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both of mine are listed on twitter. for example. @ horsebuggy shows up as
<cite>twitter.com/horsebuggy</cite>Sign up for Twitter to follow Horse Buggy (@_HorseBuggy_). Horse Buggy is the Leading provider of**...**
<cite>https://twitter.com/#!/HorseBuggy</cite>Sign up for Twitter to followk HorseBuggy.net (@_HorseBuggy_). Leading provider of Horse Buggies.....
If my site was mistaken for a parked domain.....then I have a lot of work to do. lol
We disappeared for about 16 hours yesterday completely from the SERPS then last night it popped back up and we were ranked higher for all our keywords. I deleted one duplicate page on a directory but I am not sure what transpired to cause the events. Hopefully someone else will have some input and let me know if this is a common occurrence.
Aeronet...I am not sure if that fixed the problem but now we are ranking higher than ever. Thanks for your input!!! I was scared. 
Not sure what happened but tonight all our rankings are now back...and we are ranked higher than ever. We also now rank the highest we ever have for our main keyword as we have climbed to #3. We also have NEW terms we are now ranking for on the first page. This has been a very strange day.
They said they didn't put me on any networks.
Overnight we dropped completely off the rankings. I have no idea what happened. I was excited we were doing so well the past 60 days and ranked for many keywords and long tails. This morning we disappeared from 100% of the rankings.
Thanks for the heads up....They just removed all the duplicate content. I hope that fixes the problem but for one page of duplicate content it seems a little severe. That is an industry specific directory that was free.
As far as I can see my website has been removed from all the terms I was ranking for over the past 60 days. Poof.
I hired a link building company and they were working on getting one term ranked. I hired them for 5 weeks and canceled with them because I wanted to be careful. Only person I have ever hired to do anything. They said they submitted me to several directories because I was new and it would be good to get started. NO NETWORKS as far as I know.
Was ranking on first page for over 80 terms with over 25 in the top 3 and my main keyword was ranked #4...now my twitter account has replaced my website for #4 in the rankings for the main keyword. I now have ZERO Rankings for all keywords for my website. I have no idea what happened. ** Is there anyway for me to check with Google to see why I have been wiped off the map in the search rankings? **
Boo
I think it is worth it. I have to be a part of this cutting edge community because of all the changes we are doing to our website. I don't want to have to go back and change lots of stuff later on. It has been great and I bug the heck out of all these professionals on here. I like associating with all these smart folks. Plus it is kinda fun to learn a whole new world of information. Hoping that some of there smarts rubs off on me somehow.
Not sure...but I plan on renaming pages too. I have heard on this forum that if there are no external links to the pages then I should just leave up the old "site map" for a while along with the new one and then after they are indexed take down the old site map. If you have links then a redirect is necessary and you do lose some link juice.
I am interested in hearing from others too in regards to a more direct answer to your response.
Depends on where you are at in the SEO timeline. I just started and made one comment on a site and now I get more traffic from that site than several of my paid boards combined. If the comment is on a high traffic board and is very relevant that it could pay big dividends for a new website like mine. On the other hand there may be other great ways to continue developing SEO for the long term. For the short term though..this one comment has been gold for my newbie site.
Boo
I put my twitter url on a directory and it was not working...so they changed it.
They sent me the following message.
The following changes have been made:
** Twitter Id changing from http://twitter.com/widget to http://twitter.com/#!/widget
Should I have them change it to something else?
Yes...I will end up doing both...because staying up until 4 or 5 AM many nights is not going to work for me in the long run.
We are a nationwide group with very little local traffic. I think I will probably start focusing on getting links from industry specific sites with good domain and page authority. I will also follow the link you suggested. I had no idea that good directories and blogs were under fire. Thanks!
They said 8 hours minimum for $250 an hour and then each hour thereafter it would just be at the same hourly rate. The would have been doing all the set up including keyword research. Seemed a little high...so I have been burning the candle at both ends to learn this stuff. Bought two new books yesterday ($70). If I new for sure that I would have the ultimate optimized site with the proper keywords it might be work it to me. I guess I just have to research the company more to find testimonials etc.
SEOmoz has this recommended list of directories and "BOTW.org" is the 15th best directory to purchase a link from out of 229 recommended sites. I just looked at the site and saw a bunch of my competitors on there. Since I only had 3 links I felt I need to purchase a couple. For the rest of the year I will just be linking to industry related sites. I have a feeling that these "good" directories will be okay as long as I get them in the proper ratio to my non paid links. Will probably take a hit right now because I bought two. Also got Business.com.
I am getting ready to add WordPress too and change some url's. My understanding is that redirects are only necessary if you have links on those pages....is that correct?
Can me paying an SEO firm $250 for one hour of work benefit me more than buying a lifetime link on Best of the Web for $249? ( Firm said I had to buy a min of 8 hrs though)
The firm strongly suggested that I not purchase a paid link. (All my major competitors have paid the $249)
Boodreaux
Which is the best way to set up the 301 redirect on my main home page?
http://horsebuggy.com to http://www.horsebuggy.com
Or does it make a difference?
Boodreaux
I didn't know you were just looking for a validation of your experience. I just was addressing the "tools" part of your comments. Glad more experienced folks could help you out.
William,
The 6 weeks I have been around, I have found it to be a wealth of information and everything has worked fine for me. I think the site is basically for sharing insights collaboratively with other SEO folks and webmasters. Everything has worked fine for me but I am a novice and may not be utilizing everything properly yet.
