Is your blog losing out on a huge second audience because of fear?

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There is a long standing controversy over whether or not it's OK to duplicate your blog article content on another website. The argument between search engine optimization (SEO) experts goes like this.

SEO guy- "Never duplicate your blog content on another website, Google will penalize you."
SEO girl- "When we were dating you were always such a fraidy-cat. Google doesn't penalize you unless you are trying to game the system or steal someone else's content. Just look at all the news syndication websites out there. Do you think Google is penalizing all of them?"
SEO guy- "Well, you,....you... "
SEO girl- "Wait, what's that music I hear? Are you listening to the new Taylor Swift album? Are you sure you're a man?"

Will Google penalize me if I duplicate my content?
Duplicating your blog content simply means that you take your blog article, publish it on your own site, and then post it somewhere else as well. Google doesn't particularly like duplicate content. But then again, I have serious doubts about whether or not they care to do much about it. Instead, what Google is simply trying to avoid is, for example, if you searched for articles about red swingline staplers, you don't want more than one search result that leads you to two identical articles. That's not an ideal search experience. But Google doesn't need to penalize you for posting your blog article in two different places. Instead Google simply chooses which version of your content to display, and then skips the other.

What are the options if you are afraid to duplicate your content?
Some SEO experts suggest that a duplicate posting is OK if you change a few things in your article so that it doesn't get seen as a duplicate. Suggestions include:

• Rewrite the title
• Change paragraphs to bullets
• Change advice into questions
• Change images / ALT text
• Mix and match content from a similar article
• Rearrange the first and last paragraph
• Switch from Maxwell House to real coffee

Other SEO experts suggest placing a link back to your original article and adding canonical tags (that's tech-speak, sorry) in the code. It has been suggested that if you first post your article on your site and then quickly link to it from Google+, Google might actually index the article very quickly. The theory being if the post on your site is the first one found, Google may lend more weight to it. After that, you can post your content to a second site. For more detail about the suggestions, check out the lively discussion we had on LinkedIn.

What does Google say about duplicate content?
Let's stop all this whining and shenanigans. Google themselves wrote an article about the topic. Here's snippet from the article:

"If you syndicate your content on other sites, Google will always show the version we think is most appropriate for users in each given search, which may or may not be the version you'd prefer. However, it is helpful to ensure that each site on which your content is syndicated includes a link back to your original article. You can also ask those who use your syndicated material to use the noindex meta tag to prevent search engines from indexing their version of the content."

What does Jeff Bullas do?

Jeff Bullas is a hugely popular blogger with 250,000 followers. That doesn't make him an SEO expert, but I'm thinking he probably knows what he's doing. Jeff duplicates his blog posts. I took a look at the last three articles he posted on his blog. He then duplicated those same articles on Business2Community.com .I compared the two versions to see if they were identical. On average, Jeff only changed five words in each article. That's it. Just five words. In articles as long as his, changing five words hardly constitutes a rewrite, and thus I am betting Google sees these as duplicates. Is Jeff being penalized for his duplication? I sure doubt it. Is Jeff crying in his Uncle Tobys VitaBrits Weeties (the Australian version of Wheaties cereal) about how his SEO is in the dunny (Austrailian word for toilet)? Hell no he's not.

What do I do?
I duplicate my content. Why? First of all, I want the content that I write to appear on my own blog. When I write an article, I want my readers to read it on my site. My social sharing links point readers back to my site. Readers share the link back to my site on their social networks. I want all that SEO pointing to my site. And I want my readers to find other articles on my site. And then, after all of that, I want a whole new set of eyeballs to see my content. That's why I post it on another site. The other website contains my bio which links back to my blog. Since Google knows I own my blog, and my bio appears at the bottom of the duplicated content, Google can tell I've just re-posted the content. I'm not breaking the law. Interpol isn't going to raid my swanky pad and confiscate my laptop and my fancy coffee. Instead, Google is just going to index the article on my blog and not index the article posted on the second site.

So what say you? Just how wrong do you think I am? Do you duplicate your content?

