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Data is the cinnamon of content marketing. It enhances your dish with a nice cinnamon flavor, but you probably don't want a big heaping spoonful of uncut cinnamon or the next thing you know you've launched a viral video meme. Or something like that. A story without data maybe is a nice story, but it's also toothless. The internet is littered with baseless opinions and we don't really need more of that. You can make an opinion insightful, however, when you back it up with facts, sources, numbers. Prove a product works laying out a success by the numbers. I want to see stories that know when to lean into the data, the kind of story that chews your face off and then drops the mic. Make an assertion, express an opinion, back it up with facts, but never forget that the numbers are there to support the story, and not the other way around. Cinnamon... face chewing... it must getting close to lunch time.

Jordan is right, I don't recommend spinning any of the content, it generally doesn't turn out well for users, and tends to make it 'unreadable'. Your best bet here is to think of Search and Email as two separate things. If you're going to use the content in multiple newsletters and reach other audiences (the same person won't read it twice), then that's perfectly fine. However, if you're going to allow ANY of it to get indexed by the search engines, then I would only allow one copy to get indexed. You can archive the other copies, but just make sure that you don't allow indexing of those copies. Duplicate Content isn't generally thought of as  'penalty', it's more about the fact that only the first crawled version gets indexed, and the others generally don't.

Can anyone else shed any light on this? Many thanks.

Thanks EGOL. I like this approach and think we'll give it a try. I think it's a soft approach that can help us get our foot in the door.

Hi Gary, I'm not entirely clear about your question, but it's best that you create content you know will move the needle for your brand and share it with sites you have a relationship with and that can help your business meet its content marketing goals. It's unlikely the websites you mention meet those qualifications, so I'd say start by creating a list of websites that you know can help your brand that publish similar content. Then reach out to the sites about sharing content on their website. The key, however, is to be very specific about your goals with regard to the relationship: Traffic? Conversions? etc. RS

This depends what your goal is, are you looking to rank both pages in search? If so, you will need to create unique content on both pages. However, if your goal is to promote one of the pages via other means, you can put a rel canonical tag in the header of the site, which will give content attribution back to the original page and will solve your duplicate content issues. Here's more information on the rel canonical tag: https://moz.com/learn/seo/canonicalization As another option, you could simply noindex one of the pages. Hope that helps.

I'm a huge believer that you CAN find a great writer on these low-cost sites. But I'm an even stronger believer that you'll (a) have to be very lucky (b) spend a lot of time weeding out low-quality providers and (c) be better off hiring an in-house writer/team to handle the duties. Based on my experience, however, most agencies creating in-house writing teams fall short in one of two areas: Even though they have the staff to create worthwhile, meaningful content, they refuse to commit to quality, focusing more on speed than precision, delivering anemic posts that clients soon see through. When the clients bolt, the writing team is disbanded. The problem was neither the writing team nor the clients. The agency simply lacked the heart to do what was right. They create a team of ONLY inexperienced writers, which means the quality of the content is likely to wane over time, and no one is likely to notice until it's too late. RS

I haven't paid for Google Custom Search engines in the past, but depending on your traffic, your search units may be far less than expected. We see plenty of large sites (thousands of pages+, millions of visits) that see less than 0.1% of their pageviews from searches. If you're starting the search feature from scratch, I wouldn't assume from the start that you're going to need to pay the $2000 rate. Scoop.it is a bit more like Pinterest or Delicious. You can post stuff to your Scoop.it account, but it's probably not going to be a good solution for searching a website.

Dirk, Anthony - Thanks for the feedback. Very helpful. Vic

First, I apologize for responding so tardily. I would like to congratulate you for taking the time to craft a post for YouMoz. Also, it's commendable that you're seeking feedback at this stage. Most authors, myself included, simply want it off their plates at this stage. While, yes, as Dirk said, it can take time for us to get to your post, that's owing in large part to (a) the initial quality of the post (posts that are more ready to be posted do get moved ahead of the line as we review, re-review and include copious notes in the articles to authors for revision) and (b) how effective authors are at making the needed changes in a timely fashion. Our goal with YouMoz is to post the best content possible. That can mean a lot of back and forth between author and editor. Feel free to email us at editor@moz.com RS

Hi, you sure can drop me a line, but here is how you do it - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Article_wizard/Ready_for_submission You can see two buttons: create draft and submit directly. The second one is the one I was talking about. But, again, it can bite you back if your article will violate anything

If the only option is to disallow via the robots.txt, then I would agree with your setup - disallow the slugs specific to the tags you don't want indexed. I've heard shopify is a little rough to work with sometimes because of the limitations, so whatever you can do I think is better than nothing. Remember that the robots exclusion is treated as a suggestion and not a command, so if it's possible to assign a no-index meta tag to those URL types that would be best case. Looks like you're on the right track with the post below: { % if handle contains "tagged" % } { % endif % } The one suggestion I would make is that you use noindex,follow so the content will still be crawled, but the duplicate tag won't get indexed. That would create multiple paths to the content on your site, but not create an index bloat issue with multiple tags.

Hi Shauna! I agree with everyone here, and I'd encourage you to specifically not focus on the practices you've mentioned.  I'd also like to suggest two specific resources for you—Cyrus Shepard's "How to Rank" post and ebook, and our Beginner's Guide to Link Building.

