Avoid Making Some of These Detrimental Mistakes That Can Negatively Impact Your SEO Efforts
Sharing an article on your own site can be a great way to boost your credibility and show your readers that you are doing adequate research and staying on top of new developments within your field. However, if not shared properly, you can run the risk of negatively affecting your conversion rates and being counterproductive to SEO efforts being exerted by your team or a third-party company.
Duplicate content or simply posting a link to another website does not allow your site to be properly indexed by Google and other search engines. In turn, this can affect your ability to show up on Google searches and minimize the amount of traffic being directed to your website, which means you may lose a significant amount of potential clients! Here’s what Clicc Media recommends when it come to sharing someone else’s content.
Summarize the Content
Remember that copy and pasting an article which already exists as your own is considered plagiarism and could result in serious legal action. In addition, Google will consider your site duplicate material and your site may be penalized for it, even if you include a link back to the original article. Additionally, simply posting a link to another site’s content won’t allow your content to be indexed and it won’t appear on search engines under keywords regarding the topic.
Instead, take the time to read through the article. Then, write a brief summary or synopsis for your readers. You can even write it as a reaction or response to the original article! This way, you can highlight key points you found useful and elaborate on them from your business’ unique standpoint. Including a link to the article and identifying the authors can allow you to give credit where it is due as well as incorporate a strong backlink to your site. Feel free to also include a quote or two from the article – just try not to exceed two paragraphs worth.
Highlight Quotes Properly
Speaking of quotes, if you find that there is a whole passage or a lengthy area of text that you would like to quote or share verbatim with your readers, utilize a different text format to separate it from the rest of the article. Block quotes are a great way to not only draw emphasis to a certain point or idea being illustrated but also helps to show that it is an expert from the original content. Indentations, bolded text, or italics are also an excellent way to set apart chunks of text taken from the linked article. These features are usually available within the formatting areas of your website’s backend. If you work with a website management company, discuss how this can be achieved.
Ensure It Comes From a Quality Site
A poisonous backlink could be detrimental to your site ranking. Just because you agree with the content, doesn’t mean it is coming from a reliable website! Sharing links from low-ranked sites can cause your site’s ranking to lower. Keep in mind anyone with a credit card can start a website and share whatever content they please. Sticking to high-ranked, expert websites will, in turn, help to bring your site’s ranking up. This is because you are sharing credible, trustworthy content from a well-known site.
For example, sharing a link to an article published by a journalist at the New York Times can be regarded as more reliable than a link to an article published by a user on a free blog hosting site. Google agrees with this and, therefore, will rank your site according to the content within it, including backlinks. If you are unsure of the quality of your links, a backlink audit can help determine what is helping and what is hurting your website.
Content is Key
Still not sure what content you should be sharing? Not to worry! Clicc Media Inc offers an extensive variety of SEO techniques and content marketing services to help you create and maintain an excellent website that generates traffic and creates conversions. To schedule your one-on-one consultation with one of our experts, contact our office at 954-271-3111 today!