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Category: Branding

Explore the topics of branding and brand awareness and why they’re important for any business.


  • Hello everyone, One of my clients is undergoing a major rebrand, which will require some substantial changes to their domain / URL structure. Primarily, we're going to: Move from a high-ish DA site to a low DA site Change the subdomain URL structure (more on that below) Update the content (copy, design, structure) on www. site to match the new brand The content on the subdomains should remain the same 301 redirect all pages from old site to new site where applicable The current site architecture makes great use of subdomains, which are also going to be changing in terms of name. So, we're moving from oldsubdomain.olddomain.com to newsubdomain.newdomain.com (and not oldsubdomian.olddomain.com to oldsubdomain.olddomain.com). The content / structure of these pages is going to change minimally. We understand that we're going to take an SEO hit overall, but are there things we can do to minimize this hit? Anyway we can 'estimate' the hit? Anyway we can educate our client to as to what to expect beyond (it is going to be bad…). Please let me know. Thanks!

    | 10SL
    0

  • I am thinking about changing the name of my site. The new name is available with .re domain (that spells the name) or a .com. I have registered the .re and the .com is parked and for sale so my question has 2 parts. Is it worth buying the .com or do I really not need it? How much does it matter in terms of losing traffic and other factors? If I do buy it which should I use as the primary domain? Thanks!

    | yojimbo23
    0

  • Hi, I have a client who has a website with its brand name in its URL and this is not very keyword friendly as it is just numbers http://www.44-16.com/  -- the website has been up for a few months and is starting to see it traffic increase (mainly due to PPC).  The client has told me that they also have another URL which is directly relevant to the industry they are in and they have asked me for advice on the best way to use the second domain. Would it be best to create a second website that has several links to the main site (although new content, not duplicated content) or would a blog be the best option for the new site? The existing site does have a blog that generates some good traffic so they'd have to be writing two blogs I assume? The client doesn't want to stop using the first site and I want to give them the best advice to make the best use of this second domain. Thanks!

    | bendyman
    0

  • Hey all, I've been thinking about the pros and cons of case study formats (On-page vs. PDF), and was curious to see what you all think. An on-page case study is crawled by search engines and has fewer barriers in terms of visibility. The only pros I can think of for a downloadable case study (with no opt-in) is that it's less likely to be plagiarised (generally a low priority) and can have a custom design that may not fit with your website's look and feel without clashing. Also, I suppose it makes it easier for visitors to save the PDF for future reference. Have I missed anything? Do you have a preference? Keen to hear which you prefer, and why. Let's brainstorm! Cheers,
    Carlo

    | carlod
    1

  • Hi, I have researched few sites on this topic and I could see that the competitor keyword should match with the add text relevance, landing page relevance and CTR. Any other factors more to be included to improve the quality score? Reference: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2285536/Google-Updates-How-AdWords-Quality-Score-is-Reported

