Matt Cutts was recently on a panel with other high profile SEO’s that critiqued some websites and gave some insight into how Google feel’s about the importance of unique content. On his blog, he said:

“Once again, I sat on the end and had my wireless and VPN working so that I could use all of my Google tools. The promotional gifts company had a couple issues. For one thing, I was immediately able to find 20+ other sites also belonged to the promotional gifts person. The other sites offered overlapping content and overlapping pages on different urls. The larger issue was searching for a few words from a description quickly found dozens of other sites with the exact same descriptions. We discussed the difficulty of adding value to feeds when you’re running lots of sites. One thing to do is to find ways to incorporate user feedback (forums, reviews, etc.). The wrong thing to do is to try to add a few extra sentences or to scramble a few words or bullet points trying to avoid duplicate content detection. If I can spot duplicate content in a minute with a search, Google has time to do more in-depth duplicate detection in its index.”

It’s clear that Google frowns upon content that is essentially recyled by webmasters and used on other similar sites. For one, it’s obvious from Matt’s comments that is very easy for Google to detect networks of sites owned by one owner. Most SEO’s know this but if you didn’t know that, be warned. As the algorithms evolve and are better able to detect what they consider spam, what may work today may be considered spam tomorrow. It’s also obvious that Google also does not want people changing a few words, changing “happy” to “glad” and think that it’s perfectly fine with Google to add all that recyled content too all the different sites you have. Unique content is one of the problems anyone who has a bunch of sites has to consider if you have sites that are topically similar.  Essentially, what Google wants is for you to actually contribute to the web by adding original content. Can you believe they have the gall to want that? What a pain! Actual fresh content? Golly jeez…that’s asking a lot. Why write original content when you can steal it from someone else right? That’s just a crazy idea. Original content. Yes, you can get more traffic by adding fresh content to your site. But it’s sooo much work. It’s so much easier when you don’t have to work for it isn’t it?

Seriously though, find ways to create unique content. Expand your mind, think outside of the box. I can assure you that you will see the rewards of your work, but it doesn’t happen by luck. I’ve had good success hiring writers for fairly cheap but make sure the content that they’re writing is actually unique. Let them know before they start that you check for originality of work by using tools that check for duplicate content and you will have a much better chance of having original content written for you.

So by now everyone knows that typically if you’re trying to optimize a brand new domain, you’re going to be waiting a long time before you can rank for any competitive terms in Google. Sandbox, aging delay, call it what you will but in the great majority of cases you’re going to be waiting around 9 months before you start seeing your new website show up for any competitive search terms. I’ve also noticed that it seems new sites don’t just come out of the Sandbox all at once. It seems that you come out of it slowly. I’ve worked on optimizing many new domains since 2004 and it seems to me that the 1 year mark is (in my personal experiences) is when I see my sites start to rank for everything I was optimizing for. Month 9 I start to see the site come up for a few terms, even the “homerun” term I’m optimizing for, but definitely not for all the minor terms I’m going for on other pages of the site.

If you’re working on a new website and you want it to rank high for your terms, you’re going to have to earn Google’s trust before you can rank high in the search engines for competitive terms. How do you earn Google’s trust? By focusing on getting links from authority sites that are related to the topic of your website. If your website is about a residential boarding school in California, then type “schools” or “boarding schools” into Google and see what sites show up. Then, do whatever you can to get inbound links from those sites. Remember, if the sites that show up are directories, odds are that those sites are redirected links and those won’t give you any “link juice”. Keep in mind however that poeple are typically going to find your website either through ranking high in the search engines, or through other directories on the web that rank high themselves. If it’s worth it, consider obtaining listings just for traffic sake and not for the link benefit. Obviously, cost is an issue.

Another thing to consider is your overall linking pattern. Search engines like Google want to see a “natural” linking pattern, so keep that in mind if you’re link building with all the exact same text. I’ve had experiences where sites didn’t rank well for a specific term because I over did it with the inbound anchor text. Vary your text or it will be clear that your linking pattern is unnatural. Don’t just use “San Diego plastic surgeon” in your anchor text, use “Cosmetic surgery in San Diego”, “Plastic Surgery clinic San Diego”, “liposuction San Diego”, “breast augmentation”, etc. This is much more natural because not everyone will have the same description of a website and not everyone links to a site in the same way.

If you’re trying to earn Google’s trust, don’t engage in link exchanges with non related sites. Focus on  links that will actually benefit visitors to your website. And no, it’s not true that if you link to other websites from your site that you will lose rankings. Don’t worry about “leaking” PageRank, that is “old school”. Your link reputation gives Google a lot of information about your site. You think Google can’t figure out that all your links are reciprocal? Trust me, they know.