The next best thing to a guest blog post

Adding new eyes to your blog
shouldn't be this complicated

All of us who spend our time in the depths of social media have been told ad infinitum that writing guest posts is the missing magic that will catapult us to stardom and wealth beyond the realms of Taylor Swift. Taylor secretly wants to write a guest post on my site, but I won't let her. Anyway, there is another way to add significant traffic to your blog that is rarely discussed. Whether you are writing an article that will serve as a guest post or one that is going to be posted directly to your blog, you can use expert quotes in your article to help significantly drive new eyes to your blog.

How does using expert quotes work? 
The idea is so simple, yet so overlooked. When you are crafting your blog article, include a quote from a known expert in the subject area of your article. Once you incorporate expert commentary into your blog article, you'll find that the expert who is being quoted will promote your post in social media to their own networks.

Everyone, including experts, wants to elevate their level of respect (being further viewed as an expert) in their niche. Once your article is published, they will reach out to their Twitter minions, Facebook likers,
their email list, and link to you on their personal  blog. And, if they are separately employed and have enough clout within their own organization, they will convince their employer's social media team to promote it as well.

How do you get an expert to provide a quote?
This is easier than you may think. But you've got to consider your target first, and then do a little work to make the process as seamless as possible.

• Look for an expert who is reachable
• It's easier to reach out to an expert who works for a small software company than it is if you try to reach Seth Godin. Not that he's impossible to reach. In fact, he calls me so frequently to ask my advice I've had to put his mobile number on auto-block so I can get back to my real life. Seth, if you're reading this, sorry, you're going to have to come up with your own brilliant ideas from now on. 
• Reach out to the expert and tell them you are writing an article and would like to include an expert quote from them.
• "Own it"- own it means even if your blog only has two regular readers, one of them being your mom, when you contact the expert you need to be confident and sound more like a journalist than some schlep with no blog readers.

Make it easy for them to provide the quote

• Instead of asking the expert to write a quote, write the quote for them and ask them to review and approve. 
• Send them your full article with their quote already included
• The fact that you have pre-written the quote makes it so much easier to get the quote approved. And since you have sent them the full article, they can understand the context of how their quote will be used. What you are trying to avoid is waiting around for them to write a quote and send it back to you.
• Include links back to their site or blog. That is their payback for providing the quote.

Who are the best experts to target?

• The best experts to target are authors, press contacts, and those who simply participate in answering questions on LinkedIn or Quora (more on that below). 

In order to get an expert quote, what should your article be about?

• Do a review of an ebook (or pull a quote from an ebook). Reach out to the author directly.
• Review a software product (or similar). Reach out to the company's marketing team. Or, look at their press releases area of their website and find the appropriate press contact. Typically, press contacts at companies are very reachable.
  
  Example: "Post to multiple social networks quickly using one simple tool "

Where to find an expert:

• Finding an expert can be as easy as posting a question on a LinkedIn Group and waiting to see who answers. Once a good answer is given, take a look at that person's LinkedIn profile to see their level of expertise. Do they work at a respected company in your niche? Do they author an important blog in your niche?  
• This would also work on Quora or LinkedIn Answers.
• The type of experts that answer questions on these sites are the type of people who are likely to be reachable, and will respond to you.
  
  Examples:
  From a question about why ISPs block images, an expert ended up providing a quote for "Why email marketers should avoid the coming wave of mosaics in email and what to do instead"
  From a question about email deliverability, an expert ended up providing a quote for "Flush your email marketing job down the toilet with this one big mistake" 

Why bother adding an expert quote?

• This elevates the respect level that readers will associate to the article, and thus to you. 
• The expert will promote the article to their social networks, driving new eyeballs to your blog. The effect is similar to having your article posted as a guest blog which will include backlinks to your site which drives great SEO to your site.

If you are interested in a quote from a not-so-humble email marketing expert, let me know.

Image credit flickr under Creative Commons

32 White Hat Ways to Build Inbound Links - Expanded

This article expands on Hubspot's "32 White Hat Ways to Build Inbound Links" written by Corey Northcutt by adding a few more ideas to what Corey discussed. Oh, and, if you don't mind, please tweet a few snippets from this blog post. If you do that, we may then be able to afford to buy Loraine in the cube next to me a new ficus tree since she killed yet another one .....sorry, long story. : )

Building inbound links to your blog or website is the most important way to bring more visitors to your site and to influence search engines to rank your page higher.  If you can add inbound links without trying to pull the wool over Google's eyes, then Google will reward instead of penalize you.

