GottaQuirk

How do you run a search campaign for a solution nobody knows exists?

by Carlos Menezes

TeamBug, one of our newest clients, is essentially an online team management application. The offering for amateur sports teams is simple but incredibly effective – through a host of features TeamBug lets managers create sites for their own teams where they can organise fixtures, decide on line-ups based on player profiles and communicate directly with their players.

Text messages or emails are sent to players with the individuals replying whether they are available for the fixture or not. Any details that they could then be interested in are supplied on the site itself – the position that each player will be in, kickoff time, a map to the game and match reports.

There are a number of other features available that I won’t go into detail about here, but at the end of the day it’s a great offering at a very affordable price.

The problem that we face when marketing it is that TeamBug is somewhat a victim of its own success. Being the first on the market (that we can see), not a lot of people are aware of the offering and hence won’t even know to search for it.

So how do we go about running a SEM campaign for it? First up, of course, is the extensive keyword research. Optimising for generic sports terms is out of the window given the competitive nature of the sector and the scope of the project. Long-tail keywords more directly related to TeamBug’s offering are probably not popular enough, so a compromise needs to be reached and keywords are chosen that will display our results contextually.

For our PPC ads this isn’t too much of an issue – clearly written adverts that cut to the chase are enough to ensure that no clicks (read: media budget) are wasted. True, there were Quality Score issues to be taken into account if we were to face a low click-through rate, but we were confident that this wouldn’t be the case. The offering is solid enough to attract significant attention and simple enough to have its core communicated by a PPC ad’s short character count.

Facebook CPC ads are even simpler – targeting interests and activities ensures that we are reaching the right target audience. Chances are that if someone has football listed as an activity he belongs to an amateur team, or knows someone who does.

Of course there are a number of other tactics that need to be used, but the above are probably the most straightforward ‘push tactics’ that are employed.

And then came the news that Nike had released a competitor product – Playmaker.

Strangely enough, this wasn’t a reason for panic. Quite the opposite in fact. Despite the fact that Nike is one of the world’s largest brands, has a great ad and an enormous budget to showcase Playmaker, ultimately it has an inferior product. If TeamBug occupies the same space and is positioned accordingly, it should come out quite well, and with more and more attention being generated due to Nike’s involvement, the little guys suddenly find themselves in a great position.

Tweaking our PPC, SEO and Facebook campaigns to react to Nike’s emergence is simple enough, but how best to capitalise on all of the social media buzz that the giant’s involvement will inevitably generate? The answer – BrandsEye.

Although most obviously an Online Reputation Management tool, BrandsEye has a host of other functions and I have long believed that one of the most powerful is that of a lead generating mechanism.

By identifying conversations surrounding Playmaker and the like, around people frustrated with its limitations and looking for something more comprehensive, BrandsEye brings TeamBug right to the people who are asking for it.

Of course it doesn’t end there – how TeamBug interacts and positions itself with these individuals and communities is probably going to be the single greatest determining factor in its online success – but it does give the brand the chance it needs to compete with a global giant whose daily marketing budget is probably enough to sponsor the Quirk cricket team's drinking habits for life.

2008/11/27 | permalink | comments (0) | trackbacks (0)

Conversion Optimisation Tools

by Heidi Edelmuller

Use conversion optimisation to close the loop. (Image via Flickr, by Jorge under CC).

What is Conversion Optimisation?

Every website has at least one goal. This goal, commonly called a “conversion” , is the most desired action for the visitors that come to the site. In fact, you could say the purpose of a website is to help the visitor reach that goal and convert.

Types of conversions vary: from a credit card transaction, submitting an online form or downloading a file to simply accessing a certain page.

One of the major benefits of Online Marketing is the ability to accurately measure the number of conversions on a site, along with other metrics like number of visitors – which then allows you to work out the conversion rate. Beyond simply measuring these things it's also possible to use the information from your tracking programs and feed it back into the system. You can then test, improve and optimise the process of getting a user to convert. This is what we call Conversion Optimisation.

Why is Conversion Optimisation important?