    | zco_seo
    0

  • Hello, We recently launched a new home page design on our company website, but we still have the same focus keyword in the title, H1, and in parts of the page copy. However, this focus keyword no longer represents our entire brand. We want to change the focus keyword and have done some research on the keyword difficulty and local searches in Google, but are still uncertain on the potential effects. Let me explain our situation more in depth. Instabill provides business owners with merchant accounts and other services. Our current focus keyword is offshore merchant accounts. However, over the past three months, we have been helping businesses establish US merchant accounts (retail, mobile, and online--but retail and mobile to US only while online to merchants everywhere) and intend to continue to increase our US merchant base. We are also still able to provide offshore merchant accounts. Our fear is that when a US merchant comes to our website (http://www.instabill.com), they will see Offshore Merchant Accounts in big H1 letters and leave our site since they want a local US merchant account. However, we still want to make sure our international merchants know we can still work with them. Thus said, we would like to change our focus keyword to something more broad, but still descriptive of our brand: merchant services. To elaborate, we want our H1 heading to read Merchant Services for Retail and Online Businesses. Merchant services is more descriptive since we provide more than just merchant accounts. We also provide the payment gateway, free shopping cart modules, help registering businesses, help obtaining an SSL certificate, and a discounted PCI Certification Service through McAfee. We have more than one page on our website that ranks for the term online merchant accounts, but none that rank for merchant services. However, we are willing to put in the work to ensure we optimize our website properly and put in the effort to make the change successful. Merchant services is also a keyword we would like to optimize on our website, so making the change on the home page will only help the steps in the process. Statistics:
    Offshore Merchant Accounts has a 35% difficulty level and we consistently rank for SERPs #1 and #2. This term, according to the Google Keyword Tool, only receives 70 monthly searches in the US, 50 in the UK, 10 in Canada, and 10 in Australia. These are the four countries of most importance to our website. Merchant Services has a 57% difficulty level and we do not rank for it in Google at all since we have never tried to optimize for this term in the past. Also according to the Google Keyword Tool, this term receives 14,800 monthly searches in the US, 1,600 in the UK, 590 in Canada, and 260 in Australia. Clearly, merchant services could potentially get us much more traffic than offshore merchant accounts if transitioned correctly. I suppose my bottom line question is this: Would it be a bad idea to change my primary focus keyword on my home page? What type of results should I expect to see if searching Google for my company name? Thank you for all of your help. Meghan
    Senior Copywriter of Instabill

    | Instabill
    0

  • Hi, We took on a new client in March. Over the last few months I have noticed that their Branded Organic Traffic has dropped off considerably, around 20%. On further investigation I discovered that the drop off occurred between Jan & Feb this year (prior to us taking over). In Jan they launched a new site, the drop off seems to coincide with the launch of their new website. I also found out that their Page Rank had disappeared before the launch of the new website, and is still a PR/na. My first thought was that they have been penalised. How likely is this on a very well known site which gets roughly 170K visits per month? Could the drop in Branded Traffic be due to a decrease in advertising budget elsewhere (to compensate for the cost of the new website, leading to less brand exposure)? Could it be that there are just fewer people searching for their Brand? I guess the questions I am trying to find out are: 1. What are the reasons for massive drops in Branded organic traffic? 2. As an seo I am tasked mainly for optimising for non-branded organic traffic, is there anything I can suggest to the client to help get this traffic back? 3. If it is an algorithmic penalty (Panda, Penguin), how do I know which one? I have started with their links and disavowed known toxic links, fixed crawl errors, optimised their top pages etc etc. If it was a penalty and I mange to fix it, will their branded traffic return? Any help with the above would be greatly appreciated. Jon

    | JonRaubenheimer
    0

  • My client's own several hotels in Los Angeles. I thought it would be a good idea to ask writers and bloggers to visit the hotel, free of charge, in exchange for a review or write up. Of course, we want to be above board and up front with everything, including encouraging any review to be the truth and forthright, however I just not sure how best to ask them.  Sometimes I ramble on and have trouble getting to the point and I know its really important here. Does anyone have any advice here? Many thanks!

    | AaronDavis
    0

  • I know this might sound as a newbie question or maybe not, here it goes. I've had a client for the past 2 years, and we have accomplish many good things for his local website .com.ve (venezuela). It's been so good that he is opening a branch in Dominican republic .com.do. The content, strategy and even the services are exactly the same, but the owner  wants to have different site for each country. Of course he only wants to pay for one domain. I do want to share our success ont the .com.ve with the other domains and he actually owns the "global" domain .com with his brand name. So, what should I reccomend... Develop a second site and start from scratch? Migrate my blog from the .com.ve site to the .com site and give each country a separate folder? /ve /do?. What it's the best scenario for me to have all the traffic we have earned transfer to the global brand and to have separate info for each country... Thank you so much for your answer that I kno would be great. Dan

    | daniel.alvarez
    0

  • Hi, I am doing SEO for a website that deals in 4-wheeler tyres. While reviewing the organic traffic in Google Analytics, i noticed some keywords that are completely irrelevant to the theme of the website. Some are porn related terms while some are like google, yahoo, laptops, youtube etc. It seems someone is doing negative SEO for my website, as a result of which a decent number of searches are coming from these irrelevant terms. What should i do to block traffic from such terms as this may harm my website's performance in search engines. Please suggest a solution as soon as possible.

