Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hello Moz Friends,

So I wanted to ask for your friendly tips.

Im in Colorado and my competition has business names like Colorado SEO and then one company owns like 5 of the top 10 Google ranked sites under different names.

Im an honest guy, but how does someone compete in a crazy competitive industry?

How about you? Did you start at the very bottom and never got to the top?

Or did you outrank the leaders?

I know seo people are smart, but it's easy to wonder if there is any room left?

So just wondering your success or failure stories with competing in a competitive market online

Any tips are appreciated!

Chris

Thank you so much Brian!

So in your opinion, I live in a rural town of like 500 people, so would you suggest telling Google my service area is the biggest city near me? Or do a radius like 50 miles from my location?

Thank you so much for your expert advice

chris

Oh wonderful! Thank you so very much Thomas!

Hi Moz Friends,

I'm looking to try Facebook ads and I see online promo codes, but I'm not sure if they are real. I wrote to Facebook and they laughed at me.

So maybe someone has a great idea on where to get even a $25.00 code to try it out.

thank you all

Hello Moz Friends

So Google is nudging me to submit an AMP version of my website, but I'm no coder. In fact I'm a Wordpress Addict. So I'm just curious if you have created an AMP version, what do you use? Or did you have to recode an entire new website?

Thank you friends!

Chris

Hello Moz Friends

I just wanted to make sure I'm doing things correctly.

On google my business your given the option to list your service area. I serve the entire state of Colorado with my internet marketing services.

So I listed Colorado as my service area.

but Moz Friends, is this the wrong idea? Like should I list the major cities and call it good?

So instead of service area Colorado, I should put Denver, Colorado Springs, Pueblo etc

Thank you for your friendly help

Chris

Hello Moz Friends,

I wanted to ask about affiliate terms pages.

I'm assuming that if I have an affiliate banner where someone clicks on it, and I get a penny, that I need to have an affiliate disclosure or some sort of link saying that I make money.

I'm know is some legal ground here, but just curious if this is how the concept works?

Thank you so much!

Hello Moz Friends,

So I wanted to ask a quick question.

About 2 months ago I was on the phone with a Yext representative and they were doing a demo with me of their services.

I said that I did not have many clients ye and was offered a deal that wet like this:

Pay $300 now and then pay $50.00 per month per location.

Then all of the sudden the guy said his day was over and had to go. I never heard from him again.

So I wanted to ask if anyone sells Yext services? and if this special sounds right?

I am just starting my official seo consulting business and Yext is expensive for the startups like me. So maybe you know of some alternatives or cheaper solution for doing mass citations at one time?

Thank you ever and happy 4th!

Thank you! And yes I do agree on the quality links, I was shocked to see so many crappy back links.

Wow Marcus I hope to be at the level of knowledge that you are on day! Simply amazing answer.

So my client is local with one address for the main office where they ship the building materials anywhere in the U.S.

They have a network of contractors all across the same region who will in terms use the materials to build houses and garages etc. so most people will search for Garage Kits and then see my client also builds them.

So my fear is to limit the proper seo. But not sure if I add categories like website (Dot) com/garages/California would benefit a national level campaign, or if I keep the site/garages but add another silo of pages such as site/service-areas/California

of course I know that every page must be unique. It's not plug and play state and city names.

But I'm not sure which approach is better because do I need the specific modifiers like the item being sold, Garages, then the state. Or if the search engines are smart enough to know that we have products and our service area pages designate the areas?

but then look at craiglist, you have the city first then the categories.

I just don't want to mess anything up. I have complete freedom to do whatever I need to do.

I am here though as I know some of the best people in the world are in the Moz community!

Thank you again Marcus your awesome!

Hello Moz Friends

So I have always worked on local seo, websites, and digital brand management.

But one of my clients wants to go national. They sell building materials and the competition is pretty fierce.

So here is my question and I thank you in advance for any advice:

How do I not mess up a national seo strategy, based on local seo efforts?

So for an example, say I put the NAP in the footer, but my client sells to 49 states, will this hurt a national campaign?

And on the opposite, would getting local links from say construction websites in California, if my NAP is from Florida, hurt or help?

I understand that most of this is seo 101, but I am so used to local seo, that I don't want to cause national issues by doing something local.

