1. Flash: When they ask for a fully flashed website, let them know the adversity it might make. By doing this you are helping them to establish the right online presence. Unless your client is Coca cola or Burger King ( I mean,  :-), an establish brand), they will really want to establish better Visibility to the Search Engines.

2. SEO – If a client just wants a website, let them know what SEO is and how it is going to help them. Make the site SEO friendly within the design scope (Eg. Image tags, XHTML validations, designing without tables, etc). Most of the clients will not say NO to make their site ready for SEO.

3. CMS – Ask how frequently they want to change the content, and if they do, let them do know how to do it themselves with a CMS. You may also need to let them know the advantages of fresh content. I believe instead of providing them a static site of 20 pages, you can introduce them Joomla and how to use it, for some additional but onetime investments.

4. Advantages of Opensource - Do they need a CMS or Ecommerce, You can justify why you charge less. Let them know that you can cut cost by using WordPress or Magento and still make their site professional. By doing this you are introducing standards – if your client goes to some other developers, it would not be difficult for them to take up the work.

I recommend you to keep a short write up (with some references) or articles on the above mentioned (you may keep that under your client section of your website) and ask the client to refer them. It also helps them to understand that you know what you tell them.

Thinking of what’s next? Do you want to leave the site with the results that you have attained and be forget SEO since you have got your results? Nope. You shouldn’t.

If your targeted keywords generates enough revenue then think of how much competitive your keywords should be and how many of your competitors will be using those keywords and working for good number of quality links for their site

Search engine algorithm gives better value for frequently updated site with keywords around the content and for site that continuously gets quality backlinks.

Watch closely you’re competitor and find out what they do to compete your site. Here are the factors that needs to be frequently monitored

(1) Content update - It is always recommended to fine-tune and update your content at least once in a month or two with keywords around meeting keyword density and keyword prominence.
(2) Brushing up your Keywords  - As always monitor your top ranking keywords and fine-tune it according to the number of total search results and compare with your competitors activity on those keywords of your target. Check out the areas in your content to know where you can focus your top keywords and build quality backlinks for those keywords as anchor text. Be sure to meet keyword density and do not stuff keywords.
(3) External site link juice - Check whether all the links build exits with time period, since some may be removed or moved out to some inner folder level and the algorithm might not identity those backlinks. So build equal and relevant links as an alternative to those links that had been masked and improve or retain the position with good number of quality links.
(4) Monitory traffic - Analyzing your traffic is one of the essential factor were you need to know how site performs with search engine organic clicks and directories or sites referrals. If you notice any drops in traffic, identify those area and work on them to set your goal.

And also here are the checklists that can help you to maintain SEO results and withstand the competition

(1) Check how your competitors rank in Google, Yahoo and Bing for your keywords?
(2) Have you updated your content that meets current target market and information?
(3) Are you tweaking your web site structure for search engine friendliness that meets current algorithm?
(4) Are you working on building quality links regularly?
(5) Are you optimizing your site with the current popular keywords?
(6) Are you analyzing you traffic to know from which location your visitors are coming from and optimize the site for those location based search engines?

These important factors and checklist will help you to measure the site strength and weakness of your site. Now you should have known that search engine optimization is not one time activity and search engine algorithm gets updated often and competitors fight for your top keywords position. Keep in mind, your website needs continues SEO in order to retain and improve your good SEO results.

Maintaining the SERPs (result/Postion) are equally important as your SEO process. Continuous SEO is within the process of SEO to generate continuous business queries to make. So keep up the good SEO, Always, do not think about stopping your activities.

Now let us see why you should avoid duplicating the content?

First of all, copying the content brings down the understanding of the concept. If you start understanding, that is only how you grow. The scriptwriter should understand why something is and how it works. If you copy, you are missing out on that. You are just resurfacing the upper layer and not getting into layers underneath when you do that.

If you are not willing to write on your own, you will not know the exact intention and get stuck at one place. You will not know how to take it forward. The originality of the content will be missing.

While it is easier to just copy from someone else, why do you have to create a new one? If you don’t do that, you will not know why it looks like, you cannot feel the way it feels like and you will not be able to read the way it should be read. The final outcome will be an artificial one.