    | PFX111
    0

  • Hi, we are now creating an strategy for an online store that sells alcoholic beverages and also drinks to mix with them (for example for creating cocktails). The company is located in Spain and wants to begin selling in France. We are thinking of optimizing SEO of the online store, but it is a little difficult cause the description of drinks are really similar, and the inner text too. (Gin is Gin, and you can't describe many things about it. The brand changes, and also the bottle, but it is very difficult to describe a product like that) So we are thinking of creating a content marketing strategy and alsoa social community using facebook and twitter, and so on. As allways we are thinking of a blog and placing the contents there and then distribute then in social networks.... As the the products are alcoholic drinks, we thought that we could give people ideas and recipes of cocktails, and also to create videos about how to prepare those cocktails.But I am not sure about this strategy, specially about the video generation, cause as the products are alcoholic beverages, I am not sure about the policies of Youtube about that kind of issues. I tried to search on the Web and find nothing. This kind of content is for adults only? If so, should we create it anyway? Is it worth it? What kind of strategies will you apply to gain visibility for an store like this? I will apreciatte your comments and advices. Thank you!

    | teconsite
    0

  • Hi All, What's your opinion on sharing the same content across your social media outlets. We are targeting only slightly different markets across each social media outlet. I find it hard to develop content for each outlet 3-5 times a week. There really is so much to share. At the same time, I wouldn't want to get canned for any duplicate content or anything like that. Along those lines, can anyone provide some advice on which social media outlets are "followed" vs. "not-followed," both in terms of links and overall indexing? Thanks!

    | CSawatzky
    0

  • This feels like a question I should know the answer to and I'm a tad embarrassed to ask, but the part of my brain that gets tripped up by somewhat simple things sometimes, is begging to ask just to confirm my understanding. I want to make sure I have it right it prior to giving advice. When one guest blogs I assume that it is critical to create content that is original and unique to that one instance of the guest blog. That means, do not also put that post on your own blog and do not submit it to any other blogs for inclusion. This is both for duplicate content issues and also to respect and not put in jeopardy for duplicated content, the blog owner you are guesting for. Is this correct? Are there any scenarios in which there might be a deviation of this "rule"? Like some use of canonicals or anything else?

    | gfiedel
    0

  • Hi all.. this is not a question about how this can be done but which is better for SEO. Franchises make up 8% of the USA small business market.  This is no small potatoes.  But everything about Google seems designed for the unique, stand-alone business (Places, Analytics, Adwords, Duplicate Content Rules, etc.)  ... I think about this issue a lot so wanted to put it to the community. Imagine a franchisor with 200 locations.  This company licenses its brand and business operations system - that's what a franchise is.  So each local franchisee starts out with a "content ready" website template which they are required to use for brand compliance. (Each local franchisee has a Google Place page and a Local Website in their territory.)Assuming each solution has the same number of local citations around 50% duplicate content on its services pages (e.g. branding text)... which of the following does Google like best? A single, customized CMS (e.g. Drupal) which places each franchisee site in a subfolder of the TLD.  Highly duplicated services pages are given canonical pointers to the main site's version.
    domain.com/location A single, customized CMS (e.g. Drupal) which places each franchisee in a subdomain of the TLD.  Highly duplicated services pages are given canonical pointers to the main site's version. location.domain.com A multi-manager dashboard (e.g. ManageWP) which operates an individual Wordpress installs on a single server (dedicated self-install server, sites share IPs)
    _localdomain.com _ A multi-manager dashboard which operates an individual Wordpress install on multiple, diverse servers (e.g. shared hosting on diverse hosts.)
    localdomain.com I know that the best case would be for each franchisee individually to be so motivated to set up their own site and properly use brand elements, get links, etc. but this is impractical (trust me.)~~~~~~(*update 4/4/13 - I have written a blog post which describes what I think is the ideal franchise web marketing & SEO program and would welcome additional comments!)

