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I think the best way to handle this would be to use excerpts on the home page.
EXAMPLE POST TITILE
aadfs asdfs a fdsdf s dfsdf sfds sdfs sdf sdf sdfs sf sdf
sd fsdf sdf sdf sdf ssd sdfs fsdf sdf sdfs df sdf sdf sd fsdf
sf sdfsdf s dfs fsdf sdf sdf sdfs fds dfs df ssdf s sd fsd fs
sdf sdf s sfd sd fs dfs df sdf s dfs df sdf s dfs f
READ MORE
this allows someone to visit your site, read the enticing excerpt and click the link to the blogs page.
nice, that answers a lot. You've been a huge help.
Ok, about .html
is that something I just add manually to the permalink? or should I use some type of plugin? I use wordpress.
I like the idea of 1999-season.
The site is named Pittsburgh Steelers Roster (maybe a mistake but that's ok)
My page titles are "2011 Pittsburgh Steelers Roster"
So the page title tags look like
"2011 Pittsburgh Steelers Roster | Pittsburgh Steelers Roster"
This is going to be perceived as keyword stuffing, correct?
So, I should come up with a more creative page title, correct?
Ok, I did make most of the changes you've suggested.
I changed /history/ to:
/roster-history/
only because the site is going to have a lot of historic content about the decades, years, teams, and players.
I have a question about this URL:
http://pittsburghsteelersroster.com/roster-history/1990-1999/1999-pittsburgh-steelers-roster/
Would Google penalize me for having repeated the keywords in the URL? why does it makes sense to shorten this URL?
Could you take a look at my site and help me optimize it.
I would probably do both options.
Are you including the cities in your page titles and page descriptions? Do you mention the cities in your content body?
Page Title: Company | adjective product servicing city A & city B
maybe a sub-page for city A and a sub-page for city B
anchor text and links to the main page which will carry some juice to the sub-pages.
Link building strategy county-wide to the main page, link building city specific to the sub-pages.
I'm not super experienced so take my advice cautiously.
Do you have a physical location in both City A and City B? do you have google place pages for each location?
Will it rank as well as .com or .net? when people Google "who is Andrew Solomon"? will it appear?
as a side note, I know an SEO who purchased www.whois(his name).com
Yea, I read an article about personal branding that said to use your name when available. Issue is that my name is so common it's not available anywhere.
I'm still early in the branding stages but need to make a decision soon.
Should I consider changing "andymisiu" as my social profile name? or is it ok?
AndrewSolomon and AndySolomon are both taken as domain names. I use the alias "andymisiu" for all of my social accounts.
I'm thinking of buying AndrewJSolomon as my domain name as James is my middle name. Should I be concerned with using my middle initial in my domain name?
I'm going to include "andymisiu" in the site title for recognition and branding.
What do you think? any advice?
Guess I should stick with AndyMisiu then. Since it's my username on most of my forums already and available across most accounts.
Andrewsolomon.com and Andysolomon.com are gone. Should I use my middle initial andrewjsolomon.com? or is that too much information?
I watched the "White Board Friday" video on creating your own website based on your name. Can anyone explain why this would be a good concept for me? I'm currently involved in
1. Marketing for the company I work for
2. Sales for the company I work for
3. Affiliate Marketing/ Site Creation as side projects
4. SEO as a free-lance part-time offering
5. PPC & Web-marketing as a free-lance part-time offering
Would my personal page be to showcase all of this? why is it beneficial for SEO?
I was more speaking of the sidebar advert.
on the page where your placing the call to action... make sure to explain why someone would want to join the guestlist, then ask them to join it.
I noticed that a lot of the information was listed below the form.
I would maybe just add some quick bullet points above the form
Gain access to exclusive clubs!
Party in the same venues as celebrities!
ect....
Just some idea's from a guy who hasn't been to a club in years... so take it for what it's worth 
What is the benefit of joining the list?
For me... I don't think the JOIN LIST stands out enough on the page. I would maybe list out some benefits and make the option stand out a little more.
I think the sidebar "join list" is really missing on some opportunity. Instead of it being a picture of a random girls face, maybe list out the benefits and make it pop from the page a little.
Thanks for the reply! great answer and good to know. The developer mirrors your answer as well.
I'm using Wordpress to create websites and blogs. I have limited (non-existent) HTML Coding knowledge. I'm looking to insert tables within my pages with information. Inside of these tables I want certain names to link to another page with more specific information about that name.
