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Category: Branding

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

  • Branden_S


    I'm about to create a favicon for my company and noticed an animated favicon option.  I can't remember a major website using an animated favicon, but I use Chrome, which doesn't support them. Are animated favicons visible on many browsers?  Do they have any impact on SEO?  Does anybody use animated favicons?  Is it worth my time to create one?

    | Branden_S
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  • BipSum


    Hi Community, one of my sites was affected by panda penguin and then EMD updates last year. All our google 1st page rankings were lost and we have spent the last few months trying to recover the situation.  Changed content, meta tags, meta titles, disavowed links, changed navigation structure among other things.  We are now at a point where we are thinking of scrapping the whole thing and re-coding the site.  Before we make the decision I wanted to ask what the main risks and points are that we need to consider. Are there any useful guides to help us make an informed judgment?  Also, if we were to re-do the site and also change the domain name what are the implications of this and what needs to be considered.  I'd really appreciate some advice as this is a major step for us. Thanks

    | BipSum
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  • reallygoodstuff


    Hi, I've seen this question asked and answered by SEO's somewhere in the past but can't seem to find it. A press release we created was covered in a  nice article by a very prominent newspaper, with a mention of us but no link. The paper is so prominent that you hesitate for a second to write them and ask for the link, but of course, it doesn't hurt to ask. One mistake I made was issuing the release but not really pointing it at a piece of relevant content besides our company web site. This is not part of the question but is a good tip fo' learning and growing - the information we released was highly compelling but we should have taken the time to create a beautiful, linkable asset on our site. Anybody with advice on the best way to ask for a link? Is it asking the author? I assume I am not going to get this. I think this article will be syndicated -- if it gets picked up elsewhere, do you think it's worth the time to ask those papers?

    | reallygoodstuff
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  • PFX111


    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
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  • teconsite


    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
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  • BeytzNet


    Hi All, On one hand, if I follow them they are happy and receive a notice that they are being followed and will probably be more agile to plus my writings. On the other, it is unreasonable for me to follow everyone... and I think that as a brand I should watch very carefully who I follow. Thanks

    | BeytzNet
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  • well-its-1-louder


    Thanks for looking. Site is: www.vintageheirloom.com My homepage seems slower than the rest of my pages, & erratic load times, 2 -6 secs. It looks like it loads twice when run through Pingdom tools (http://tools.pingdom.com)? On the results page I can see the html script object at the top http://www.vintageheirloom.com/ and then reappears at the bottom again. Load time 1st is approx 761 ms then 1.35 seconds. I've looked for images that might be loading the site, I saw this as a reason, but I can't see this being the problem. I've seen mention of looking in my .htaccess file if that is the cause. I've removed chunks of code to see any changes but couldn't spot any, still loads html script for www.vintageheirloom.com twice. Thanks Kevin .htaccess file details: <code>RewriteOptions inherit # 1.To use URL Alias you need to be running apache with mod_rewrite enabled. # 2\. In your opencart directory rename htaccess.txt to .htaccess. # For any support issues please visit: http://www.opencart.com Options +FollowSymlinks # Prevent Directoy listing Options -Indexes # Prevent Direct Access to files <filesmatch "\.(tpl|ini|log|ds_store)"="">Order deny,allow  Deny from all</filesmatch> # Prevent Direct Access to files <filesmatch "fbcindex"="">Order deny,allow  Deny from all</filesmatch> # Use PHP 5.3 AddType application/x-httpd-php53 .php # SEO URL Settings RewriteEngine On # If your opencart installation does not run on the main web folder make sure you folder it does run in ie. / becomes /shop/ RewriteBase / RewriteRule ^sitemap.xml$ index.php?route=feed/google_sitemap [L] RewriteRule ^googlebase.xml$ index.php?route=feed/google_base [L] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !.*\.(ico|gif|jpg|jpeg|png|js|css) RewriteRule ^([^?]*) index.php?_route_=$1 [L,QSA] ### Additional Settings that may need to be enabled for some servers ### Uncomment the commands by removing the # sign in front of it. ### If you get an "Internal Server Error 500" after enabling any of the following settings, restore the # as this means your host doesn't allow that. # 1\. If your cart only allows you to add one item at a time, it is possible register_globals is on. This may work to disable it: # php_flag register_globals off # 2\. If your cart has magic quotes enabled, This may work to disable it: # php_flag magic_quotes_gpc Off # 3\. Set max upload file size. Most hosts will limit this and not allow it to be overridden but you can try # php_value upload_max_filesize 999M # 4\. set max post size. uncomment this line if you have a lot of product options or are getting errors where forms are not saving all fields # php_value post_max_size 999M # 5\. set max time script can take. uncomment this line if you have a lot of product options or are getting errors where forms are not saving all fields # php_value max_execution_time 200 # 6\. set max time for input to be recieved. Uncomment this line if you have a lot of product options or are getting errors where forms are not saving all fields # php_value max_input_time 200 ## INCREASE PAGE SPEED HTACCESS MODIFICATION ## <ifmodule mod_headers.c="">Header set Connection keep-alive</ifmodule> AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/xml text/css text/javascript application/x-javascript BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html <ifmodule mod_headers.c="">Header append Vary User-Agent</ifmodule> ## END INCREASE PAGE SPEED HTACCESS MODIFICATION ## ## DIVERT NON WWW TO WWW http://www.seomoz.org/q/is-there-an-easier-way-from-the-server-to-prevent-duplicate-page-content ## <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. [NC] RewriteRule ^ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]</ifmodule> ## END DIVERT NON WWW TO WWW http://www.seomoz.org/q/is-there-an-easier-way-from-the-server-to-prevent-duplicate-page-content ## # BEGIN WordPress <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteRule . /index.php [L]</ifmodule> # END WordPress RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^.*$ RewriteRule ^authentic\-preowned\-designer\-handbags$ "http\:\/\/www\.vintageheirloom\.com\/authentic\-second\-hand\-designer\-bags" [R=301,L]</code>