    | scottclark
    0

  • Question 1: What is the general consensus on gaining links through blog comments on blogs with CommentLuv enabled? Backstory: I was studying our competitor's links and tripped upon something I haven't seen before. There were a number of blog comments created in 2011 by an individual who was probably an SEO hired at least partially for the purpose of making blog comments to gain inbound links for the competitor. I haven't dug deeply enough to find if there are any more recent than 2011. The interesting part was the name/link of the company for this individual which was not the company's actual name but a URL crafted from a main keyword. It  obviously has a redirect to the actual competitor's website which is where the link took me AND a link to this individual's "most recent blog post". This blog post on the company site was written by someone else entirely. Question 2: Clearly some manipulation to build links- would these links be considered unnatural? Question 3: Would it be smart for me to find blogs with CommentLuv to gain links to my blog?

    | gfiedel
    0

  • Hi guys, I've been reading through other similar asked questions regarding this but I can't seem to find the answer I need.... I'm having a discussion with my director regarding what would be more  SEO friendly for a new page/URL we are creating. Is using folders or hyphens better? The new page is question would be something along the lines of either: (home page) www.eteach.com/utc (about us page)--> www.eteach.com/utc/about (talent pool page)---->www.eteach.com/utc/talent-pools Using the folder structure here will always show the user that they are on the UTC pages, then shows them what pages they are on int he UTC site. OR! (home page) www.eteach.com/careers-at-utc (about us page)--->www.eteach.com/about-utc (talent pool page) -----> www.eteach.com/talent-pools-at-utcs which doesn't make it as clear to the user, but is this way more SEO friendly? Can anybody make a good argument for and against folder structure vs hyphens? Thanks, Virginia

    | Eteach_Marketing
    0

  • .pro Domains have ben out there for a while but seem to as late started to be adopted. Thoughts and opinions welcome.

    | bozzie311
    0

  • Hello, I got a client who told me that he bought his images from a stock photography website. I know it looks awful and all, but the client can't afford a photographer to get some decent pics. So, How positive it is to use Alt Text on images that aren't yours? The purpose of using alt text properly is to get traffic from an imaged based search right? So if the business shows up with some stock photography it looks kinda bad. Is it worth optimizing images in this case? Or just leave em without optimizing? Changing pics isn't an option. Thanks

    | Eblan
    0

  • I am looking at starting a brand new website and purchasing a domain to see my hair product.  My question is that domain i am wanting to purchase if a 2 word .com domain but it is not being currently used and it is up for auction for 10K. I am looking a purchasing a domain name that is the same 2 words but a has a hyphen between the 2 works. My assumption is that if I start building content, concentrating on seo (keywords, link building, etc) and brand building that I should not have any problems with my hyphen in the domain. I am looking for feedback and insight from the SEO professionals!  Thank you guys in advance. UPDATED 1-29-13 Here is the scenario and I am looking on how you would handle it. **name = my brand name I am looking to purchase a domain within the year: namehair.com I currently am using: namehairbrand.com I have purchased: name-hair.com My concern is if I began my SEO efforts and the brand grows extensively then the person who owns "namehair.com" will raise the price even more than the current price of 10k.  I plan on purchasing that domain name within the next 18 months or so and then direct the traffic to the domain "namehair.com". If I put all my efforts into "namehairbrand.com" and then submit to Google that I have changed domains - will I get my butt kicked by Google?  Thank you guys - you are really helpful!

    | dsmolinski
    0

  • I have found conflicting reports online whether or not dashes in domain names hurt/help ranking.  Example yourbrandonline.com vs your-brand-online.com? I found Rand's write up on how to select a domain and he suggests staying away from hyphens but mainly because its hard to remember or people my enter it in wrong.  Here's his comment. "Reject Hyphens and Numbers
    Both hyphens and numbers make it hard to give your domain name verbally and falls down on being easy to remember or type. I'd suggest not using spelled-out or roman numerals in domains, as both can be confusing and mistaken for the other." Aside from people possibly struggling to get there directly because of the domain name, are they OK to use?  Or, are domains with hyphens considered spammy? Thanks in advance.

