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The point is that for seo value ezines and squidio and hubpages aren't as valueble as they used to be. If done perfectly and not spammy you can get some small value out of it but I wouldn't make it the foundation of your seo work. What I would do is maybe write 1-2 articles for each that have solid content and promote them on various social networks so that people can see you have published writing in different sites and that can have multiple benefits. If you write only for your site then people will assume no one wants your work, if you write for multiple sites even the web 2.0 sites people will believe you offer something valuable. That being said I would focus on Guest Blogging on sites that are similar to yours. This will accomplish most of your goals. I hope this helps. Good luck.

I would advise on focusing on Google Plus for your local seo and all 4 major social media sites for your larger demographic sites. Google plus is highly used by google of course to personalize an individuals search. This means that you have a greater chance of ranking well when a person +1 your site. On another note Bing takes into consideration Twitter and Facebook. So I suggest you work all 4 with an emphasis on Google+.

From my experience I see that every site no matter how big or small is vulnerable. I'm a Realtor and my focus is to get that coveted top spot on page 1. Currently I'm in the number 7 spot for one of my main keywords and for other keywords I'm high on page 1 or on page 2.

Now who is on top? the national brands. But even they get impacted because they compete against each other and for some terms I beat them in the SERPS. I use Long Tail Keywords in order to do this.

Now, Google is fine tuning their search bots and there will of course be movement up and down for some sites. The thing to remember is to make sure you focus on the long term.

1. Great Content
2. Blog
3. Social Media
4. Ease of use for your web visitor
5. On Page SEO
6. Natural Link building
7. Infographics
8. Video
9. Off Line Marketing
10. SEO Continuing Education

My advice is to have a like button and a link to your Facebook page. Most major brands do this. Reason is that the search engines, especially bing take into consideration your social media efforts, also having a bunch of legit likes are like votes from users and show new visitors that your site is respected.

That being said you do want to engage with your visitors on Facebook so having a link to your fb page is recommended.

This way you get the best of both worlds.

Here is a link to a great like and buttons for your site.

http://sharethis.com/

Straight from SEOMOZ

Where does your tool get its search volume data from?
For this tool, we get our search volume data from Google's AdWords API.

http://www.seomoz.org/help/keyword-analysis

I hope this helps.

You did the right move by doing the 301 redirect and by submitting a new sitemap. Another thing you should consider doing if possible is identifying the links you previously had for those two sites, contact the site owners or webmasters and politely ask them to change the old link for your new URL. You should also make sure you are promoting your new site on all social media and you might consider a small PPC campaign. Also analyze the keywords you had on both sites and see how they compare to your new site. Keyword density may not be as powerful as before but still relevent. Hope this helps.

Hello Brian,

I'm a Realtor also. Yes, the school of thought is to optimize a page for one keyword phrase. But in our business that is not necessarily the case. Me personally I have about 4 keywords that my site is optimized for. Reason for this is that most people will link to your main page, so the link juice will be for that. I would use this order

1. Dallas Real Estate

2. Dallas Homes for Sale

3. Dallas Condos

These tend to be the most competitive phrases in our industry. what you want to do is make sure your title has the phrases based on value. The order above should be the order. meaning your page title should have

Dallas Real Estate / Dallas Homes for Sale / Dallas Condos

Then natural mix in those phrases into your content but make sure it is visitor friendly content and not just keyword stuffing.

Also think about internal linking and your external link profile with these various anchor terms.

Note: keep it all natural and legit. The only short cut in SEO is to the Penalty Box.

The rule of thumb is that the no follow attribute doesn't pass any link juice but in my humble opinion I have personally seen sites that would not get discovered otherwise with no other links pointing to it and on page seo not so great get discovered and started to rank well relatively quick because a link does exist. Also it has been mentioned in the past that a good link profile should incorporate both followed and no followed links.

Your clients opposition might have a healthy mix of followed and no followed links. Also Domain age plays a factor as well. Were they ranking higher than you from the beginning or did they all of a sudden shout up in the serps?

First I would audit the site using the tools here on seomoz. Check out the back links and see if there is anything out of the ordinary, then check your rankings for your main keywords and see how they've been impacted. Also you will want to see how long your site takes to load, visitors don't like waiting more than 10-15 seconds for a page to load. Also make sure your site hasn't been deindexed by google. did you receive a message from google saying there was an issue?

I spoke with Yahoo, apparently they only offer the 301 redirect for the higher cost hosting plans that run about $40. Any ideas?

I just took a look at them as I'm not familiar with them. I see guestblogit has a free and paid version. Do you know what it means to have 1 live article with free membership or 5 live articles with paid membership? Is that per month?