Conversion Optimisation helps you make the most of the traffic that comes to your site. This can be done in 2 main ways:

Use your data to determine which types of traffic bring in the most conversions – and then focus on bringing in more of that traffic.
Use testing to determine how to change your site in order to get more conversions from on-site traffic.

In order to test and improve both your traffic-driving tactics and your site, you need to gather as much information as possible. There are hundreds of tools available, ranging from very basic and free to very complicated and expensive. For the purpose of this post I will be covering some of the popular, easy to use and FREE (or pretty damn cheap) tools available. These are ideal for the beginner to intermediate conversion optimiser.

What Conversion Optimisation Tools Should You Use?

Google have, over the years, introduced several tools that can holistically track your Online Marketing data. The major advantages of the Google products are that they are free, simple and integrate well.

Google AdWords Conversion Optimizer
Google’s Conversion Optimizer is a tool within Google’s PPC advertising platform AdWords. It allows you to manage your campaigns by cost per acquisition (CPA) rather than by traditional cost per click (CPC) or cost per impression (CPM). You choose the CPA that you are willing to pay, and Google uses software to edit your bidding price and advert position in order to meet your specified CPA. While most PPC fundis (myself included) will argue that software can never replace a skilled campaign manager, this tool is very helpful if you do not have the time or experience to optimise your campaign (for some tips on how to use Conversion Optimizer, click here). This tool can only be used if you are advertising with AdWords and have implemented AdWords conversion tracking on your site.

Google Analytics
If there is one tool that you should be using, this is it. Google Analytics is free, easy to implement and simple to use. It’s basically a web tracking program that allows you to see where your site traffic is coming from and how it is behaving on your site. You can set up goals to work out conversion rates on different types of traffic, and also allocate value to goals to work out a CPA. As it is easily integrated with all other Google products like Google Check Out, Analytics will definitely help you to close the loop on your online marketing efforts.

Google Website Optimizer
Just as its name suggests, this tool allows you to optimise your website by split testing different versions of pages. You can, for example, set up 2 different versions of your homepage and Website Optimizer will randomly split your traffic between these pages before calculating which page delivers the best results. You can experiment with both A/B split testing or the more complicated multivariate testing. This tool is available to anyone using Google Adwords or Google Analytics.

Crazy Egg
Crazy egg is the only non-Google product on this list and also the only one to have a monthly fee. However, at only $ 9/month for their basic package, Crazy Egg is well worth the money. In a nut (or egg) shell, this product allows you to see how traffic behaves on your site by showing you where traffic clicks. This is easily illustrated on a heat map (or more detailed confetti map), which shows an infra-red type image of the clicking activity on any page on your site. Crazy Egg will make it easy for you to see if you have placed page elements where visitors expect them to be, and you can keep testing until you get the page layout that results in the least confusion and frustration for your visitor.

Give these a try and let me know what you think.

2008/11/26 | permalink | comments (5) | trackbacks (0)

Getting Noticed: Tips for Great SEM

by Lyndi Lawson

Image via Flickr, by Chris Gin under CC

Seach Engine Marketing (SEM) is a complicated beast that requires a considered approach. Here are some things to take into account while you’re considering the best strategy to slay or tame it.

1). Make sure you stand out

Whether you’re marketing yourself on the high street or advertising small china figurines that collect dust in old ladies’ homes, it is important to make yourself stand out. It’s the same with SEM. There will almost always be advertisements for products that are similar, if not the same as yours. Essentially, those delightfully upstanding high street citizens are all offering the same thing, but it’s the one who tries to maul you through your car window at the traffic lights that you’re going to remember. Whether it’s a snappy PPC ad or optimised copy that would make Shakespeare proud, you need to make sure that your customers take note of and remember your online endeavours.

2). Strong calls to action

A great SEM campaign needs to tell its target audience what to do and how to do it. While the advertiser may know what he is trying to achieve, it is not always as obvious to the target audience. People are busy and while, getting them to actually read about your product is the first hurdle, you need them to buy it or fulfil your site goals rather than merely thinking that it looks interesting. Calls to action not only tell customers what to do but they also tell them how to do it - a good thing if you’re trying to make a sale.