Thank you again Moz Friends

"Have a Positive Day"

Chris

Hello Moz Friends,

So as I was researching some competitive backlinks and I noticed a lot of backlinks that a clients competitor has are on parked domains and they appear to be google ads from some point.

You know the pages that this page no longer exists, or hey do you want to buy this domain? and it has like 6 google ads on it? Yep those pages.

My clients industry is construction and their competitor has links from zombie websites, foreign, websites and more. But the links are no longer on the page. Like when it was crawled, their ad was showing.

Does this make any sense and is it usually temporary?

Thank you for your thoughts friends!

Thank you for all of the help.

I feel like a fish in the ocean sometimes.

The sharks are swimming all around, yet I am trying to get from point A to point B the correct way.

I consider Moz the authority on seo practices, yet I see so many sites that go against these different principles and out rank almost everyone in their industry, that I am like - well do you go with the pack and hope for the best, or do you stand your ground and do what's right,? kind of like that whole "If your friends were jumping off a bridge would you?" type of thing.

Thank you for pulling me back off the ledge.

Chris

Hi to all,

Ok so I have been beating myself up trying to figure out how to create a good ranking title for my websites homepage.

My competition uses commas in its title tags

But these are 100% against what Rand and many posts say here. I watched his whiteboard where he says don't use commas. There are posts that say, don't use commas.

The biggest one is mortonbuildings(dot)com - followed by - lesterbuildings(dot)com

They basically have the same title tags with commas.

So what's the catch here? What am I missing? of course these sites have Great Domain Authority, but I swear what they are doing is going against what Rand and many other seo professional's are preaching.

I thought it should read better for visitors? But to me it looks like keyword stuffing with a brand name?

Any help is greatly appreciated to let me know if these commas and strategies are good to do? or bad news?

Again thank you for your time to help a small business.

Chris

So this may be an odd question.

So a competing company went out of business.

Their domain name is now available.

So just for research purposes, would you ever or would it be unethical for a person to buy an expired competing domain name, and point it to another site to collect their link juice?

The site was only a DA of 10, but not sure if one - its bad to buy a competing companies expired domain - and two - even though in the same industry, this would be bad to point it to another site or create a site from it.

Just curious your thoughts.

Hello,

I am trying to zone in on a link building strategy for a non-linkable site.

What I mean by non-linkable is I have a construction site. It's a family owned and operated small business.

Our clients are farmers and older people usually.

We go do a job, do it right the first time, and leave.

Basically even if a couple of people who link to me for some weird reason, this is no way in the realm of 6,000 that my main competition has.

I have tried to get as many quality citation resources as possible by using get listed, and white spark.

My domain authority is only 16 though, so I must be able to increase this somehow.

I have listed with Google +, Bing, Yahoo and every other major citation I could find.

So now with trying too increase links with other ideas.

I read somewhere to donate to charitable organizations, but if they link back to me as a donor, in an unrelated field, isn't that spammy like?

So a construction site donating to a disease website, and then getting a backlink in return, does that look weird.

It just seems like there are so many rules that I do not want to mess something up.

I do not want get spammy links, but not sure if citations count as links so I am doing a win-win thing?

Thanks for any tips

Chris

Hi so I am curious if a homepage may carry the most link juice, then if you service an entire state, do you include the state name as a keyword in your homepage title to get noticed, or the company brand, resulting in adding service area pages to cater to unique each city that you service?

I am just not sure if Google is smart enough to know you service a state? I have my local page with a service area, but is this all I need? So I would not need to add a state name.

Like I build horse barns, pole barns, metal buildings, and indoor riding arenas.

So I am curious if you would do a title tag like

Colorado Builders - Barns, Buildings, and Arenas

Or maybe Colorado at the end?

Or not at all

Thanks for any tips.

It seems fine to me in IE, but in Firefox it is one line. I am my own webmaster and it's just wordpress.

AMAZING HELP!!! This is good stuff here. I am in the same boat, and already started taking these steps before I even read this. I will say this is all working for me.

Ok so a crazy title, but please hear me out.

I have a construction website. It's a small business.

It serves people one time, we get the job done right the first time, and usually never go back.