Get your blog on

In this section of Corey's article, he outlined several ways to use your blog. I would add the following:

Use Tweetable quotes in your blog content to get readers to tweet
In your blog posts, put tweetable snippets with a Twitter share button displayed on them. Your readers are looking for tweetable content. If you provide short, simple content for them, they'll be much more motivated to send out that Tweet. Don't take up the full 140 characters though.  Leave room for them to put in their own hashtag or re-tweet text.


Link to other blogs and your own blog, from within your blog articles
Linking to other people's blogs will encourage those blog owners to repay you the favor by linking back to you. But, don't forget to link to your own blog articles as well. This type of interlinking will encourage readers to click through and read more articles on your blog. This decreases the abandonment rate on your blog.  The abandonment rate can be considered by search engines who rank your page. If users stay on your blog website for longer, it makes your blog look all shiny and sparkley and stuff. Google loves shiny, sparkley things.

Write guest blog posts
Write a guest post blog on someone else's website. Your content will be posted on someone else's blog which means their readers will become familiar with you and visit your site. Sign up to be a guest blogger on myblogguest.com. It's a great place to find a guest blogger and to list yourself as one too.

Invite another blogger to write a guest post on your site
If the author has a decent social following of her/his own, you can expect that she will use social media to promote the article which also drives traffic to your site. This is a great concept, but don't overuse it. You should author your own blog and then have a few guest posts from time to time. You can apply to guest post on this blog here.

Create content beyond your blog

In this section Corey encourages you to invest in more than just blog content. I would add that from within your ebook, you should create hyperlinks to your own blog content, post short, and add tweetable quotes in the ebook to encourage readers to tweet the content.

Create an infographic and post it on Pinterest 
Infographics are insanely popular. Click on the image on the left for an example.
When you create one, post it on your blog page and then on Pinterest. The link on the pinterest page should point back to the blog article url which will serve to further drive traffic to your article. Place social share links on the infographic and supply the html code for others to be able to post the infographic on their own websites. Don't forget to write text on the Pinterest page that uses your keywords. This will help in your search rankings.

Tweet your infographics with [INFOGRAPHIC] in your tweet 
Once posted on your blog or Pinterest page, tweet the infographic and include [INFOGRAPHIC] in your tweet. People recognize this and will click through to view.

Create custom graphics for your blog image
For your blog posts, first pick out a good image using Creative Commons that has no usage restrictions. Again, if you don't use an image on your blog, Google will pout about it because all-text is not sparkley and shiny whereas text with an image is all pretty-like. Then, using the image, create a graphic and place text on it that will entice viewers to visit the link like the one below. The image should be posted to your Pinterest board.  Since viewers of Pinterest will also see the sparkley text prominently on the image, they will click the image. The link on the pinterest page should point back to the blog article url which will serve to further drive traffic to your article. And, while you're at it, you should add your logo to the bottom of the image you've created. That way, if people repin your image to their Pinterest boards, your logo will always be present.

Create a meme image and post it on your blog article and Pinterest page
Meme images are those funny images you see moving around the internet. They too are all sparkley and shiny, and make people giggle. You can highjack some of these images for your own use. See below for an example of one that was posted to a blog article about how to double your Gmail inbox placement rates. And here is the same image posted on our Pinterest board. The link on the Pinterest post points back to the blog article. A free tool to help you find and build your meme image is memegenerator.net. There you can pick from hundreds of meme images and write your own text on them.

You can follow Corey Northcutt on Twitter at @northcuttSEO

How retailers can use social to drive customer loyalty and make more money

Brick and mortar retailers (and online retailers) do a rather poor job in using social to help grow their own businesses. Several years ago, when you first started your retail store selling dried lima-beans, or used lawn-mower blades, or defunct Suzanne Summers flab-o-blaster-cisers or whatever it is that you sell, none of this social-schmocial stuff mattered.  Times have changed!  And so should your approach to building customer relationships.  Here are some quick ideas that you should incorporate into the retail experience you are providing for your customers.