3). Run an integrated campaign

Having recently integrated our SEO and PPC teams into the awesome Ministry of Cunning SEM plans, we are all about the holistic approach. This is not a new idea either – using too much of one and not enough of the other is a sure fire way to fail at the ultimate goal of dominating the SERPs. More than that, they are complementary tactics, which, when used correctly will ensure more traffic to your site as well as a higher conversion rate.

4). Landing pages matter

Do not underestimate the importance of landing pages. Think of house hunting – it involves a lot of time looking at advertisements, followed by viewing the real thing. Very often, no matter how incredible a house sounds in an advertisement, it’s the first few minutes that have the most impact on your decision to either run away screaming or investigate further. Entrances to houses are exactly like landing pages. They are your strongest indicator of whether you’ve found what you’re looking for or if you simply aren’t in Kansas anymore. Some advice for landing pages: keep the copy short and to the point, include a strong call to action and ensure that it’s relevant to the search engine result that they clicked on.

5). Focus on relevance

I cannot emphasise this enough. If someone clicks on a link that advertises pink fluffy toy elephants, they need to be taken to a landing page where there are pink fluffy toy elephants for sale. If you think this through logically, why would someone who had clicked on a link for fluffy pink elephants actually want to purchase a Russian bride? I don’t see the link and, I suspect, neither will your visitors. Relevant content, in addition to ensuring more conversions, will increase your chance of legitimately getting to the top of the organic search results and will ensure better Paid Search rankings too. And, even if you’re selling Russian brides, you can retain some semblance of credibility provided you are at least transparent about it.

2008/11/25 | permalink | comments (0) | trackbacks (0)

Traffic: Not Just An English Rock Band

by Shaun Oakes

What Shaun does in the evenings. (Image via Flickr, by mistress_f under CC)

Traffic is a vital component to the success of your website. You need to attract visitors to your site where they can either be exposed to your brand or be converted into an enquiry, lead or sale.

The overriding principle is to generate traffic to your site which is relevant and to get that traffic to interact appropriately with your site, convert according to your site’s goals and give your brand suitable exposure.

Traffic can be split up into two main camps - Organic and Inorganic.
Let's take a look at these groups and highlight their potential pros and cons.

1) Inorganic Traffic (Paid Listings)

Inorganic traffic refers to "unnatural" forms of traffic i.e. traffic that is bought or paid for. This is a quick and effective method of sending almost instant traffic to your site, via the use of paid listings or sponsored links.

The most common forms of paid traffic are usually secured through banner advertising or paid listings.
For example: Google's Pay Per Click campaigns have paid listings running down the right hand side of the SERPs. These advertisers bid to have their adverts positioned there and will pay a predetermined amount whenever someone clicks on their advert. The most typical costing used here is CPC. For banner advertising the payment model is usually CPM which is based on how many people view the advert. New trends for CPA are emerging where you pay for a specific action such as a form being filled in.

Relevancy is key here. You don't want to highlight used cars in your adverts when you're actually selling scooters.
If done correctly, paid listings can prove to be incredibly cost effective, driving targeted traffic to your site within a matter of hours.

Besides Google, you can also drive paid traffic to your site using:

Yahoo!,
MSN and
Facebook paid listing options.

Upside	Traffic volumes obtained using this method can be massive. Results can be obtained within hours.
Downside	You need to continue pumping money into this avenue in order for it to be effective.
Traffic Quality	Incredibly high if done correctly, as these would be targeted

2) Organic Traffic

The broadest category of traffic as there are various options available.
Organic traffic refers to visitors who have arrived on your site through "natural" free avenues such as via search engine results pages (SERPs), Social Media sources or conventional linking from 3rd party websites.

2.1) SERPs

In terms of traffic volumes, visitors deriving from organic SERPs (i.e.: the left hand side of a search results page) can be just as effective as paid listings.
The difference here is in the quality of the traffic obtained.

While you have complete control over paid listings and banner advertising (you can dictate anything from which key phrase your advert appears to which page the user will then land on) this is not really the case with organic SERPs. You are at the behest of the search engines and how they choose to index your site. The best you can do is adopt positive SEO (search engine optimisation tactics) to maximise the chances of the search engine bots indexing your site favourably.