I'm using a plugin called "WP Tables Reloaded" it simple helps you to create aesthetically pleasing tables without needing to know HTML Code or CSS.
The issue is... when you create this table and insert it to the post, the only thing that shows on the sites back-end page is the table I.D. and the only thing that shows in the HTML is the tables I.D. It looks like this...
[table id=2 /]
I don't think search engines will be able to crawl this table, thus I won't be receiving any credit for the links being used within the table.
Am I right about this?
My company is still in the process of evaluating these guys:
http://www.seobywebmechanix.com/
So far they seem pretty knowledgeable and educated on the subject. Pricing seems pretty reasonable.
What are the products your offering on the product pages? are they reviewable? could a blogger create a review for your product and link to the product page? Do you have any videos out on the internet anywhere about the products? are there any directories you could list the product page in?
good discussion Matt! and your right about creating our own kitchen content.
Well, if you break out a site into individual franchise sites... your relying on the individual franchises to rank for SEO. All new sites, all starting from scratch whenever they sign on as a franchise. If you use the method of one site using sub-directories.. you have the benefit of building an ongoing SEO powerhouse.
Further strengthening the franchise.
This is something to consider too, right?
Maybe the term "skinning" was the wrong term or process. I apologize if I've given wrong information.
Have you looked into what other franchise opportunities are doing?
I did a search for "handyman baltimore"
front page of google brought back two franchises using the idea I was trying to express.
go to www(dot)handymanmatters(dot)com and type in a few different zip codes from different states. Same website, same franchise branding, different local experience.
go to www(dot)mrhandyman(dot)com and see how they are doing it.
Also, we've just signed up with a franchise opportunity for kitchen refacing. We're a large home improvement company and are just adding this to our site. But, when you go to our menu tab for kitchen refacing you actually go to thiels(dot)com/products/cabinets/ the difference? it's our branding that appears and not thiels. This is where the idea of skinning came from... probably the wrong term for the actual process.
Those were the options I was trying to express.
What is skinning?
Skinning is a concept where by a program user or website visitor is given control of how the program or website they are using, looks to them, by choosing from a selection of differing pre-made designs (or skins.)
From the user point of view they are able to tailor the way a program or website appears to them according to their tastes and makes for a very interactive experience.
So how does it work?
Well if we leave programs to one side and concentrate on websites, the very basic concept is that as a web designer you create however many HTML pages of content (text and editorial images) are neded for your site and then instead of just one CSS file that governs every style and design/positioning element of the site, you create any number of seperate CSS files which will style the HTML page a different way depending on which one is loaded.
When the user chooses from a selection of skins on your site one CSS file is swapped for another and the page appears to have been instantly redesigned. (the actual content remains the same, but the way it is presented (colours, fonts, structual images) can be swapped each time a new skin is selected (CSS file is loaded.)
I just copied that from the web, but I would make one main website and allow my franchises the ability to skin the website to give it there own local flavor.
As the others have said, continual link building and constant effort will continue to build your strength. Have you analyzed where your competitors are getting links from? build relationships with local businesses and ask them to link to you.
Also... Think Long-Tail Keywords
My company is primarily a window replacement business. We have the unfortunate situation of being up against major players with huge bankrolls for SEO and advertising. How to compete?
Well, instead of focusing primarily on the major keyword of "landscaping". Try to solve some other issues that may lead into larger jobs.
Examples:
Bed Weeding newcastle, Tree/Shrub Pruning newcastle, mulching newcastle, edging, lawn care, mowing, ect....
Use your blog to create some Tips & How-To's, optimize those blog entries for the long tail keywords and soon enough your blog will be the gateway into your website.
Learn how to target longl-tail keyword searches and how to analyze keyword competition to find the right niche blog posts to create.
Also, don't forget your standard offline marketing practices. As more people gravitate towards SEO it does leave open some traditional ways of getting business.
Also, I would run some PPC campaigns using a platform like unbounce or lander
Good Luck!
Most certainly SEOmoz can help you. Start by creating a campaign with your site on SEOmoz and tackle the issues. Watch video's, read the blogs and start using SEO tactics to improve your sites rankings.
I have a questions about creating a website network for affiliate marketing purposes and how to achieve the best SEO rankings for each site.
An example would be MLB(dot)com. MLB(dot)com is the hub site, with what appears to be official site sub-domains for each Major League Baseball team.
If I were to create a website for every baseball team, would it be best to create each site individually and link them together?
or should each site be a sub-domain of a hub site?