For Brick and Mortar stores - ideas to grow your social

• Use in-store signage to promote your email newsletter, SMS messages, Facebook community, Twitter feed, and Pinterest page.  And while you're at it, promote your website.
• At the point of sale, ask your customers for their email address.  "If you give us your email, we'll send you special discounts on volume lima bean purchases!"
• Offer to send the customers their purchase receipt via email. This means you'll get their email address.  This isn't permission for you to start sending them your newsletter, but when you email their receipt to them, you can promote your email list signup form, SMS program, Facebook community, Twitter feed, and Pinterest boards.
• On your paper receipts, promote all these channels.  Print it right there on the receipt.  Offer a special incentive if they join or sign up for one.
• Monitor your social channels and answer questions / comments from customers early and often.  And, thank those that commented or tweeted.

For Online stores - ideas to grow your social

• Send shopping cart abandonment emails.  Today, only 22% of online retailers are doing this.  These can be very effective.
• Send a personalized email after purchase to thank the customer and invite them to your social channels.  Too many retailers send a thank you email, but it's not personalized.
• Monitor your social channels and answer questions early and often

ExactTarget did a great study on these topics

And since you have a retail store, check out how a tiny tavern sold thousands of tshirts bearing their logo.  The greatest free advertising your store will ever get.

Be glad Twitter broke up with LinkedIn

You date a girl for all that time, you give her all that great stuff, take her on dates to see those sappy girl movies, and then she dumps you for Steve McStud-o-bicepts because he has the really cool hair that has the swooshie thing at the front.  Well that's the situation with Twitter giving the old heave-ho to LinkedIn this week.  What does this mean to you as a small business owner?  In the past, if you created a Twitter post thingey (called a tweet), you could add "#li" in your tweet and that little code gizmo told Twitter to also post your tweet as an update to your LinkedIn profile.  This was looked at as a time saving measure whereby you could update both Twitter and LinkedIn at the same time (oh, and by the way, on your LinkedIn profile, there's also a place to post updates, for those of you that don't know).

Twitter has decided to bite the hand that feeds it by canceling this ability.  Not a smart move in my opinion, but it's no dumber than those nimnods at Netflix who decided it would be a good idea to separate their DVD vs streaming services.

Anyway, I'm really not that upset with this Twitter/LinkedIn spat.  Why?  Because you shouldn't be using the same text to post on Twitter as you post on LinkedIn (or any other social network) in the first place.  The reason I say that is because the viewers of  your different social networks have different expectations of what they want to see from you on each social platform (click the link and look for "The Social Breakup").  Twitter followers expect one type of post, Facebook fans expect another, and LinkedIn users a third.  The short of this is that you need to customize each post you place on each different social platform.  So, loosing this functionality isn't really much of a loss.

If you want to help streamline your control over posting to each different social network, try installing the Shareaholic plugin  in the Google Chrome browser.  It will at least help make the process somewhat easier and faster.

5 steps to create your first Pinterest board

5 Steps to create your first Pinterest board and take over the world

Are you a simpleton?  Do you read a lot of "Dummies Guide to...." books?  If so, you've come to the right place.  So, your wife told you to "set up a Pinterest board to help drive traffic" to your small business (eg- restaurant, fishing supply store, online junk seller, used tire salesman, pharmacy, or whatever).  But you don't know what Pinterest is, why your wife is on such a rant about it, or how your business could use Pinterest.  And after all you'd rather be applying suntan lotion whilst sipping iced cafe-o-laite.  And anyway, even if you knew how to set up a Pinterest account, you wouldn't know what to do with it.

Let's quit all the pouting and general caterwauling you're doing and set up your Pinterest account and your first "board":


Request an invite to Pinterest.
I have to request an invite?!  What they hay?  Yes, at this point Pinterest still requires an invitation to join.  The invitation must be embossed on 100% linen card stock.  The engraving must be done in 24k gold leaf in 8 pica font.  And, to get an invite in the first place, you must first prove that the engine oil in your car is Valvoline,... no, make that Quaker State.  Anyway, just request the invite and it won't be long before you get an invite.