Through correct keyword optimisation we can have greater control over which pages on our site appear on the SERPs for certain key phrases, but we never have full control over what is being indexed or how users find us.

For example: A restaurant review post you wrote may contain a throw-away line about drinking a brand of tea. Users looking to buy this brand may end up arriving on this page via the SERPs and will then probably leave just as quickly as it's not really relevant to what they were looking for. So, although a strong presence on organic SERPs will drive a continuous stream of "free" traffic, the quality is not always of the highest order.

Upside	If a site has a strong presence on the SERPs, the site can generate a steady flow of free traffic.
Downside	Visitors will not be as targeted as inorganic traffic and high traffic may not necessarily equate to high conversions. Can take a while to get a strong presence on the SERPs.
Traffic Quality	Can vary from low to high. Traffic arriving through optimised pages via researched key phrases will be high. Users arriving through obscurely indexed content on the SERPs will not be.

2.2) Social Media Sites

These include:

Social bookmarking sites such as Digg, Muti and Reddit.
Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

The amount of traffic received through these sources is closely linked to how active and influential you are in online social communities (something we will leave for another post altogether).

Assuming someone is heavily invested and influential on these sites (in which case they probably won’t need to read this article), traffic generated through these sources can be considerable (i.e. a submission reaching the first page on Digg, posting a link on Twitter to your thousands of non-bot followers etc.).

The nature of Social Media however - with new content being added and discussed continuously - means that these methods tend to provide short-term spikes in traffic, rather then offering any significant long term benefits. Traffic quality also tends to be low, with most visitors arriving through the "curiosity factor", before quickly moving on to the next link which grabs their attention.

Upside	If you're a respected and well-connected source on these communities, traffic via Social Media sites can be substantial.
Downside	Considerable time needs to be invested on these sites in order for it to generate traffic, and even then, it only provides a (potentially massive) short term spike. Traffic Quality
Traffic Quality	Low. Unlikely to convert into either customers or repeat visitors.

2.3) Referral Links (Blogging, 3rd Party Links etc.)

Much like Social Media sources, links from blogs or influential sites can see a considerable spike in traffic, depending on the nature and scope of the link in question and the originating site.

For example: A throwaway "click here" in an arbitrary paragraph may see a short term spike in traffic and nothing more. However, an external blog post or web page dedicated to your website can generate a steady amount of traffic. The quality of the traffic derived from this method also depends on the site or link in question. A link from a restaurant directory site to your restaurant review blog is likely to lead to repeat visitors. whereas a link from a tea-lover's blog to your post where you made a vague reference to a brand of tea would be less likely.

Upside	Can lead to either a sharp spike in traffic or a steady stream of visitors. Downside
Downside	No real downside, although sometimes the spike in traffic is only short-term.
Traffic Quality	Varies on the scope and relevance of the 3rd party site.

Conclusion

Through the use of on-site keyword optimisation, an advertising budget, active participation in Social Media sites and the creation of quality content, a site can generate both organic and inorganic traffic.

In planning your SEM strategy you should determine, through tests or experience, which traffic generates the best results, ROI and exposure for your site or target market – and pursue traffic tactics which get you an optimal amount of that traffic.

The key is to make sure the traffic coming to the site is healthy and relevant, so that it converts at a cost effective ROI to justify the initial investment made to create the traffic in the first place.

2008/11/25 | permalink | comments (0) | trackbacks (0)

Aaron Wall on Holistic SEM

by Katharina Scholtz

Aaron Wall of SEO Book.com. Search guru Aaron Wall of SEO Book.com is back on GottaQuirk to answer some questions. Our own search fundis - Heidi, Shaun and Suzan - were given the chance to pick his brain on the topic of running a holistic SEM campaign. Enjoy!

What is the number one mistake clients/people make when integrating PPC and SEO campaigns?

The biggest mistake is that they try to use the same pages for all the queries. Your PPC pages should be conversion oriented, but if your market is competitive you may need to create some informational pages and market them to be able to rank against some of the top competitors.

There is a view that a client's SEO and PPC campaigns should be carried out by two separate agencies. Especially if they are a client with a large budget and who require specialised expertise in each area. What are your views on this?