I have not tried to contact customer support before but I think most issues are resolved on the question and answer board.
Thanks....EGOL, I have started to add some substantive text in the form of a "page envelope" that you had mentioned a few weeks ago and it seems to be really helping right now.
I can't wait to start adding images. (fast loading ones) When you say captions do you mean just captions under the images?
Okay...so 301's are for links....gotcha. My 12 pages do not have any external links on them except for internal links. Are 301's necessary for internal links?
Thanks for your response Alan! The new keyword is related strongly to the old keyword and has just as much traffic and same difficulty as my term.
My site has been up for only 4 months. Will I still have to use the 301? Why not just put the new page out there without a redirect? Maybe have both pages with duplicate content and remove the old one once the the spiders/crawlers pick it up?
Here is an example of my the end of my url after my domain name. It has no relevance or meaning whatsoever.
/search/index/subspecialty/262043
I already rank on the first page for all 13 of my main keyword terms. Is it possible for me to start ranking for additional key words on those page by adding additional content on the pages? How much impact will this have and will the new keywords still juice from my already good keywords?
Also if I am already ranking well for those key words...with really horrible URL's. Would it be possible to add my new key words into the URL's? Since the current URL's seem to have nothing to do with my current rankings maybe I can keep my current rankings but then also get a huge boost for my new keyword rankings?
Thank you,
Boodreaux the novice.
PS. I have already heard the great advice of keeping my old site map up for a while after I change the URL's in order to let google catch up and re-index the site.
We are also doing a URL rewrite soon....I am looking forward to seeing responses. It is probably not relevant but I read on here somewhere about making sure you old site map and new site map or on the page for a while until google starts making the connections.
What is a brand anchor text?
I have 540 sites that are grabbing my jobs and re-posting them without permission. I hope I am not in line with getting hit by Panda.
Thank your for your input Ennovation! Thank you very much. This is great!
I am a NOVICE .........My website is about 4 months old. My developer/programmer only has 4-6 hours of work a week so it is going to take 4 months to finish two weeks of work. So I have to prioritize the things that are best for SEO (Our architecture is PHP,Apache and Zend) .** If you are interested I would be curious to how you would prioritize some or all of these. Or at least as many as you can until you get bored.**
1. Optimizing Cart/Conversion - 7 hrs - (Extremely low conversion rates)
2. Optimizing Speed for usability -10+ hrs (Very slow on initial load time) 10-14 sec
3. Filling in all Titles and Metadata - 2 hrs
4. Contact persistence with cookie...enter data only once. - 2 hrs
5. Social panels for sharing content - 3 hrs
6. Custom notifications for those who opt in. for updates - 5 hrs
7. Shorten 12 key URL's and optimize with key words - 3 hrs (I rank this very high)
8. Install Wordpress Blog - 5-10 hrs
9. RSS Feed - 5 hrs ( Run a feed real time on side of page)
10. Create Content Management System for me - 20 hrs (So I can make changes)
11. Keywords for H-1 Tags - 1 hr
12. At tag for images - 1 hr
13. Use of bold /italics - 2 hrs
14. Canonical tag in head - 3 hrs
Any expert advice will be greatly appreciated.
Boodreaux
PS After studying SEO for 1 month I think the priorities should be #7,#3, #2, #1, #5 (on landing pages) #11, #12,#6, #4, #13, #14, #8, #9, #10
Sounds like Sage advice!
The reason I had the question was because I don't want people typing in horsebuggy.com....my competitor.
Sounds like horse buggy it is though! Thanks!
I have a new website and I am getting ready to submit to a few paid directories to get my links started. I wanted to optimize my domain name/keywords for those directories and also for my on page SEO.
My domain contains my keywords. For example "www.horsebuggy.net
Questions:
#1 Should I target the horsebuggy.net in my on-page SEO or just target horse buggy?
#2 When I submit to a paid directory which should I choose for my company name. (I currently have a DBA for each term....for ex.. horse buggy and horsebuggy.net .
Thank you,
Boo
Complicated. Does everyone still recommend addthis for social sharing?
Does the same thing with mine. I don't know but would like to know.
Robert!
I will be giving them call tomorrow.
Thanks!
Eduardo,
I am in the same boat right now and am willing to pay to get the question answered but cant find any takers. If I find out the answer I will email you and please let me know if you find out anything. I think we have the exact same problem and I also will probably have cannobilization issues too.
JP>>> I will have to find out more about "silo-ing". And I was also told that data at the bottom of a page can be considered a "page envelope" and was okay as long as there was valuable content above it in much greater amount.
Alan,
If the key word is in the document 20 times and sounds natural is that better than 1 time? I keep hearing people saying optimize for your keyword and I heard one source say not to put your keyword more than 30 times.
Is their an optimum number of total words for your home page? How many keywords should one attempt to get ranked on that one page if your website is new? If your content is graded at a post-graduate level how many times is the maximum # to mention your key word or words for SEO.
Thank you,
Are there any SEO Content writers that can create several pages for me on a post- graduate level for a target audience of physicians?
Writing should be informative regarding our company and also optimized for keywords. I only have one quote so far from a company outside of SEOMoz and I was hoping to get someone on this site that had some experience in this area.
Thank you,
Utah Tiger