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That's really helpful

Many thanks for taking the time

Ash

Hi Roman

Thank you for your help.

Im looking at the speed issue as well.

None of our pages have the canonical tag on them - why is this so important?

Ash

Thank you for your detailed answer, its much appreciated.

Our site is www.over50choices.co.uk is well established with a national presence.

We have 5 or 6 "cornerstone" products and until recently have been successful with most of them through natural search, we do v little PPC.

We have seen "funeral plans" and "over 50 life insurance" rankings drop from top half of page 1 to bottom/page 2 positions which of course impacts our earnings.

Our site has always been set up in the way that you suggest, so the reason for my questions are because we have been looking at ways to squeeze every last bit of juice we can and more  recently have read about the importance of internal links, so was keen to understand whether the sidebar site wide links was not the most effective way to structure the site going forwards?

They have always been there but if google has changed the rules recently i was wondering whether this is what could be hurting us.

We have started a review of internal links for these products as we have so many and the early findings are that we could do with some tidying up but nothing major.

All of our other long tail keywords are still performing well, so its just the big keywords that generate a lot of our income that have dropped.

Does this info help shed any more light on why they may have dropped?

Thanks

Ash

Hi most of our pages are rated as "medium" for optimisation by the google page speed tool and with an average speed of 2.5 seconds compared to my competitors whose pages are rates as "fast" and have a speed of less than 1 second!

We use the DNN platform & my web dev has said that he cant squeeze anymore from the platform and that to get the same speed as my competitors will need a platform development which it out of our control.

My question is, is it worth moving our site to another platform that can achieve these fast speeds or is the difference between medium and fast not worth it - i am mainly looking at it from a google ranking signal perspective.

Ash

Yes its in the sidebar.

Just to clarify then, having say 300 links all with the same anchor text and most with an exact match to the main keyword/product is ok ?

Also if say i have an internal link in the main body of content for one of the pages linked that is also in the sidebar which will google take as the primary link eg sidebar link is "over 50 life insurance" and link in page content is "compare life insurance" both going to the same page?

Ash

HI Roman

Thank you for your answer.

We also have site wide "Quick Links" boxes on most pages where we have a list of anchor text with links eg

• Equity Release Calculator
• Compare funeral plans
• Affordable Health Insurance
• Over 50 Life Insurance

These are in addition to on page text links.

So google will see hundreds of links coming in to these key pages all with the same anchor text - should we continue with this or remove them?

Regards

Ash

Hi our site is set up typically for a key product (money page) with 6 to 12 cluster pages, with a few more associated blog pages.

If for example the key product was "funeral plans" what percentage of the internal anchor text links should be an exact match?

Will the prominence of those links eg higher up the page have an impact on the amount of juice flowing?

And do links in buttons count in the same way as on page anchor text eg "compare funeral plans"?

Many thanks
Ash

Hi

Just using the new Moz Link Explorer which has revealed a load of spammy back links at 70% plus that we know nothing about, here are just a few:

http://rre.eiftcom.press/files/images/sunlife-insurance-logo.html

http://zsa.eiftcom.press/files/images/sun-life-insurance-logo.html

http://www.hak660.com/quotesquotesscottish-funeral-quotes.html

http://picphotos.net/life-insurance-in-your-50s/

When you visit these pages they all say site unavailable.

Will this be hurting our site?

How do i remove them?

Many thanks

Ash

Thanks Umar

It would appear looking at the threads you provided that I cant use the Trustpilot review scores in schema mark up as they are from a 3rd party & google only allows onsite reviews to be displayed via markup................doesnt explain my competitor at Golden Charter is displaying stars in SERPs as they have no onsite reviews!

Which means that i will have to set up a separate method, which will duplicate the Trustpilot work, to capture directly reviews from customers.

Why is like never easy!!

Ash

Hi we have excellent Trustpilot reviews & want to know if we can include these in schema markup in order for the results to show in SERPs?

The Trustpilot results show in PPC but not SERPs.

