Welcome to the Q&A Forum
Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.
Yea the article tag can help. It shows the original page. However note that this probably best for
blogs, forum post, news story, and or comment.
The canonical tag is for more internal websites and primarily popular for blogs. When you say satellite pages, are you referring to inner pages of your website or other pages on other websites? Curious.
Hi Juile,
301s are the only way to protect your back-link profile built towards your brand. I did it for a huge project I directed with Leads dot com. We are still looking to 301 redirect one other website that is also going away. Submit A Website dot com has years of authority. Although this is a very large site example; it should serve as a rule for any other viewers of this thread.
Also to expand on the duplicate content issue. If you wanted to take an extra precaution, just make sure there are no duplicate pages within your website. You can use "Screaming Frog" (desktop software, free to use) to look at duplicate content within your website. Aside from this, you should be in great shape.
I also see having a website managed by a 3rd party; very frustrating. However, tell them to setup a .htaccess file and setup your mod-rewrite (for whatever server your site is running on) and give them a list of pages throughout your website that you want redirected.
You can use gsite crawler to crawl your website and then from there you can dump the data into excel so you can provide neat data to your 3rd party developer and they should be able to help.
If you need additional help, just message me. 
It won't hurt you in normal circumstances; however in a 100 link rule, I would certainly avoid it. Best practices has taught me that any other cloned link will be skipped over and will not add any additional weight to a particular page. It would be more for usability score if anything.
*I would stick to the 100 link rule for each page and be unique with those links.
It certainly can look like this in the eyes of Google. However, if there is no mission or intent to try and scam Google of page rank, then place this tag in your header
and you should be fine.
Also any link juice associated with the page should also follow to your website.
For more info checkout this SEOMOZ post:
To add on here, creating authority to your website comes from siloing your website. Meaning your keyword research and knowledge on certain subjects will guide you in setting up many pages in your "site" that can help in passing link juice to your most top-seeded-keyword-directories. As a result, the deeper you have pages that cover specific content of a certain category, the better your authority and page rank juice will develop. So worrying about your contact page should not be a huge concern.
You absolutely do not want to no follow any of your own pages.
I found this page within SEO MOZ that answers the link juice question:
"Will this pass 100% of the link juice from a given page to another? More or less than a 301 redirect does now? Note that Google's official representative from the web spam team, Matt Cutts, said today that it passes link juice akin to a 301 redirect but also noted (when SEOmoz's ownGillian Muessig asked specifically) that "it loses no more juice than a 301," which suggests that there is some fractional loss when either of these are applied."
Add this to the top of your pages that you feel have the same content somewhere else on the website.
As far as the backlinks, I am not sure how that will pan-out. In theory they should still flow. I'll have to double check and make sure. However, duplicate content is a big issue. I deal with it on a national level and it is a total nightmare, especially when the site is very large-dynamically produce by a cms that is not seo friendly.
Just 301 redirect whichever website has the most authority. You can manually make all the pages that the site with the most authority has and create a .htaccess file and then setup 301 redirects to the new and permanent location (or to the new website). Doing this will help you save time that you put into your "baby" and ensure the new baby get's that authority. As far as duplicate content, make sure you remove the pages from Google's index. To do that you'll need a Google Webmaster Tools account.
I am not totally sure if it is a big difference. However, my Dr. House side to my brain still wants to focus on the 301s.
The only exception I can think of is if your previous domain violated the EMD Algorithm; exact keywords domain name for a website. I am wondering if Google devalued it and whatever backlinks that were helping your website?!? I am so paranoid about Google's filters...I swear it's like they have rat traps everywhere and when they go out to look at one caught in a specific trap, they audit it for field testing. You could be just unlucky?! Also the keywords you are competing with also would have a big factor if Google randomly sampled your site and audited it??? Any thoughts?
Also do you have a Webmaster Tools account? Google would report any directories that are not found. If they are there this would definitely prove my point of 301s not properly written. If so then click all of them and mark them as fixed and let Google recrawl.
*New websites with no much authority tend to do a Google dance. So if you're site is less than 12 months old or even 2 years old without a huge domain authority it could take a while to rebound.
Looking at this I would definitely say or question the actual .htaccess rewite. It's a little clearer to me that your site lost back-links or page flow. Also the domain rank is an important metric of "authority". This is the stuff related to your website's actual content. Backlinks "deep or inner links" to various pages helps bolster the home page and "domain authority score". So I believe the actual 301 redirect technique is in question.
I know you said you did a redirect in the html files direct. I have never learned or heard of that technique (an example would be great aka markup/code); however, if your website is on an Apache Server, you would need to create .htaccess file and use this code:
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^newdomain.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
Redirect /yourdirectory http://www.newdomain.com/newdirectory // for any other unquie content you want to redirect manually
*this is the way to do it, you can always Google or YouTube a video to show how to setup a .htaccess file on your server or on your cpu and then some special settings in filezilla (or whatever ftp software you use) so you can see the file. In FTP software .htaccess files are hidden, so you would create it and go nuts trying to locate the actual file. Filezillia I know has a feature or setting to unhide it so you can transfer it to the route of your server.
