Every SEO expert knows that one of the biggest problems we face is duplicate content. When there are two different URLs for one page, the search engine is never clear on how to treat them. It has to decide which page to show for a specific keyword, which page to give the PageRank to and which page to consider as the main authority. It may also divide the authority and page rank, an action that will only take away from the page you’re trying to promote.

There are many ways to create duplicate content. Here are only few::
-    Different URL format for the same page (sort parameters are very popular here)
-    Print versions of pages
-    refid parameters (affiliates etc)
-    Different search query results and navigation issues

The canonical URL tag is a joint initiative of Google, MSN and Yahoo. All three united in order to create a common tag called “canonical URL tag”. This tag lets all the three big search engines know which of the duplicate pages is the main one and it can then pass all the authority, link juice and main focus of the robot to that right page. If there are two similar pages with slight different URLs, a canonical tag placed on the duplicate content URL will tell the robots which page it should promote. As for the importance of this tag, according to Google, “it’s a hint that we honor strongly”.

The canonical tag must be located in the header of the page should will look like this:
<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.compucall-usa.com/blog”>.

Why is it different from a 301 redirect?

1. As opposed to a 301 redirect that redirects the page both for the user and the search engine, the Canonical URL tag is just for search engines. Users will still be able to reach and view all your duplicate versions. Hence if you’re only trying to sort the results on a page, you can.
2. The engine will verify that the content is similar and that the use of this tag is justified. In a 301 redirect, you can decide whether the redirect is justified. Regarding how much similar the duplicate pages have to be, Google say that they “allow slight differences”.
3. The 301 URL redirect operates exclusively on a single root domain, so you can’t use this tag to redirect between two different domains.

Unclear issues

The “link juice” question is still unclear – we will have to test it and see the results.
Also, the transitivity of the links is unclear (only Yahoo mentioned that they support transitivity of this tag).

For more information, you can read Matt Cutt’s blog post and SEOMOZ’s blog post (by randfish).

To make a long story short, I realized that in order to properly SEO WordPress, then what you really need to do is keep it simple. Have a sound platform or theme, research and write great content, and share it with the community relationships you’ve developed and are actively developing.

Here’s the presentation I gave, WordPress & SEO, slides only. If you have any questions, please share them with me. I’ll be uploading the video later on when tech gets it done.

SEO Targeted WordPress Themes

The first and most crucial thing to consider for a WordPress blog is the theme. Not only because of the importance of the visitors first impression, but also because of how a website’s code can influence the way Google can read you. There are many themes out there, created by people of all kinds. Part of them are designers, others are programmers. Not all of the people that put these themes together took into account the significance of being “friendly” to search engines. The code has to be clean, logical and focused around the content. It is very important that your WordPress theme be CSS/XHTML validated. Although a great many “SEO WordPress themes” out there meet this basic requirement, a lot of them don’t (You can always run yours through the W3C Validator if you want to make sure your blog validates). Some themes also have content optimizing tool possibilities, such as the ability to give SEO friendly page titles and much more. There are websites that also give “SEO grades” to their themes, so make sure you don’t pick a theme with a grade lower than 85

SEO Plugins for WordPress

There are many SEO plugins for WordPress that can enhance your blog’s compatibility to search engines. The most common is the “All in SEO pack” WordPress plugin. This plugin creates an extension within your WordPress platform that lets you insert Meta tags into each post. This plugin also avoids duplicate content issues typical to WordPress and creates titles templates, so you won’t have to optimize your posts titles manually. Simple Tags is another WordPress plugin that enables you to manage the tags all over your blog.

We can’t really discuss blogs marketing without also mentioning SMO (Social Media Optimization). The Sociable plugin (and there are many other plugins) is a tool that gives your readers the possibility to submit your post to many social communities, social websites and bookmarking sites. Creating a social presence for your blog in the social community is a vital component to any blog. After all we don’t want to get into that debate of if you build them a field they will come right?

Analyze Your WordPress Traffic!

