Welcome to the Q&A Forum

This looks like a great site for applying SEO.  You have some good content to start with.

I'm sure lots of comments will flow in... here are some of my thoughts.

1. Markup.  I would suggest thinning out the code and getting rid of the table-based layout.  Part of good SEO is making sure your page loads nice and fast.
2. Home Page Layout.  I noticed the Used Pumps button at the top takes you off site.  To an affiliated site, I hope?  The image area is just fading images, you could replace the Flash there with a javascript equivalent and get the added benefits of adding alt attributes to the images and perhaps even laying some image titles over the tops of the pics for additional key phrases.
3. Page Layout.  I took a look at the New Concrete Pumps page as an example.  In the HTML, you should list the main content area before the sidebar and use CSS to float the sidebar left.  You already have heaps of links in the navbar.  Coming the this page just looks like more and more links.  Moving the sidebar after would help.
4. Page Titles.  I noticed your Meta Title is <business name="">| New Concrete Pump Trucks, while the anchor text to get there from the home page is New Concrete Pumps, and the page title is Concrete Pumps.  This seems like a lost opportunity.  You have 80 chars to use up in the title... put your key phrases first and be sure to include the phrase (or variation thereof) in the page title.  Is this page about Concrete Pumps or NEW Concrete Pumps?</business>
5. Images & Links.  Alt attributes help to describe the image they are attached to; Title attributes help to describe the link they are attached to.  I'm not really seeing this utilized.

These are just some initial thoughts.  Getting the code in shape will be a great foundation to start building your SEO campaign!

-John

I tend to use these guidelines...

1. The KISS method  works wonders (Keep It Simple Stupid).  Say more with less.
2. Keep it Content-Heavy and Code-Light
3. Learn proper HTML structure - think of the ease of adjustments down the road.
4. Make the site be fast-loading
5. Communicate... that's the whole point
6. Maintain clear calls-to-action
7. The web can be hard to read, especially for older eyes.  Design to your audience and have nice contrast.
8. Keep an open mind - push yourself to learn and try new things.  Ask questions and seek answers when you are unsure.
9. Design inspiration can come from anywhere... non-web sources can be great!  Architecture, magazines, nature, you name it!
10. Web design (including page markup) is both parts creative and technical.  There is no single way to lay out a great page.  Some ways work better than others though, so strive to be the best you can!!

Hi Andrew-

We were just discussion this earlier today... hope this thread helps you out!

http://www.seomoz.org/q/should-i-use-www-or-not-in-my-main-url

The general consensus is that google doesn't care either way.  It boils down to either aesthetics, personal preference, or in the case of an existing domain whether one of the root links has already developed better rankings.

-John

I think this is where we'll see the relevancy of content playing an even more important role.  It will provide more opportunities for higher rankings - with KG applied, you'll be fighting against others in your category instead of the broader multiple-meaning terms.

Bill-

There are several SEO plugs available for WP that will handle these issues.  Yes, you are right that adding "noindex" will be beneficial on tag, category, and archive pages.  The idea here is avoiding duplicate content issues.  BTW, check out: Yoast SEO for Wordpress.

Here is how the values for the robots meta tag work:

• noindex will keep a page from being crawled
• nofollow will prevent a page's links from being followed

I agree with noindex'ing these pages; though I would argue that a nofollow is still worth leaving out.  If these pages have any juice you want to allow this to flow to the other links on the page.

Hey Flavia-

Check out this article on htaccess magic

http://www.askapache.com/htaccess/list-of-methods-to-redirect-users-to-different-page.html

There is a section on 301 redirects that will get you started.  If you want to share any specific examples I'd be happy to help you further.

-John

Hey Olga-

If you're in a competitive market then you should consider a more serious platform so you get the most out of your efforts.  Wordpress with Cart 66 is good; Magento is good too.  GoDaddy is really pretty slow, especially since it's a shared hosting situation.

Many different things may have happened in your switchover - content changes, image path changes, etc.  Have you set up Google Analytics or Webmaster Tools to dig in further to see what's going on?

I did try taking a look at your site ... it's loading slowly from here.  You could also try setting up a free account at GTMetrix.com and analyze some pages.  There are lots of tips on how to speed things up, but again you may only have so much control with your current hosting setup.

