Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi John.  I've seen some websites that use a simple box that is "lightboxed" on top of the content.  When you click Yes, the lightbox appears and the content is shown as normal.  To a search engine, this would look like a perfectly normal website.

However, if your "click yes or click no" refers the end-user to another page ONLY AFTER they click yes, then this would be a huge issue with search engines.

I'd recommend using the "User Agent Switcher" in Firefox to view your site as a Googlebot.  This should tell you whether or not it's seeing the entire site or just a portion of your site:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/user-agent-switcher/

Hi Niall!  Can you tell me what you're trying to accomplish with the blog?  Is the blog a supplement to the website or is the blog just by itself?  I have several blogs and my goal is not necessarily to target a large audience.  Rather, I use my blog to get my name out there and to write about topics that I really love.

Hi Jay,

It looks like Mozcon used to be called "PRO Training".  In previous years, they typically had about 150 seats available.  However, I don't see any information online that specifies the number of seats available this year.

Regarding what to expect, check a review that I found:

http://www.bryanphelps.com/2009/08/29/seomoz-pro-training-seminar-review/

Being that I've never attended, I hope that someone will reply with their first-hand experience.

Awesome!  Thanks for the update!  I've been using the Open Site Explorer to find high ranking directory lists.  However, it would be nice to have an experienced source for that info.

Hi Dave,

Most websites that have a review structure frown upon giving something in return for a review.  Yelp is very clear on these guidelines:

http://officialblog.yelp.com/2009/09/to-solicit-or-not-to-solicit.html

On the Google site, this is known as a conflict of interest:

"Reviews are only valuable when they are honest and unbiased. Even if well-intentioned, a conflict of interest can undermine the trust in a review. For instance, do not offer or accept money or product to write positive reviews about a business, or to write negative reviews about a competitor. Please also do not post reviews on behalf of others or misrepresent your identity or affiliation with the place you are reviewing."

Source:  http://www.google.com/support/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=187622

I hope that helps!

That's the one!  Thanks!

I would recommend using the Open Site Explorer (http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/) to view your competitor's websites.  Then, sort them by Domain Authority and take a look at the web directories that they've used.  In my personal experience, a lot of my competitors use paid web directories and you can figure out which ones are worth trying and which ones aren't.  The great thing about the Open Site Explorer is that it'll show you directories that actually have relevance instead of just blindly "googling" for paid directories.

I was recently looking at a blog post here or a webinar and it showed a website where you could see all of the local sites (yelp, Google places) where your business has been submitted.  It was an automated tool.  Does anyone remember the name of the site?

Here's what it says:

Last Crawl Completed: 2011-03-30 12:17:51 -0700 New Crawl Starts: 04/04/2011

Unfortunately, the errors that it mentioned were fixed several days before the crawl started.  If it happens after the next crawl, I'll be worried.  So, I'll just wait until then.

Thanks for the info, Wayne.  I really appreciate it!

Hi Dave,

Most websites that have a review structure frown upon giving something in return for a review.  Yelp is very clear on these guidelines:

http://officialblog.yelp.com/2009/09/to-solicit-or-not-to-solicit.html

On the Google site, this is known as a conflict of interest:

"Reviews are only valuable when they are honest and unbiased. Even if well-intentioned, a conflict of interest can undermine the trust in a review. For instance, do not offer or accept money or product to write positive reviews about a business, or to write negative reviews about a competitor. Please also do not post reviews on behalf of others or misrepresent your identity or affiliation with the place you are reviewing."

Source:  http://www.google.com/support/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=187622

I hope that helps!

Hi John.  I've seen some websites that use a simple box that is "lightboxed" on top of the content.  When you click Yes, the lightbox appears and the content is shown as normal.  To a search engine, this would look like a perfectly normal website.

However, if your "click yes or click no" refers the end-user to another page ONLY AFTER they click yes, then this would be a huge issue with search engines.

I'd recommend using the "User Agent Switcher" in Firefox to view your site as a Googlebot.  This should tell you whether or not it's seeing the entire site or just a portion of your site:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/user-agent-switcher/

Hi Jay,

It looks like Mozcon used to be called "PRO Training".  In previous years, they typically had about 150 seats available.  However, I don't see any information online that specifies the number of seats available this year.

Regarding what to expect, check a review that I found:

http://www.bryanphelps.com/2009/08/29/seomoz-pro-training-seminar-review/

Being that I've never attended, I hope that someone will reply with their first-hand experience.