A lot of our clients are older, some who have a rotary phone still.

So for the sake of social seo, how do you get people to like a company on facebook, when its a local business who basically gets in and gets out.

I read somewhere to place ads with poll type pictures. For an example say, Like us if you like a clean bath tube. It sounds weird, but it seems to help some. It gives you a like, and they all add up.

So for a business who is trying to get likes, without buying them, how do you approach it?

Thank you

Chris

Hello I am working on my families website, it is a Colorado barn construction site.

I am new here, so any and all help is appreciated. I have already gotten some excellent tips for general seo, but now trying to pinpoint in on a target.

I am reading as much as I can everyday.

My questions are:

Keywords... Ok so when I type in keywords and the results come up, even with an exact match, I am 12 pages back. So what influences the keyword rankings? Is it best to add in like say a service into a paragraph? Like I have been using Ubersuggest or however its spelled, and so would you take keyword phrases and then try to naturally add them to paragraphs? Is this how rankings are created? Thus your site being found? I have major competition that does not even have the keywords I type in, found on there site, and they still rank #1. So I feel that it must lead into my next question DA.

Domain Authority: I assume domain authority comes into play. The leading company in my world has a 50 and I have a 15. I am trying to raise this, and using the Moz tools I see my competitor has like 400 edu links. So in some ways it seems like wow get as many edu links as possible. But now it seems like this is not good? Like everyone is afraid to get links that may be considered spam in nature. That being said, would you still go after edu links?

Media: So kind of an odd question, but does adding a video to a home page help bounce rates? Like maybe if they sit and watch a two minute video that is interesting, then they may check out the rest of the site? Or for the sake of load times, do you keep the homepage as fast as possible?

Thank you for any tips. Also if you view my site, please give me any negative feedback as you can to help me improve.

Thank you

Chris

Well I guess it's what it is

thank you so much for your insight

I am using the avada theme now. But I thought I was doing ok. I got a best selling theme, set it up to load under 2.5 secs and felt good.

Yet everywhere I go says that themeforest is bad with horrible themes. You must get a framework. So I'm just second guessing myself that themes are bad and frameworks are best for seo and load times etc.

I am just uneducated and trying to learn.

Hi to all.

Ok so I am curious how to format and seo a website homepage?

This question is more in the way of dedicated towards how to rank locally if you have multiple services?

See I have a construction website and we have many services. So do you try and format the homepage to promote the brand, or do you go after the services?

Like would you say hey we are this company we serve here and here, and basically make it an about us page?

or do you say hey this is who we are, but say we do this, that, and the other?

I am afraid that although I have a webpage for each service, if the main url gets the link juice right now, how should a homepage be?

Thank you for any tips or suggestions.

Chris

Hi to all.

Ok so as I read around the internet I see a lot of people who dislike theme forest and using their themes. I have a them from them, the Avada theme.

Ok so they have made a TON of money. But would so many people buy the theme if it was that bad?

Going forward, my question is, are wordpress themes a bad thing to do?

I feel like its peer pressure to switch to a framework like Genesis. There are so many people who state that a framework and child theme is the way to go.

But I am using this avada theme and having under 2.5 sec load times. A lot of people say the code is bloated and is horrible. I understand this and got a cache plugin that makes a huge difference.

But I do want to learn and I do want to approach websites in a positive way. So if you have any thoughts on themes, please tell me your thoughts. I am no developer, so they seem to work, but is it at a price? Like bad seo and serps?

Thank you chris

Hello all,
 I am trying to figure out how to add leverage browser caching to these items.

• http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/js?v=3.exp&sensor=false&language=en
• http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/webfont/1/webfont.js
• http://www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js

Whats hard is I understand the purpose, but unlike a css file, how do you specify an expiration on an actual direct path file?

Any help or link to get help is appreciated.

Chris

Hi,

So as I search the wonderful land of the internet, I see this Genesis framework brought up quite a bit.

I have researched it for a few weeks, but it seems like it uses hooks instead of shortcodes.

So I am curious if anyone has used it? And if so what your thoughts are about it?

I am a COMPLETE newbie here, so hooks look scary. I am sure with time they will seem like second nature.

