You've got some social channels working now...but Pinterest is a missing element and is taking off like lightning.

Do plenty of research (in Keywords, Analytics and SEOmoz) before you start making changes to your homepage, so you'll be making informed decisions. Your get a quote section is taking up a lot of valuable homepage real estate. You might consider creating a banner link to a quote page and use that space for beneficial content. You can create links to your quote page from just about anywhere, so it shouldn't be hard for people to find.

Good luck. Resist the temptation to panic and start grabbing at straws. Be methodical about your changes.

I will always defer to Egol. Proceed with carpet bombing for 6-8 months, then conduct In-Page Analytics and re-consider aforementioned approach.

You don't need the word "patches" on all those links. Users will know those are patch categories and don't need to read it. Having "patches" in those links is not what is going to bolster your homepage optimization for keywords such as "custom patches" or "custom embroidery patches" etc. A good homepage title and homepage content will do that for you.

I'm guessing your site is relatively new and may not have much domain authority (I may be wrong). If that is the case, pare down the volume (10-15) of links on the homepage to the categories that generate the most business for you: ie "sports patches" "business patches" etc. You'll get better juice distribution to those important pages if there are fewer homepage links.

Once you pare it down, create a left nav link to the rest of your patches - basically a landing page with the rest of the links to the other pages.

Interesting. I didn't know anything about this - affecting the sender and receiver. I'll do some more digging. Thanks for shedding light on this for me.

Hi Dr. Meyers. Thanks for the note and the link. I understand the first part of your response. However, I don't fully undertand the second part. How will an incoming affiliate link create duplicate content for me (the recipient of the link)?

I use H1 tags on category pages. Typically, category pages have short tail keywords and could use some reinforcement.  I could use an H1 tag on product pages in the descripton area, but haven't found it necessary since its in the title and product names are typically long tail.

I don't know how prevalent it is, but I've not heard of using an H1 tag on a product name. I'm not suggesting its wrong or would hurt anything. We rank well for products. I just don't use the practice myself and don't see the point in it.

I understand they don't want to use the product name in an H1 tag in the product description, but rather on the product name at the top of the page. There's no problem with tagging it in the description, I just don't know why it would be done on the name itself when they have a title tag for that.

Here's how they would set it up:

Insert Product Name Here

.

Thanks Tom. I've never heard of anyone putting an H1 tag on a product name and wouldn't do it myself.

So the only reason someone would put an H1 tag on a product name is because they are clueless, correct?

Why would you put an H1 tag on a product name? I came across this in another forum and thought I'd float it here.

He's shortening the url from johnsmithwidgets.com to johnsmith.com. Literally, the first part of the url is a name. Very bland and generic.

His long url is established, has decent page and domain authority and good natural link profile.

He purchased the short domain and I don't know how he intends to use it. I just think he wants to have the short version available for user convenience.

Ideally, wouldn't he want links to continue to his long domain?

Suppose I have a long url on an established site and created a shorter version of it so it is easier for people to enter directly and click. I 301 the short version to the long. I don't think there is much concern for people linking to the long version pages, but will there be a tendency for people to link to the short url instead of the long for the domain links? Will I not benefit as much from links to the short vs the long? Thanks.

It also supports Google's "above the fold" algorithm update. Get your relevent content above the fold (links too). Think of the fold as the area of your monitor that you can see without scrolling down the page. That's why the top of page 1 pays the money and value diminishes as you go down the page.

Google ran a series of tests last year where AdWords in the right space on the page alternated with space at the bottom of the page. We structured AdWords to be at the top of the page on the right and were pissed off when they moved our ads to the bottom of the page. We wanted our ads to be seen without people having to scroll down the page.

Granted there's a lot of different monitors and Webmaster Central has tools for testing how pages look, but consider your own browsing habits.

People tend to take the path of least resistance (and viewer patience is growing shorter and shorter as the months go by).

Well said Oracle.

If you're the origin of the content, you should keep the credit (authority) on it as age of the content is a factor. That's why fresh content is good. When a manufacturer's new content comes out, we hustle to get the content up as quickly as possible so we reap as much benefit from "freshness" as possible.

Having said that, I've seen some of our manufacturer sites well below us in the rankings largely because their SEO isn't so hot. Some manufacturer's/distributors don't put much emphasis on SEO for various reasons.

If you're doing some good SEO, with your brand in your domain and originating the content, you should be in great shape.

Hi John,

Considering I don't know where you are in terms of site development, I will offer some suggestions in general terms.

1. Do you keyword research to determine how your customers will find you. Include your city and/or state name in your searches. Build pages that your customers will find beneficial and optimize for those.