    | well-its-1-louder
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  • teconsite


    Hi! we have a client that wants to begin doing business in Italy and France. As they don't sell directly to final customer, they need to generate brand awareness first in those market. We are thinking of a content marketing strategy. As they are a furniture company and they create a very nice product, we think we can work a lot with pictures and articles. We think that Pinterest, Picassa and flickair will all be very important for the strategy. For sure, we know they should create a Facebook Account for each country, but what happens with twitter, pinterest, flickair, youtube ...?  Should they also create an account for each country? They are not a very big company, and I am not sure about if they would be able to generate enough content for each account if they have an account per country. What do you think? One account per country or can we avoid that for some social networks? Thank you!

    | teconsite
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  • JonathanRolande


    Hey, After months of working hard we have some great content on our website, and now seem to be getting into a flow of releasing content consistently. I think it's now time to shift a bit of focus onto getting more eyes lookng at it, and importantly the right eyes. Has anyone got any tips or advice? Kind Regards

    | JonathanRolande
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  • BTMSEO


    A few months ago, we changed the anchors in all of our websites footers to rel="nofollow". We did this so we could drop the possibility of getting hit by the penguin update. So first, we had anchors in the template of every website that read something along the lines of "web design by bluetone media". This was on every page, so we quickly changed every link in our footers to nofollows so it would show Google that we were using that space for mainly branding purposes, instead of stealing juice from clients. However, after monitoring our link analysis, we have severely dropped in domain authority, domain moztrust, domain mozrank and more. I believe this is due to the lack of followed links, so would it be best to go back and remove all of the links from the templates of our websites and just leave the dofollow links on the homepages of our websites, or just wait it out and see what happens. This crazy decline in domain authority has only recently happened, should I expect a bounce back soon?

    | BTMSEO
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  • CSawatzky


    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
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  • JonnyGreenwood


    Before 2012, our employees used to spam in the forums as we are not that skilled in SEO at that time. And it caused a low WOT score and some people report us as spam. But since 2012, I forced them to stop all kinds of spam activities, but it always take 10x works to make up for the mistake made before. Now we are totally focus on the white-hat SEO, and how can we improve the WOT score? Thanks. I've already requested a review, and they said that they need more time to re-rate my site.

    | JonnyGreenwood
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  • jhinchcliffe


    Hey everyone, I'm getting a wee bit frustrated. I have looked at every blog post I can about merging Google Local and Google Business Pages and I can't figure it out. I already have a verified Google Local page here https://plus.google.com/107404063103285095864/about?gl=CA&hl=en-CA and a Google Business Page here https://plus.google.com/b/100116630212547145177/100116630212547145177/posts . Both are already verified. How do I merge these existing profiles which are already verified?

    | jhinchcliffe
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  • Palmbourne