I have had success with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. But when it comes to Google+ its a ghost town for me. One thing I've noticed is I can't get a custom URL like I can with the other sites so promoting my G+ account in person is not as easy Or maybe i just don't know how if it is possible. Also I can't get people to join the network. I understand that those who can get G+ will benefit on local seo but getting people to take a moment away from Facebook and twitter to even register for a G+ account has been virtually impossible. How can I entice people to G+ my site? That is the million dollar question. Has anyone found a way to successfully get people onto G+?

When did you add the meta titles and keywords? I ask this because if you are ranking at position 7 on Monday morning and you then add these components and on Monday night or Tuesday your rankings drop, it's most likely not because of these additions. It could just be an algorithm change that impacted you.

I have a duplicate content issue. On my site the home button goes to the index.html and not the www. If I change it to the www will it impact my SERPS? I don't think anyone links to the index.html.

Last I checked Analytics still gave insight on keywords.

If you use google analytics it will give you every keyword that a person uses to get to your site. You need to follow the reports. I have the app for my iPhone and iPad. I monitor my site daily. One of the best features is seeing how people get to my site.

Analytics shows me their operating system used

Keywords Used

Unique visitors

location of the search

and a crazy amount of data

Best part it is free.

http://www.google.com/analytics/

Hope this helps.

Facebook is looking to optimize its site for its advertising section. If a person likes the Facebook Page via their main site then the benefit doesn't transfer to the website but only the page. If the person has a like button for the website then this is beneficial for the site and not the facebook page. I would suggest you have a like button for the site and a second button that takes them to the Facebook page and from there request another like. A lot of sites implement this strategy. Facebook vs Google, the Adwords Wars. Site owners can get caught in the crossfires by confusion. I hope this helps. Good luck.

Have you audited your site using the page analysis tool on this site? Also check out your back links. See if anything has changed. What I also like to do is monitor the activity of my competitors on the SERPS. That way I can gauge what they are doing and when. Use the tools on this site and you will have an edge. Your situation can be because others are implementing seo tactics or just a change in the algorithm.

I would use Google Webmasters tools and head over to the internal links. It will give you all the info that Google is looking at and indexing.

Hope this helps.

You wouldn't get penalized for the 302. 302's normally aren't used because they don't pass along link juice but in this case that is not your concern. What might create an issue for you is that people will like your site and then choose to link to it, but it will most likely be the Sydney link structure if that's the route you go, most people copy and paste the URL and then use it as a link. Then when you redo all your structures you will have one city page with a crazy amount of link juice but a main URL with no link juice. You won't be able to fix it either with a 301 because then no one will be able to see your Sydney page. You will create a problem for yourself in that sense. Hope this helps.

Social Bookmarking is like getting a vote of confidence by individuals. Search engines are in the business of providing relevant and popular results to their users. Hence if you receive a lot of likes on Facebook, twitter mentions, interest pins, Digg posts, Stumple Upon posts, delicious, of course Google + shares and likes and the other million other options out there, the search engines will recognize this and rank you higher.

The world of SEO now includes Social Media as part of the overall formula. Especially Google+

With search engines using adaptive search in their algo, what's the best way to reset? Currently I go to my browser which primarily is Safari second Firefox third Chrome, I empty the cache, clear history and remove all cookies and data. I also disable customerzation based on search history. Is this the best way of starting from scratch so my search results won't incorporate adaptive search tech? I also make sure I'm not signed into my gmail account since that can impact SERPS as well. What else should I be doing to make sure my search is not customized?

I would set up a 301 redirect for all the pages regardless if they are indexed or not. You never know if anyone might look for that page at some point and end up seeing a 404 page not found message.

Seems like the seo jury has spoken and CSS it is. Thank you all for your help on this matter. Thumbs up to you all.

As everyone already stated this is an ill advised strategy. Facebook is getting more stringent on its policies and this type of strategy can be compared to buying 1000 links for $50. Not a good purchase.

I understand that you want to show your web visitors that you have content that is well liked. The best way to increase your likes is by good old fashioned guerrilla marketing.

1. Make sure you reach out to all those who are your current Facebook friends and remind them to like your page. If you direct message them with an appeal you will have a higher conversion rate versus simply posting a request on your timeline or theirs.
2. Make sure you set up a Group and Page for your business. This is valuable for every business and can keep people up to date on your latest info.
3. Reach out to your Twitter followers, Linkedin Friends and Google + friends and ask them for a like on your site.

These are just some suggestions. I hope they help and Good luck.

If your client is already ranking extremely well for that many keywords I'm sure she is already incorporating these tactics which are basic.