I speak from experience that the hosting makes a big difference.  I moved a client from Rackspace Cloud to a dedicated a few months ago.  After making the switch several of our key terms (moderately difficult) were seeing page 1 and 2 rankings.  Just my .02

-John

Hey Karen-

Links on Facebook are marked rel="nofollow" so no link juice is actually passed from them back to your site.

Hope that helps!
John

Steven - that's a great idea to recycle still-relevant posts.

Another idea, perhaps a way to handle more date-specific posts, would be a "Looking Back" type of callout on a page.  "Here's what we were talking about a year ago..." or five years, etc.

EGOL, you mentioned having 10 recent posts.  You could extend this out a little more and have another batch of ten that are related tags posts - even posts you set as specific that you'd like to renew again.

Ryan - excellent points!  The benefits of adding a CMS to this site would be quite good, at the very least for providing some sort of grounds for moving forward on a unified platform.

Digging back through the Q&A... I'm several posts reporting this sort of thing.

http://www.seomoz.org/dp/rogerbot

Perhaps you could try specifically blocking rogerbot?  If that doesn't work, an email to the SEOmoz team may do the trick

Do you have a Google account with Webmaster Tools?  If not, go ahead and sign up for one (it's free!) then submit your site for reconsideration to Google.  While you're at it, make sure your XML site map is working.  You should be back on Google within a few days to a week.

It sounds like this is a short-term nofollow situation, so that shouldn't be too much of an issue.

-John

Are you currently running a campaign to see how your rankings are positioned?  Have you had any site troubles, down-time, etc?

The tag pages will only add duplicate content for you.  It would be a good idea to add a meta tag for robots with the value "noindex,follow".  This will keep the pages out of the index, yet still let the links be followed.  There are plugins available for this sort of thing, Yoast has a good one; I believe All In One SEO is also pretty good too.

+1 ... I'm seeing the error too.  Hopefully it will be fixed soon!

There are a couple of different approaches to take.  My personal fave is the "noindex,follow" on tag & category pages.  Having said that, I've heard of some people who have great category rankings.  That may depend on just how much duplication you have going on between the category/summary page and the actual blog post pages.

The Yoast SEO and All in One SEO plugs are great for WP by the way.

Yumi-

Did you see this Whiteboard Friday post?  I thought it might help you out:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/international-seo-where-to-host-and-how-to-target-whiteboard-friday

-John

Hey Rich-

I looked over the domain.  You should get rid of the /index.htm reference in your code.  I'm seeing this in your footer nav.  Further, you should add a 301 redirect in your htaccess file so /index.htm just points to your root domain.  That will help clean it up in the engines and will be reflected in OSE.

The fact that /index.htm IS showing in OSE would explain why the internal link figure on the root is 0; it's just robbing your stats.

Once you redirect and educate OSE on the link you really want you'll be golden.  Plus... you won't keep losing link juice through that footer link.

Let me know how it works out!
John

No, there are indeed over 100 <a>tags on the page.  I guess I wasn't very clear... sorry for the confusion.</a>

<a>You have 10 blog post summaries listed on the page.  Each post summary has a few links plus there are many other nav links on the page, bringing you up over the 100 mark.  If you keep adding posts that count should stay roughly the same....when you add more posts the older ones are automatically pushed through to Older Posts, keeping the 10 latest summaries on that page.</a>

<a>As I mentioned earlier, one method to reduce the</a> <a>tag count on the page would be to remove the category links.  They don't seem necessary since you are only using the one blog category.</a>

I agree with Adam.  301 redirect the .net to your .com so you keep your link juice on your main site.

Many people use the .net versions as a safeguard to prevent competitors from using the namespace in the SERPs, especially on competitive keywords.

Are you trying to rank your images in Google image search?  If so, make sure the full path for each component stays the same.

As for general SEO, you're right on track.  The performance boost from the parallel loading will be one more step to help you rank!

I went to MozCon last year and a speaker presented info on just this sort of thing.... what to do when your niche category is relatively lame.  You might look at last year's presentations for some ideas.

This is a real opportunity!  Depending on your client reception to these ideas, you might want to take a look at a few things.  Decide on a social media tone that's appropriate and sales-worthy.

• Set them up as a leader in their field - authoritative tone and feel
• Offer up interesting material - who says it has to be business as usual?  As Ben mentioned about the pirates and creative posting - what if you inject some humor?  Laundry fails?  Cartoons/Comics?  Funny videos?
• Copper mining equipment ... sorry to say, that's pretty dry.  Wouldn't their potential contacts love some awesome humor interspersed with some helpful content.

