Questions created by Cairmen
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How to focus SEO efforts on a single country?
I hope this one isn't too obvious a question to ask, as I'm sure it's been asked before. However - I'm considering a new site which would be focussed entirely on a UK market. US and other world traffic would be effectively useless. Using social media and standard linkbuilding techniques, how do I focus my efforts on the UK market? Getting links from .co.uk, I guess - what else? Or is it just "SEO generally and some of it'll be for the UK"?
Link Building | | Cairmen0 -
Best practise for updating software guide
Heya! I write a guide for a specific piece of Internet-based software which is about to undergo a major patch release. No-one's going to be using the old version, so my old-version articles are essentially going to be useless, as are keywords related to the old version number. Given that, I'm intending to update all my guides to be current with the new version. However, obviously I want to keep the Google juice for the old guides, as they rank pretty well. The three options I'm considering: Simply retitle the old guides to the latest version number - "How to use Blue Widget 2.0" becomes "How to use Blue Widget 3.0". Disadvantage - my URLs still include the old version number, 2.0. Write updated guides as seperate articles and 301 redirect the old articles to them. I've done this before with some success. So, I'd 301 the URL for "How to use Blue Widget 2.0" to the url for "How to use Blue Widget 3.0", my new article. Disadvantages - possible loss of link juice? Also, I believe redirects can be kinda tricksy. Just leave both the old and new versions up there, with a link from the old version saying "outdated, check the new version". My belief is that this would be the worst idea. Should I do one of them, or something else? And why?
Technical SEO | | Cairmen0 -
How much does page load time affect SERPS?
I've been digging through SEOMoz and couldn't find a straight answer to this, so I thought I'd ask here. How important is page load time to Google and your SERPS position? If you're answering, I'd also love to know 1) how you know that your answer is correct and 2) if you've personally seen a webmaster improve his page load time and subsequently his position in the SERPS.
On-Page Optimization | | Cairmen0 -
Is my 301 redirect working?
Very simple question here . I've redirected a bunch of older pages with decent ranking to some newer pages on my site, using the Thesis theme's built-in redirect function. However, in the SERPS, the older pages (and, importantly, older titles) still show up. When clicked on, they redirect to the new page, but it's still irritating because the older titles make the site look out of date. Is this Working As Intended, or have I or my theme done something wrong? And if it's the latter, what's the best way to achieve a redirect, preferably with a Wordpress plugin?
Technical SEO | | Cairmen0 -
What strategies to best use to boost rankings across long-tail articles on site?
Heya! I'm currently engaged in what appears to be a slightly unusual SEO task. I run a large, reasonably well-respected (but not global-standard, yet) site that I'm currently monetising through individual articles targetted at addressing specific search engine queries that I know have decent traffic. It's the EHow / Demand Media model, except with a focus on a single specific (video games) niche, and much, much better quality articles (sufficiently good that they attract a fair amount of praise - all the writers on the site are published authors and the quality's damn high). Most of our articles end up ranking with essentially no backup, but they don't rank high - usually 2nd or 3rd page of Google. I'm trying to determine what the most effective strategy would be for us to boost our article rankings with the least possible expense / effort (we don't have a huge budget). Our long-tail articles are mostly being trumped by articles with either a couple of external links to them or by other articles with no links but from a site with significantly higher Domain Authority (70+ to our 48).I'm working to improve our on-page optimisation, but it's already pretty good (an "A" report from the SEOMoz tools on most or all pages). So, I'm wondering what the best use of our time would be to increase traffic globally across the site. Strategies I'm considering: Focussing on building links to the homepage and to any other pages on the site, by asking for links from community members, doing linkbait articles, directory submissions, guest blogging, and so on. Long-term aim: increase our domain-wide MozRank and MozTrust. Build links to our long-tail articles specifically, most popular first. Get direct links from relevant blogs, press releases, social bookmarking, etc. Long-term aim: get to #1 on Google one page at a time. Something Else? I'm wondering what the big SEO brains here would suggest? Happy to provide additional details if it would help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cairmen1