Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Thanks Aggie! Glad to see Matt Cutts addressed it directly.

Thanks Tuzzell, just what I was after.

TL;DR: I am writing copy for some web pages. I am duplicating some bits of copy exactly on separate web pages. And in other cases I am using the same bits of copy with slight alterations. Is this bad for SEO?

Details: We sell about 10 different courses. Each has a separate page. I'm currently writing copy for those pages.

Some of the details identical for each course. So I can duplicate the content and it will be 100% applicable.

For example, when we talk about where we can run courses (we go to a company and run it on their premises) – that's applicable to every course.

Other bits are applicable with minor alterations. So where we talk about how we'll tailor the course, I will say for example: "We will the tailor the course to the {technical documents|customer letters|reports} your company writes." Or where we have testimonials, the headline reads "Improving {customer writing|reports|technical documents} in every sector and industry".

There is original content on each page. The duplicate stuff may seem spammy, but the alternative is me finding alternative re-wordings for exactly the same information. This is tedious and time-consuming and bizarre given that the user won't notice any difference. Do I need to go ahead and re-write these bits ten slightly different ways anyway?

Do you know of any service businesses (ie not software or SaaS) that uses video marketing effectively?
Especially any company offering more than one service. Just for example, a training company of any kind.

Literally anything that comes to mind will help me so, so much. My Google-fu is failing me on this one.

My boss wants me to register a domain with a US company.

However, most of our customers are in the UK. Though I would host any future website using a UK hosting provider, I don't know if registering the domain with a US provider would make any difference SEO-wise?

I don't quite know what you mean by 'open page content' - I'm guessing you just mean resources, articles etc open to all?

In any case - WordPress is good for SEO, and most developers use a CMS now even if they're capable of hand-coding.

With a few exceptions, the only time you might want static HTML pages is if you're keeping content the same forever. And even then, you can keep WordPress the same forever.

So I don't think you'll get any benefits from static HTML, and even if you do:

Benefits from static HTML (whatever they are, I doubt you'd find any) <<<<<<< Developer cost

No problem. I know how hard it is to start in the deep end. Best of luck.

Hi there

A few thoughts on 'electric bike':

You've got a huge amount of keyword cannibalization going on. Have a look at your title tags - you've got 'Cytronex Electric Bikes' at the front of most of them. That's some of the most important space on your site's page, it needs to be used wisely. Put whatever keyword(s) each page is targetting there. You'd be better off having something like:

Electric Bikes | Cytronex

Electric Bike Reviews | Cytronex

Light Electric Bikes | Cytronex

etc.

Also, you're in a very competitive niche - a search reveals lots of highly SEO-ed pages. I can't imagine you were getting much traffic when you were at 25-ish anyway. Your boss needs to understand dropping from page 3 to page 7 is nowhere near as bad as dropping from 1st position to 3rd - at least in real revenue.

You do have some links from some relevant sites. But your inbound links could use a bit more keyword rich anchor text on inbound links. I've had a look, and your inbound anchor text is mostly your brand name. In an aggressively SEO-ed niche, that's going to hurt.

Google Adwords estimates a million global searches a month for that term. That's high and that's why the competition is so high. Nobody can reasonably expect you to compete with agency-managed sites, especially if you're new to this.

How long have you been looking at this drop? Big changes, especially in the lower rankings, aren't that unusual. All the more so in competitive (ie highly spam-ridden) niches. You're at the sharp end of algorithm changes. You'll need to measure this for a longer time before really freaking out about it.

So my main advice would be to get some better anchor text links. You're getting some good media coverage - see if you or a PR person can get a few anchor text-rich links in from good sources. That'll make a difference.

You should also definitely try targetting some less competitive terms as well as getting rankings for 'electric bikes'. Targetting the entire site at that one term isn't likely to help.

Have you considered adding a blog, a resources section (etc) which can contain some easier keywords? 'Best electric bike', 'fast electric bike' etc. You already rank well for 'lightest electric bike', you could try picking up some variants of that. Much fewer searches, but a lot better chance of ranking.

Being fast seems to be a Unique Selling Point for your bikes, so I'd target anything related to that - 'fast electric bike, power electric bike' hard.

Also you don't seem to have any of the synonyms for bike - pedal bike, push bike etc. - anywhere on your site. Your customers may use that language so so should you.

I actually solved this problem with a very similar solution - using the address markup at schema.org

Thanks for putting me on the right track!

It worked! The map is gone. Looks like Google really does pay attention to those schemas.

If by 'high-quality sites' you mean sites which have no purpose other than to let you submit articles for links - Google's Panda update greatly reduced the effectiveness of links from these sites.

A simple rule of thumb is: does the site I'm looking at have any relevance to human beings? Will they derive real value from the content on this site? Sites that let anyone submit anything without any real editorial discretion aren't valuable to users, and so they're not valuable to Google.

There are many kinds of good quality sites. One good source are online magazines and blogs in your sector. If you want to be accepted by a high-quality site, you've got to have high-quality content to justify that. The extra work involved in trying to get a good piece of writing accepted to a respected blog or website is worth it, as many an SEO can testify.

Best of luck

Hi there

A few thoughts on 'electric bike':

You've got a huge amount of keyword cannibalization going on. Have a look at your title tags - you've got 'Cytronex Electric Bikes' at the front of most of them. That's some of the most important space on your site's page, it needs to be used wisely. Put whatever keyword(s) each page is targetting there. You'd be better off having something like:

Electric Bikes | Cytronex

Electric Bike Reviews | Cytronex

Light Electric Bikes | Cytronex

etc.

Also, you're in a very competitive niche - a search reveals lots of highly SEO-ed pages. I can't imagine you were getting much traffic when you were at 25-ish anyway. Your boss needs to understand dropping from page 3 to page 7 is nowhere near as bad as dropping from 1st position to 3rd - at least in real revenue.

You do have some links from some relevant sites. But your inbound links could use a bit more keyword rich anchor text on inbound links. I've had a look, and your inbound anchor text is mostly your brand name. In an aggressively SEO-ed niche, that's going to hurt.

Google Adwords estimates a million global searches a month for that term. That's high and that's why the competition is so high. Nobody can reasonably expect you to compete with agency-managed sites, especially if you're new to this.

How long have you been looking at this drop? Big changes, especially in the lower rankings, aren't that unusual. All the more so in competitive (ie highly spam-ridden) niches. You're at the sharp end of algorithm changes. You'll need to measure this for a longer time before really freaking out about it.

So my main advice would be to get some better anchor text links. You're getting some good media coverage - see if you or a PR person can get a few anchor text-rich links in from good sources. That'll make a difference.

You should also definitely try targetting some less competitive terms as well as getting rankings for 'electric bikes'. Targetting the entire site at that one term isn't likely to help.

Have you considered adding a blog, a resources section (etc) which can contain some easier keywords? 'Best electric bike', 'fast electric bike' etc. You already rank well for 'lightest electric bike', you could try picking up some variants of that. Much fewer searches, but a lot better chance of ranking.

Being fast seems to be a Unique Selling Point for your bikes, so I'd target anything related to that - 'fast electric bike, power electric bike' hard.

Also you don't seem to have any of the synonyms for bike - pedal bike, push bike etc. - anywhere on your site. Your customers may use that language so so should you.