Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hello Mozers My client asked a very good question today.  I didn't know the answer, hence this question.  When you submit a 'Removing content for legal reasons report': https://support.google.com/legal/contact/lr_legalother?product=websearch will the person(s) owning the website containing this inflammatory content recieve any communication from Google? My clients have already had the offending URL removed by a court order which was sent to the offending company.  However now the site has been relocated and the same content is glaring out at them (and their potential clients) with the title "Solicitors from Hell + Brand name" immediately under their SERPs entry. **I'm going to follow the advice of the forum and try to get the url removed via Googles report system as well as the reargard action of increasing my clients SERPs entries via Social + Content. ** However, I need to be able to firmly tell my clients the implications of submitting a report.  They are worried that if they rock the boat this URL (with open access for reporting of complaints) will simply get more inflammatory)!  By rocking the boat, I mean, Google informing the owners of this "Solicitors from Hell" site that they have been reported for "hosting defamatory" content.  I'm hoping that Google wouldn't inform such a site, and that the only indicator would be an absence of visits.  Is this the case or am I being too optimistic?

Hi Mozers I'm in the process of trying to secure a client that requires social media expertise.  I want to be able to use my SEO knowledge as a benefit.  I am struggling to explain in simple terms how a knowledge of SEO underpins a good Social Media campaign. Does anyone know of any good resources I can work through to communicate this issue effectively?

My client has recently had his site rewritten by a company which supplies a website/hosting/seo service.  The client still wants to use me for establishing his site locally and for SEM.  My problem is that the code is not accessible to me.  They have set up GA tracking which feeds into the reports dashboard.  There is no way of actually access the raw data. When I asked for access to the GA account I got this message from bOline solutions: "Your SEO consultant will need to create a new GA account and then add the meta tag to the reports tab of your site" Because I am still very much learning GA I do not know what meta tag they are referring too.  I'm therefore stuck as to how to create it.  I've started learning about "Google Tag Manager" and am working through "Digital Analytics Fundementals",  I've a feeling this is just a question of terminology - can anyone more experience in the subject help me?

Hello Google Local Experts I'm a little stress, to put it mildly.  I have been working hard to get to grips with Google+ and Google Local.  I have followed all the advice on Moz that I can lay me hands on. Following advice, I have added my private address (in rich text snippets) to the header of my own site.  I've not felt particularly comfortable about doing that, but it's clearly one of the messages Google Local requires to be sure that your site is authentic. My concerns got concrete last evening when a new follower on Google+ started to send me private messages - culminating in asking where I lived.  Despite family demands I went straight to my site and removed my house number.  Now I know I'm messing up my NAP - but Ahh - my About section points straight to my site which at that point had my full address in Bold on each page of my site. I really am upset about this and think that Google should be rethinking their demand for displaying a companies address on the site.  If you are self employed you are put in a vulnerable position which is morally questionable. Please would someone give me some advice on the best way to address my worries in the short term? Please could someone with a bit of clout point this potentail danger to women out to the powers that be in Google?

My client has been very successful in local for yoga hertford.  Now she wants to do an additional site with five other yogies.  The name of the company is obviously different and as with her original company hertsyoga - the actual venues for the sessions are all over the place but principally at a local venue called the Castle which hires out a studio. My question is what do I do to keep her Nap consistent.  She apparently has friendly neighbours who are happy for her to use their address (one door up), and apparently they wont move!  But I really don't think they will be happy for me to put their address on the site and in citations locally. What should I do?

