What do you think about this strategy?
-
I am new to SEO but have been hired to handle the SEO for a martial arts school. They had previously attained top three rankings primarily using nofollow on every link on the homepage except footer links which had anchor text of their keywords pointing to their second tier pages. Each of those second tier page also had all nofollow except a single footer link that had a keyword anchor text link going back to the home page.
Seemed to work for them.
I was going to keep it as as well as focus on creating about 10 separate wordpress blogs. They want to give each blog to a student who will post daily and from each post link to their site via anchor text. Anything wrong with this?
Thanks
Wiliam
-
So even if the website is top 2 in google--For instance usually if you type in mma training in bergen county you will see www.njtraininggrounds.com listed at sometimes the first three spots---you would still say to take some page rank away from the index page and have a followed blog from there?
-
Rather than having 10 separate blogs, I agree that you should have only one blog but make each student an author. That way the content will be aggregated and consistent rather than having your efforts thinly sliced.
-
Hi Shane, thanks for the info. I think I may have them do that instead. Do you think the blog should be accessible from the homepage?
-
Thanks Ryan
-
Safe may be the wrong outlook
This strategy is definitely employed by many, but i think they are slowly seeing the returns on these types of strats slipping. Not to say they do not work, but not sure it is a good idea in such a small niche (probably a pretty big SEO footprint will be left)
If you have articles that call for linking to your site that has a logical and informational purpose, then this is a good strat, but just throwing out content with anchor text to your site is sometimes a waste and possibly hurtful.
IMHO - Forget so many word presses and concentrate on having a blog on your site that generates quality informational content that is related to your niche both directly and abstractly. This is a site link building strategy that can payoff in incoming links and traffic.
Now this is not to say that other avenues should not be taken, but if you have lots of content that can be created then i would keep alot of it on your site mostly in one place so you are not spreading all that potential traffic to alternate sites not on your domain (wordpresses)
Just an idea
-
You can offer as many anchor text links as you see fit. Understand that only the first link to a given page will pass the anchor text.
Unless a student really takes their blog seriously and writes high quality articles, these blogs probably wont offer any linking value in terms of PR. They may very well bring in some long tail traffic and gain exposure for your site that way.
-
Hi Ryan, thanks man. Will do. Do you think it's a good strategy to create the wordpress blogs manned by students daily with fresh posts, and then have those blogs link back to the main site? Any idea how many anchor text links is safe to put per post?
Thanks a lot
-
The strategy of nofollowing internal links to the degree you mention goes directly against what we know as best practices for the SEO industry.
As far as the results achieved, I would relate it to a recent Las Vegas experience. I was with a friend who had a 19 while the dealer had a 10 showing. Blackjack logic says to stay on 19, no matter what. He decided to hit, he got a 2, and the dealer had 20. His choice worked in that particular instance. Even so, I would never duplicate that action nor recommend it to anyone else. The point is, don't confuse the results with the tactic.
Another mozzer just referenced this link in a Q&A reply which talks about using nofollow on internal links: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/
The summary: I would remove nofollow from any internal links, and know that footer links are considered weaker then links found in your content.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
SEO strategies specifically for saas companies
For location specific businesses there are many tactics to locally optimize your business letting them rank higher than large companies. Are there any tactics/strategies specifically for saas companies?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | alexadedmon0 -
What do you think about SEO of big sites ?
Hi, I was doing some research of new huge sites for example carstory.com that have over million pages and i notice that many new sites have strong growing for number of keywords and then at some point everything start going down (Image of traffic drop attached)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | logoderivvthere are no major updates at this time but you can clearly see even on recent kewyords changes that this site start loosing keywords every day , so number of new keywords are much less that lost keywords. How would you explain it ? Is that at some point when site have more than X number of indexed pages then power of domain is not enough to keep all of them at the top and those keywords start dropping ? Please share you opinion and if you have any experience by yourself with huge sites. Thank You very appreciated 2LC3AxE
0 -
Thinking about not indexing PDFs on a product page
Our product pages generate a PDF version of the page in a different layout. This is done for 2 reasons, it's been the standard across similar industries and to help customers print them when working with the product. So there is a use when it comes to the customer but search? I've thought about this a lot and my thinking is why index the PDF at all? Only allow the HTML page to be indexed. The PDF files are in a subdomain, so I can easily no index them. The way I see it, I'm reducing duplicate content On the flip side, it is hosted in a subdomain, so the PDF appearing when a HTML page doesn't, is another way of gaining real estate. If it appears with the HTML page, more estate coverage. Anyone else done this? My knowledge tells me this could be a good thing, might even iron out any backlinks from being generated to the PDF and lead to more HTML backlinks Can PDFs solely exist as a form of data accessible once on the page and not relevant to search engines. I find them a bane when they are on a subdomain.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bio-RadAbs0 -
301 Redirecting from Static to Dynamic URLs. I think we messed up