• social media: Especially Google+
• Offline tactics with online Press Releases directed to local media for positive exposure on and off line. Which will also help for greater rankings to get towards the #1 spot.
• How are they ranking on the other search engines?
• Info-graphics specific to their industry to be directed to all local bloggers and site owners.
• Brand Building:
• PPC Campaign: It is beneficial to be both in the paid and non paid positions since most people naturally want to click on the non-paid link. This gives you more impressions.

These tactics directly and indirectly add to SEO.

Hope this helps. Goof luck

Google has been treaking their algo for a while now and sites have been shifting up and down. Some sites have been penalized without receiving a message so that can happen. Unnatural link building on low pr sites only in blogs or on link farms can definitely get you in hot water with google. My advice is to start generating great content for your site, videos help for seo, blogging is perfect, social media interactions are beneficial, and start developing a real high quality link profile. Yahoo Directory, Better Business Bureau, dmoz, BOTW, business.com, yelp, yellow pages, manta and other sites that are google friendly. If your other keywords are ok then it might just be the algo but still means your specified keyword needs work. hope this helps. Good luck.

Hello Harry, I asked a similar question the other day and one response I received was that pr news wire was the best of the bunch. I was looking at a few pr sites. Pr buzz which is membership based and only $300 per year with unlimited submissions. Pr wire which has a tiered level pay structure Pr news wire which is also tiered Online pr news which has a free submission and tiered level as well I would run a search on open site explorer of these to analyze them separately.

When having a website designed, is it best to have a Responsive Design with Media Queries or is it best to have a Website designed for laptops andDesktops and a second mobil website?

What are the SEO benefits of each strategy and Which is best for the user experience?

Dashes / hyphens have been the preferred style for a while now. I'm not sure about them being separators or not, but as Zachary mentioned Matt Cutts from google mentioned dashes are best practice. What I would do is find the best sites in your industry and analyze what is working for them and not working. Dissect their site with the tools here on seomoz. A point of reference. Seomoz uses dashes not underscores.

First step is to visit that site and visualy confirm if they are linking to your site. If you find the link then use the seomoz bar for Firefox to make sure the link is being followed. If you can't find the link that way then I would suggest heading over to Google Webmasters and checking inbound links from there. You can do this in both analytics and the regular webmasters tools. If that doesn't work you can also try going to the google search bar and typing in link:www.mysite.com and getting a preview of links to the site. You can of course use the link tool on this site to get info but remember it is updated once per week I believe. If all else fails you can contact the site owner or webmaster and ask them where the link is so that you can do your part and promote that page.

Which web hosting company is the best to use for SEO purposes? Also which company has the best cost and value?

Just a note. Besides the canonical fix, you can also go into google webmasters and instruct them if you want them to show the www version or non www version. This can fix the url side of duplicate content. This doesn't fix the whole problem but is a good feature to utilize. I hope this helps.

Hello Cesar, google wants a natural link profile. This means they want to see a site have both do follow and no follow attributes. They would like sites not to spam and generally do a good job determine what spam is. To answer your question, if a site only has no follow links, then google would most often not rank the site well. If a site has only do follow links from low page rank sites then it might look like spam, now if the do follow links are from high page rank sites only then google might think they are paid links which they don't like. The key is to have a variety of links from high page rank do follow and low page rank do follow and mixed in no follow. You will also want to make sure your anchor text is not all the same. I really you should have 5 or more anchor texts so it looks more natural. Hope that helps.

I have a blog on Trulia and Active Rain which are real estate websites. I see that they both are Do Follow.

My question is how much link juice do these sites pass a long to my site when I write a blog post on these sites and create a link to my main site?

I've heard somewhere that even though a link has a Do Follow attribute it passes little link juice in certain cases like a no follow attribute.

Also, if a link is a No Follow link, does it still pass along some link juice or is it completely juiceless.

Is there a way to see which sites pass the most link juice to my site?

Thanks all.

XML Sitemaps are important for search engines. It makes their job easier. Even if you rank in the #1 position today you still want to take care of the maintaining your position. Especially for the simple stuff.

Here is a link for an XML Generator

http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/

I hope this helps and Good luck.

You might want to consider doing both at the same time. Rehab your main site while you simultaneously build a new site. My thinking is hypothetical here but I believe it is worth a shot. What happens if you keep your main site and try to rehab but nothing ever fixes it because so much damage has been done? Or what happens if you dump that site to start a new one and it takes you years to get to where you once were, or possibly you could lose so much ground to others that you might never catch up. Now by doing a simultaneous site campaign you can give yourself 6 months to a year of hard work on both to see which one has the best results and then reassess your situation. Now this only works by not interlinking your sites. Google will think you are trying to game them instead of your real goal of having a clean link profile with a legit site. Once the test is done and you've determined which site is the strongest you can then 301 redirect one to the other. Just a thought.