You can use your keyword on multiple pages within your site. Lets take a look at Mountain Biking.
If your site is named Maryland Mountain Biking, you would only optimize your home page for Maryland Mountain Biking. You would optimize each individual page for a different phrase using Mountain Biking.
Mountain Biking is your keyword... but your optimizing for the specific phrases within your site on each page.
So.....
Maryland Mountain Biking Trails
Maryland Mountain Biking Races
etc...
So using the primary keyword on each page isn't an issue unless your only optimizing for the primary keyword (mountain biking). If your optimizing each page individually for the specific phrases, you don't have an issue.
Search this site for "Keyword Cannibalization"
Good luck to you! I plan on opening an SEO/ Internet Marketing company in about 2 years. I don't plan on going global either 
but it is a nice business to be in.
This is probably going to be an unpopular answer among current SEO's, but it's a part of competitive business. You should get some proposals from SEO's in your local competing area and see what they are doing and what they are offering. It unfortunately creates some work for the competing company, however... it does shed some light on the situation and allows you to be competitive.
I'm not really sure how you would go about the whole process of redeveloping your site. IMO, I think having everything locally centered on one home-page with maybe drop down menu's to the other sub-categories within the main category would be good. I would look at what some other SEO companies have done and how they've developed there website. I can say that obviously ranking for an SEO company is pretty difficult given the competition.
I think traditional sales and business to business marketing strategies are very effective. Also, PPC is a great way to drive business.
I'm pretty new to the SEO world, but have been in Marketing for an long time. To me CONTENT is king.
60% Content
20% Social Media
15% Link Building
5% On-Site
I think you should have excellent and useful content that provides an awesome user experience on your website. If you do that, the link building and Social Media aspects of your marketing will take a life on of there own. I would spend most of my time creating the best possible product, service and content to provide to the public. The public will be happy to share your pages with everyone without you needing to manipulate the system.
I think Social Media has been and will continue to increase in popularity as "votes" for your pages. Plus, SEO aside... it's one of the best ways to reach new customers. Link building has it's place for sure.. it's huge.. but the engines are on a continual effort to make SEO about real user interactions. The engines want to rank sites that are naturally being shared and "voted" upon by real engaged users. On site SEO? is pretty simple and shouldn't take much time, just making sure your targeting good keywords and having those keywords crawled correctly.
Hope my little bit of knowledge was of some help.
Via Wikipedia:
"Anchor text is weighted (ranked) highly in search engine algorithms, because the linked text is usually relevant to the landing page. The objective of search engines is to provide highly relevant search results; this is where anchor text helps, as the tendency was, more often than not, to hyperlink words relevant to the landing page."
So, you'll want to use text links (Anchor Links) as your source for linking.
I will just quote the guys from SEOmoz:
The more popular and important a site is, the more links from that site matter to the search engines. Getting lots of local, topic-specific links is great, too, but to earn trust and authority with the engines, you'll need the help of some powerful link partners.
The concept of "local" popularity (first pioneered by the Teoma search engine) suggests that links from sites within a topic-specific community matters more than links from general or off-topic sites.
I'm going to give an example of the potential website I'm going to build. Lets say it's about the individual graduating classes of a certain high school.
I want my targeted niche keyword phrase to bey "graduating classes of example high school". Graduating Class would be the broader keyword.
I would have a home page, which is a blog of recent news covering all of the students who've attended example high school.
From my home page, you're able to access individual pages:
2012 Graduating Class
2011 Graduating Class
2010 Graduating Class
etc....
If I'm internally linking to all of these pages, won't I encounter keyword cannibalization?
or is the link "2012 Graduating Class" unique enough?
Thanks for the reply! I appreciate it!
Thank you very much for the reply! guess it's going to take more than 1 tool and a decent amount of research to determine if a keyword is worth competing against.
I would think the key is to utilize SEOmoz to create a site that will become it's own DA & PA powerhouse.
I really like the Keyword Difficulty Tool. I'm looking to get into some affiliate marketing and I'm trying to assess a good niche site to create.
I have a couple questions about assessing the results of this tool:
1. When looking to compete for top 10 SERPs are Page Authority & Domain Authority closely related? because a page could have a 1 PA and an 80 DA.
2. What individual PA ranking is considered to be surpass-able? below 40? 30?
3. What difficulty percent would you consider worth competing for? or a waste of time?
I guess I'm looking for some breaking points here.
Thanks!