.php?sortby=rating

5) Printable versions of pages being accessible by the search engines.

6) Additional marketing domains that are not properly redirecting to the main website.

7) Different urls that are used to display various elements on the page.

8) Re-naming urls without deleting or properly implementing redirection rules.

Some ways to address duplicate content include redirecting multiple domains to the preferred or “canonical” version, using the canonical link tag, restricting access in your robots.txt file, etc. The best situation is of course a site that doesn’t create duplicate content in the first place. However, if you do have an existing site creating duplicate content, be sure that you utilize some of these handy work-arounds.

According to Wikipedia.org, Geo Targeting is, “the method of determining the geolocation (the physical location) of a website visitor and delivering different content to that visitor based on his or her location, such as country, region/state, city, metro code/zip code, organization, Internet Protocol (IP) address, ISP or other criteria”.                  

While it is not imperative that all websites focus attention on geo targeting, local businesses can benefit greatly, especially if your marketing budgets for more traditional marketing are limited. Simple methods such as adding the contact information for the business to the homepage content and meta data can increase your chances of showing up in local search directories or in the local results on Google.

Other good SEO techniques include adding county and city names to the page to narrow down the keyword targeting for the page.  For more internationally minded geo targeting, webmasters need to keep in mind the different terminology used in other countries. In the UK, web surfers will use different terminology than their contemporaries in Africa.

• What does Google look for?
• Your address and keywords listed on your site
• Your address and keywords listed on other sites
• Your address and keywords listed in local directories
• Reviews of your business
• Domain Name

Submitting to Local Search 
At the very least, local businesses should start out by submitting to the oldest and most trusted of the directories (Yahoo! and DMOZ). After that, they should go for the large traditional business directories as they tend to rank well for many local terms. This increases reach in the search engines and positions the business as a local and trusted entity within its community.

Local Directories for Small Businesses to Consider:
Yahoo local – Very Important
Yelp.com
Yellowpages.com
Brownbook.com
Merchantcircle.com — ranks well
Citysearch.com
Superpages.com
Insiderpages.com — ranks well

I cannot stress enough the importance of having a solid landing page to direct website visitors to. This is especially true when you are running a Cost Per Click (CPC) Campaign. If you are going to pay to drive a visitor to your site, you ought to make sure the visitor is sent to a page that clearly and concisely represents not only your offerings, but more importantly the offering that this particular visitor was searching for. In other words, it is rather frustrating for a searcher to click on an ad for a pair of Nike shoes and instead be sent to a page for Nike shirts. If you’re lucky, your visitor will be patient enough to go through your navigation and locate the Nike shoes page they should have been sent to in the first place. More than likely, however, the searcher you already paid for will just click on the back browser and find another ad. So how can online retailers prevent bounces like this from occurring? Although there is no way to guarantee a low bounce rate, there are steps you can take to improve it and your landing pages are a great place to start.

A good landing page will possess a clear cut call to action. What do you want your visitors to do? Examples: Click here to receive your coupon, Fill out this form to generate your free report, Enter your email address to be added to our monthly newsletter, etc.

In addition and beyond just the importance of user experience, Google very specifically factors in landing page quality and relevance as part of their algorithm. This algorithm determines where your ads will appear and how much you will have to bid. Therefore, having an effective landing page will not only improve the experience for your searchers, but also afford you the ability to garner better online real estate and at a lower CPC.

What are you waiting for? Get busy and start to improve your landing pages!