Hello Mozers I have learnt from the forum about the competitive analysis tool http://www.51blocks.com/online-marketing-tools/free-local-analysis/ and followed the link - only to find that it is for the US.  I'm in the UK and need to access this for google.uk - does anyone know of a UK equivalent? Could I also check with the forum to ask the question that got me into this in the first place.  It's probably a daft question.  For the Ranking report in Moz, do I just need to put the local city name in front of the keyword to get the local rank.  I have been doing this and assuming it's ok, and my local ranking does show up. Thanks Catherine

Hi folks Can anybody help me.  I foolishly, dogedly followed  a Lynda.com tutorial for developing an 'online portfolio in WP'.  Little did I know that my initial assumption - to use the 'twenty twelve' rather than the 'twenty eleven' theme would land me in such deep water. I was attempting to learn php on my own.  All went well, until, --- the index page for the customized post type. Now I have two beautiful customized posttypes, 'companies' 'coverage' and no idea how to create an index page for either.  I can't do the next step!  I have tried every permutation - changing the permalink settings, changing them back, desperately searching for any handle to the nebulous links within the menu section.  The only thing I can do (and have done for now) is to link the menu item 'company' and the menu item 'coverage' to a single post.  Then the poor visitor has to scroll through the posts individually. I tried contacting the tutor and Lynda.com, to no avail!  I have searched forums and found this is a common problem, but because I am so confused and novice to php they might as well be speaking Chinese. To compound my problems, looking through 'Wordpress SEO' for Yoast, I am painfully aware I can't go to the first basic step and fix the peramilinks to 'Postname' as that just makes my flakey menu collapse like a pack of cards. Help!

I've a client with a jobs page.  I've found that a high traffic, low competition keyword phrase 'OH jobs' and wish to optimize appropriately.  The trouble is that there is hardly any body text and any number of job entry listing.  As the listing which all go to individual job description pages, naturally fit the description (part description) OH Job - would it be good to use this description within the anchor text of the links?  If so is there a maximum?  I've been trawling around SEOmoz and Google Search and have got more and more bogged down! ta

Hello Mozers Can anybody help me.  It's a bit OCD, but, I really want to find the internal links within a clients site that are generating duplicate urls. I did start looking page by page using search, but got a bit stir crazy! I'm sure one of you smart SEO's will have a simple, clever solution:) Thanks Catherine

I realize I'm probably opening a can of worms, but here we go.  Do you or do you not add a sitemap.xml to a clients site?

Hi Mozers I'm still struggling with my London based client with two locations and one business.  Basically she has a location in W1W 'Westminster' and a location in 'WD!' Borehamwood. Has anyone any good resources of input concerning geotargeting.  I've done some searching but can't get quite the help I'm seeking. I'd like to make the Pages cover a 5mile radius and be highly specific to their locations.  Is this the right way to proceed? Thanks

Hi Mozers I keep puzzling over this one!  I work from home and really don't want to plaster my address all over the web.  The GP page now allows for me to hide my exact location, which is great.  However, as far as I can see this is not the case with all the potential local directories and listings. I have been trying in to get around this by not adding my house number and last digit and 2 characters of my post code.  So far this has been allowed by the local listings I have signed up with. When I tried doing as recommended by the excellent Miriam and checking my business name with 'Getlisted' I found that I could only see these local listings if I added the doctored address, i.e. no house number or full postcode. My question, finally is, if I continue in this fashion for businesses based at home addresses am I going to confuse the search engines.  I want to provide a consistent NAP but GPP insists that I add a full postcode.  The only way I could possible see around this is to add: street name city full postcode and omit the house name/number. Will this be a reasonable work around to maintain client confidentiality and satisfy the NAP requirement of Local search?

Hi I've had a couple of Google Places Pages for a few years.  They rank well.  I've just discovered Getlisted, via a tutorial. It will not see that I have claimed these pages.  Can see Yelp etc.  Any ideas. thanks Catherine

Hello Mozers I'd like to know if two existing GPP can have the same name 'spabycar'.  At present 'mobile nail technician' based in W1 and 'spabycar 'WD' are ranking (ironically the one that has the old brand name is very high!). Both need to be 'spabycar' If this is feasible, is there a down side, and is there a good tutorial source for an aspirant to follow? Thanks Catherine

I've read about the changes in requirements for Google Places - and hidden the address for my relevant local clients.  Is there any step I can take to speed up the edit being recognised and displayed in SERPs.  In addition, I would like to know, will the address also disappear from the actual Google Places page as well?

