Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Thank you

Usually I just add them to the areas that allow, like for Twitter, its says add homepage url etc.

So under WMT yes they are there, but not in open explorer, so nit sure if it was a big deal or not.

HI,

If you have access to the backend, I would say to try a couple of things:

1 - If you are using a theme, many times I have found even with my own theme that I got from theme fusion is that the pages titles are also the H1 tags. So to counter this, while still on whatever page you have open, scroll down to the page options. So like options where you can change default sidebars, maybe author etc. You have have an options that says something like Page Title Bar Options.

This is a way to override whatever H1 tag you may have going on if your page title is showing up as the main H1 tag also.

2 - If you are using Yoast, this may also be adding h1 tags for you.

3 - You may check to see if you have <title>type coding or functions. Maybe even shortcodes adding h1 tags. I would say if you View your source code for a page, you can pinpoint where the H1 tags are going up so that you can know where to look on your pages.</p> <p>I am not sure if you want, I am no pro, but if you tell me your website I can view the source code too and tell you where the h1 tags are.</p> <p>Best Wishes</p> <p>Chris</p></title>

Hello, As I have used site explorer on competition sites, I am curious what I need to do to have my facebook, twitter, and pinterest links to shop up as a backlink?

I see some other sites have it, even if its a nofollow, but curious if I am doing something wrong? I have had accounts since last year.

Just curious if I am doing something wrong,

Thank you

Chris

Hi Kevin,

Thank you so much for your thoughts and help.

If I may please ask,

Could you please let me know what is the best method for targeting a Local State Level seo effort?

For an example, when I type into Google keywords tools my keywords, I add the state of Colorado in my search queries, then added those keywords to my title tags and pages.

BUT--- Is there a specific method that you use to make sure you are being found in a local search?

So If someone searches for BBQ, how do you know that you will be found in your area?

Thank you for any tips and advice.

Hi Thomas,

As always the Most Intelligent and Compassionate Answers!

I purchased the Avada theme from Theme Forest because I was a sheep and followed the heard of people who have bought it.

I wanted a mobile responsive theme, and it worked.

Yet...

When I started looking at forum posts and such, it seems like good code is very important. So it started to make me wonder, "What if my theme is not coded for seo and google?"

I am on the edge to jump on board with genesis.

But I did read the the hooks are tough for newbies like me.

Even though some themes, companies, etc have support staff, but it may take days to get help if you get any at all. So this makes me worry.

But on a good note, I found that Synthesis - a Copyblogger company I think, includes Genesis with the monthly price. So they make sure everything is setup correctly, So I like that for sure.

I mean I still need to design it, but at least the setup will be right,

Anyways thank you again Thomas. You are as always amazing!

Hi, So I am curious if there is a tool to see if a site is coed properly for Google?

I am running Avada, a standalone theme, yet I am also using a cache plugin.

But when I search my code, its all like on one huge line.

So I am curious if there is a way to verify or check if a theme is coded correctly?

Thank you

HI

So I read on here somewhere that it is important to get local links, instead of just national links.

I am curious how does Google know if the links you are getting are from a local source?

Thank you

Oh and on an odd note, since I service ALL of Colorado, is there a proper way to add Colorado to the url?

Like if putting everything I do under Services, would it be best to name that Site/Colorado/whatever

So use Colorado as the category for the services?

Or would you maybe not add the state you service?

Thank you Richard for your time to answer

I was just so unsure if I did Do a menu item, an then listed each page under it is best,

Like

Pole Barns ( main Menu item Click able to the main Pole Barn Page)

-Sub Menu Items-

• Pole Barn Construction

• Pole Buildings

• Pole Barn Kits

or

If its best to have say a services page, then when you go to the services pages you click on a service, then from that page you go to other pages related to that service?

For you this may be kindergarten stuff, but just trying to do things proper for Google and My visitors.

Thank you again

Best Wishes

Hello to all,

I appreciate your time and trouble greatly, so thank you in advance.