They claim it has airtight security. So if you have used this framework, how is this any different than an updated stock wordpress site?

I understand that vulnerabilities may be in plugins and such, but if it is really airtight, that seems great.

Any thoughts are appreciated as I just want the best user experience. So many people use this framework, yet my site gets if I'm lucky 1000 views each month. It is a basic site to let people know we exist. So its not like I have a popular blog with 50,000 pageviews each month.

But... going into the future, I want a pleasant and consistent user experience. Maybe a wordpress theme is all you need. Maybe a framework is more for developers.

Any thoughts are greatly appreciated.

Chris

Ok thank you. I am using a cache plugin, yet I would like to add more stuff. For an example when I add social buttons, its another request and adds time.

Thanks for the help. Now if I have speed of I can work on more content

Thank you for everyone nice help

I did see that yslow on gtmetrix. It says I get an F for no cdn. But not sure if it will even save me much?

Hi so I have a very easy question I think.

I am too new to seo stuff to know better, but which speed test site is the best?

I have a construction website. My issue is I am getting mixed results.

Pingdom is showing

<dl>

<dt>Load time</dt>

<dd>1.18s</dd>

</dl>

<dl>

<dt>Requests</dt>

<dd>22</dd>

</dl>

<dl class="last">

<dt>Perf. grade</dt>

<dd>94/100</dd>

<dd>Gt metrix is showing 98/87 with a 2.13 load time.</dd>

<dd>And it varies from when I do it.</dd>

<dd>So which do I go off of?</dd>

<dd>With pingdom, I feel pretty good.</dd>

<dd>With gtmetrix I feel like maybe I could improve.</dd>

<dd>I ask because I have been looking into a cdn, but because its like learning a foreign language to me, I do not want to go there unless I have too.</dd>

<dd>Thank you for any advice on which speed test to view as most accurate</dd>

<dd>Chris</dd>

</dl>

To add, yes maybe if you put Las Vegas, NV as there is also a Las Vegas New Mexico might help

Hello to all,

my site http://www.allspecialtybuildings.com is a barn construction site.

Our visitors are usually local.

I am worried about page speed. I have been using Google Page Insight, and Gtmetrix.

Although I cannot figure out browser leveraging, I have a 79 / 93 google score

and for gtmetrix 98/87 score.

Load times vary between 2.13 secs to 2.54 secs

What is acceptable? I want to make sure I get Google love for a decent page speed, but for me these times are great. Bad times are like 7 seconds and higher. I have thought about a CDN, yet I have read horror stories too. I have ZERO idea of how to use a CDN, or if I need it. I just want a fast site that is both user and Google speed friendly.

So my question is, what is a slow speed for a website? Is under 3 seconds considered ok? or bad for seo?

But any advice is greatly appreciated.

What's hard is google is making me change my company name. So I have my company name but that are also saying, you can have it but you mut customize it.

so that's what led to the question. I am not trying to compete against google, I'm trying to make sure that I'm not messing up the google custom url

Hi to all,

Ok so I was offered a custom url from Google Plus, greatly appreciated. Yet do you go ahead and add keywords when prompted?

I mean if its your business page, and Google says you MUST add some sort of number or letter behind your custom url,  do you add some keywords?

Like ford for example sake. Would it be smart to put google.com/+ford-mustag-f350

So you add a couple of hyphens, and a few keywords?

I understand the principle of shorter is better. But if your url is already like 15 characters, does a few more hurt? Or is it useless?

Another example: Your Google page is tv repair man. Your Google offered url is google.com/+Tvrepairman

But again it says you must add a number or letter etc.

So do you add like your location? so tvrepairman-colorado or maybe no hyphen?

Or go farther and go with tvrepairman-colorado-springs-co

My point is, I am lost. It seems like for now its a one and done. You mess it up, your stuck with it for a while, and I cannot find any ideas online on how to work this. Maybe because its common sense, but just looking for some friendly and honest advice.

Chris

Let us know if you heard back from them. It will be great to hear what they say

I will chime in, although learning myself.

With just listening to Mr. Shepard speak in a video, it seems like by 2016, Mobile will take over desktop usage. Not that desktops are going to be obsolete, its more that people will be able to access the information they need by using mobile devices.