Here's another perspective .... think about a big player like Pepsi.  Check out this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiP70pBUjuw&feature=related

Granted, big video, big budget ... but they were offering something memorable that really had little to do with drinking the product.

With a little creative thinking, that might be just the ticket for scoring decent returns in a tough category.

If you're talking about links on a page, 100 - 200 is the general guideline depending on your site.

If you're talking about incoming links, and they are quality links, then let 'em rip!  Seriously, for incoming links you primarily want to just stay ahead of your competition.  The general idea is to slowly build them over time, think of them as a natural linking progression rather than - BOOM - all at once.

Theo's on the money here... it makes no difference to the engines.

If you need help deciding, check out which homepage (with or without www) has the higher rank and roll with that one!

Google doesn't store cookies when it indexes your site, so it will "see" your page as someone who hasn't visited before.

Perhaps there's another way to look at this.  How about redirecting all user-agents except googlebot to achieve what you want?  Then you'd keep the redirect you want and your rankings!

The "See what Cerritos Nissan customers...." anchor text is pretty lengthy.  If I understand correctly, the 6 - 8 word max or less than 55-60 character rule of thumb should apply to the anchor text.  Like most other things related, keeping it in check seems to make the most sense.  If the anchor text is more descriptive this will give the link more weight.

On the shorter side of things though... How many times have we seen "click here" to download.  Is the link value "click here"... or rather is it about the page or item we're clicking to get to?

-John

Your best bet is to "noindex,follow" your tag pages.  There was a great article about this just a few days ago on the Moz blog:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/setup-wordpress-for-seo-success

The article covers tags, categories, author pages and more.  You're sure to find what you're looking for.

-John

You are right about the ecommerce layouts... typically product organization is by category then you can click in deeper for the product detail.  Categories are commonly nested as well... like your Shoes category branching to dress, casual, and athletic.

Most decent ecommerce platforms will allow a full description on the product detail page and a short description for display on the category page.  Furthermore, category pages themselves will often have a description/content field of some sort.  Obviously, you want to avoid duplicate content issues, but you can use the combination of the category descriptions and product short descriptions on your list pages for ranking on the category.  Then, you can use your product pages to rank as well.  Again, you can keep the content different between the short and long product descriptions.

I've seen sites handle the category pages without much content; however I don't think you can go wrong with the additionally ranked pages if you set them up correctly.

Also, check to see if you can get an ecommerce template that supports related products - this will help with your internal linking.  You can also check out up-sell/cross-sell areas of the product page as well.

Do you have a link we could check out for content suggestions?  That may give a better idea of why the product pages aren't ranking well for you.

John

You could try something like this:

RewriteRule ^overnight-toiletry-packs.html /toiletry-travel-bags [R=301,L]

You need to escape the hyphens and periods... and include the switches for the 301 and specify that it's the Last rule.

Let me know how that goes - certainly share some code if you still get stuck.

-John

Go the distance and request the link update - it's just cleaner that way!

Check out this article under the Links and off-site Factors section:

http://www.spottedpanda.com/2011/seo-news/confirmed-seo-facts-matt-cutts/

Hi Neil-

How are you handling your canonical tags?  You'll want your regular domain to rank, not the mobile domain.  Be sure to include rel="canonical" on your mobile pages to point to the main domain.

John

Well, it sounds like you'll need to find it or create it.

First, you could offer up your own reviews.  You could also open up the pages to allow comments.  Go ahead and push those heavily on your social networks to pull in traffic to gather up those reviews.

You're in the right place for SEO help... most folks in here really want to be here, so no worries about ego bashing.

What are you planning on using for a platform to develop the site?

Tricky areas to watch out for on e-commerce sites include handling of duplicate content on category (list) type pages vs. actual product pages, particularly if they are nested and search result pages.  You will definitely want to use your rel="canonical" tags.

As for the domain name, it's certainly helpful to include keywords, but it's not the end of the world if you don't.  You're really developing a brand.  Think of ebay or twitter even.  Clearly, no keywords to be found.

If you're talking about the rest of the URL, then yes, make sure you work with a platform that has good SEO support: search-engine friendly URLs, meta title & meta description support, and a place to enter descriptions for your images at the very least.

That's a start... certainly ask if you have other questions!