I think you can learn a lot from each…SEO helps you find longtail PPC keywords, PPC helps you determine what areas to focus your SEO efforts on. If they are both done by external teams then someone internally should have the job of trying to integrate the feedback from each to ensure market knowledge in one helps drive the other.

Some new tools like http://www.google.com/sktool/ make it easy to get a glimpse of what is going on, but the more informed each party is about your conversion data and what is working well for you, the better they will be able to help you achieve your goals.

How do you go about measuring ROI on an integrated SEM campaign, when there are so many different elements to it? If Social Media generates traffic or augments SEM campaigns, should it be factored into ROI calculations?

On our blog Peter Da Vanzo recently focussed on how hard it is to calculate the value of Social Media. I think the best way to look at Social Media is to think of it in terms of link generation and how much ranking boost those links might give your site. By looking at it in this manner you focus on the aspects that are a bit more concrete and chalk up any branding benefits as a free bonus.

Calculating the value of link is a non-trivial engagement, but once you know the value of a top ranking and survey the competition using a tool like SearchStatus you should have a good idea of how strong the competition is and what you need to do to get to the top.

Should your PPC and SEO efforts overlap and focus on the same key phrases or should there be a clear division?

Many of the keywords certainly should overlap, but there can be significant deviations as well.

If a keyword is too competitive for you to compete with in organic search but profitable on PPC you should go after it. As an example, filters like geo-modifiers make it easy for local businesses to buy some of the generic keywords that they could never compete for in organic search.

The opposite is also true. If a PPC keyword is too expensive for you to compete because only 10% or 20% of people searching for it are interested in your offer, you can still go after that keyword in organic search. Using negative keywords in PPC helps you filter out some irrelevant traffic, but with organic search you don’t need to do that…a 1 in 5 chance of being relevant that is still free is worth going after.

Building a lot of content helps you rank for a wide array of keywords that might not be worth the effort of targeting and managing in PPC. Some of the better keywords can be fed across, but in a recent Google post Google wrote that 20% of their search queries are queries they have not seen in the last 90 days. You can’t access all that traffic with PPC unless you are using a savvy combination of phrase match, broad match and negative keywords.

Once a site has a strong presence on the organic SERPs for specific phrases, does it make sense to continue running a PPC campaign on these phrases?

Absolutely. Even though they are near each other it is easy to think of them as different marketing distribution channels. As an on demand marketer you want to be wherever the consumer’s eyes are.

The one exception to this, as pointed out by my wife (http://ppcblog.com/is-display-advertising-getting-the-shaft/), is brand bidding on your own brand…if you are the only person bidding on your brand and you own the brand in the organic search results, it is probably more cost effective for you to manage your organic listing presentation rather than to pay Google for people that were already looking for you. Though even for your own brand a PPC campaign can make sense if you have competition in the AdWords ads or have a rushed seasonal offer you need to promote right away.

Is it worthwhile to invest time optimising for search engines besides Google given that Google has such a strong position in terms of global traffic?

I generally optimise for Google and hope to pick up the other engines as well. But if something is working particularly well in another engine and is driving nice conversions I would not ignore it. If you have an enterprise level site it might be worth looking into Yahoo! Search Submit Pro (http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/srchsb/).

What effect do you think Google's trend towards personalisation of SERPs have on how people implement a holistic approach to SEM?

I think SEO will still include components of link building and keyword research for a long time to come, but I think personalisation adds value and exposure to sites that do any of the following:

Frequently advertise.
Build brands.
Add community, news, conversation tools, and/or other interactive features.

Sites that exist mostly as a brochure are going to be in the hurt locker.

Do you think search engine marketers put themselves at any disadvantage by using and allowing Google Analytics and benchmarking (i.e. making that information available to Google)? Do you know how many people or what percentage of websites now use Google Analytics?

I have no idea what percent of people are using Google Analytics. They keep adding features that make it more tempting to try (like their advanced segmentation http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2008/10/google-analytics-releases-advanced-segmentation.html ), but when possible I would opt away from using them. While testing it might be worth using them to gather feedback, but with Google sharing more data with the public (and your competitors) I can’t see how you win by sharing more of your data with Google.

