Thanks Chris that makes sense - think I was trying to over think it !
Ash
Welcome to the Q&A Forum
Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.
Thanks Chris that makes sense - think I was trying to over think it !
Ash
So with Google SERPs looking for more customer intent and especially to direct questions eg, How much does a x cost? Where can I find x etc - is it good practice to create a bank of Q&A's on site or is it sufficient to have good quality content on the subject matter stating the costs of x and where you can find it written in a customer friendly manner?
Will a bank of Q&As add any value if they directly answer the most likely search questions?
Thanks
Ash
Your help please as with so much kicking around about what is best practice us poor novices havent got a chance to keep up!
My site www.over50choices.co.uk focuses on personal finance for the over 50s and one of the product sets is Funerals: I have c40 pages on the subject and 25 pages with the word "funeral" (eg funeral plans, how to arrange a funeral, funeral directors, funeral planning etc) in the URL, Title & H1 Tag - individually each page explains specific elements of the "process" and solutions to them eg purchasing a "prepaid funeral plan" all of which were optimised for specific Keywords (because thats what i was advised was best practice 6 months ago).
Am I correct in thinking that in the new world ie post Hummingbird et al, that a better strategy is to use the "product home page" as the core landing page, with sufficient content to summarise what's on offer, covering all of the individual subjects from each pages in an umbrella/topic kind of way?
And to still retain the linked pages from the core landing page, as they will contain the detailed information?
Many thanks
Ash
Also if I do combine the 2 pages should i 301 the compare page to the other?
Thanks
Ash
Tommy thanks for your advice.
Will having specific internal & external anchor text help google know which pages I am targeting for each keyword eg "Over 50 life Insurance" & "Compare Over 50s Life Insurance" or will i always have the same issue because the first phrase is contained within the second?
Ash
Hi Aaron we could merge them, but when we designed the site we set out to be different from the other comparison type sites, in that rather than push the "Buy/Compare" option on the product landing page we wanted to take them on a journey depending on their level of knowledge.
Laying out their Nav options in the left hand side they could choose where to go depending on which page they arrived at, which is great once you are onsite, but not for optimising for search, hence my question.
Merging the page is an option but are their any options we could explore first?
Thanks
Ash
Yes, I know customer experience is king, however, I have a dilema, my site has been live since June 2013 & we get good feedback on site design & easy to follow navigation, however, our rankings arent as good as they could be?
For example, the following 2 pages share v similar URLs, but the pages do 2 different jobs & when you get to the site that is easy to see, but my largest Keyword "Over 50 Life Insurance" becomes difficult to target as google sees both pages and splits the results, so I think i must be losing ranking positions?
http://www.over50choices.co.uk/Funeral-Planning/Over-50-Life-Insurance.aspx
The first page explains the product(s) and the 2nd is the Quote & Compare page, which generates the income.
I am currently playing with meta tags, but as yet havent found the right combination!
Originally the 2nd page meta tags were focussing on "compare over 50s life insurance" but google still sees "over 50 life insurance" in this phrase, so the results get split. I also had internal anchor text supporting this.
What do you think is the best strategy for optimising both pages?
Thanks
Ash
HI Andriy the site is www.over50choices.co.uk the specific page is http://www.over50choices.co.uk/Health/Compare-Health-Insurance.aspx
I have just plugged in the Quake Toolbar and see the KW density remains the same for all pages!
Is this because the site is DNN CMS templated site - is there anything i can do to get the pages analysed as separate pages?
Thanks
Ash
Hi yes, I did change one or two internal anchor texts, so that could be another factor.
I guess i should have changed one thing at a time to test the impact - once it has settled down i will remove one thing at a time to test.
Thanks
Ash
Hi Dan thanks for your advice.
Yes they all have A Grades although one or two of the pages could have too many KWs in the "key" places, which as you say used to work!
I will track and play with over the next few weeks.
Thanks
Ash
Hi I recently updated some page titles, H1 tags & on page content which overall has seen search results slip down following the first site crawl by google I assume.
My question is, should I try to get back the rankings and test and change one thing at a time to see the impact right now or should i wait for a period of time for it to settle down once goggle has crawled the site a few times or will the subsequent crawls have no impact?
Thanks
Ash
This is the page http://www.over50choices.co.uk/Health/Compare-Health-Insurance.aspx
KW: Compare Health Insurance
Thanks for your response, the number of KWs quoted already excluded, alt tags, images, titles etc, so the 15 KW's are else where on the page !