Question - 1 -

I just watched a video regarding onsite <acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">seo</acronym>. This video explained to instead of using a services page to list each service, instead if possible make a page and menu item for the most popular search terms.

So my families business site is allspecialtybuildings.com

We do construction. I currently have it setup to have a services page then the listings of the services with its own page under the menu.

But from watching this video, would you also suggest that it would be best to take maybe the top 3 or 4 services, then list the services as actual page menus?

So say instead of this:

Service Menu Link -
-Pole Barns
-Indoor Riding Arenas
-Garages
-Horse Barns
-Loafing Sheds

Would it be best to have each service as a menu in itself like this:

Home
Pole Barns
-Pole Barn Construction
-Pole Barn Kits
-Pole Barn Color Charts

Indoor Riding Arenas
-Indoor Riding Arena Construction
-Indoor Riding Arena Kits
-Indoor Riding Arena Color Charts

Same- Different word
Same- Different Word

So basically create specific and relevant pages and remove the popular pages from a service page.

Not sure if this make sense, or is basically not needed?

Last Question - Branding-

I got 2 <acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">seo</acronym> companies reviews back, and was told to change my branding and domain. See the issue is that the company name is All Specialty Buildings.

So All is basically thrown out of some search results, almost like its a stop word.

So "Specialty Buildings" shows up on many results. I would like to counter this.

So I am curious if I get a new domain, like say something like ColoradoBarnConstruction.com

Would this be a better domain for <acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">seo</acronym> rankings and memory for people?

Or would I risk an EMD penalty?

When I look for dentists, or <acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">seo</acronym> help, I get coloradodentist, or coloradoseo(dot)com's

So they all rank well, I just want something brandable and easy to remember. I figured the company name would be best, But these companies that want 3500 a month for <acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">seo</acronym> services are saying different.

Again thank you for your time, your ideas, and your advice.

Thank you

Chris

Thank you so much. You have helped me so much.

Best of wishes to you

Hello to all,

I wanted to ask if I am doing this correctly.

So I own a Bernese mountain dog website

I used the google keyword research tools to view keyword ideas.

I listed my results below.

So my questions are:

1 - Bernese Mountain Dog Puppies (the keyword) blow away the other keywords. So when you are looking at your sites most popular keywords, do you make the most popular keyword your homepage? Because it gets the most link juice? Like would you build the homepage around the best keyword instead of branding - like the company name etc?

Or does it matter? Basically just as long as you use it for one page?

2 - When you have keywords that have parts of other keywords, is it safe to use the longer keyword because it has parts of the other phrases? Such as Bernese mountain dog puppies for sale is a part of Bernese mountain dog puppies for sale in Colorado.

So if you use bernese mountain dog puppies for sale in Colorado, it will also hit the bernese mountain dog puppies for sale? ( without the In Colorado)

What type of strategy would you use for this type of situation?

3- Lastly, and thank you for your time - I watched a video from a grey hat seo guy. He said to take a keyword or phrase like say Colorado home builders, create a page like example.com/Colorado-home-builders/

Then make you h1 tag - The Best Colorado Home Builders

Add The Best Colorado home builders to your meta description

and one more time in your h2 tag

Then create a Bold, and italic The Best Colorado Home Builders in your unique content paragraphs.

So my question is - is this grey hat and bad? Or the standard? I do not want to get hit for over optimizing. So just wanted to ask you opinion first.

In the end, I truly thank you for taking the time to read my questions. I appreciate everyone's help and greatly appreciate your knowledge.

So my results look like this

| bernese mountain dog puppies | 590 | Low | $0.45 | 1% | |
| bernese mountain dog puppies for sale | 90 | High | $0.42 | 9% | |
| bernese mountain dogs | 90 | Low | $0.37 | 0% | |
| bernese mountain dog puppies for sale in colorado | 30 | Medium | $0.76 | 0% | |
| bernese mountain dog breeders in colorado | 20 | Medium | $0.32 | 0% | |
| bernese mountain dogs colorado | 40 | Low | $0.08 | 0% | |
| bernese mountain dog puppy breeders | 10 |

Hi I am curious if adding a embedded Google map to a footer helps for Local seo?