Will SEO still be around in 10 years time? If so, how do you think it would have evolved?

I think it will become more integrated as part of the publishing and marketing process. It will not have as much value as a stand-alone field, but for decades it should have value as part of the workflow in online publishing and online marketing.

Do you see any possibility of Google adopting a Baidu model, where companies can pay to receive advantageous positions in ostensibly organic listings?

I see it being more indirect… where perhaps you can buy an ad in Google Maps or a particular Google Product Search ranking, and then have some of these sorts of universal search tools popped right into the organic results.

At the same time I see the AdWords ad units expanding where they can. A couple great examples of this are the extension of AdWords ads to include product images, while also promoting Google Checkout and the Google Merchant Search Beta test.

Some people say that SEO is an "acceptable" form of spamming the SEs. What effect do you think such "SEO spam" has on performing holistic SEM? How would Google's response to "SEO spam" influence holistic approaches to SEM in future?

I am pragmatic in my views. Everything comes down to risk and reward. I think if something has an exceptionally high ROI, is easy to do and is focused on influencing search engines then eventually the market will get regulated. This can happen in a number of ways…

The price or cost can increase (as happened with PPC click prices and the cost of domain names)
The technique can become considered black hat and thus to some degree regulated either algorithmically or manually.

There are a lot of profits in pushing the limits on some fronts, but the risks can be significantly lowered by building a direct audience and building other marketing assets like a brand. Leveraging those and adding in a bit of SEO is typically worth a lot more than having a purely mechanical approach. Those who are in the centre of social networks will have more sustained profits than those who try to game everything.

As a general rule of thumb I try not to cede any moral authority to search engines. They show ads for things like “cheat on your spouse” so I am not sure they have earned the right to be deemed morally superior.

2008/11/24 | permalink | comments (0) | trackbacks (0)

The NoIndex Link Love Dilemma

by Suzan Gray

The other day we had a technical question relating to the Quirk SearchStatus tool which we are going to answer here but, for the purposes of this post, we are assuming that you understand the importance and processes of linking in SEO activities. If you’re a little unsure – check out these posts before reading on:

The question posed revolved around the difference between NoFollow links and NoIndex pages and asked whether a NoIndex page could accumulate PageRank. And if so, could it pass on PageRank to the sites it links to (i.e. pass on the link juice it might be receiving).

Before we answer the question, let’s clarify what we are talking about:

A NoIndex page is a HTML meta tag (at page level) telling the search engine spiders visiting your site not to display the page in the SERPs.
NoFollow is an attribute of a hyperlink, indicating that the link is not necessarily endorsed by the website and should be ignored by search engine spiders. In Google's case, it means the Google spider will not channel any PageRank link juice to the pages that the link is sending you to.

To get back to our question - effectively the dilemma is whether NoIndex pages have the same effect as NoFollow links when it comes to sharing the link love.

Matt Cutts (Google’s guru of link love) says that a NoIndex page can accumulate PageRank, because the links are still followed both inwards and outwards. So even though the page itself won’t be showing in the SERPs, it can accumulate and pass on PageRank if it has links out to other pages.

The bottom line:

NoIndex pages can still give and receive PageRank and link love, even though they are effectively invisible in the SERPs.
A NoFollow link will not share the link love, even if it comes from a highly ranked page. (Different search engines have their own treatments in this regard, but this is the Google way).

2008/11/19 | permalink | comments (0) | trackbacks (0)

Duplicate Content and the Hot Sibling Conundrum

by Shaun Oakes

Image via Flickr, by Zabowski under CC

Tracy Martin was probably one of the most beautiful girls in my Matric (senior) year. Tall, slender and very athletic, she was the type of girl that most guys would gladly give up an eye - or at least some form of non-essential body organ - for a chance to be with. It was strange then, that she was largely ignored by the cooler kids and instead spent her days socialising with the Computer Club members and the hairy girl with the weird hump on her back.

You see, Tracy had an equally gorgeous twin sister called Tamsyn, who was massively popular and loved by all and sundry. With Tamsyn around, Tracy never really got the credit her looks and personality may have deserved, as she was seen as nothing more than an imitation of her more illustrious sibling.

