Does the mark say, "EGOL?"

There may be some value in branding in that regard depending on what you're selling.

However, If its small and unobtrosive then the viewer probably wouldn't be able to tell what the logo is/says until they open the image.

Edit add - when its that small its easily removed and cropped so it really becomes a matter of whether you think its important as a branding element versus protection.

A watermark won't affect your rank.

In my opinion this is more a matter of the use of your time.

I very rarely see watermarks anymore on ecommerce sites. I think a watermark will do more to pollute the appearance of your product than protect your images from piracy.

From a practical perspective, Google and other shopping feeds may have rules regarding watermarks and artwork associated with products so make sure you are aware of the rules if you use feeds.

Edit add - I can recall 1 ecommerce site I've visited using watermarks and the only other places I see it are sites that sell images and artwork.

I will definitely do that for Rackspace bots, Chris.

Thank you for taking the time to walk me through this and tweak my filter.

I'll give the site you posted a visit.

Crap.

Well, I guess the vernacular is what I need to know.

Knowing what to put where is the trick isn't it? Is there a dummies guide somewhere that spells this out in kindergarten speak?

I could really see myself botching this filtering business.

Does it need the . before the )

rackspace cloud servers

Maybe my problem is I'm not looking in the right place.

I'm in audience>technology>network and the column shows "service provider."

For example,

Since I implemented the filter four days ago, rackspace cloud servers have visited my site 848 times, , visited 1 page each time, spent 0 seconds on the page and bounced 100% of the time.

What is the reg expression for rackspace?

Sure. Here's the post for filtering the bots.

Here's the reg x posted:  ^(microsoft corp|inktomi corporation|yahoo! inc.|google inc.|stumbleupon inc.)$|gomez

We've submitted our sites to the reputable local directories and update only as needed.

Looking through our backlink profile I've found our store on ooodles of local directories I have nothing to do with and never signed up for.

I'd direct the money elsewhere.

A watermark won't affect your rank.

In my opinion this is more a matter of the use of your time.

I very rarely see watermarks anymore on ecommerce sites. I think a watermark will do more to pollute the appearance of your product than protect your images from piracy.

From a practical perspective, Google and other shopping feeds may have rules regarding watermarks and artwork associated with products so make sure you are aware of the rules if you use feeds.

Edit add - I can recall 1 ecommerce site I've visited using watermarks and the only other places I see it are sites that sell images and artwork.

I would suggest a couple of things.

First of all I would suggest that bounce rate could be compared to a pulse. Over time, you'll discover an acceptable bounce rate (pulse) for a particular site and those rates may vary from site to site. An acceptable site bounce rate for us is about 50-55%. If the rate pushes toward 60%, it tells me there is something going on that I need to investigate more deeply.

If you're in ecommerce, product feeds will affect your bounce rate and you'll need to identify products that adversely inflate your bounce rate and address accordingly.

Secondly, bounce rate also applies to pages (which in turn affects site rate). Its relatively easy  to identify pages that are affecting bounce rate. I know what pages on our site will have a higher bounce rate than others. If there is something I can do do reduce the bounce rate for a page, I do it.

Having said all that, I would throw a guess out there that an acceptable bounce rate would be between 45 and 65% with a rate in the 50% being realistic.

My first impression was (and I suppose still is) that this is a directory of shortcuts to humans (0,0,0).

It was my understanding that if Google is going to give a directory any leniency, it must be discriminatory to some extent.

I don't see anything in terms of discriminating factors.

You're either direct to a person or not. If you've got to press 0 a bunch of times its of no help.

Sorry, but I'll pass on this one.

Sorry Miki but I think it flunks on both counts.

We've submitted our sites to the reputable local directories and update only as needed.

Looking through our backlink profile I've found our store on ooodles of local directories I have nothing to do with and never signed up for.

I'd direct the money elsewhere.

Thanks Dr. M. We are like a Home Depot, Ace Hardware, Target and Feed Store rolled into one and we rank well locally across the categories.