Content Duplication and its impacts on SEO

1. Duplication of content will be considered a spam by all the search engines. There are so many websites with similar products, so the copywriter must be very careful in creating content. Search Engines likes fresh and unique content. It ranks websites depending primarily on the content used in web pages. 

2. Changing the phrase of an existing content and rewriting is also considered as content duplication. Search Engines have ways to find out and it is supposed to be spam. This will certainly affect the ranking of a website.

3. When a website is reported to have duplicate content issues, the total number of pages ranked by the search engine will automatically come down. Fewer pages to rank will lessen the rankings and might lead to lower traffic.

4. It is important to make your content unique; otherwise there is absolutely no point in doing all these. The search engines will not bother to feature your website in its result pages.

5. There is a difference between content duplication “penalties” and “filtering”. When we refer to penalty in search engine rankings, we actually talk of points being reduced from your overall score, but the truth is, the pages are just filtered like you filter unwanted particles from a can of liquid. Accidently, this filtering can sometimes filter out your good particles.

Tips to avoid Content Duplication

1. While preparing content, make sure you don’t copy it from somewhere and try to replace the words with exact meanings. The search engines have already come up with a solution to deal with this issue.

2. Before you sit down to write, ask yourself what exactly will create value for your users.

3. Try to get various perspectives, take the good points from them and fill the rest with your own thoughts and creativity. After all, you have to make it happen and move forward.

4. You can be influenced by many, but make sure you don’t copy anything.

So while preparing content, watch out for duplication from search engine’s point of view and as well as loyal customer’s point of view. At the end of the day, it is the search engine and ultimately the customer who are going to “look” at your content, so make sure it is liked by both, otherwise all the efforts you put in for your business to grow will go wasted.

So how can one write effective content for their websites? Read it as “effective writing” and not “lengthy writing”. Out of my experience as an SEO consultant and professional content writer, the more crisp and easy to understand the content is, the greater are the chances for it to become a hit among the readers. Also I am of the opinion that regularly updating your website with data that is useful for the visitors would divert more traffic to your site. When do you think one needs to consider re-writing their website content? I have come across the following observations that I have mentioned below: 

• Traffic inflow is good, but the conversion is not as expected, because the visitors are probably not getting what they expected out of the contents.
• When the content is very less and the site is filled with only graphics and Flash designs
• The content in the website is not explaining more about your business and gives irrelevant information to your visitors.  

I have found the following tips highly helpful in maintaining effective SEO web copy for websites: 

• Know your audience: Understand who are your audience and write keeping them in mind. Also write stuff that they can relate themselves to and what is realistic.
• Give a clear picture of your business: The content in your website should give exact details of your business. This helps in your audience getting a better idea of your business, thereby encouraging an inflow of website-relevant traffic.
• Make the content heading more appealing: Now that you know your audience well, next try writing stuff that will appeal to them. For example, if your visitors are going to be more of careful and budget-conscious family ladies, then you could write articles like “Top 8 ways to organize your household budget effectively”(Gosh! Am sure I myself would be interested to read it as well, and am not even married!) The heading has a striking impact to attract readers and wins a main part of the battle of bringing in traffic.
• Give them some useful information: Well you have clearly understood who your visitors are going to be and you have catchy headings as well. But what if the content inside is of no use to the audience. Write stuff that contains utilitarian information to your clients.
• Choose apt keywords: You have got to think from a normal layman’s point of view, who is searching for products. Choose probable keywords that your audience would search in the search engines.
• Use Keyword phrases: Bank on phrases and not single words as keywords, because the probability of searchers using phrases of words is more.
• Keyword phrases in Meta tags, links and headings: Now that you have frozen on the keyword phrases, use them in Meta tags, link them with text links, so that the pages get related to one another. This increases the probability of search engines spotting them out. Also use these phrases in headings as well
• Check and re-check! And more importantly, check and recheck whatever you have written, to overrule any spelling or grammatical errors.  

According to me, these are certain ideal steps that you can follow from the SEO point of view, to optimize your site. I am sure, if written smartly and relevantly, web contents would help give a boost to your website, thereby increasing relevant traffic and sales conversion.

Also feel free to download our Practical SEO Techniques EBook