    We have registered an additional site selling items that are different to what we sell now, as an example we have registered a site call www.apple-pears.uk, another company has registered the name applesandpears.co.uk with the view to trying to sell the domain name, would we be OK to call our site Apple and Pears as a title even though our website is www.apple-pears.co.uk.

    | Palmbourne
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  • Ron10


    Hi mozzers! i play in a band that is based in Austin, TX but travels to all cities across texas.  I've been told i need to have citations in place to help my organic rankings in the cities across Texas that i perform in. 1.  What are the best ways to get citations to rank locally in each city for my band?  i have a page set up on my website for each city that we perform in.  Do i set up accounts on local business directories in each city that i perform in with a link to that city page on my site?  I have performers that i hire in each city and can use their address for the local address on each business listing but my business phone number would be the same for all cities.  I don't want this to look black hat to google by filling out business listings for many different cities with the same phone humber but my customers are in fact in all these major cities almost more than in my home town. 2.  Since i can only fill out a google places page for my home city, what other ways can i get citations to help my organic rankings in all the cities that i perform in? Thanks in advance for everyone's input! Ron

    | Ron10
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  • gfiedel


    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
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  • WorldEscape


    Greetings support, I would like to know if i can use similar keywords into my index title tag and than the similar keyword into the title tag of another page from the same site. Example:The site selling ''Dubai Apartments'' ''Dubai Vacation Rentals'' ''Dubai Holiday Apartments'' and ''Dubai Accommodation'' and would like to rank the index page for  ''Dubai City Apartments'' and ''Dubai Accommodation'' and the category page  /apartments/  for ''Dubai Apartments'' Is this ok ? because I do not want to lose the rank for the index page because it's already higher for ''Dubai City Apartments'' and ''Dubai Apartments'' I also have use this title tag on the home page: Dubai City Apartments | Dubai Accommodation | sitename brand and than i have category page such: /apartments/   title  Dubai Apartments | Dubai Apartment Rentals | brandname /vacation-rentals/    title  Dubai Vacation Rentals | Holiday Rentals Dubai | brandname /holiday-apartments/    Dubai Holiday Apartments | Dubai Vacation Apartments | brandname P.S. My index page is already rank for keyword such: dubai apartments, dubai holiday apartments, dubai vacation rentals and dubai accommodation but i want to know rank the category page. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Best, Giuseppe

    | WorldEscape
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  • McCannSEO


    While reviewing 404 errors in Webmaster Tools, I noticed that a client had a link from a high authority, well respected forum, to a page which no longer exists. When I checked out the linking post, it was from 2004 and showed a campaign against the company for it's advertising tactics. I'll spare the details but the company has since changed their ways. It's tempting to implement a 301 to get the link juice from this DA 80 post, but since the reason for the link is a negative one and the co-citations are not going to be positive, is it better to just let this link go? Or what about something more up-front, such as setting up a page which states the company's mission statement and commitment to quality and standards and 301 redirecting to there? Even if we let this link be broken, a potential customer could be put off, so it might be a good idea to address this past issue on site? Let me know your opinions on whether there is a way to benefit from this link or whether we are better off allowing the 404.

    | McCannSEO
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  • G2W


    Hi All, I'm having an issue: I recently merged my Google+ business page and +Local page, and I'm happy it's verified for local search purposes. However, I am having a supremely difficult time getting the formatting and anchor text links I inserted in the "Edit Business Section to apply; It's just one large chunk of unformatted text.  Of note is the fact that the text content did actually change when approved. I made a post on Mike Blumenthal's blog about this, and he said that he generally does not recommend merging at all. Any ideas how to get my formatting and text links approved by the Google+ team? Any thoughts on the pros and cons of merging Local+ in general?

    | G2W
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  • Crunchii


    I'm currently contemplating implementing ratings on some of our products. Using schema.org what would be the best approach if I have several languages for a product? Can I use the same review setup on these two pages?
    www.spamfighter.com/SLOW-PCfighter
    www.spamfighter.com/SLOW-PCfighter/Lang_ES Is it possible to do static structured data or does the rating system have to be present and possible to rate? I noticed that Rank Tracker has a system where it's hardcoded and links to reviews. jsOGI9UtqC

    | Crunchii
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  • Chris.Menke


    I'm trying to get a company logo to show up next to the search results for a search on [company name] AND a separate author photo to show next to the About page of the author of the same site for a search on [author name] There is author markup on the company's "About" page and Google's structured data testing tool shows that that page is correctly configured to show the author pic. There is publisher markup on the home page and the tool shows that the page is correctly configured to show the company logo. However, no company logo shows up in the search results for the [company name] search--just an author pic next to the "about" page for the [author name] search. if I add author markup to the homepage in addition to the publisher markup, I get the author pic showing up for both [author name] and  [company name] searches. How is anyone making this work?  Thanks.