So why am I telling you this?
Well, partly because I am bitter about having to settle for snogging the hairy girl with the weird hump on her back. More importantly however, it also serves as an accurate analogy for the duplicate content issue in the search engines.
Let's take a quick look at some of the key points and common questions regarding duplicate content:

Er... What is Duplicate Content?
We will start things off by explaining what the term "duplicate content" actually means. Google Webmaster Central Blog describes it as follows - "Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar." So there you go, done and dusted.

Now if you have one or two paragraphs of text pulled from another source, (eg: you're showing an extract) but the majority of your page content is unique, this won't be considered duplicate content. If that were the case, most news portals and personal bloggers would be screwed, so rest easy on that one. Coders can also relax - if your code is identical on every page, this also has no bearing and will not be considered duplicate content - it's the actual content that users can see which will be evaluated. In terms of the acceptable duplicate / unique content ratio on a page, there is no real magic number. As a rule of thumb then, just make sure that the majority of your page content is unique and original and you should be fine.

When and Where Does it Occur?
Duplicate content issues can occur on your own website and are usually accidental, especially when you're running a CMS on your blog that generates URLs. Basically this means that you could have a post listed under www.mysite.com/category/widgets/ as well as www.mysite.com/2008/10/. It may also occur when you're using syndicated content or allowing something you have written to be syndicated. For example the article you wrote about the mating habits of the Remora fish could get picked up and appear on other aquatic-related websites. It can also occur when other sites "scrape" your content, pulling what you've written and republishing it on their sites without crediting you.

Okay, So What will Happen to My Site if I Have Duplicate Content?
Here's the thing, I've heard many people saying that your site will be penalised and removed from the search engines if it's found that you have duplicate content. This is not really true though. If a search engine spider finds two pages on your site with identical copy, it will just choose the one it feels is the most relevant. The problem with duplicate content on your site then, is that often the spiders will choose the "wrong" page to display, for example the printer friendly version of a page. This isn't really what you want appearing on the SERPs is it? No, of course not.

Having two or more pages with duplicate content also dilutes the "search engine juice" your site may carry for that content. For instance, having three pages with the same Remora fish article on your site and with each page having five different internal links pointing to them, doesn't make much sense. It would be smarter to have one page on the Remora fish, with all 15 internal links pointing to that specific url. Make sense?

If you have permission from a blog or other web resource to use their content and are worried about getting penalised for any duplicate content issues, the best thing to do would be to use the NoIndex meta tag on your page (meta name = "robots" content="noindex, follow"). This tells the spiders to ignore the page and not attempt to index it, which is when it would notice that it's a duplicate, making that page solely for the web user's benefit.

Okay, But What Happens if Someone Else is Duplicating my Content?
If you're allowing your content to be syndicated, always insist that they link back to your article. This tells the search engine spiders that your work is the original source and that they are the duplicate. As your website becomes more popular, the chances of someone else stealing or copying your content without crediting your work become greater. Most of the time, these nasty "scrapers" are dodgy and will immediately be regarded as duplicate content and will either be banished to the supplemental results or won’t appear on the search engine results pages (SERPs) at all.

If, for whatever reason, they are being indexed on the SERPs and are actually ranking better than you (because they're either a massive or popular site themselves, or your site is relatively new) you have a few options. You can either send someone over to break their legs - which can be mildly effective, although they would still be able to use a computer - or you can file a website infringement notification which will lead to an investigation and will likely see their site removed from the SERPs if your complaint is found to be valid.

Great, Can You Sum This All Up Then?
Going back to my analogy, Tracy Martin represented the original source, Tamsyn Martin served as duplicate content and all the cool kids from high school represented the search engine spiders (the hairy girl with the humped back is just something that keeps me up on cold, lonely nights). To summarise then, if you're duplicating your own content on your site, you will not be penalised, but it will put your site at a disadvantage on the SERPs as it decreases the chances of your pages ranking well. If you are duplicating content from other sources, play it safe and "NoIndex" these pages so that you won't fall foul of Google.

For more info, SEOmoz also has a lovely graphic illustrating the process – check it out here.