I'm inclined to believe you are correct in that signalling city keywords would not automatically or significantly diminish ranking outside the city.

However, considering the input from others, specifically the volume of search as found in Google Insights/AdWords etc. and the length of the title and how it affects the other keywords, I'm inclined to think I should take the local tag off of those products that don't need to be sold locally - and we can identify those pretty easily.

Would others agree? Thumbs up if I should take it off or thumbs down if I should leave it as it could only help and not hurt.

Hi Ben. We use a combination of both bullet points and paragraphs. Personally, I like bullet points when looking at products because typically they highlight the features, benefits another other specifications that sometimes get lost in paragraph text.

From my experience, it doesn't matter from an SEO perspective whether paragraph or bullets are used.

From a user perspective, I'd suggest using whatever format helps the user get the most information the quickest that helps them make a "conversion" decision.

I posted a link to Rand's recent Moz Blog in another forum.

One of the users posted a link to this article as a counter point.

Thoughts?

[title edited by staff for clarity]

Hi Stephanie,

I took the course last fall and recommend it if you have the basics down. It is pricey, but you get a LOT of information to digest that is immediately actionable. I'm an in-house SEO and told the boss if we're going to go to the "next level" I needed some training. Soaking up GWT best practices will only get you so far in my opinion and eventually you'll probably feel like you've plateaued. Here's a few observations on the course:

1. If you have a basic understanding of SEO and need more comprehensive and advanced training - it is very thorough. Almost too much information and in some cases not enough depth when needed. On-page optimization, site hierarchy/structure, local SEO and link building strategies were excellent.

2. The information is actionable. You can implement what you're given as you're getting it.

3.  Yes, some of the information/techniques are dated and could be fresher. It might be easier to keep it fresh if the scope was not so broad. Having said that, I like the breadth of the training.

4.  They have a support program where course instructors can answer student questions on-line. It's a great concept, but could be better executed in my opinion. I felt the instructor's were too busy with their own jobs, clients, life, etc. to provide timely answers and depth to students inquiries.

5. One hour a week we get to have a live chat webinar with the course instructor. I liked it but I could have spent a half hour myself asking questions that came up from the course due to its volume of strategies.

6. I would have liked more current "real world" examples of sites using the practices so we can see the tactics in action.

Now, I feel like I need advanced Analytics and CRO training to compliment the SEO training I've received. There's a lot to do and do well.

Hi Guy. In terms of no-follow for page rank sculpting purposes, I've read the pros and cons of both and for me I've concluded I'd rather direct the juice where I want it to go rather than to block or prevent it from flowing where I don't want it to flow. No-follow can have unintended results, so I prefer the alternative.

Volume of categories and how to structure them is a challenge for a lot of ecommerce folks (me included). I've recently started flattening my site. While development of useful and intuitive sub-categories helps people find what they want on the 3rd or 4th click, crawl penetration suffers due to the depth. By flattening my site I mean reducing the number of sub-categories that can only be reached by other sub-categories - which is basically moving 3rd or 4th level categories up to the second level or top level (left nav).

A large and top ranking Toy Store I visit often to see how they structure their links has a top nav with categories, a left nav with categories and a sitemap in the footer. Each navigation entry has either different links in it or some different anchor text linking to the same pages. After much reading and apparent consensus among veteran users in this forum, I nixed the sitemap as unnecessary if I use good linking practice throughout the site. One Guru even suggested a sitemap can hurt your rankings if every page is linked to every other page with juice diminishing returns.

In my case, I created a left nav link to additional categories and put categories or sub-categories in them that were either: 1. Removed from the left nav because they were not important enough to be on the left nav 2. Removed from the left nav because on-page analytics suggested they didn't warrant being on the homepage. 3. Were a 3rd or 4th level category that on-page analytics showed there was enough demand to move its link to a second level or top level.

I hope this works for me and could of some help to you. Good luck.