    | Chris.Menke
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  • littlesthobo


    Hi All I'm looking for a bit of a steer on which direction to go in here. I have a new client and the client has a 'branch' in London.  The brand is about to be franchised across the UK.  They currently have a google places page in London (old style Google places, not a plus page) and nothing else on Google +. I don't really want to touch the Google place (local page) because it ranks well for their business and far higher than their organic search result. In terms of adding to their social presence, I think a Google Plus 'Brand' page would work as a generic brand, with several additional local pages being created as franchisees come on board.  They have a safe and strong brand and have plans to reinforce through social. I'm about to set up the brand page and wondered if anyone has any thoughts, words of warning or points to consider? I don't know why but I feel somewhat tetchy and fearful of Google places that have yet to be merged. Thanks

    | littlesthobo
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  • Pedram_SEO


    Hi All, We are in process of syndicating a few press releases on company news over the next few months. These aren't fluff PRs, they are actual news and can provide some value for linking opportunities (woohoo). Anyway, we are a public company, so there are some relatively strict guidelines as to what content we publish. A great place to place some flexible links is in the boilerplate of a release. However, we can't change that content around too much on each PR. So, question is, are there any negative implications on pushing out that kind of duplicate content on the web. Clearly, it's not our intention to spam whatsoever. But, I can see how the same type of content going out on the web multiple times in coming months good send off a negative signal. Takes/thoughts?

    | Pedram_SEO
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  • Novos_Jay


    I work for an e-retailer. I've noticed that at least one of our competitors (and, I think, a second as well) has set up a neutral "third party" website that attempts to provide unbiassed information about different manufacturer's products. Of course, their products always win out over the competitor in these comparisons. But this one site (and another whose corporate backer I can't seem to figure out) is keyworded so poorly, and not branded at all. There are very few (if any) links to the corporate sponsor, or links, period. It's definitely not serving to have "Little Brand x" appear next to "Big Brand Y" in search results, either (again, really poorly keyworded). Other SEO seems really minimal. What do you think their strategy is? Is it a dumb waste o' money or something really smart that I'm not picking up on? Your insights most appreciated!

    | Novos_Jay
    1
  • ScentsySEO


    So I have this theory and I’m wondering if anyone else has some input. I believe I have found a loop-hole to Google’s Penguin update. Let me explain. I work for a pretty competitive party planning company. Our biggest competitor for search is also our bread and butter to our company, our consultants. In addition to outside competitors trying to manipulate business from those consultants. Anyways, one of my top priorities is to not only rank for multiple pages on our site, but to also have our social sites rank on the first two pages. Recently I have watched a spamming MLM YouTube video review of our company crawl up the YouTube charts and out rank us for our Company name in YouTube search. And now, this week, the video has crawled up to rank 3<sup>rd</sup> behind our main site and Wikipedia for our brand keyword! So how does a YouTube video that is simply a review out rank us for our company name in our social platforms? Mind you he is also outranking our core social sites of which we have thousands of comments and interactions on per day? Looking at all of the metrics of the video, according to how I believe ranking to work in Youtube, there is no way this guy should be ranking as high as he is. The video has a decent amount of copy, it has fewer than 10,000 views, 76 thumbs up, 5 thumbs down, fewer than 2,000 subscribers and his channel only has 12 videos. It wasn’t until I was looking at our search results in Seomoz that I realized what this guy was doing to move up so quickly in rankings. He has 1,671 linking root domains to his video. He has been building excessive links to this video on Youtube. Well, since Google isn’t going to penalize its own website, the old technique of excessively building links to one page… seems to be working. Has anyone else come across something like this? Where building excessive links to a video or other social platform substantially has increased rankings?

    | ScentsySEO
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  • dtlalaw


    Hey Guys, For about a few days now, my google authorship photo no longer appears in search results.  Also, I am unable to access my google places page, as every time I try I get an error from google (error #500).  The places page still works, but I cannot log in as an administrator. I have no idea why this is happening, as the rich snippets tool indicates that everything is fine and dandy.  I have also made no changes to the structure of the site. Can someone please explain why I am encountering these problems.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

    | dtlalaw
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  • scottclark


    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
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  • VGRRI