Hello from a tired SEO I slept badly last night when I discovered last evening our Domain Authority had slumped.  I've found that my client is now receiving followed backlinks from links placed in the footers of two good quality/related sites. My question is should I ignore the reduction and keep link building around these - or - should I ask for these links to be removed? Another factor in the mix is we have gone from about 300 links to 600 in a month.  I have been working hard on our blog and site content with feeds to technorati. Any advice for a tired novice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Hello SEOmoz members I've got   yet another naive question for you.  RankChecker is telling me that my client has risen to pg 1 position 7.  Whilst SERPs is telling me they are still on position 14.  I know that SERPs is variable depending on many factors, but this holds true for separate searches on other computers in various far flung locations. Please give me some insight into what is happening.  I'm waiting to open the bubbly! Thanks

Hello can anybody help me.  I'm trying to setup a feed from our company blog to our companies facebook page.  When I try and Google it the advice is out of date.

Hello Can you help me. I'm starting out in SEO and sometimes I think I miss the Elephant in the room. I have tried and tried to find our via 'Google' or 'Seomoz' articles the answer to this question. How does 'Google Panda' link a facebook business page to it's actual business website if the url is not identical eg 'www.setteeherts.co.uk' 2 'www.facebook.com/settee-herts'? As no one is talking about this I'm assuming I am missing the elephant. If you can see it can you point it out gently? ta!

Can anyone recommend a WP plugin which creates a description from the individual blog post it's describing?

Hi This again is probably a naive question, but here goes anyway.  I've searched around a lot to find out how to use 'Technorati' with my companies blog posts, i.e.extend their reach.  I have discovered, from lots of querying, that WordPress does an automatic RSS feed which 'Technorati' will automatically pick up on once it has been told of an update to the blog by WPs automated Ping. In a WP forum I found a discussion about the problems of getting your blog into 'Technorati'. http://wordpress.org/support/topic/tags-do-not-update-technorati/page/2?replies=52 In it basically it states that you blog post should be there.  If it isn't it is due to errors in coding on an individualized theme.  I ran a W3C validater suggested, that did pick up 90 errors for my 'home' blog page.  The link even explains in practical terms how to correct the errors. However, the designer is not convinced this is the problem.  As a novice I don’t know if this is the reason for definite.  Does anyone have an opinion on this problem?

HI I'm still plugging away at getting to grips with my companies personalized blog.  I've been trying for the past two days to upload a theme to my own test Wordpress blog, in order to correct a bug in the companies theme that makes formatting in the Post disappear.  The code in the themes CSS file seems to be fine. Anyhow what I assumed would be a simple step has given me hours of hassle. I have finally got to the point of uploading an unzipped version of the theme intot ‘/wp-content/themes/’. Now try as I might my Wordpress admin is completely blind to the fact. Any attempt at using the Upload facility (which is what I attempted many hours ago) fails.  There seems to be no place to say, look out there at my directory - a new original theme - unzipped and ready to go. Am I missing something very obvious?

The and _formatting tags format the text in the WYSIWYG editor but not in the browser (I've tried in Firefox and Internet Explorer.  It doesn't help if I add non depreciate Html _and Is this a theme Issue?  Is there a way to fix it?  Does anyone know why and are added instead of and ?__

Could anyone recommend a plugin for creating wordpress post descriptions.  There is a confusingly large selection of choices in the wordpress plugins directory.

Having read Rand's post about the canonical tag I very much wish to use it to advise Google that the duplicates created during archiving (due to the fact that the posts have multiple categories) are just copies. I understand the theory, but can't transfer it into practice!  Could someone give me an idiots guide as to how to add the tag and to where.  My site produces approx 10 - 20 blog posts per week.  Each has at least 2-4 categories applied to it.  They are archived each month, at which point I have  a big jump in duplicates in my campaign panel. Help! C:\Users\Catherine\Desktop\me_small.gif