2. Use your city name and/or state in title tags and on page where appropriate.

3. Make sure you use your local area code, zip code, street address consistently in all your local directories and Google Places. Visit getlisted.org for directory submission ideas.

4. Put your address in the footer of your site.

5. A blog is a great idea for lawn seasonal lawn care tips. Take photos/videos of your work and post them on your site/blog to beef up content. Example: "Here's what we can do about chick weed starting to show during the winter months." - I called my lawn guy about it last week :).

6. Leverage social media (Facebook specifically) for connecting your customers and allowing your customers to share with friends.

7. I wouldn't have one picture on my site that was not a local picture. Name your files with localized tags and use proper alt tags.

8. Its okay to include surrounding communities in titles, meta descriptions and on-page etc. as Google will pick those up as well depending on the competition.

9. If you have relationships with local vendors ask them for a link.

10. Don't do more for your site than you can effectively manage. If you can't keep your site, blog, facebook page etc. fresh, don't do it. Scale it back, keep it simple and ALWAYS keep your customer's benefit the motivation for what you do.

Good luck!

Don't forget to enable e-commerce: http://support.google.com/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55528

Does Google interpret Affiliate links as paid links?

If so, can Affiliate links harm your rank if they are not properly tagged with a no-follow?

Thanks.

Thanks Tyler. What's a sandbox?

Anybody have some good advice as to how to handle customer accounts when merging eCommerce sites?

These include email accounts and store accounts. We're trying to limit customer concerns when people discover the sites are merging.

Thanks.

Also, don't forget to have a look at your links in Webmaster tools.

Thanks Kane. I'm reluctant to post the url. I'm assuming the 301's have value as they have reasonable page authority.

Can Google "interpret" the content of a 301 source page or only the number of links?

"We are planning to offer an incentive to all our customers who interact with us on social media websites"

Echo1 - I'm not knocking what you (or anyone else does regarding this) but this begs the question: How come Google doesn't like paid links, but lends credibility to solicited and incentivised "likes" and "pluses?"

Will lobbying take over SEO and SERP's? Just like Washington politics, will the bigger and deeper pockets wield the influence?

Google is inviting us to play by these rules (sorry for the soapbox moment).

Todd Malicoat teaches the SEO course at marketmotive.com. He and Rand share teaching love on some videos too!

I know its effective practice cuz we're getting our arse kicked. I'm curious if its best practice (white, gray or black hat).

I'm checking a competitors link profile on its landing page that is hitting the top of page 1 for several keywords.

This competitor (national chain) has a strong domain authority (69). The particular landing page I'm checking in OSE has two 301 redirects from its own site among some other directory links to the page.

The page shows 15 external links and half of them are very strong including it's own 301's.

Aren't they essentially sending their own juice to the landing page to bolster page/domain authority to rank higher in the SERPS for those keywords?

Is this a common practice using the 301's to a landing page? Is it white, gray or black hat?

They are appearing suddenly appearing on the first page for several category keywords, so we're doing some snooping.

Thanks.

Hi Mike. I've sent you a couple of personal messages. Give me a shout back when you can.

Hi Erica. I think what we will do (and weigh in on it please) is keep the homepage up with a notice to customers that some of the site content is moving to our parent site. We won't allow folks to buy anything, but we'll let them access their account to change/delete information if they would like.

Our parent site only sells a smattering of the products on the closing site and we'll 301 those. The two sites are so different I think people would be startled to be redirected to the parent site. What are thoughts of "when not to 301?"

I'm thinking we should put a date on the move so they can change account information by a specific time.

I thought I would put links on the home page to the parent product categories ( about 5 categories), so they can check out the parent site if they want.

Let's say we leave the homepage up for 30 days (60 or whatever) and take it down. If I don't put a 301 on it (and I wasn't going to), I should probably customize the 404 correct?

How long are 301's valid in Google? At some point does Google stop indexing the 301?

Thanks for any input you've got.

We embed the videos right on the product and category pages of our ecommerce site. We like keeping them on the page so the customer stays on the page. If they want to pause or stop the video they can and they don't have to close a window.

Hi Mike. Now we're getting into robots.txt, noindex, nofollow, follow tags etc. There's a lot of information regarding these tags and what they mean.

Use the search tool above and search robots, nofollow, noidex etc. You'll find a lot of posts and links that describe what they mean to Google and how they they should be used.

If you haven't already, you might load the mozbar and use the highlighter tool to quickly check links, view source code etc.

There's a lot to explore and understand.

Check out this from Rand: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/determining-whether-a-page-site-passes-link-juice

Google "dr oz videos" and you will go to the page preceding Lauri's book page you referenced. The link that goes to Lauri's site is at this Oz page: http://www.doctoroz.com/book/dream-it.

I got to the page selling your wife's book by Googling: dr oz lauri loewenberg.