Create your first "board"
A board is a hard thing made out of wood. Hitting your head on it hurts. But, it's also a place to stick images onto.  Now that you've received your coveted invite to join those of us who are elitist Pinterest pinheads, and your friends are all jealous, you need to create your first board. Before you do so, read this article because it will tell you why you'd want a Pinterest board, and what you are trying to do by creating one.  Within Pinterest, click Add > Add a Board. You'll get a popup that looks like this:

Type in a clever board title, choose a category, and then click Create.

Add pins (images) to your board
There are a couple of methods to add pins to your board.  You can use the Add+ button at the top of the Pinterest page and you'll get the same popup shown above. Then just click "Add a Pin".  But, to use this method, you need to have the image stored on your local computer.  Instead, it's easier and more flexible to install the Pinterest "Pin It" browser plugin so that you can pin images that you have on your website or elsewhere, from right inside your browser. To get to this magical button, you'll have to travel to the land where gnomes and fairies live.  Or, just go to "About>Pin It button" on the Pinterest.com website.  You'll then see this popup:

What the above image means by "Add this link to your bookmarks bar" is that it wants you to save that url as a bookmark in your browser (on your Bookmarks Bar). When you click the "Pin It" button, you'll see this dialog popup:

So, just literally drag the button onto the top of your browser where your bookmarks bar is located.
To use the Pin It button to add a pin to your board
When you are on a webpage where you see an image you'd like to pin on your board, click the Pin It button on your browser bar.  It will present you with a page of all the images on that webpage similar to the below (on this particular webpage there were two images; one with some text in it, and the other of Elaine Benes dancing, which is awesome).

Select which image on the page you want to pin and then you'll see this dialog:

Add a few details
Here you'll have a way to select which board you want to pin the image to, and what text to add to the pin. The text you add is important!  Search engines will see this text.  You should consider using text that relates to your website.  Once your image is pinned, you can Edit it to change the link (the default setting is that your image will link back to the page you pinned it from).

After you've pinned several images to your board, you should look around Pinterest and find similar boards.  Repin some of those images to your board and comment or "Like" other images.  The more you participate in the community, the more people will find your board and repin your pins.  And the more people that visit your board, the more traffic you'll get to your website, and the closer you'll become to world domination, the demise of your arch nemesis, and independent wealth beyond your wildest dreams.

PS- if you don't like the way Elaine dances, I can't help you.  It's awesome.  Come to think of it, get off my blog, you're not allowed here anymore.  You come back, 1 year.

5 easy steps to build your small business using LinkedIn

Pizza box math humor

Search engines love LinkedIn, just not necessarily YOUR page - 5 steps to build your small business using LinkedIn

If you run a pizza joint that gets most of it's business from passers-by on the corner of 8th & University Place in Greenwich Village, NY (no, there's not really one there, I already checked so stop looking), then your business might not need LinkedIn. But the rest of us, that are made or broken by the connections we make with business people, do need it. Many business people have a presence on LinkedIn but they aren't really maximizing it.  There are several hidden things that will make your time spent on this great social network well worth your time.

1- Link to your website using keywords, not the pesky "Company Website" text that LinkedIn wants to force on you

See the difference in the 2 links?  One has keywords, one does not

To help boost your search engine attractiveness / searchability / affinity / magnetic-ness and all around awesome-oscity, you need to use keywords for the text of the link that points back to your website. How do you do that? See below. This is a simple way to get LinkedIn to let you use whatever text you want for your website link instead of the old stand-by of "Company website" that they default for you. Just select "Other" on the field type dropdown.

Choose "Other" from the Website dropdown to expose a text field

2- Search engines love LinkedIn, but not your page because you don't use keywords in the right places

To get found, you need to make sure that you've not only got the right keywords on your LinkedIn profile, but you've got them in the right places.  Search engines love to see keywords in important places.  Heading tags on a webpage that have keywords in them are given more weight by the search engine than those same keywords in the body of the text of the page.

Add keywords in your job title

Yeah, yeah, I know, you have an official job title and you're afraid your boss will see that you've unofficially granted yourself another one. But really, I don't think she'll care. In the job title field, go ahead and title yourself with something slightly more keyword-awesome than "Sr. Director, Finance at Initech."  How about "Sr. Director, Offshore Financing and Finance Development Consultant Lead at Initech."  With a title like that, you're far more likely to get found by Google searches or LinkedIn searches.

Add keywords to your heading field.  

