Search engines do not like duplicate content. Google is especially aggressive when it comes to weeding out unnecessary content from its listings. The simple way Google does this is to keep the first copy it finds and to ignore all duplicate versions after that.

There are several types of Duplicate content:

1. Content that is stolen, ether blatantly taken from a site or scrapped by bots to create content.
2. Added in two locations on the site to aid navigation. This content belongs in two places on a site but it is really the same content.
3. Accidentally duplicated content.
   1. This can be subtle. For example, if you have a gallery and each picture has its own page, if you keep the meta tags and head titles the same and the rest of the pages contain only minimal text, you may find only one of your gallery pages will be listed.
   2. Another example of this is what is known as boilerplate repetition, where too much content is the same on each page. For example, having a large copyright statement on all pages.
4. Printer friendly pages.
5. Syndicated content.

The good news is that Google will not ban your site for duplicate content. Unless it appears deceptive and intentional, it will just not list the duplicate pages.

The best ways to avoid any duplicate trouble are to manage your site with a good robots.txt file or better still, use Google Webmaster tools and a sitemap.xml document to label the content correctly for the spiders.

Oh and of course the number one way to avoid duplicate content is to hire good writers to create original compelling Search-Engine-friendly content. And look no further then DDA as we have the best writers in the whole world when it comes to such a task.

Today, I will complain. My first complaint is that 15 minutes into my drive to work I realized I forgot something very important and had to turn back to pick it up, and by doing so I woke up my 3-year old. Second, in my efforts to stop using plastic water bottles, the reusable water container I filled up and placed in my car fell and spilled all over the back seat. Third, as I was stopped at a traffic light, the gentlemen in the car next to me rolled down his window to tell me that something was hanging off of my front suspension. Great. So, I pulled over and deemed it non-life threatening and off to work I went.

Now, finally at work with my morning coffee, I decide to read a brief article about the use of type for HTML websites. This should have cheered me up since I’m such a font fanatic. It turns out that the article was one long complaint regarding designing accessible websites and the font choices designers are forced to use. How appropriate for today. I quite enjoyed reading this article as I have often struggled with wanting each DDA-designed website to look stunning, sexy, and load quickly with lots of searchable HTML text, but knowing that we are restricted to a handful of fonts that will show correctly on different browsers and multiple platforms. The writer of the article pointed out that great advances in technology for web typography have not surfaced for 12 years. Well, that is definitely a valid complaint. These restrictions can definitely pose a problem, but fortunately DDA’s degreed and experienced graphic designers work hard to find a balance between beautiful, user-friendly designs that can also be search engine optimized to perform well on search engines like Google.

So, Arial, Courier, Georgia, Times, Verdana, Tahoma and Trebuchet, the spotlight will still shine on you as for the time being (and hopefully not for another 12 years) you will be the font of choice for HTML-based websites.

Where does your traffic come from? Or more specifically,  which search engine sends you the most visitors? Well, obviously this is a rhetorical question, as I know you will answer Google. Below is the breakdown of traffic sent to one of our sites.

87% of there traffic is from Google–note that is just search engine traffic, not including referrals from other sources. You might say, well, maybe they just rank better in Google than in Yahoo or MSN, but then don’t they pretty much rank in all the main engines for roughly the same keywords. It just seems that Google gets so much more traffic that it is reflected in how much it sends our way.

So Google is still King and it seems it will stay that way for the foreseeable future–which means that you’d better play by their rules, because if you lose your rankings in Google, then you lose your traffic.