    | JoshKimber
    1

  • Hi there, I have a keyword "finao montreal" that used to rank 8 or 9 in Google serp. All of a sudden it dropped under the top 50 results, I was wondering why and I found out that Google now auto-corrects "finao montreal" to "final montreal". Finao is a well know brand of custom high-end photo albums and I find it strange that Google corrects it. Anyone has an idea on what to do with this situation? Is there a way to provide Google some feedback about the autocorrect?

    | valadas
    0

  • Hi everybody, I'm having a 'heated' discussion with a collegae about .org domains. Originally .org domains were created for non-profit organizations and it was fairly difficult to get a .org domain ( like .gov and .edu still are). Nowadays it's easy to register a .org domain and i see plenty of commercial .org emd's ranking well. We are planning on launching a new white label in the Netherlands (.nl) and have several domains in our portfolio that we  can us for this. I recommend using an exact match .org domain (.nl and .com are already taken) for the new white label www.exactkeyword.org. **My collegae says don't use www.exactkeyword.org, because we aren't a non-profit organizaton and we can't garantuee we won't lose our rankings over the next 3 to 4 years. He would recommend going with the available www.exact-keyword.info. ** Who right and who's wrong and why? Can i garantuee no risk with .org for a commercial organization?

    | PrizeWize
    0

  • Hey there, So I'm sure this question must of been asked before but I was curious of whether or not it truly does carry some weight when it comes to SEO. As an example, lets say my domain name was "kokkle.com" if I left comments (non-spam comments) on articles that were related to the some-what the same niche. And as the comment name I left it as Kokkle would that seem like your commenting just for SEO purposes? I want to leave actually good comments that will carry on discussions within various sites/blogs but I'm afraid to put my domain name on the comments. What do you think? Is blog commenting a good form of building backlinks? If so, how should one go about it? Thanks

    | utesters
    0

  • It was a female brand i believe. Does anyone remember which it was or have a link? Gracias!

    | VistageSEO
    1

  • Hi - Please read this in full before you answer. I currently own a website that sells kitchen cabinets and bathroom vanities that match the kitchens. This website has been operational since Arpil 2009 and we have built good rankings over the past 3 years. The site is operated on the Volusion platform (my mistake from the beginning, but we're kind of stuck now). We are in the process of designing a new website on the Magento platform - everything will be 100% different from look, speed, the way our customers shop, content, product skus, etc. The original plan was to keep the same domain but implement 301 redirects for subpages (subpage urls would have to change) and shut down the Volusion site and transfer the domain name to the Magento site. Our current website does make money right now and we would hate to lose rankings (even if only temporarily) during the switch or have something go wrong. What I am now thinking is keeping our current website on Volusion where it is currently making money and having the new Magento site have a new name/domain. The sites would sell most of the same products (the Magento site would sell more types of vanities and accessories though). The two sites would have different email addresses, phone numbers, and mailing addresses. Is it a bad idea to try and rank two websites selling pretty much the same thing? We have competitors out there that sell the same products as us, I would just prefer to compete with myself rather then someone else. Another issue is our name, one of our competitors names is extremely close to ours and we rank for pretty much all of the same keywords and customers get us mixed up all the time. This other site would have a different name (one that makes more sense). I want to make a decision that will not come back and bite us later. I know there are a lot of bigger sites that operate tons of niche sites, and of these website could eventually be similar to that. I really appreciate your help and guidance! Thanks

    | tyler756
    0

  • I  wasn't asking the question from a complete lack of experience but I put this question on the forum here last week…How much would you pay for a key rich domain name with the correct extension? I'm setting up a new website to sell Whitby Jet and one of the members of this forum suggested I should buy the domain name www.whitbyjet.com it was for sale for $300 or £200 in UK money and they thought it was a bargain.  I thought it was worth the cost even though I've never paid anywhere near that amount for a domain name.
    .
    There is a company offering www.whitby-jet.co.uk or £1500 ?!!!! I have bought key rich domain names before, which were very descriptive also but only paid the registration fee with no additional costs
    .
    I just wondered how much members of this forum have paid for domain names. And why they thought it was worth the cost... SEO Branding etc.? By the way the company that was acting as the intermediate for my new doaminis is an absolute pain. They didn't perform the transfer process quickly until I bombarded them with emails My new domain is still not working one week down the line. In the past I bought a domain cheap and it has been working within 24 hours directly.

