Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Im just curious.. Im sure a lot of you, like me, Google your own search terms on a fairly frequent basis. Does doing this skew the result you are actually seeing? As in, does Google tailor the results more to my liking, and therefore perhaps show my own site (which I would click through to often enough) higher on the page that it actually is? Sometimes I swear that happens. Steve.

Lets say I have: www.domain.com/au www.domain.com/uk www.domain.com/nz In Webmaster, should each of those be setup as a separate site, targeted to the relevant country? Does the country targeting in Webmaster bear much weight? Cheers 🙂

So we currently have two websites: www.thephotoboothguys.co.uk and www.thephotoboothguys.com.au We're redeveloping our sites, and combining them to have just a singular website (and then sub sections for each country / location). Unfortunately we can not get the .com of our domain, nor the _.net _And I really can't find a .com that i think will work (for lack of availability, or just because the domain name would not be succinct enough). So, I also have registered - www.photobooth.gy and www.thephotoboothguys.co
My question ultimately is - is it a bad idea to use a .gy or .co as my main domain - especially when we dont operate in either Guyana or Columbia - but, assuming that the content and structure of the website make it clear what countries and locations we do operate in. Is this something Google et al will figure out over time? Or is it likely to make a huge impact? Or should I be searching harder to find a .com that will work for me? Cheers!

Hi All... I have had an SEO guy doing some  work for us (link building etc) over the past few months. In the last week or two, I have been receiving emails from a few website owners complaining that our SEO guy has been spamming their sites (either through blog comments or forums posts etc). Now, to clarify, it's not spam as in "come and buy our awesome product" - it is spam as in he makes (for example) blog post comments that are relevant to the topic, that sometimes don't make perfect sense (due to his english skills). So, they do seem perhaps, extra spammy... (it is all hand written... not an automated scripts) My questions Im not out to do the wrong thing, so, is this approach bad news? Apart from annoying people, are there are other downsides? If I were to pre-write him comments/posts that actually made perfect sense, would that be a better approach? I don't want to annoy people, and I don't want to do the wrong thing, and I don't want our rankings to be effected, so... what is the consensus?

So - being photographers, we have our main website, but also, we use a hosted service for all our client galleries (www.zenfolio.com) So, in effect, we have two websites: Our main informational website Our client gallery/proofing website The client gallery has back links to our main website - so, when people are viewing their gallery, they can easily get back to our main site. We also have thrown a few of our preferred keywords in there for SEO purposes. The gallery has thousands of pages which link back to the main site. So.. the client gallery URL can either be: http://ourbusinessname.zenfolio.com OR we can have it so it uses our own domain, such as: http://gallery.ourbusinessname.com The question is, which domain name will benefit the back links more? Our custom subdomain (which links to our main domain) or, using the Zenfolio domain (which is external to our site). Or, is there no real difference either way? Or.. do I make no sense?

Hi All (this is my first Q, so I hope it is a reasonable one!). Ive just started looking into Micro Formats and, so far my understanding of them is a little bit limited. So.... 1. Is there SEO benefit in using these? 
2. What is an appropriate use for them? Our website has a reasonable business directory on it (which is there for SEO purposes ultimately) - so am I correct in thinking that it would be prudent to use Micro Formats for all their contact details etc? I guess Im just not 100% sure on how and when to use them.. and what the real benefit is. But, I would love to know.. 🙂 Thanks heaps!