Don’t over optimize your site! So all your title tags, H1 tags, alt tags, metadescriptions and your content have the same exact phrase in it. You can hurt your site by over optimizing so don’t go overboard. Older sites have much more forgiveness then newer sites so don’t think because your competitor is doing it that means that you can as well. In the SEO world, all things are not created equal.  

I will say I have seen sites that go overboard on link exchanges and similar anchor text and still rank well but who knows for how long? We’ve all seen Google updates that kill the rankings of websites. As the search engine algorithms get smarter, it will be more important to try to avoid those tactics that can potentially jeopardize your site. If you wear a white hat

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned in the business world is the importance of working with the right clients. More business is not always a good thing if your client causes you headaches. A few months ago I took on a new client who, right off the bat, I had a bad feeling about. I didn’t want him as a client, I was already incredibly busy at it is, but he convinced me about what a great client he would be. The first rule of thumb is that anybody that claims to be low maintenance is definitely not. That should have been my first sign to run like hell. But no, I didn’t listen to my intuition. Over the course of the first three months I listened to him critique the site design, suggest changes and then make new changes on an everyday basis. He’d suggest a change, then make another one which contradicted his earlier change and he had no shame about it. He would also constantly call, asking if the changes he’d requested had been made. “Um, no, not yet. You just sent me that email 3 minutes ago and those changes will take a  few hours”. Incredibly impatient man. So, eventually I finished his site. “This is the only website I’ve ever liked, and I’ve seen thousands. I love it”. So after the site was finally finished, I began optimizing his site. Within just 7 weeks, I got him to the 1st page of Google and Yahoo for all his main keyword phrases. I highly doubt it was no coincidence that right after he found out how high he was ranking, he called and said “Please cancel all the services you’re doing for me”. Many clients don’t believe that SEO is a regular monthly thing. However, if you don’t continue to improve and work on a site, it will tank in the rankings. I was perfectly fine with that to say the least. I didn’t want to work for this miserable man anyways. I sent him my final bills, he said he would pay them (with the exception of one charge) and then a few days later decided not to pay. I know he never intended to pay, he was trying to weasel out of it. “I’m going to have another SEO firm check your work”. “What’s there to check?”, I replied. “You’re on the 1st page of Google and Yahoo for all your keywords”. No response of course. Long story short, he turned around and sued me for all his money back that he’s paid me. Well, at least the $7,500 limit that small claims court allows (out of the $8600 he paid me). He actually owes me money since he never paid me a cent for optimization. He’s done this before with other people (I spoke with his last service provider and he did the same thing with her). Funny thing is I knew that this guy would pull something like this. He is an extremely unhappy man, constantly talked about his poor child hood, and has many things to say about many people. The great thing is that his rankings have completely tanked and have now dropped out of the top 300 results in Google. Never have I been so happy to see someone’s rankings drop. One of his competitors, my current client, now ranks # 1 on Google for every one of the keywords he wanted. Thank you, idiot, for the motivation you have provided me. My clients will ALWAYS rank above his site (especially now that his site fell out of the Google rankings). Moral of the story is to choose the right clients to work with, document as much as possible through email and paper trails in case something like this happens to you.

So I’ve always wondered how many hyphens is too many when it comes to domain names? You’ve got two things to consider when it comes to this:

1. Your site visitors.

2. What the search engines think about it.

We’ve all seen those domain names that go on forever like: this-domain-name-is-the-coolest-and-very-long-and-annoying.com/buy-viagra-poker-chips.html. Anytime we see something like that we can pretty much guarantee the site is going to be a junk site and probably just made for adsense. Potential site visitors of course have learned by now not to click on those types of URL’s because they will be sent (or often redirected) to some trash site that has nothing to offer. Search engines also notice those domains with many hyphens in them. You won’t get penalized for having hyphens in the domain name but your site will attract attention and probably be examined more closely to ensure it’s not a spam site. So the question is “How many hyphens is too many in a domain name?”.

It’s rare that you see a domain with more than 2 hyphens in it rank high for anything that is a moderately competitive term so I wanted to test out if I could get a site up in Google with a handful of hyphens in it. The site is personal-injury-attorney-in-san-diego.com. (5 dashes in the domain). After 1 year it now ranks for many terms that are heavily sought after terms by every lawyer who handles PI in San Diego. Also, site visitors have no problem visiting the site and are not “turned off” by 5 dashes in the domain. Probably because it’s pretty specific about what the site is all about.

Of course, I’d always prefer a domain with no dashes in it at all if possible but those days are long gone. To bottom line is it’s ok to have hyphens in the domain name as long as your site is not doing anything against the guidelines of the search engines. Just keep in mind it will probably be monitored more closely so make sure you do whatever you can to keep your site safe from penalization.

High Rank Websites focuses on helping businesses who are serious about high visibility on the search engines. By high visibility, I’m talking targeting a 1st page ranking on the major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN for targeted keywords and phrases. This blog is focused on SEO, SEM and web design.