Thank you

Wow Gary great posts thank you.

so going forward, would it be smart to change my citationa to show my new domain? Or leave it in case the original site comes back?

And create new citations for the new domain?

Hello

I am not sure of the rules, although I do not see many people posting looking for help.

I do know that Moz has a list of people who you can try though

http://moz.com/community/recommended

Hi John,

Although I am no expert, but my research and thinking is that if you are being hit by a domain wide penalty, then yes any new content will also suffer as it is an extension of your penalized domain.

Now even one page can cause a whole site some issues. Just as with most the homepage carries the unnatural links, so the whole site hurts because of it.

I am sure an expert will chime in soon, Best Wishes

Thank you so much Marie,

You are very smart and I appreciate your time to answer my question.

If I may ask - With trying to test the waters with an additional domain, I have no problems writing new content. My issue is though if you try and add in say a company name and phone number, will Google say "Hey this may be a different domain name and content, but the contact info is the same?'

I have also had an answer on a similar topic about one great site is better than 10 semi ok sites.

My goal is just to be found. I made the mistake of hiring some seo from Digital Point, and now I am paying the price for black hat seo.

That being said, I do LOVE my domain as it is my business name, BUT I had a local seo here in Colorado tell me that all a disavow does is tattle tells on you to Google. So basically you are telling Google to penalize you. Of course they wanted $3000 for a new site and then $1500 a month to do seo on it. So maybe its just a money thing.

I also thought about going with an EMD as so many sites I see have he keywords in the name, so I figured to try that route too.

Either way I feel like I am on an Island by myself. I want to join civilization once again. I have cleaned up many links, got citations, and have a 44% bounce rate. But not listed in like the first 12 pages of google for my target keyword. So its lonely. I am lost on who to trust, so I turn to you and all of the great Mozzers

Thank you again

I would disavow them. It seems like Google wants the cleanest backlink profile possible.

Hello,

Although I am no expert, I have read mixed views on this. While trying to get better links, I read to create a scholarship or donate to get good backlinks.

Matt Cutts said somewhere that Google does not favor EDU or GOV links

Although most of the time these types of links have great DA.

Some people in the Google Product Webmaster forums bashed me for asking about DA as DA is garbage in their eyes.

So that being said, in my research most every site above mine have great DA, but poor PA

So my thinking is that as a whole domain they are awesome, that page though is not linked to very often and or so it does not show trust and authority in Google

I am sure an expert will chime in. Best wishes

Thank you Gary

i do not have any manual penalties, yet even with new links, citations, and disavowing bad links I do not show up under my states simple niche

So now I am looking going towards a fresh start

what hurts is I do like my domain as it is my business name. But when I am not being found, I am not good.

So without paying 2500 a month for help, I feel like I need to do something

Hello,

So while I sit and wait for Penguin to hopefully ease up on my site, would it be smart to create a new site and then forward the old penguin hit site to it after the dust clears and any issues are better?

I have heard some people say you never recover from an algo penalty? While others say to wait it out.

So just curious what you think? Would you ditch a site that is not super followed or popular? in the attempt to create a site with no bad backlinks and start fresh?

Thank you for your thoughts

On maybe the bad end, if I go with anything, I will be creating the site myself.

I have really leaned towards Genesis ALOT for the last year.

But again the hooks scare me, yet the speed, schema.org markup, and responsive designs are great for me.

I do not want to use many plugins, and being that the speed is good, then maybe I can not use any cache plugins

Wow thank you Thomas. You are great.

i looked at genesis but worried about hooks. I do not need anything fancy, but worry it's not too newbie friendly.

i searched woo themes before but was worried as I noticed some people complaining about updates.

I have never seen anything about genesis being bad. It loads fast and seems to be responsive

I just want good seo and a part of that is readable code.

