Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi,

I'm aware of the SEO benefit in category pages and would like to implement them on my (client's) site.

Unfortunately, the developer set up the blog where there is one parent category called 'blog' and the rest of the categories are sub-categories, underneath the parent. While it seems like an easy fix, he claims that it's not because of some programmer jargon I can't understand.

So my question is, can subcategories offer same or similar value as categories, or do I go head to head with this charming guy?

I created a segment in analytics for non-branded terms. Problem is, that when I use that segment it shows all the search traffic even non-paid. Why is that?

Or, how do I limit the non-branded segment to only non-paid search?

The segment I created looks like this --

Dimension: Keyword

Condition: Does not a match regular expression

Value: Name of client (with pipes between possible words)

Thanks.

Background: We're creating a site that for a service provider on a wordpress platform, and it will include a blog with a page for each service category. Let's say the client is a wedding photographer we'd create a page for studio portraits, events, wedding, newborns, family etc.

Question: Should each category page be a stand-alone page or a blog category? As a blog category it will be updated with new content continually and automatically. However, it could cause duplicate content issues as well as keyword dilution.

Research: I've done research and obviously there are conflicting opinions - skip categories altogether, categories bring traffic, problems & solutions. I'm hoping for your opinion on the matter, or direction to content on the issue that will be helpful.

Blog categories yay or nay?

Thanks. That was a really useful link.

I'm going to take that to mean that 'men s' is a stand in for 'men's' or 'men!s' or 'men!!!!!!!!!s'

I'm still not clear about how to apply that (as in how Google applies that) to organic search because they return (slightly) different results 'men s' and 'men's'. Also, why would the adwords tool show separate search volume for both terms if one's a stand in for the other?

In doing keyword research I discovered that the Google Adwords Tools returns results with a space in search terms where an apostrophe should be.

For example:  Searching for 'mens fashion' or 'men's fashion' will return keyword ideas like 'men s fashion trends', 'men s fashion styles'. Same thing happens if yous search for '50s fashion' or 'mens suits'.

Not only that but if you search for 'men s fashion' in the adwords tool you get 14,800 exact matches! Who would you use that term? And if you do search for it in Google, it will auto correct to 'men's fashion'.

If you know the answer to what a term like 'men s fashion' signifies, you can skip the rest of this post and answer my question (thanks!). If not, here's what I did to try and figure it out - but I'm stuck and I need your help.

1. First off, I did a search for all 3 terms: (mens fashion, men's fashion and men s fashion) in the adwords tool. The tool responded with different numbers for each, with  'men s fashion' far exceeding 'men's fashion'. See image 1

2. I did a search for each of the three terms in Google. The top 10 results for each were different. See image 2

3. Google reads 'men s fashion' as 'men's fashion'. I know that because:

1. Google says 'showing result's for men's fashion' (obvious!)
2. Google instant lists terms beginning with 'men's fashion...' See image 3
3. Related searches are identical for those two but not for 'mens fashion'.

4. But it's not completely the same since as I mentioned you get different results, and the number of results found are different as well.

So that brings me back to my question: When the tool says that 28 people search for [men's fashion] and 14,800 search for [men s fashion]. What on earth does it mean?

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Klout is a good tool for Twitter. It will give you the number of mentions, retweets, and their own algorithm of how influential you are, and how far your reach is. You can use it to look up any Twitter profile.

They've just added FB and LinkedIn but I haven't tried it so can't tell you about it.

Thanks. Exactly what I needed.

But why is is that the display URL in the title line looks different from the green display URL? AS in ROASTe.com instead of roaste.com?

I'm not sure if this new but I noticed it today:

Some of the ads that are displayed on top of the SERPs have a title, and then their web address, separated by a vertical bar.

For example (see image): Coffee Beans Online | CoffeeBeansDirect.com

The same ad, when displayed in the side bar (see 2nd image) doesn't contain the web address. I expected that because if you count the letters in the ad, including the 'coffeebeansdirect.com' it exceeds the amount allowed for a google ad.

My question is: How did it get there? There's no room to distinguish between top ads and side ads when you write a new a new ad in adwords so where did it come from?

Plus, notice that both CoffeeBeanDirect.com and ROASTe.com use caps that are not used in the green link at the bottom. How did Google know to present the url that way?

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If it's the questions you're worried about, that's why we're here - to learn from experts.

If it's the answers you're worried about, I think you can tell who are the experts and who are the kindly novices.

As a novice myself, I would be grateful if someone pointed out to me that I could be asking better questions.

This site already has a reference section with articles that cover almost every topic (definitely the basic ones) in SEO. You can always point people to those when they ask a basic question, and put more effort into questions where the author has done their homework.

This may be an incredibly unscientific answer, but the plusone button is ugly.

It crowds up the SERPs, it crowds up an already busy 'tweet, share, like etc.'

To SEOs it has incredible power, but to the users, it's: 'What is this little monster button doing here?'

True, about Google Adwords. Although, that isn't my only source.

I can always run a test campaign just to see the number of impressions I get on the keywords I've designated as 'zero search volume'.

And why is QS so important?

Wow, I guess you're right. I'm gonna get started on moving heaven right about now.

Too bad, there are quite a few people between me and heaven.

Thanks for the in depth answer.

I'm working on a PPC campaign for a client who provides a luxury service. He has very little search volume in general, and there's one product that has no volume at all.

I'm wondering if it's worthwhile to run a campaign for this product using the general keywords. I estimate that 95% of the population has no intention of using our service and can't afford it even if they did.

For example, say we're a concierge doctor service. When people search for 'medical doctor' or 'medical treatment' they are looking for doctors, and we probably could help them, but they won't want us when they could go to the doctor's office down the street and pay a fraction of the price.

Obviously I'd tailor the keywords so it would be as relevant as possible.

Yay: If my ads are clear, then whoever clicks them is interested in my product, so my money is being well spent. I'll just have a very low CTR.

Nay: Spend the money on advertisement tailored to the target market, both people with existing interest, and those who would want it if they knew we existed.

Yay or nay?

Just spent the last couple hours checking out Xenu. Found this article here on SEOmoz:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/xenu-link-sleuth-more-than-just-a-broken-links-finder.

Turns out Xenu is an awesome tool - can't wait to make more use of it.

I also took Joyce's advice which was more suited to the task I was trying to do. Thanks for the simple solution!

HI,

I'm looking for a tool that'll generate a URL list for a site. I looked at this thread here http://www.seomoz.org/q/online-sitemap-generator which came up when I searched for sitemap generator.

However, I don't need a sitemap per se, and I don't need to submit it to Google - just a list of pages is what I need.If it updated automatically, that would be useful as well.

Anyone know of a tool, on or offline? Or anyone used Xenu and know if it's what I'm looking for? Or is there a simple solution that I'm missing?

Thanks.

Hi,

I'm working to optimize a site that currently has about 5K pages listed in the sitemap.  There are not in face this many pages.  Part of the problem is that one of the pages is a tool where each sort and filter button produces a query string URL.

It seems to me inefficient to have so many items listed that are all really the same page.  Not to mention wanting to avoid any duplicate content or low quality issues.

How have you found it best to handle this?  Should I just noindex each of the links?  Canonical links? Should I manually remove the pages from the sitemap?  Should I continue as is?

Thanks a ton for any input you have!