A competitor looks to have no Trustpilot or other independent reviews but is showing 5 stars in SERPs, i also cant find any customer reviews on their site, it looks to be just coding that is driving the SERPs view?

Their site is goldencharter.co.uk

Any thoughts much appreciated

Thanks

Ash

Thank Everett thats really helpful.

I must admit i do wonder whether i have split out too many pages that could be combined, I think when i launched this version of the site in June, i was trying to focus a core keyword per page, with plurials etc, as i didnt think google would in the example you used pick up funeral planning & funeral plans as connected - god this job is hard sometimes!

Ash

Hi i set up a personal Google+ page and added a business page for my website www.over50choices.co.uk.

The business page is linked to my site, but my personal profile "James Price" has the authorship and my blog, youtube, twitter accounts for over50choices linked to it - do i need to link all these accounts to my Google+ business page to get maximum SEO juice or will my personal page get picked up?

Do i need to transfer all the social accounts to my business profille - help!?

Thanks

James

Hi Guys

My site was launched in June 2013, with approx 6 pages for each section eg, funeral planning, annuities, insurance etc - we have not achieved page 1 in SERPs but many page 2's & 3's.

On average each page has between 200 to 300 words, with images, using the funeral planning section as an example the page headers are:

• funeral planning (introduces what it is eg prepaid funeral plans, writing a Will, inheritance tax planning)
• funeral plans (what is a prepaid funeral plan & the benefits)
• why buy a funeral plan (reasons to buy)
• funeral costs (rising costs of funerals & plans)
• buying a funeral plan online (why buying online is easier than visiting the funeral directors)
• compare funeral plans (compare prepaid funeral plan providers options)

We decided at the outset to go for more pages rather than 1 or 2 pages with 600 to 1000 words on as we thought from a customer experience perspective that the information would be easier to see & with an older audience the headers would educate them & make them more confident to buy online. And clustering the pages & linking them together we thought google would recognise this!

However, from everything i have recently read we may achieve better SERPs if we combine pages, to remove the obvious "funeral plan" keyword overlap & longer pages may achieve better "topic" value with google (as per Rands recent WBF)?

So we are at a crossroads - do we give it longer for the original plan & hope that we pop up in SERPs page 1 or bite the bullet, create one page per section/topic & find a way to display the content in user friendly way?

The latter is of course major surgery to the site, but if there is sufficient long term value I will swallow hard & do it!

Thoughts?

Ash

Hi Roman

Thank you for your help.

Im looking at the speed issue as well.

None of our pages have the canonical tag on them - why is this so important?

Ash

Hi we have excellent Trustpilot reviews & want to know if we can include these in schema markup in order for the results to show in SERPs?

The Trustpilot results show in PPC but not SERPs.

A competitor looks to have no Trustpilot or other independent reviews but is showing 5 stars in SERPs, i also cant find any customer reviews on their site, it looks to be just coding that is driving the SERPs view?

Their site is goldencharter.co.uk

Any thoughts much appreciated

Thanks

Ash

The question is, do I build my personal profile or company brand profile?

I blog, I tweet, I facebook, I G+, I use LinkedIn, I have accounts with other social media platforms and I am still not sure whether the most effective route to drive traffic is to use my personal or brand profile!

My face is v much part of the brand (launched June2013), I have a Disqus account in the brand name and i have joined other communities in both brand & personal names - it occurred to me whether I am diluting my overall "authority" by using both.

It also occurred to me that when signing up to new forums by using my brand Twitter account to register this will leave all comments as the brand, when perhaps others will be looking for a "real person"?

Previous advice sometime ago was to use both, but I wondered whether expert thinking had moved on?

Thanks

Ash

Hi our site is set up typically for a key product (money page) with 6 to 12 cluster pages, with a few more associated blog pages.

If for example the key product was "funeral plans" what percentage of the internal anchor text links should be an exact match?

Will the prominence of those links eg higher up the page have an impact on the amount of juice flowing?

And do links in buttons count in the same way as on page anchor text eg "compare funeral plans"?

Many thanks
Ash

Thanks Christy

I think its becoming clearer.........so much info around on the subject!

Regards

Ash