    It would be so useful if we could get insights into the members of a twitter list in the same way we can get statistics on the people we search through the "search twitter bio" options (following/followers/RTs/Social Authority/etc). This is possible through the twitter api but it limits to 20 list member which is useless. Anyone know of a solution? Thanks!

    | VGRRI
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  • prima-253509


    So here is the issue. I am working with a company that used to have a branded domain. Then they split the domain into two separate keyword rich domains and tried to change branding to match the keyword rich domains. This made for a really long brand name that is difficult to actually rank for as it is mostly hi traffic key terms and also created brand confusion because all of the social accounts still operate under the old brand name. We are considering a new brand initiative and going back to the original brand name as it better meets our business objectives (they still get traffic from branded searches under the old brand) and the old branded web domain. My question is if there is any added risk in going back to an old domain that has been forwarded for the past 2 years to the new domain? I know the risks and problems of a domain name change, but I am not as certain about the added complication of moving back to an old domain and essentially reversing the flow of 301's. Any thoughts? Cheers!

    | prima-253509
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  • gfiedel


    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
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  • Antony_Towle


    We have linked our Google plus company profile to our main website and setup a rel=publisher authorship which appears and works fine in the SERPS as we regularly create Google plus posts about our industry and products. We also gain some good traffic through some of our smaller product specific micro sites so i wanted to setup our publisher markup for these also as some of our posts are relevant to these products. I setup the rel=publisher on one of these , but the Google snippet testing tool says that the rel publisher is unverified. Is this Google's way of saying i cannot use the same Google plus company profile across multiple sites My question is: Does Google not allow you to display the same Google plus rel publisher profile for multiple websites ? or is the there a problem with how i am marking up my micro sites ? has anybody tried this ?

    | Antony_Towle
    0
  • JoshBowers2012


    The question: I've been doing work for authors lately and a common question is if they should have a site for their book and a site for themselves. Separate sites with different domain names. At first I thought this would be a bad idea. Why spread information across two sites if they can be related and used together in one? But I see a lot of authors doing this and some with marketing companies. One site for the author with information about them, their books, their social media presence. Then another site for their book, with new social media accounts, other info, etc. What do you guys think? Has anyone tried both and seen any pros and cons? Is there a perfect answer?

    | JoshBowers2012
    0
  • emerald


    Hi,
    I'm not sure what action to follow as nothing online seems to describe my Google Place situation - trying to merge 2 completely incorrect business listings for our company, that are also not identical. We have 2 listings on Google Places for our 1 company but a recent address number change has added further complication to already incorrect and different listings. our first/oldest listing was created by google but with incomplete business name, wrong map pin, completely wrong address, but shows our trip advisor reviews. created by us a year ago (we didn't realize the dupe issues) with full business name, correct address at the time (now incorrect since address number change), correct map pin, full description photos and info. This does not link to our trip advisor reviews. How to merge these when they aren't curently identical or correct? All online help seems to explain identical dupes but not this situation. What updates I tried recently: After some research, I changed all citations on the web to no.2 business name (except trip advisor who would not change), our new address number and then updated our no.2 address listing. But has stayed pending for months. It seems to be live, but still with the old incorrect address that does not match citations or our website. When I tried claiming both places with same account it showed the same pending new info I updated for no.2 in dashboard (so I can't edit no.1), but this data is not is not live on either. Last week I decided to do something radical, so logged in with a different account to reclaim no.1 and copied all information pending in no.2 to no.1 so that they should be exact same and hopefully force to merge. Both are pending and 2 different accounts now. What else can I do? We can rank locally while the 2 listings are like this. Should I call Google helpline and explain?

    | emerald
    0
  • JABacchetta


    I'm wanting to submit press releases to PRNewswire, BusinessWire and MarketWire.... but I dont want to take the time to fill out forms and fax them back, or pay the initial membership fees. Are there companies that just take the press release that you've written, and then send them out to these services? Where can I find such a company?

    | JABacchetta
    0
  • Eteach_Marketing


    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
  • underscorelive


    I have taken over the SEO campaign for one of our largest clients. They already receive over a million visits a year due to the brand itself. However, I'd like to start targeting some new search terms to diversify the incoming visitors. Any advice on this type of situation, beyond traditional SEO best practices? Thanks in advance!