It depends how your site is generating it's rankings. Is it a competitive keyword or a non competitive keyword? Do you have high keyword density on the main page now? How many links do you have pointing to your main page? If you do split up your pages you might lose your rankings. Also you will be changing the destination of the pages so you might be starting from scratch. You might consider keeping the main page and adding the second page with a link prominantly on your main page. This way you keep your rankings. You need to be careful with how you move forward. How long have you been ranking for this keyword? You also need to make a business decision on whether or not making the change is better for your business than keeping the rankings. If you determine that your site will be much better for the user and generate better conversions from visitors to buyers then it might make sense to take the ranking hit start a Plc campaign and work with a white hat seo pro to regain rankings.

So Wistia or Vimeo is better for SEO?

My thinking is that during this time you would have rehabbed the main site enough that it might not be penalized but also might not be as strong as your new site with a squeaky clean profile. So my thinking is that it wouldn't hurt. Now if you didn't rehab the main site and did a 301 then I do think it might hurt your new site. I hope this helps in your decision. Good luck and keep me posted on how it goes.

I heard about the Art of SEO but is it outdated?

If you want to maintain your rankings and you have a good web designer that will make it look professional then yes. At the end of the day it's all about converting web visitors to actual consumers of your product. There is always a battle between seos and web designers. The trick is to merge both or find a person that is competent in both. I'll look at the site now and give you more feed back.

No problem, Hope it turns out well for you.

Another idea would be to do some seo work for the commercial page and separate seo work for your residential page. If you're also thinking about doing a PPC campaign which most seos suggest to do both, then you can create an ad for each commercial and residential. That way you will direct your visitors to the page they desire tailored for them. Some of the best seos out there ( note I'm not one of them, I'm still learning myself ) have suggested that if a person sees your company in an ppc ad and on the same page for organic search, they are more likely to click on your organic search. This means more exposure and won't cost you much.

Welcome to SeoMoz, don't panic, what I would do is write content on your site or blog several times per week. Doesn't have to be everyday. I would promote those writings on all the social networks. Then I would also engage in some community charities and then do press releases to your local papers. This will get you links of high pr value. I would also arrange for talks at your local community college about the benefits of your industry and try to get the school paper to run an online story with a link to your site. Now you will have an edu link. I would also contact local bloggers and site owners and see if they are willing to write a story about your industry and link to your site. Now you have local bloggers spreading the word about you with valuable links. I can go on for days on various strategies but this is the meat and potatoes. You will do well. I hope this helps and good luck.

If the domain name is a solid one that has the ability to stick in your clients head then it might make sense to buy the domain and spend a few months rehabbing the quality of links. If you have the financial ability then I would buy it, use google webmasters to identify the bad links, reach out to the site owners and request they remove the links, send a report to google showing the work you've done. Then I would work on getting positive links for your site by getting mentions in online news sites, edu sites and others. You can accomplish this by hosting a small charity event. Also have your customers write reviews on Yelp and similar sites. Yahoo Directory link and BBB link. Time heals all wounds including bad links.

There are no concrete rules when it comes to ratio of no follow / do follow but a rule of thumb is that you should have an 80/20 ratio of do follow versus no follow.

It would be suspicious if you only had do follow but wouldn't look right if you only had no follow.

As you already know, do follow links hold a lot of value. No follow links just gives the impression that your link building is natural.

That being said I would't remove the no follow links to get a better ratio. Just make sure your link building strategy focuses on natural white hat strategies

Hope this helps.

I agree with Alan, 10 links from great sites like, edu, gov or news sites can far outweigh thousands of spam links. My advice is to go after a few high quality links yourself. Your serp rankings will go north and eventually your competitors will go south.

I also have the same problem. There are links that are pointing to my site that are not showing up on OSE. These are old links. I'm thinking OSE doesn't capture all inbound links.

What I like to do is use the link operator in chrome or safari

use  link: then the name of your site without the www or the .com. This will give you a list of every site that mentions your site.

I would then make a list of all those sites and then use the seo tool bar for Firefox to see if they are followed or no followed links.

Thanks Egol,

I find myself spending 4 hours a day on something SEO related. Now granted most of the time its verifying what I just read to make sure it's accurate but I hear you, it's trial and error combined with constant learning and patience mixed in.

I'd rather have 10 links from the NY Times than 100 links from no name sites. That being said, if you could get the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, NY Daily News and the NY Post to link to your site, now that'll be valuable. Can you tell I'm from New York?

At the end of the day you want links from multiple trusted sites.