I'm looking for some guidance on an issue I believe we created for ourselves and if we undo what we did. We recently added attributed search to our sites. This of course created a bunch of dynamically generated URLS. For various reasons, it was decided to take some of our existing static URLs and 301 redirect them to their dyanamic counterpart. Ex .../Empire-Paintball-Masks-0Y.aspx now redirects to .../Paintball-Masks-And-Goggles-0Y.aspx?Manufacturer=Empire Many of these stat URLS had top 3 rankings for their associated keywords. Now, we don't rank for anything. I realize that 301 redirecting is the way to go...if you NEED to. My guess is our drop in keyword ranking is directly tied to what we did. I'm looking for an solid argument to be made to my boss as to why we should not have done this and that it, more than likely has resulted in dropped keyword rankings and organic traffic. I welcome any input. Also, if we decided to revert back (remove all 301 redirects and de-index all dynamic URLS), what is the likely hood we can recapture some of this lost organic traffic? Can I disallow indexing in a robot.txt file to remove, say anything with a '?' in the URL? Would the above URL example (which was ranking in the top 3 in SERPs), have a good chance of finding its way back? thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Istoresinc1 -
I can't help but think something is wrong with my SEO
So we re-launched our site about a month ago, and ever since we've seen a dramatic drop in search results (probably due to some errors that were made) when changing servers and permalink structure. But, I can't help but think something else is at play here. When we write something, I can check 24 hours later, and if I copy the Title verbatim, but we don't always show up in SERPs. In fact, I looked at a post today, and the meta description showing is not the same, but when I check the source code, it's right. What shows up in Google: http://d.pr/i/jGJg What's actually in the source code: http://d.pr/i/p4s8 Why is this happening? Website is The Tech Block
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ttb0 -
Google Freshness Update & Ecommerce Site Strategies
Just curious what other ecommerce SEO's are doing to battle fresh content. We've been having our clients work on internal blogs, adding articles one click away from landing pages, and implement product reviews when possible but I don't know that it's enough. Our bigger customers have landing pages (usually category pages) with very competitive keywords. So my main issue is what to do with fresh content on category pages.. I've toyed with the idea of having the landing page content re written every now and then. We used to use a blog parser to bring snippits of comments from the blog into landing pages but I believe that to be a problem with duplicate content. News snippits from other sites don't seem beneficial either. Anyone have any other ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iAnalyst.com0 -
"Original Content" Dynamic Hurting SEO? -- Strategies for Differentiating Template Websites for a Nationwide Local Business Segment?
The Problem I have a stable of clients spread around the U.S. in the maid service/cleaning industry -- each client is a franchisee, however their business is truly 'local' with a local service area, local phone/address, unique business name, and virtually complete control over their web presence (URL, site design, content; apart from a few branding guidelines). Over time I've developed a website template with a high lead conversion rate, and I've rolled this website out to 3 or 4 dozen clients. Each client has exclusivity in their region/metro area. Lately my white hat back linking strategies have not been yielding the results they were one year ago, including legitimate directories, customer blogging (as compelling as maid service/cleaning blogs can really be!), and some article writing. This is expected, or at least reflected in articles on SEO trends and directory/article strategies. I am writing this question because I see sites with seemingly much weaker back link profiles outranking my clients (using SEOMoz toolbar and Site Explorer stats, and factoring in general quality vs. quantity dynamics). Questions Assuming general on-page optimization and linking factors are equal: Might my clients be suffering because they're using my oft-repeated template website (albeit with some unique 'content' variables)? If I choose to differentiate each client's website, how much differentiation makes sense? Specifically: Even if primary content (copy, essentially) is differentiated, will Google still interpret the matching code structure as 'the same website'? Are images as important as copy in differentiating content? From an 'machine' or algorithm perspective evaluating unique content, I wonder if strategies will be effective such as saving the images in a different format, or altering them slightly in Photoshop, or using unique CSS selectors or slightly different table structures for each site (differentiating the code)? Considerations My understanding of Google's "duplicate content " dynamics is that they mainly apply to de-duping search results at a query specific level, and choosing which result to show from a pool of duplicate results. My clients' search terms most often contain client-specific city and state names. Despite the "original content" mantra, I believe my clients being local businesses who have opted to use a template website (an economical choice), still represent legitimate and relevant matches for their target user searches -- it is in this spirit I ask these questions, not to 'game' Google with malicious intent. In an ideal world my clients would all have their own unique website developed, but these are Main St business owners balancing solutions with economics and I'm trying to provide them with scalable solutions. Thank You! I am new to this community, thank you for any thoughts, discussion and comments!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | localizedseo0 -
Best strategy behind moving country subdirectory to dedicated TTLD wo/ loosing organic search volume?
Community, We are about to move one of our most popular country sub directories from brandname.com/de/.. to brandname.de . We have just purchased the domain so while the domain has been registered in 2009 the URL has zero domain authority. What is the best strategy to execute the move while being cautious about loosing too much organic search volume the subdirectory is receiving right now? Obviously it will take some time to build up DA on the TTLD so maybe it is a good idea to keep the country directory for a little longer and start on the TTLD with just a static landing page, place some links, wait until it receives some DA builds up and then perform the move. Thoughts? /TomyPro
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tomypro0