If any admin reads this- please know that Thomas here has always went above and beyond with every answer. I truly appreciate it

Thank you for the thoughts. Do you recommend any particular theme? I am using Avada by theme fusion.

Hello, So last year I did rank for my website.

Yet I switched from Adobe Muse to wordpress. I thought it would be great for updating and blobbing if I ever do it.

So I got a theme, and went for it

I have Yoast and that's it for plugins.

But if I take say another couple of years to blog, am I hurting myself with wordpress? Like Google knows I am using wordpress so it expects me to be creating content?

I know its an odd question, just had to ask

So I am curious about keyword placements etc.

My main question is:

So is whatever you search for in say Google must be the same in a website - to be found?

So say you search for plumbers in Colorado

Then you must have that exact, same phrase, in your website to be found?

or does Google know based on title tags and such that a page is about plumbers and they service Colorado?

I just want to make sure I am understanding how keywords work to be found.

I mean you can have Colorado plumbers and plumbers in Colorado. So its hard to figure out how to use keywords.

So a brief suggestion is greatly appreciated

Chris

Hi, so I am curious if Penguin has a time limit?

Like say after 90 days it resets and looks to see if any penalties still exist?

Thank you

Thank you Travis

So would you say that I should be concerned then?

I am just at wits end trying to figure out what to do next. I figured maybe a bad bounce rate could be causing some of this issue.

A part of me says burn the site down, and start fresh, but I have branding and friends that know us. Some say they never recover, some say wait it out.

Its frustrating for sure.

Thank you again Travis for your insights

Thank you Thomas

I had just noticed these pages that had high bounce rates and wondered if I deleted these pages if it would indeed help my page rankings if indeed a few 100% bounce rate pages can take down a whole site.

I am unsure if I have a panda or penguin penalty. I have disavowed bad links, and removed a bunch.

Yet now I am looking at page content. I have 2 pages posting bad bounce rates, yet I want every I to be dotted and T crossed.

So I truly appreciate your insight as you are the expert, and I greatly value your time.

Hello,

So with trying to figure out what I can do to better my website, I noticed a post on here that mentioned bounce rates.

So I went to my Google analytics pages and listed my bounce rates. My average is 44%

But I have a picture page that is 100% and a contact page that is 80%

Can pages like this cause an algo penalty that could hurt a whole site?

Thank you for your valuable insights

Thank you for your valuable insights.

I have a lot to learn

Hello

So with reading a blog post by Bruce Clay - http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/seo-friendly-web-design/

It reads that it Is best for seo to use text links instead of drop down menus.

So I just wanted to ask you opinion.

Hello

Sorry to hear about your troubles

I would say that maybe it may take a while to refresh, yet also if you were ranking at one time with those bad links, you may have to replace them with good natural links.

I am learning myself, so I am sure an expert will chime in. I know it is very frustrating. I have sites above mine that have hardly to no backlinks, a low domain authority, and kills my site in every search I do.

I never got a warning like yourself. In some ways I wish I did so I could send in a reconsideration request.

It sucks, but I feel your pain. I do wish the best for you.

Chris

HI,rategy.

So I spoke to a local Colorado seo company and they suggested to find whatever keywords is the most searched under my GWT's and put .com behind it and build other sites for other keywords.

I was curious about this type of strategy.

Does this work? This seo guy said I could just get a DBA bank account and such for each domain name etc.

I am not wanting to mislead anyone, but I am curious if for the sake of promoting other services, if creating other websites with partial and EMD's are worthwhile?

Another issue I worry about is if I put my companies phone number, then next thing you know there is 3 or 4 sites that use that same phone number. To me this does not build trust with Google.

But being I am learning, maybe this is a common strategy, or doomed from the start.

Just curious what you think. Would you build other sites to try and rank for other services? Or keep one sites and maximize it?

Thank you for your thoughts. I just do not want to pay $3000 per site if it will hurt not help.

Sorry to hear about your website pain.