    | underscorelive
    0
  • CSawatzky


    Hi Fellow Mozzers, Just started off here on seomoz.org and am super happy to have joined the community! I've recently started a new job as web optimization manager for an education company. There is a lot to do and one of my first tasks is to figure a better strategy for our current blog. I've convinced our management to move our blog from topic.domain.com to domain.com/blog. My research has shown that this is a better strategy so that our blog can receive the DA of our root domain, get more people to click through our site, and even receive more natural searches (PLEASE, someone correct me if I'm wrong on this). Anyway, our blog is currently hosted as a Wordpress blog and we're wondering if it's more worthwhile to build a blog platform ourselves or continue using Wordpress. I am not a technical guy and don't know the backend stuff to make it happen, but my concern is primarily for the optimum search capacity. Also, our bloggers frequently put links to different portions of our website - does this hold any negative  SEO value in terms of too much internal linking? I personally wouldn't assume so, but then again I could be wrong. Finally, we also track our main website using Google Analytics- currently, the only tracking we have installed on our blogs is the default provided by Wordpress (yes yes I know, but that's why i'm here -- to fix these weaknesses). I'm assuming we will be able to better track using GA when the switch is made. So, I guess my questions are: (1) Is my research correct in that it's better to have our blog hosted as domain.com/blog over topic.domain.com (2) Are there any best practices in making this switch and/or any negative implications with continuing to use Wordpress or should we build our own platform (we have the internal resources to do so, but would prefer to take the easiest and best route in terms of SEO and community building). (3) Will it still be just as easy to track using GA. Thank you!! Pedram

    | CSawatzky
    0
  • Haystak


    One of my clients (a dealership) has 2 google places listings. One for their actual dealership and one for their parts and service dept (they are separate buildings 5-10 mins away from each other). When you search for their name "Westchester Toyota" both in web and maps the only result is for the parts and service building. Both listings are active and verified (and both are in good standings). The weirder part is that if you take that same search in maps "Westchester Toyota"  zoom out a few levels and search again Boom both listings appear... Not only that but the main stores listing is places as listing A. I'm wondering if anyone has ever had this issue and has a solution? I believe on the initial search Google is deeming the parts and service listing as the dominant listing (which is why it zooms in so far) but then Google throws me for a loop making the real listing the "A" when you zoom out. Note: The main listing is closer to Westchester, NY. Any insight is appreciated!

    | Haystak
    0
  • CEOLaser


    I am looking in my webmaster tools and under the "Optimization Tab" >> "Content Keywords" and I find my website's list of what I assume words Google notices mentioned frequently. I want to know how I can better manage this and get more relevant key words to show up. Because the website I am referring to is a college lifestyle magazine we have various topics that range and I could see confuse Google.The top word is college which is great but some of the others seem a little random and could definitely be more relevant. Any tips on how to improve this? webmaster-tool.png

    | CEOLaser
    0
  • Archers


    when a PPC campaign is instituted what happens to non-branded organic search traffic ?

    | Archers
    0
  • landon_harlan


    Hunting around I don't see a simple answer as to the best way to treat a customer base that speaks 2 different languages. The ultimate goal is to build the most efficient, easy to manage solution where segmentation is minimal, ie: we don't have to add 2 lists of friends, if possible. There are a couple of options, 2 company pages (1 english, 1 spanish) 1 company page (english) + community page (spanish) - community pages look like the company can loose ownership however. 1 company page + group What is the best way to do this?

