Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal featured an article by Sara Needleman and Amir Efrati on the new Google algorithm update. They interviewed a few business owners who had lost their Google ranking and, consequently, a lot of their business from Google users due to the latest Google algorithm update (this happened in late 2010).

Not only did our clients not lose their rankings, but the they have gained rankings instead.

Here is why: Google has traditionally devalued “duplicate” content. If your site’s content has been copied from any other site indexed by Google, your site would be penalized severely – even if portions of your site are duplicate. Read the blog post I wrote on duplicate content syndrome.

So, the respected writers needed to emphasize that the SEO companies that these mid-size and giant corporations are working with were not paying attention to this SEO-101 lesson.

I suggest they interview some of our clients next time, too.

Amongst the clients that gained in rank were www.mavenlive.com for their very competitive keywords including: physical therapy software.  Today, they’re ranking #1 in Canada and #3 worldwide.

We didn’t have a single client lose their rankings with Google.

Popularity: 6%

Google rankings of many Web sites suffer greatly because of a phenomenon called “duplicate content.” One of our clients, cryoserver.com was penalized (red-flagged) for this particular reason prior to signing up with us. The site was ranked on page 13 of Google SERP’s for one of their main keywords.

Duplicate content refers to “substantive blocks of content” that match or are similar to “content within or across domains”, according to Google webmaster central. Google simply reduces the ranking of both pages/Web sites if it notices similar content being posted.

Here are some examples of duplicate content and tips on how to resolve them:

Mirrored Sites
Having mirrored sites refers to the same Web site being hosted on two or more different domains. This was basically what cryoserver.com had done. They had their site hosted on cryoserver.com as well as forensiccs.com.

Use a domain-level redirect from one domain to the other to resolve the mirrored sites issue. Also, use 301 redirects for any linked-to Web pages within the redirected domain.

We asked cryoserver.com to redirect the mirrored domain to the main one. After only one week, Google removed the red-flag and now their site ranks on the 3rd page (still some SEO work is needed to get them to the first page).

The same for-sale items on e-commerce Web sites
This is very common when it comes to e-commerce sites. Many URL’s are dynamically created and linked to from the home-page or other pages. Or simply, one product is placed within different categories. To resolve this issue, you should avoid dynamically building your pages and use different description even for the same products if they’re placed on different categories (having different url’s).

Copied text to be placed on competitors Web sites
If someone copies your text and place it on their site, your site could be penalized (flagged) by Google spiders for having duplicate content. This doesn’t happen too often, but when it does, it reduces your site’s rank on Google dramatically. To resolve this issue, you should contact the site that copied your text and ask them (by using all means) to remove the stolen text from their site. If they don’t comply, you should just rewrite your own content (painful, but it’s easier and less expensive than hacking the other site and removing your text).

Print-only versions of Web pages
Avoid print-versions if at all possible. If you cannot, use a “no-follow” tag wherever you link to a print-version copy of your Web pages.

Web pages that generate a mobile-friendly version
Similar to above, use “no-follow” tags so Google spiders don’t follow the link.

If you have any other questions, don’t hesitate to ask. We will respond to all questions in a timely manner.

Popularity: 33%