Ahhh, you will definitely run into duplicate content issues!

You want to include a rel="canonical" to point to the domain & path without the variables.  You don't want this sort of URL to be indexed (use robots: noindex,follow); it's much better to show the clean URL in Google.

You should have a meta tag for the page language (adjust language code as needed):

As far as the URLs go... many sites are converting these to non-escaped variants on save.  Magento, for example, treats e, é, and ê as e in the url.  Check out Lemonde.fr, french news source.  They are just stripping the accents as well.

To adjust for the accents, you would need to transliterate them.  First, find the function that is generating the URL.  Next, if your system allows has the iconv() function:

$new_url = iconv('utf-8', 'us-ascii//IGNORE//TRANSLIT', $old_url);

If not... then you could go this sort of route:

$table = array(

'Š'=>'S', 'š'=>'s', 'Đ'=>'Dj', 'đ'=>'dj', 'Ž'=>'Z',

'ž'=>'z', 'Č'=>'C', 'č'=>'c', 'Ć'=>'C', 'ć'=>'c',

'À'=>'A', 'Á'=>'A', 'Â'=>'A', 'Ã'=>'A', 'Ä'=>'Ae',

'Å'=>'A', 'Æ'=>'A', 'Ç'=>'C', 'È'=>'E', 'É'=>'E',

'Ê'=>'E', 'Ë'=>'E', 'Ì'=>'I', 'Í'=>'I', 'Î'=>'I',

'Ï'=>'I', 'Ñ'=>'N', 'Ò'=>'O', 'Ó'=>'O', 'Ô'=>'O',

'Õ'=>'O', 'Ö'=>'Oe', 'Ø'=>'O', 'Ù'=>'U', 'Ú'=>'U',

'Û'=>'U', 'Ü'=>'Ue', 'Ý'=>'Y', 'Þ'=>'B', 'ß'=>'ss',

'à'=>'a', 'á'=>'a', 'â'=>'a', 'ã'=>'a', 'ä'=>'ae',

'å'=>'a', 'æ'=>'ae', 'ç'=>'c', 'è'=>'e', 'é'=>'e',

'ê'=>'e', 'ë'=>'e', 'ì'=>'i', 'í'=>'i', 'î'=>'i',

'ï'=>'i', 'ð'=>'o', 'ñ'=>'n', 'ò'=>'o', 'ó'=>'o',

'ô'=>'o', 'õ'=>'o', 'ö'=>'oe', 'ø'=>'o', 'ù'=>'u',

'ú'=>'u', 'û'=>'u', 'ü'=>'ue', 'ý'=>'y', 'ý'=>'y',

'þ'=>'b', 'ÿ'=>'y', 'Ŕ'=>'R', 'ŕ'=>'r', 'Ā'=>'A',

'ā'=>'a', 'Ē'=>'E', 'ē'=>'e', 'Ī'=>'I', 'ī'=>'i',

'Ō'=>'O', 'ō'=>'o', 'Ū'=>'U', 'ū'=>'u', 'œ'=>'oe',

'ß'=>'ss', 'ij'=>'ij'

); $new_url = strtr($old_url, $table);

I'm not sure about Korean handling - perhaps someone else knows how these are being handled?

-John

And so the questions begin....

What about the quality of your incoming links?  What are your "spray booth" competitors doing?  Any changes there?  Have you been steadily building links and content or did you post it all up at once?

Google doesn't follow javascript so if you want the links followed on that page you'll need to somehow include them in your code.

You could try an A/B test.  On some pages, place the form below your #container div and absolute position the contact form back up to the top with CSS.  After that, monitor for a bit and see if it helps.  Perhaps it's the making of a future YOUmoz blog post?

Hey everyone... just seeing who's going to MozCon next month?  It would be nice to connect some usernames and faces when I get there!

I also agree with the over-optimization ... the nav structure seems a bit heavy right at the top.

Check out Screaming Frog ... good stuff

I ran into this situation a few years ago.  We set up inner pages with the modal content anyway and loaded the content via ajax.  For users without javascript it would gracefully degrade.  Who doesn't have javascript right? Well, Google crawlers for one.  The additional pages won't hurt you.  You can craft this so it's a transparent process for the end-user.

If you're in a competitive market and you only have the single page it will be extremely difficult to compete with other sites that are pushing new content and consistently expanding their web presence.