While content is a valuable asset for moving a website up within search engine results, one expert recently warned marketers not to repeat content across their site too often. Industry commentator Dave Feldman recently explained in an article for Search Engine Land that firms should be careful when using their own content more than once across different pages of their website – as this can confuse the search engine robots into devaluing the material and lead to a lower ranking.

Feldman suggested tactics such as “utilising a robots.txt or no index tag to keep multiple versions of your pages from being indexed”.

His useful comments may be easily understood by some firms and marketing chiefs but for many small businesses (and quite a few medium and large ones) the web is unknown territory and these sorts of instructions fairly meaningless. Furthermore, in an increasingly squeezed economic environment, many people lack time to spare to revamp their websites and ensure their pages are optimised for the search engine algorithms.

According to watchdog Ofcom, “most” small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) lack an individual or team dedicated to enhancing their communications.

However, it is important that businesses either make time to bring their online presence up to scratch or employ a specialist to do so. The internet is marching relentlessly on and, thanks to widespread use by consumers looking for products and services, is already a platform SMEs ignore to their cost.