    | whitbycottages
    0

  • Hi fellow Mozzers, I'm hoping to do a bit of brainstorming if you don't mind helping out. We've never done a contest for our clients before, so want some ideas on how to get the most out of it. In Australia it is coming up to formal (Prom) time, and our client sells boys suits and girls formal dresses, so I figured it was a great time for a contest. It's a brand new SEO client, so it's quite late notice...the competition can only go for about 3 weeks because most of the school formals are around late November, early December. (Not ideal I know) The client is willing to give away one free suit, and one free dress, and I want to brainstorm some ideas on the format of the contest, e.g. what should people have to do to enter the draw? Avenues we plan to promote are: Facebook (they have 600 likers), Twitter (currently not many followers), I'm thinking Australian mummy bloggers, free contest listing websites, email database. Any other ideas for promotion? The goal for the contest is to increase brand exposure, and to attract lots of links. Looking forward to hearing your suggestions. Thanks, Karl

    | Static_Shift
    0

  • Hello, Checking the Analytics part - Search Engine Optimization/ Queries - I found suprising results for my website: The website is no. 1 for my brand name but only has a 28% CTR on the brandname in the Google SERPS! Please see exactly what I mean here: http://screencast.com/t/GKjwliZ6GTF7 I'm looking for your experience of CTR of other websites in the same situation. Do you have similar low CTR? Some background info; The website is no1 for the brandname. Sitelinks are shown. Google Maps is shown on right. In the period are no adwords advertisments on my brand name as I know. I checked several times. I cant understand where 72% go after searching for my brandname. Thanks for sharing your experience. Best Regards Daria

    | nmedia
    0

  • We have a line of products that are all using the same template or shell for a website structure. All have different content relating to a specific product or service, but being its a line of different products under one family, we use the same colors and template structure for consistency and branding purposes. It was just brought to my attention that using a template like this across multiple sites could raise duplicate content flags as google is reading the same template code and may not differentiate that its a family product line of sites. Does anyone have any feedback on whether this could be true or not?

    | anthonytjm
    0

  • I am looking for a Press Release Distribution Service, I know PRweb is a good one but as an Agency we launch constant press releases for our client. Just wondering if someone can tell me about a good PR Distributions services that provide unlimited Pr distribution and which are best for getting your Pr into Google News and easy to use. Also has anyone user http://www.sbwire.com

    | conversiontactics
    0

  • Most roadmap imagery is available from zoom levels 0 to 18, for example. With zoom level 0 the whole world can be visible. As we all know, the more we zoom in on Google Maps, the more spots (e.g. name of restaurants, hotels etc.) are visible. Some spots are visible "sooner" - with a lower zoom level, which is of course better for the company. Some companies are only visible with a very high zoom level. If I have a highly branded company is the zoom level lower? Is this the answer for the different display?

    | petrakraft
    1

  • Just starting to use twitter and can see its potential but I have a personal account, one my holiday letting business and one for my CCTV installation business. Obviously the problem is I have to login to each account separately and post relevant tweets. I like the idea that people following because they're interested in the subject but the downside obviously is that I have to split my time and my total followers across three accounts. What do you do with your twitter presence focus on one account or have separate accounts?

    | whitbycottages
    0

  • http://www.entireweb.com/express_inclusion/ Anybody used this?  There is a express inclusion that you pay for, vs the free.  Wanted to see what the group thinks.  Worth it, not?   It is not included in the SEOMoz list of directories.

    | CleverPhD
    0

  • Any recommendations for an SEO friendly social sharing button company? Or ones that provide a good service and also actually helps your brand name in SEO? I think it is important for others to be able to share my pages with colleagues and others. Thank you, UtahTiger

    | Boodreaux
    0

  • Traditional Share of Voice (SOV) used to be calculated by how much your industry on the whole spent on marketing and how much you're spending on marketing. But how do you calculate SOV for the web with different page rankings for multiple keywords, social mentions, and so on? Anyone have any ideas?