    | landon_harlan
    0
  • advancedSemiotics


    Hi MOZers, I've been given a handy little domain puzzle to deal with and would love insight from the community.  Here's the situation: We're retailers of one specific, big, nationally known product.  Let's pretend it's the Snuggee (IT'S NOT).  People search for it and buy it from our site, or from Amazon or other retailers that we distribute it to. We're about to expand to carry a bunch of related, but different products - so from a one-product brand to 5 or 6 different items, relating to different keyword searches.  Imagine Snuggee people want to start selling a whole bunch of products that solve the same needs of warming the front of your body and making you look silly. The owners want to change the main domain from [specific product] to [name similar to specific product, but is more general].  What concerns me is how to handle the fame of the branded product in terms of domain names.  Current domain, based on that product, has a ton of links and a decent age.  Owners are thinking to redirect everything to fresh new unestablished domain.  While I know 301s will pass most link value, it will also be a home page that will be about a bunch of products - not just that main known one.  In fact, we're considering making a URL for each product as landing page, of which old famous product would be one of 5 or 6 pages. Two main options we're considering right now: Keep old domain as a doorway page featuring just old product, with same look and feel, and from which any links would point to the new domain.  Try to keep this as ranking for top result for this search, which should be easy. Unify everything under new domain, with old product being featured on a separate page / subdirectory.  Hope that new home page still can rank pretty well for our old product, even though it will be talking about other products now as well. What we'd stand to lose would be the SERP for old products featuring too many big box retailers that sell our stuff and take a chunk out of our margins.  The goal is to help us become known for many things, while still being always the best search result for what we're already known for. Which of those two options seem best, or is there another I'm missing altogether? Thank you!

    | advancedSemiotics
    0
  • chuck-layton


    I have a question about duplicate content. We have our mission statement on our home page, a few paragraphs. When I searched Copyscape the only pages that came back were sites like Google Plus, Manta, Linkedin, AngieLists ect. All of them have the same exact copy. Would this be something that is hurting us for duplicate content??
    It is our mission statement so we kind of want to be the same across those sites. Any input would be great. Thanks, Scott

    | chuck-layton
    0
  • bozzie311


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

    | bozzie311
    0
  • gfiedel


    I have asked this question before and am still seeking help. My apologies for being repetitive and hopefully not too pesky but I am sincere in my search for guidance. I am looking for advice on how to manage my personal G+ profile along with my business G+ page. My challenge is the coordination between the two and getting people to add our biz page to their Circles instead of to me personally through my personal profile. Google+ requires that we have personal profiles- especially for authorship, but it's my business that I want to represent and promote. I do have the Google+ badge on my website and blog posts. And I am duplicating my posts on both the personal and business pages. I have joined a couple of communities and know that i need to find more and engage in those. And also, another question this brings up: in terms of the social signal aspect for our company website/blog, does it matter where I am building my Circles?

    | gfiedel
    0
  • Eblan


    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
  • WithGodInc


    A non-profit I run owns two domains - ChristianSimplicity.com and SimpleLivingWithGod.com. I have just started producing content under ChristianSimplicity.  These are long-term projects and we have resources to commit to them.  They do not need an economic return and that is not going to be sought. Ultimately I want the sites to rank high on the key words like - Simple Living Living a Simple Life Living Well The Good Life Christian Lifestyle Christian Simple Living I have a two part question. . .  I'll ask the first part now.  The second may be irrelevant depending on the first answer. **Which domain name of the two is best to start out the site?  ** We already have some content on the first site, but are early enough in the process that it isn't a big deal for us to switch and I don't think we will lose too much with respect to rankings. Will the second domain name partial match on key word phrase help significantly more in ranking for the harder term Simple Living?  I already rank 14 for Christian Simple Living - and I'm willing for that to drop to have the longer term goal of ranking higher on Simple Living. Thanks.

    | WithGodInc
    0
  • scotennis


    This is more of a survey than anything. If your name was Jeremy Parker, and you were to start a personal blog/site. Assuming jeremyparker.com was not available, which domain would you go with? 1. jeremyparker.net 2. jeremy-parker.com 3. jerpark.com 4. Other. From an SEO standpoint it would be unlikely to make a difference. But from a branding standpoint. Which one would you perceive to be best? Thanks.

    | scotennis
    0
  • gfiedel


    This question is so elementary, I'm almost embarrassed to ask it. I am having trouble directing potential followers/friends to Circle us on our Google+ business page.  People add to my personal profile page instead, the result of which, i am not building up Circles for my business while I am building my personal profile which i don't care about. I have made personal requests, used our logo on my personal page header saying "Gina Fiedel representing (business name)" and "Visit our Google+ business page", etc.  I feel like I'm missing something. Has anyone found any sort of magic bullet for this?  Thanks!!

    | gfiedel
    0
  • Iresh.Dilan


    Hi All, Since Google give more priority to brand names and most of the penalized websites by Google's Penguin update are websites which had links with promoted keywords, is it a good idea to register a new domain by the product name (ex: www.leatherbags.com) ?. Or is it good to register the domain by the company or brand name and then build a reputable brand first before targeting product based keywords (ex: leather bags) ?.

    | Iresh.Dilan
    1

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