Finding out how your visitors reached you is a great way of knowing what you’ve done right and what you’re doing that maybe isn’t doing so well. If you can’t do that then you’re going to be more or less flying in the dark. Wassup lets you analyze traffic and users’ behavior on the site. If you’re hosting WordPress yourself then install Google Analytics or something paid like Clicky.

To sum things up, Design, Content and the Analysis of your blog or site is very important. However, there are marketing aspects that you have to pay attention to. Make sure your blog has social media links and presence, download several SEO plugins and check your theme SEO grade. And the most important advice is – always optimize your blog in order to stay fresh and on top.

Remember when VW launched the New Beetle in 1998? The hype was huge, everyone went out and got one, people were putting flowers in that little spot on the dash and people were even counting how many Beetles they would see a day on the street. They even managed to get Motor Trend’s Import of the Year in 1999. Then mysteriously, in 1999 and 2000, they started breaking down. People kept sending them in for repairs.

Well here we are in 2008 and bam, we’ve got a shinny (every pun intended) product in Chrome with probably the best viral campaign since the iphone and people are very quick to run and love it and install it on all their multiple computers (I was guilty of having it installed on 2 computers inside of 15 minutes of its release and even twittering about it).

I don’t know if Google was bitter with Microsoft getting to Facebook first, or peeved that the inked that search deal, but I have to admit that Google leaving out proper Ajax support for Chrome puzzles me. Facebook (Alexa rank 5, Compete.com rank 15), as well all know and have some to love, is heavily dependent on Ajax. It makes everything wonderful, fun and easy. Google believes Facebook is important giving it a Pagerank of 9 out of 10. I ran a search of people within my network of Israel to see how many people have Google listed as an employer and I got over 500… So you would think that one of the developers, at least, tried checking out his profile on Facebook before the release right?

You would also think that Google being partnered with Mozilla would have led to them taking a page out of their incredible development by releasing a developers edition to get the apps and the add-ons on board.. But no. Google knows best!

The big question is will people now come back to Chrome, or will the next Mini come out to put them away as our oh so beloved Mini did to the VW bug?

The Tel Aviv-Yafo Entrepreneur August Meetup, organized by Mr. Gadi Guy and Ms. Or-Tal Kiriati, will cover different topics around social networking where local entrepreneurs will be able to share in a unique occassion, together with Mr. Pulver, their ideas and techniques, get advice and discuss business models.

Mr. Ophir Cohen, Compucall’s CEO, will also give a lecture about the hottest web marketing trends, prior to Jeff’s speech.
We at Compucall believe that educating and sharing are key for the success of our community.

Alright so after a little bit of coercion and reminding people that contracts were up for renegotiation soon (aren’t they always?), I’ve got people writing and landing posts on my desk for review. After reading them, I keep asking myself the same questions:

- Is it any good?

- Will anyone benefit from this post?

- Are they just trying to get me off their backs by giving me this?

- Why did I get myself into this…

So after reading a few good posts and a few just okay posts and keeping in mind that I don’t want to discourage people from writing by asking them “Do you really think I’m going to posts this?” I’ve come up with a set of three standards that my writers (and myself of course) have to apply when writing and editing these wonderful pieces of informative literature that will one day appear on the Compucall Blog:

1. Would you post this on your own personal blog?

2. If this post were written by someone else in the industry, would you digg, sphinn or bookmark it?

3. Since your name will be under the title of the post, would you want this to show up first in the search results if someone Googled your name?

So that’s that, let’s see where it takes us shall we.

So low and behold, we finally have the website almost ready and I casually mention the opportunity to blog and interact at a general employee meeting and guess what (insert generic cricket sounds here).

Alright, maybe people are busy and it’s slipped their mind. So bring it back up at the next meeting, explain the benefits of blogging and then going to other blogs and starting to talk to others with your link pointing to our blog or to your blog profile and starting lasting industry relationships that will grow your knowledge and create great connections for the next SMX or SES. People nod. One person sends me a blog post, another contributes title for a blog post and that’s it. Remember there are 20 people here who are more than qualified to chip in.

This should be fun.