I am on the other side of the spammy link fence. I paid for an seo in 2011 to work on a site. They used black hat seo methods such as link from places such as Fiverr, yet they used digital point forums for links.

Then Here it is 2012. and Google hates me.

2013 I am a member of Moz. The best move I have made for sure.

I have done what you have and updated a disavow txt file.

I have heard many different strategies. Some say you will never recover from a non manual penalty. Some say clean up bad backlinks then replace them with good quality natural links. Then I have had some say clean up backlinks, create new ones, and then wait till the next update.

I have started with zero citations to now I have 200 or so. I do not have a bunch of backlinks, about 230, yet I am trying to gather high quality links.

So I think if you once ranked with bad backlinks, you must replace them with good quality backlinks. Other sites are ranking, so maybe use the explorer tool to see what the competition sites are using for backlinks, and see if there are any opportunities.

Best of wishes

Hello,

So I may have a simple question- do citations such as yp and manta for an example count as backlinks?

So if they do, would this be a natural link so good for seo? or a citation where it may be a backlink, but not very helpful for seo backlink profile?

Thank you to all

If you are talking about Google changing your Title tags, it could be because they are wanting to show it the way that they want to.

It happens to me, and I know others. Google just decides what is the best tag

I am interested as well to see what others think. I agree with the categories and dup content issues that could occur.

Please keep us all posted

Thank you for your help. I greatly appreciate it

Hi yes it is just for me . I just want to make sure I am using the best tools that I can.

Hi to all,

So as I am working towards the best possible site that I can build, what is the best tool or method to find keywords that people would search for that may line up with my website?

I have starting using google keyword research tool, or at least I think that is what its called. Also I am using moz, but it shows bing result for traffic.

So I guess backing up, do you usually find the keywords with the largest traffic estimates, and then work those words into your web pages?

I know to build for people first, then search engines etc. But just curious what you do or use to get an idea on what keywords are popular.

Thank You

I used white spark, and I found some great directories that were related to my site, so I felt that it was good resource to have.

Hi Thanks for the concern. No signed contract or anything like that. I was shopping around for quotes first.

I just figured $36,000 a year to do seo on a site is crazy for my budget. So this is why I am here too learn all I can first, then maybe either do good enough to do my own work proudly, or save some money by having some of the work done myself.

I love the challenge of SEO, yet I find difficulties when there is not a clear road map as I see black hat and white hat seo, but sometimes its difficult to know the difference.

But I am here to learn and I am very grateful for the opportunity.

Thank you for the tips. It is greatly appreciated

Thank you for the support.

That's just it I cannot afford $3000 for a new site, yet if there is no recovery from penguin or whatever, then I have to start thinking about the future etc.

Thank you so much for your kind words.

Hi

So I have quotes of 1250 to 2500 a month to run my website, seo wise.

What I am told is they will do all facebook postings, 4 blog posts each month, some citations, and site optimization.

Those amounts due seem like a lot. Yet I was last to start all over.

Basically I was told that because of some bad backlinks, which only a few remain, that you can never recover from an algorithm penalty. And with a Disavow, its like telling Google - penalize me please

So the plan was this:

$3000 for a new site, and new domain, and then it has no penalties, and I will be ranking in no time.

The problem is I am branded. My domain and business name is Bernese Of The Rockies. People know us and we are very respected.

So if we create a new site like example.com, I do not want to mislead people. Or if there is a penalty for say a landing page or site, where I am sending people to my main site for more info type of thing.

Just looking for your input if this is a common issue, where if you have a non manual, but algo penalty that you must restart?

Thank you so much for your thoughts and suggestions.

So last question I promise

As a rule of thumb, although .com is king, would you shy away from a .org? or .net?

Or basically its .com or nothing type of thing?

Great read, thank you for the suggestion

ok thank you.

On a weird note if I may ask.

I live in Colorado. many times people use the words CO to represent a city, like Colorado Springs, CO

Would a domain like example.co be worth it if the search engine look at CO possibly as a abbreviation for Colorado?

Or is this just stupid to think that way?

Thank you