    | optimalwebinc
    0

  • As the title says, how can I compete with competitors that have a domain authority of 60-80? (Only around 2-3 major competitors) However I would like to compete with them. Is anyone else in this situation? What did you do? I've read a lot about building backlinks etc etc but surely theres more to it. I've got to rank 1500+ subcategories for my niche and it's nearly impossible to do so. Thanks to all who reply!

    | Superinks
    0

  • Currently, when I run a search for my company's website, one of the listings in my
    "searches related to <my search="" query="">" is:</my> <my company="">scam</my> Does anyone know how to change the queries that appear in the 'related searches' section of the search results page?

    | NiallSmith
    0

  • One of our clients had a negative youtube review which is really hurting their reputation. The problem was solved and not even at fault of our client.  The uploader of the video was contacted, but has forgotten the username/password on the account. If you search for the brand name of the company, this video shows up 2nd on organic google results which is pretty embarrassing. What strategies would you all use to minimize the effects of this video?  Would you buy an adword for the company name to push the video down?

    | jastos
    0

  • This is one querstion I've been thinking about for a while: where is the best location for a blog on your website for SEO purposes? In this case I'm thinking the blog as part of a commerical website. Sub domain: You could put it on a subdomain such as blog.mydomain.com which seems quite popular (blog.kissmetrics for example) but surely this is giving the blog.mydomain sub domain the SEO value and not the www.mydomain sub domain. The one value I see here is that you could host this on another server and so any links to my main website would be from a different IP address. You could also point the sub domain to a WordPress.com blog. Internal: There are two ways the blog could be run internal to the website: 1) if the website is a WordPress.org installation you could just use one category as the blog or 2) a fresh WordPress.org installation in a sub folder such as www.mydomain.com/blog. The benefits I see with #2 is that any guest posters would only have access to the blog and not the main company website and you could make the look and feel of the blog to be more "bloggy" than the main commerical website. External: TBH I don't think there is any benefit to running a blog completely external to the commerical website (such as a WordPress.com blog) unless the company provides online services so that if the main website goes down, the blog will still be running. So, from the above, which is the best way to run a commerical site blog? Or have I missed some other options?

    | Essjay
    0

  • Hi, I have several company profiles in Google Places and Google Sites, I also have the same profiles for those companies in review sites like Yelp! and so on. I have seen that other sites have links on the bottom where Google points to those external review sites, but that doesn't happen for me yet, is there a way to tell Google that I have profiles on other review sites so they can link them or is it Google whenever they find them that will link them? Here's an example: http://maps.google.com/maps/place?cid=14126341780178539960&hl=en At the bottom you'll see that it says: Reviews from around the web Now this is one of mine: http://maps.google.com/maps/place?cid=12168877126282825032&hl=en Now how do I get that line at the bottom provided that I know there are reviews out there in other sites? Is there something I can do? Or is it all about Google doing it whenever they see fit? Thank you!

    | tass
    0

  • Hello Mozinators! I have a client I currently work with doing SEO that has a rare problem that I have not come across before nor have I been able to find any information on how to make changes for it. The problem being that the city/township is more of a community that has yet to officially be labeled as a city, yet is still marked as a town on google maps. This is a great step in the right direction however the google maps location is over the wrong place. I have attached screenshots of the google maps for this location. In the top is a place called "Lakewood Ranch" and it is not in the correct spot. Lakewood Ranch should instead be in the bottom corner of the overview screenshot, where the town center is and the medical center off of the "University PKWY" exit. I have absolutely no idea on where to start to get these changes put in place, nor if they can even be put in place. Please let me know! Thank you so much in advance! a86TM.png u1ipV.png

    | jbster13
    0

  • Dentists buy other practices all the time. Sometimes they change the name of the practice and other times they keep the name. I am working with a dentist on a new website because their old one is riddled with flash (and is ugly too)  She has two practices but they have the same practice name. One of them caters to half English speaking and half Spanish speaking patients. I'm thinking I should create a separate website for each practice mainly because we may want to design the graphics and text for the appropriate patient language probably with a English/Spanish translation button on the website? For localization, wouldn't it be better to have a url for each physical site? Suggestions?