So instead of waiting to get home to research things online, people will use their phones to get the information that they need.

So I think responsive sites are great for being able to cater to as many people as possible to cover all of the bases.

Chris

Thank you for the help.

It is truly appreciated.

This is why I am here in the first place to try and learn seo stuff, and Moz seems to be the best site around. So I am playing around with the tools and such, and it is all very scary, and confusing.

Like do I go with wordpress for a construction website that does not get updated very often because it needs new content, or is this exactly what Google wants, new content? So create content to stay afloat and survive the rankings game?

Basically I feel like I am at the bottom of the food chain with all of these big brands, with big advertising dollars eating companies up left and right for online rankings.

I understand that a site must be made for visitors first, then maybe Google. But its hard to know what is right and what is wrong. For years a phone book is all we needed, now we want to be found.

If I may ask, and this is left field - I have two Google + pages. Business and Local. Is it smarter to create posts and get likes and followers for the Business page or Local Page? I have read they may combine them one day, so don't worry about it much, yet I feel like I am in a boat that has a hole in it, so again just trying to survive.

Thank you again so very very much

Chris

Wow great insight.

i have a lot to learn and I am truly grateful for your help. The reason I used the example as I did is because with using these moz tools if I put the state at the end, it showed traffic. If I put the state in the beginning, it showed a competition percent of 29, but no traffic.

so if I may venture to say, if a company has facebook likes, twitter posts, great backlink profile and content, then you should be able to go by whatever domain I would think? So maybe emd are helpful, but if you do not bring it, somebody else will.

As I research I find sites in my competition that do not even have the name colorado or term searched showing, yet they have a huge national following.

I'm just a small local company trying to survive.

Thank you for your thoughts.

I guess my main worry is that I have Google + local, and Business, Facebook, twitter and social stuff that all point to my main brand, which is my business name. Yet there other sites, for years have never left the #1 through 4 positions just based on having so many keywords in their domain name.

Now these are not keyword-keyword-keyword.com These are like garagebuilderscolorado type of domains. So when you type in a variations of this name, the site is always ranked well. Even though a company might be 123 enterprise or whatever.

I am just nervous because I watch Matt Cutts video's almost to the point where I look at him like the all knowing Google prophet. So if he says something, do it. So here a few years ago he is quoted to have said how Google was going to crack down on EMD's so I'm like well if they are doing it, I'm going to do it. Say I buy the un-plural version of the EMD. So in this example, which is completely an example, I go and get garagebuildercolorado to compete with garagebuilderscolorado. I think to myself, as long as I get a good social, link, and content profile, I am going to compete with them.

But this whole thing seems like a chess match. I am just trying to rank at a state level. Colorado is my state. So by adding Colorado to a keyword domain name seems smart, yet now with Google Local, maybe it does not matter?

I just thought well I will get a EMD, and then point my company domain to it. So people will still find me by company name, maybe those backlinks follow a pointed domain, and play this game of keyword rich domains?

Again I appreciate all of your thoughts and advice. I am new to the tools here, and I am having fund with them.

Chris

Hi to all

so this is my first month using moz tools. When I check my competitors and keywords, everyone close to google #1 is a emd site

But with google always getting smarter, is it smart in order to compete to get an emd?

So say I rank first page #9, or not at all for my brand, if since my site is a construction site, if instead of say abc construction.com I find colorado home builders.com etc would I maybe do better? Or would google give me a bad ranking?

I am just so lost?

One last question? If I did build a emd site then just pointed my brand to it, would this be good or stupid for seo?

thank you for all advice and tips

chris

So this might be a stupid question, but that whole no such thing as a stupid questions applies here.

I am trying to narrow down keywords for title tags and on page optimization. I am focusing on my local, instate SEO only. So no nationwide searches, just local.

When I add in my state, so Colorado then keyword It shows 0 matches.

When I add Keyword then Colorado a few matches

But there is a difficulty rating of 30% or so. Would this mean that it would be good to go after this? or bad because no one searches for my term?

Then when I add my keyword, and no state, 6000 matches. But would this mean everyone and there brother is going after it? So unless you are a big brand, stay away?

Thank you for your help. I am just trying to make sure I am using it right.

Chris