Same drill. Use some different keywords here. Just keep in mind that you don't have to regurgitate your job title onto the heading field.  

3- You have a personal profile page, but you need a business page

I don't mean to say "duh" here, but.... duh. Actually, if you're new to LinkedIn it's nothing to be ashamed of.  But, go through the process of creating a business page for your company.

4- Showcase your company with video

If your company has a short video, add it to your LinkedIn company business page. How? Well one way is to use the SlideShare app on LinkedIn. 

• Create your video
• Embed your video into a Powerpoint slide
• Using the SlideShare app on LinkedIn, upload your ppt to your profile page.  
• If you don't want the video to start playing immediately, then have the first slide of your ppt be just a intro slide with text that instructs viewers to click Play.  

In PowerPoint, here's where to embed a video into a .ppt file

5- Post, and post again. Use LinkedIn like a social network like Facebook

In the same manner you'll post updates to your Facebook page, post updates to both your LinkedIn company page and personal page. Just don't spam. Your friends and business followers don't want to hear about Farmville. A lot of companies just create a business page and then leave it alone. No! It's for you to tell the world what you are up to, why you do what you do, and finally explain why your haircut looks like Rod Blagojevich.

And, when posting to LinkedIn, keep in mind that people don't want to see the exact same post you just put on Twitter with all the little Twitter hashtags and @ symbols and hoo-ha. Instead, write in a short, business-like tone, use images, and point to your article/blog. The text of your post would look something like a type-written version of what your mother used to say to you when you were little and got in trouble. You know, short, to the point, and with just a touch of color. 

Have any other great LinkedIn ideas?  Post them in the comments below.

Read next: Be glad Twitter broke up with LinkedIn

Image credit: Flickr under Creative Commons

Why arsonists wish they had a Google+ business page

OK, lets say you're an arsonist, hell-bent on angst, and thinking it would be cheaper to burn stuff down if you would go to the neighborhood Costco store and buy napalm in volume.  Then, the more you think about it, this whole "sneak in and burn down buildings for no reason" is actually a lot of hard work.  I mean, it's hot and you got burned that one time.  It was a big owee.  And then it dawns on you....instead of doing all this hard work yourself, why not sell napalm to other arsonists and have them do the work for you!  You could buy a pallet of napalm at Costco, and then open an online business selling it!  But wait, who would know about my new small business?  How would I get the word out to other arsonists?  Well here's one idea; create a Google+ business page.

Why would you want to create a stupid Google+ business page?  Because it's not stupid, that's why. Google+ is yet another outlet for you to grow your business. I know, I know, you're saying "another social channel for me to keep up with?"  Look, the point isn't that "you have another social channel to keep up with".  The point is that you have another social channel to grow your business with.  See the point?  Glass half empty or half full?  You might be pressed for time running your small business, but just keep your pants on long enough to read this article.  A year from now, you don't want to be looking back and wondering "what if I had just done that stupid Google+ thing a year ago."
Step 1: Create a Personal Account

OK, the first thing you need is a Google+ personal account.  When you visit the link below, if you don't have one, it's going to make you create one.  It will ask for your name and some other overly personal stuff.  Oh, and when it asks you "what is your favorite coffee?", tell it you love the Guatemalan Antigua El Valle from Allegro at Whole Foods.  Believe me, it is Fair Trade coffee that does not suck.

Here are the simple steps to create your Google+ business page 

1. Visit http://www.google.com/+/business/

2. Click the link at the top that says "for Business"

3. After that you'll click the button to Create your Google+ page

4. Next you'll tell it that your are a Company, and fill out some stuff like the name of your company and website url.

5. Add your company tagline and a logo.  Google+ wants a logo that is square in shape and is 250px x 250px.  If they don't get what they want, they cry like little girls about it until you give them the right size logo. 

That's it. You have your Google+ business page. From there on, it's up to you to spread the word about your Google+ business page.  

• Share it with the connections you make on Google+ and in your Google+ circles. 
• Add a Google+ button to your website.  This will make it easy for people to find your page and recommend it to others.  
• Add posts to your Google+ business page frequently and be sure to make them public posts.

Here's a helpful video to get you started growing your Google+ presence.

Don't forget about LinkedIn either