Andy Crestodina

The duplicate content penalty is a myth. If there are two pages on your website (or on multiple sites) with similar content, Google will simply choose one. Usually it's the URL with higher authority (links) or the URL that went live first. But duplicate content often represents a missed opportunity. If you have two pages with very similar content, you probably should have just one, more comprehensive page. Google is looking for the best page on the web for the topic/keyphrase. Your job as an SEO is to make the most informative page possible. Answer all the related questions. Touch on all the related subtopics. Don't worry about duplicate content. Obsess over quality.

Every message has a messenger. And the best messenger is the customers themselves. Conveying that key message in a testimonial is so much more effective than simply typing it out yourself. Surround anything in quotes and it becomes credible. It becomes social proof. To gather them, make gathering feedback part of your process. Call your customers. Ask for feedback. When you find a superfan, ask if they wouldn't mind sharing their input. UGC happens naturally all the time. Quotation marks are the most powerful key on your keyboard. Use it!

Make a content calendar, but don't be a slave to it. You'll get better results by keeping quality high rather than hitting an arbitrary deadline that you set for yourself. Every piece should exceed the audience's expectations for detail and quality. That's the key to success. It's not about publishing weekly. It's about making it so good, they remember it weeks later.

People grumble about it, but GA4 is major upgrade in measuring engagement. "Engagement rate" is a far far better metric than bounce rate. Your engagement rate is the percentage of visits in which the visitor stayed for 10+ seconds OR visited 2+ pages OR triggered a conversion (subscribed, filled out a form, etc.). Look at the engagement rate for various traffic sources. Look for patterns. You may find big clues into which of your efforts is attracting the highest quality traffic ...and which visitors just barf and bail.