Its still a mystery my site is www.over50choices.co.uk
Hi we launched our site in June this year built using DNN - I have just used Moz's On page Grader for several pages and whilst it shows the KW in the URL, Titles, Meta Description, ALt Tag, it also says that I have 15 KWs in the body of this particular page and yet when i eye ball the page it only shows 8.
Is this because of the templated navigation of the site. ie this KW also shows in the nav structure of other pages that are listed in the left hand nav menu?
If this is correct will Google think that I am stuffing my page with too many KWs?
Any solutions?
Thanks
Ash
Thanks Christy
I think its becoming clearer.........so much info around on the subject!
Regards
Ash
Hi Chris thanks for your response.
I guess my dilemma has been that because to a large extent I am the brand, what I do & say also effects the brand (i dont mean the really personal stuff, like going on hols etc), my concern with sign posting my blogs just on my personal G+ Account has been that the brand followers will not see them or is this a non issue?
Will duplicating them on both accounts overcome or should i have a clear distinction between them?
Thanks
Ash
Hi so I have both accounts set up, I use my business g+ for sign posting my new blog posts & latest news. I have Authorship set up on my Blog and that is working fine.
I am personally v much a large part of the brand, www.over50choices.co.uk and have my face on the home page and most social property, so when i do use my G+, FB & Twitter accounts, whilst they are the business accounts, its lead by me.
So just what do I use my G+ Persoanl Account for?
I have read that i should either share or duplicate the my updates on both accounts, but will that look like duplication?
I dont have many G+ followers currently but intend to develop this in the next few months, so its important that I get this right if i am to optimise my activity?
Your help appreciated.
Ash
Thanks Peter
When we launched we wanted to present content first & then "buy" later so your comments support this, although there is a temptation of course to stray from this in order to build traffic quicker!
We have moved from about page 9 to page 2 & 3 of some of our key words and rising weekly, i just need to keep telling myself we have only been live 3 months!
Hopefully with the tweaks we are making shortly with some of your pointers it shoudl all add value
Many thanks
Ash
Hi Peter that's v helpful thank you for your advice.
We are about to change the non searchable graphics to searchable text blocks shortly.
We are just going through an exercise of reviewing the changes we need to make to make the on page optimisation smarter now that things have settled down following launch a few months ago.
your comments about making the copy more over 50s is v timely,!
Do anchor texts in the body text score greater internal google juice than ones in the Quick Links ie the right hand side bar, as we're planning on rewriting some of the text to weave some in pointing to some of our key value pages?
Thanks
Ash
Hi my site www.over50choices.co.uk is 4 months old and I wondered whether my "Quick Links" section (right hand column) on 95% of my pages with the same/similar anchor text was not best practice ie should I vary the anchor text & the target locations more? ( they tend to point to my top 6 pages)
They were set up originally to make the customer experience easy to find things but from what i have read Google doesnt like too many links looking the same !
I also have 3 Graphics (cross sales messages) just above the foot of most (not the home page) pages, linking to my 3 key value pages, all with similar Alt Text tags, again should i vary the alt text or is not a good idea to have this type of link on every page?
What is best practice, as i am trying to balance the visual/customer experience whilst optimising for search?
Thanks
Ash
Meant to ask, so as it stands or even if i redirect as suggested, i am not losing any google juice having some back links pointing to to the trailing / or non trailing version?
Ash
Thanks Everett that's made it v clear.
Much appreciated
Ash
Hi Im struggling with this probably easy concept, so I am sure one of you guys out there can answer it fairly easy!
My website is over50choices.co.uk and whilst using the free tools in Majestic it said that I had:
77 Referring Domains pointing to www.over50choices.co.uk and only 35 pointing to www.over50choices.co.uk/
And in Moz it said:
The URL you've entered redirects to another URL. We're showing results for www.over50choices.co.uk/ since it is likely to have more accurate link metrics. See data for over50choices.co.uk instead?
Does this mean that my domains arent set up correctly and are acting as separate domains - should one be pointing to the other?
Your help appreciated.
Ash
Hi Oren its a personal finance brand www.over50choices.co.uk, I am the face of the brand as we want to build credibility from my 30 years in the industry.
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 no this isn't what I meant, I have authorship sorted.
i think I read on Copyblogger that it was a good tactic to re post your blogs on google plus without google penalising you for duplicate copy, in order to engage your google plus following rather than just drop a link ?
ash
I have read from an authorative source that you can duplicate your blog posts on your google plus account without issues as google knows that this is your 'property'.
is this correct and what would be the value in doing so?
until we have need sign posting new blog posts with a link.