Excellent thanks Dana I have a premium subscription to Screaming Frog so I'll get on this straight away - thought there must be an easy way to find them but forgot about the custom settings in Screaming Frog Will get on this right away Kind Regards Liam

To bring the 10x concept to a macro level, it's about being better than you were and looking at others to learn about what you can do to be better. Evolve as a person, as a brand, or an organization. It's about putting in time, care, and thought into something. It's about attention to detail. It's about investing into your end product. Whatever that may be, whether it’s a piece of content (like this answer to a discussion question), a service, a product, or an experience. That way you can stand behind it. However, the larger a company grows the harder it is to_have accountability_. · If you have a chat box on your site, it's about responding right away. · If you have a phone number on the site, it's about answering in a professional manner. · If your client has a question, is about answering or following up with the correct answer. · If you have a product or service it means going through the user experience and asking yourself where it can be better. Mostly**, it's common sense**, the main problem with it is that many organizations don't assign anyone with real quality assurance, you know, common sense thinking, instead they task them with specific orders and give them limited authority to act on problems. (Mainly from my corporate experience, although I’m sure others have had this impression of huge conglomerates) Really, it's the idea baked into theheart of capitalism. If you don't become better you will founder, then run out of money, than dissolve. Do you feel bad for those that dissolve, you shouldn’t, they deserve it, it’s called survival of the fittest. Some brands have no hope because they are generally disliked, good luck becoming a 10x brand when you are in the business of telecommunications, insurance, or banking because you are already disliked. These organizations have become large and unwieldy and have created a lot of ill-will in the community, for themselves and their industries as a whole. Who likes calling their communications tech provider, insurance, or bank?. These experiences are often characterized with ridiculous and frustrating automated menus that ask you to type in long account numbers only to have the rep ask you again. They reroute you to wrong departments, and sometimes just hang up, why... no accountability. Too often customer service representative in these industries don't have access to the info needed by the client and the decision makers are off limits for questioning. These industries are very large and un-capitalistic due to the barriers to entry and government complicity. Hint: Government regulations could enforce morality and ethics in business but have been largely coopted by the organizations that they are supposed to regulate. Other industries that have low barriers to entry (real competition) are the places where brands can evolve. They can have honest and meaningful conversations with their clients and prospects, and find out what they want. Sometimes you want to be better but don't know how. The answer - ask those you serve. Comcast has never called me asking "What do you wish would change about Comcast?" - They aren't in the position to do this. There is no one at the company who actually cares about client satisfaction. They will try to please you if you are calling to cancel or if you are looking for service but once you are in a contract, they treat you like a second class citizen. At that point, what do they care about your satisfaction, they have you on a contract and they have your money. Hopefully, you spotted the trick, they should care. Why, because it’s called lifetime value of a customer. When Google Fiber comes around to Chicago (I’m not holding my breath), I won’t feel the least bit bad about switching. As soon as that contract is up, I will look to the ends of the earth to avoid doing business with a company like that, but sometimes, it’s the quality of internet speed, or the price of a product that is the end all be all decision parameter. Like in the Amazon example, people will hassle a company for answers and then turn around and give their money to Amazon. It’s unfortunate, but it’s what we deserve as a society if those are our ethics. Like food and consumer products, you have to pay for quality. If you expect good customer service you will have to pay a bit more. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. Being a 10x brand is only possible in industries characterized by flexibility and highly adaptive environments. If you sell manufacturing equipment, and you can’t compete on price, find a way to communicate the value of after the sale support, and really deliver. If you provide a web based accounting service there are many ways to improve your offer with things like free training and access to knowledge. You may have noticed that I am using this medium to vent a bit but I hope that my examples are useful when discussing the idea of customer satisfaction and what it really means. A 10x brand will bend over backwards to make you happy, but at the same time, they shouldn’t break their backs to satisfy their competitors clients. A 10x brand makes an offer for a product or service that you didn’t know you need but now can’t live without. Maybe you didn’t even know it could exist. Many of the most popular emerging brands are rising to stardom due to new functionality and technology. Thank you for the discussion idea. Please let me know your thoughts about my somewhat cynical post, I would love to turn this into a conversation.

Matt, For me, it's a three-pronged approach: The content ideation, creation and amplification process are all very important parts of the content marketing process. Without one, the other two are not very effective. For Ideation, I like to focus on what it is I'm trying to accomplish (e.g,., the goal), then marry that with the needs of the audience. For content creation, the goal is to discern the best medium by which to share and create the content, based on the goal of the content and the ideas being expressed. For example, a post that's designed to build a conversation around an idea I hope to test might include light text and heavy graphics and be shared on Google Plus and Instagram, in addition to my blog. The amplification part of the process is the most important, and for good reason: Content that isn't amplified is unlikely to get engagement, shares or links. That's why I like to say, "If it's not important enough to drive engagement, don't create it." Links are anything but a given, but shares and engagement are a clear signal that your work is finding and touching the right audience. Where I veer off course a bit - and recommend that others do the same - is in thinking about amplification first, which is an idea Rand has shared for years. Instead of thinking (ideation) about what content I should create (creation), I focus on who'll promote the content first. That way, I'm creating content that's more likely to be shared and engaged with. I'm convinced others could/would find success by doing the same thing. RS

We've actually had a couple Mozinars on this topic recently. Practical Content Skills to Improve Creativity and Idea Generation by Shelli Walsh Content Creation for the Real World by Joel Klettke

Also, for the future, I recommend using two plugins for WordPress: Redirection by John Godley: This plugin lets you set up redirects within the WP dashboard, which means you can keep track of what's being redirected where within your WP administration. Yoast SEO by Team Yoast: This plugin lets you add and edit a lot of different SEO-related items, gives you tips regarding keywords you want to focus on, and a lot more. It's incredibly useful. To be clear, I don't work for or with either of these developers/teams, but they're great plugins that sound as though they'd be especially helpful for you.

hi Tymen, Thanks. I learn something new today! J