    | Czubmeister
    0

  • I am working with a friend of mine who is a lawyer. He has one partner and a couple of other lawyers at the firm. The attorneys each have their own Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin ,Youtube and other social media accounts. I am trying to create one brand, which is the name of the law firm. Question 1: It would make sense to me to create all social media accounts under the law firm name. Would you agree on this?   I'm worried that users wouldn't use the company facebook page if they are used to communicating to the attorney through their personal accounts. Maybe I should put the social media links for the firm on the home page only and then put the individual social media links next to the attorney profile page? Question 2: The firm has been posting Youtube videos but under one of the attorney's names. I have 16 new videos they want posted and they asked me if they should be posted to a new company name channel (yet to be created) or post them under one of the attorneys accounts? I think that most attorneys might look out for themselves ahead of the Firm. If they ever change jobs, they don't have a built up social profile if everything is listed under the firm name. Maybe the way to go would be to help optimize both the attorneys personal profiles and then the firm? Thoughts?

    | Czubmeister
    0

  • What does the forum think the best strategy for social bookmarking is? Obviously white hat, user generated would be preferable but looking slightly darker; you can obviously get services that create social bookmarks over a period of several weeks, but are they worth the investment?

    | PeterAlexLeigh
    2

  • Hi all. I help run the forum at www.bearsfansonline.com and really want to see if there any ways to increase traffic. We started with a core group of posters in 2009 and since then have only added one active user. I'm worried if we don't bring in some fresh faces, my core users will start to leave. That being said, does anyone have ideas how to go about doing this? We've tried holding contests but they haven't resulted in any new sign-ups. Don't really know what else we can do. I'd greatly appreciate any tips, suggestions, etc. Thanks in advance.

    | Xee
    0

  • Hi, I set-up a UK Google Merchant feed about 8months ago now which is automated for around 25K products. I am trying to work out why some other sites still rank better than mine in the Shopping listing under the default 'Relevancy' filter. I have both a greater number and better reviews than the competitors and am showing a better price. I wonder whether anyone has any information on whether the following factors affect the listing position under the 'Relevance' filter: 1 - Age of the listing or domain 2 - Historic 'Click-Rate' for domain in Shopping listing 2 - Overall quality of the data feed i.e. do errors or warnings for other products in the feed affect the positions of all items in the feed? 3 - Bounce rate or on-page time of clicks to target site 4 - Diversity of review sources 5 - Google Checkout reviews 6 - Company location in Google Local For an ecommerce site this positioning can make a big-time difference to sales, so I'm hoping someone has run some tests on this they can share, and if not then why not? Hoping someone can throw some light on this, as I can't find a great deal out there on this fundamental revenue stream for me. Simon

    | simonphumphries
    0

  • Does anyone have any good examples or case studies? Right now I'm working on a site with both B2B and B2C products crowded onto one site.  I'd love to find some examples of companies that have built their online B2B brand separately from their consumer products. I found the Constructive Playthings case study on Marketing Sherpa but nothing else.

    | TexaSEO
    0

  • OK, before anyone says anything, I know this isn't the right way to do things properly and that if I want to build a genuine and interested following base, I need to create some great content, tweet great things of interest and build a genuine and engaged follower base.... BUT ....Has anyone got any actual experience of using paid for twitter followers and if so would you recommend it or recommend any particular company who does it in the UK? I know there's companies who do it by getting reciprocal followers and others who just use bots to give you lots of 'useless' followers. I essentially want to know if it can work at all on any level and get you some degree of useful followers (i.e. people who may actually read your tweets as opposed to fake accounts).

    | PeterAlexLeigh
    0

  • What does the forum think the best way to get Twitter Followers is? I'm talking from the perspective from a fairly unknown brand where there's no obvious reason for someone to follow.

    | PeterAlexLeigh
    0

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