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
Oh and meant to ask, do you mean the sub folders PostId & 77 in the example below?
Ash
HI Tom thanks for getting back to me.
I was prompted to ask the question because we have google alerts set up for our keywords eg funeral plans and we never show on the list of daily Blogs for these words?
Do they need to be "anchored or in the title" to show or should google just pick them up?
Ash
I have a blog as part of my site http://www.over50choices.co.uk/Community/Ashleys-Blog.aspx and has been live for approx 10 weeks, but i dont think google recognises is yet as a Blog.
Is there anything that i can do to speed this up?
We have posted about 25 posts.
Thanks
Ash
From what I have read i should optimise each page for a keyword/phrase, however, I read recently that google may also look at the context of the site to see if there are other similar words.
For example i have different pages optimised for Funeral Planning, funeral plans, funeral plan costs, compare funeral plans, why buy a funeral plan, paying for a funeral, prepaid funeral plans.
Is this the best strategy when the words/phrases are so close or should i go for longer pages with the variations on one page or at least less pages?
Thanks
Ash
Thanks - I will give the screaming frog a go!
Seems more than a enough to keep me busy!
Ash
Wow!
The screaming frog looks like a great tool!
Thanks for this
Now the work starts!
Ash
My site has on average 220 internal links a page largely due to how the site is built ie every page shows every link via the menu system, which isnt great, but from what i have read there isnt much i can do about it.
However, this week 3 pages jumped to over 400 links and the home page over 500 internal links, GWT will only show me 200 of them, Is there a tool that i can use that will list all my internal links, so i can find out why this has happened?
Thanks
Ash
According to Moz i have over 500 links on some pages, GWT says about 400 with most (90%) having about 210 links.
When I eyeball the site it should have no more than 30 to 40, but my web agency tells me its because the way the CMS works (DotNetNuke) that all pages are linked via the top navigation.
Does this mean that my internal linking strategy is flawed before i even start to consider which pages I want to have more links to?
Our site www.over50choices.co.uk was rebranded & moved to the new CMS in June 2013.
Should i be concerned or is this OK?
Ash
PRWeb have advised that all their links are "no-follow" with effect from when google made this announcement.
And i believe Matt Cutts clarified in a video recently that good press releases have value, as it will get your message out there and potentially picked up by bloggers and press agencies, what you wont get anymore, is any google juice!
Hi Jesse thanks for your response.
My Web Developers have uploaded the HTML File as detailed in GWT but we still get the same error message that its the wrong file content eg it shows Google SiteMap Verification File - http://www.over50choices.co.uk/SiteMap.aspx - Ashley Shepherd
and not the google reference uploaded?!
Do you know how we remove or replace this file content so that google sees the correct one?
Thanks
Ash
I launched www.over50choices.co.uk 6 weeks ago and have had trouble with google indexing and crawling all pages.
It tells me 143 submitted & 129 Indexed, but the site has 166 pages?
It still shows the old home page image in GWT - which is v annoying!
Whilst the site is verified by GA & HTML Tag, it tells me in the Verification section that "reverification failed" on numerous occasions - they seem correspond with when google trys to process the site map.
Is this a coincidence ie verification fails when its trying to process the site map, which in turn is leaving me with an out of date site map and therefore not all my pages submitted or crawled?
Or will this not effect the googles ability to crawl the site?
Your help please.
Ash
Using a phrase such as "Compare Car Insurance Quotes" as the anchor text, will google count that phrase as an exact much as well as the shorter version "Compare Car Insurance" or is it only the full phrase?
I assume also that keyword phrases on the page will count as 2 for 1 as google will just look at the set of words and use both phrases?
Thoughts?
Ash
Hi 3 weeks ago I re-branded and completely changed the proposition on www.over50choices.co.uk as the URL is appropriate to the proposition. And whilst it looks good I am unsure what the Moz Tools are telling me, other than it doesnt look good?
There should be about 163 pages, but Moz reports over 500 due to i think so many 301's? Plus most pages under the HTTP Status reports No Data!
Most of the the 404's are from the old site.
Webmaster Tools say 163 pages submitted but only 2 indexed, but on site:search it says about 117 but 40+ of these are the old site.
It looks a mess...!
Sleepless nights have started - any thoughts!?
Thanks
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