They want the page before it seen on search.

Hi Mike. Right click on Dr. Oz page with your link on it. In the popup, select "view page source." It will open up a page with a bunch of code on it. On line 9 you will see the no index tag.

When checking links, I typically check the profile in open site explorer and Webmaster tools in Analytics.

We're closing down one of our eCommerce sites. What is the best approach to do this? The site has a modest link profile (a young site). It does have a run of site link to the parent site. It also has a couple hundred email subscribers and established accounts.

Is there a gradual way to do this? How do I treat the subscribers and account holders? The impact won't be great, but I want to minimize collateral damage as much as possible.

Thanks.

Product feeds are typically for eCommerce. It looks like you're in the mortgage business, so I don't know if there is something comparable or not. Perhaps someone in these forums can help us out on that. There may be a news feed or something similar.

Google, Bing and The Find will let you send them a product feed for free (as opposed to running a pay per click or pay per acquisition campaign).

Let's use Google for example. In short, our feed automatically sends Google our products with images, product name and info snippet with updates every day. Products in the feed are displayed in Google organic search and Google shopping. There are no pay per click or pay per acquisition charges.

Did someone add your site to a product feed while you were on a holiday vacation? Nothing like a product feed to put you on page one and increase your traffic/conversions by 30-50%.

Suppose its an html sitemap page. Same hold true?

• Also, I'm not redirecting any pages. I'm creating them and when they are created there is no page name in the url.

Our ecommerce sites are on CMS platforms. When we generate articles we get the following: www.example.com/Articles.asp?ID=134 in the url. There is no page name (keyword) in the url as opposed to product and category pages which generate them.

Does the absence of keywords in the url significantly impact the page rank of an article?

If it does, I'm going to submit a feature request. If not, I'm going to leave it alone.

Thanks.

Here is a brief hint from Matt Cutts on social links flowing rank (for what its worth): http://youtu.be/UxTmZulcQZ0

Mike, after going down this road ourselves I suggest you spend abundant time learning about AdWords. It is very involved and a discipline of its own. Yes, you can create the ad yourself and include the content you want. Understand this: you may think it looks inexpensive based on CPC info in AdWords, but how you set up your campaign will influence how much you pay and you may wind up spending (and losing) more than you think.

Ultimately, we wound up hiring out a company to manage our PPC. SEO and PPC go hand-in-hand but it is very labor/time intensive and we chose to do our SEO in house and hire out the PPC (at least for now).

This content blew up a server with 80,000+ hits: http://noahsdad.com/target-down-syndrome/

You are correct and I misswrote. The dashboard shows 1 linking root domain, however the attributes section of moz shows 6 external links. I'm not sure why the discrepancy. The root domain shows 1.5 million links from 1,500 domains. Keep reading these threads and you'll see the multitude of factors that play a role in SERPs.

You're overlooking:

1. The site is 15 years old

2. The word lamps in the url

3. 6100+ internal page links

4. 6 external followed page links (according to moz dashboard)

5. Page authority of 40

6. mozrank of 4.1

7. moztrust 6

8. domain authority 65

I'm sure there's more, but the day is over and I gotta stop at the store for my wife on the way home!

Speaking of multiple keywords on the same page....I read your (Stephen's) post at http://unbounce.com/seo/a-5-step-process-for-content-optimization/ and am curious about Google sets. To my understanding its shut down. How will you get similar information in its absence?

Joining the dive forum was brilliant btw.

How do you avoid duplicate content? Optimize for variations of the keyword in terms of exact, phrase, broad etc.?

Hi Angie. There's a lot being said about social influence and SERPs right now. Although I can't answer your question specifically, I can wonder logically why Google would flirt with +, likes, shares etc as an indicator of relevance, trustworthiness or reliability etc.

Facebook likes are already abused by outfits offering incentives for "liking". Curious to watch this evolve.

Alas, greatness is in the eye of the beholder not the reflection in the mirror.

At first glance of your page, a visitor might think it wreaks of negativity. A picture of an SEO guy laying in the gutter may not elicit the response you'd like from the visitor. Do you want laughs or links?

Also, the titles of your points are all in the negative. Write in the positive about what you do that is great instead of what others do that sucks.

Case in point...the owner of the store literally walked in about 8 minutes ago and told me we are going to be the distributor for a unique and profitable product. We're going to shoot video of it in use and build some great pages for it and hopefully, generate some great links to AMAZING CONTENT!

....or perhaps prepare a post on another subject.

I don't know you and don't want to offend you, but if you're putting together a post and asking us for advice on how to do it, then why are you doing the post?

If I walked into a class and the teacher asked me for advice on how to run his class, I would hustle over to the drop/add office.