Let me know if this works!
Hi Quick question, did you redirect 301 to new domain? I tried to read this, but I am just a tad unclear.
In theory a 301 to all or the exact anchor structure should pass all your page juice; however, sometimes doing this will enact a filter that spot checks for a link building footprint that violates Penguin Algorithm.
I know this sounds like a stretch, you might want to audit the link building you did initially. You can use Ahrefs (they have a free version) or if you want to take it to the next level use Authority Labs. They have great tools and reporting to help you look at your back-links.
If you have a ton of exact anchor matches and the same type of links on the same sites (site-wide-links), this can serve as a signal that could of had some of the links devalued.
The last option is if your previous url had exact anchors for keywords your ranked for. I am assuming you were able to obtain a branded url and this could affect to.
Reach back out to me, I can chat a little to help you hone in on the real issue.
How Sites Obtain Authority
To obtain authority (long-term), you need to silo your website (google that term for a complete description) with keyword researched content. The best strategy is to build links (niche directories and communities) to those inner pages that have specific types of content that cannot be featured on the home page. That content should be very engaging with a strong click to action for the reader. They could opt-in further to your content, if ecommerce a discount on a product, etc.
How To Build Directory Links
The biggest deal to building manual links to directories is to be random! Post Penguin 2012, you want to avoid duplication and automated link building and exact anchor matches. If you do decided to do some exact anchor text, only do it a few times a month. Also you don't need a ton of the same type of links featuring exact anchor either. This year and in the future "semantic" will eventually determine what your site is about and hook your content up with the correct searches.
Tips For Link Building With Directories - What To Do
With that said, hand pic the top directories (some free, some paid, some premium, local, and niche related). Make your self a road-map for the first three months and configure a good mix of each with intent to submit up to 5 or 10 depending on your niche and try to use your brand name as the anchor. Also when you do your keyword research and decide on the top seed keyword (two keyword terms usually), come up with 100 (if you can) different variations (should also try to match your website's message or content, goes for the home page and all inner pages) variations of that "seeded" keyword. Use those anchors in rotation and you should be fine.
Extra Tips
*also try to start with premium directories first
*this strategy is long-term and if you add this with good content development and syndication services or software to help distribute the content; you'll get the links that will carry your website long-term.
Hopes this helps.
I would start with a list. I have my own set of spreadsheets I maintain each month. Message me for a direct link to some places to start.
I would start with all the oldest directories with high authority for branding. Those include DMOZ, Jayde, DIRNext. Actually you should list hunt first to start your own list. There are tons of list that people have started and posted.
Also submit to local directories. I also have my own list I have manually put together and also update.
*I don't submit to more than 10 directories per month. If you do start doing this type of authority and inner directory listing, just do it slow and consistent.
I would focus on your content conversation with your target audience. This will produce natural content that you can have featured on other websites.
This would take some research to see what you have, keyword research to see what people are looking for information on, recycle and update older content (revisit it with updates).
I would also take this content and see if you get into a relationship with key niche groups and organizations.
Last I would focus on a light road-map that involves branding. Premium directories, like some of the oldest directories on the next and slowly hand-submit using your brand name. So come up with a keyword list and variation of your brand name and products. Avoid any exact anchor matches (maybe one or two).
You could also look for ways to reference your products to bloggers for review and maybe an inner link to your product pages. This will pass authority through your website.
To ensure this page juice is distributed properly, silo your website and ensure you have dynamic content throughout the framework of the website.
Now hearing more about your situation. I found the answer. When there is a site redesign, sometimes pages can get lost in translation. I had this happened with Leads do com project that I worked on and saw something similar that was going to happen until I spoke and made sure proper 301 for old pages were set to go to the new locations.
This is really important, can you double check to see if this was done properly. If those pages were somehow lost it would be a large contributing factor in the lose of page rank juice, rankings, and overall traffic.
This is in stride to what Iriving mentioned. I am not sure of your website's goal or potential, but that is a very alarming drop. Do you know who is linking to you direct; meaning do you have relationship? If not I would try to contact them for an answer why. I mean they could have adjusted their SEO strategy. Maybe the links were site-wide links and they could have changed a design or template that removed your link. Or again, they may have decided to just drop your link and if it was site wide on many of the websites, this would be a close answer to the sudden loss of backlinks and pages that loose rankings in Google's SERP.
I would consider what Irving mentioned above. It's time to do a link audit using a power tool like Majestic SEO. You could had a huge link partner disco from your website. This affect can drop a bomb on your website if your problem is indeed external.
Did you see my response above about Google reporting the 404/soft404s that are missing pages. This could be CMS related. What CMS system are you using?
Google should let you click on the pages that are showing 404 or soft404. You can see the location and do a little research yourself. Chances are you/your organization might have deleted some pages by accident or your cms system is could be jacked up. 404s are a very bad thing for your website and organic traffic.
Try to use Majestic SEO or Ahrefs. Ahrefs will sample for you for free. Majestic SEO is a monster tool you can use but cost! Just try to do link profile study just to see if there is link spam associated with your website. Just curious!
The only idea here for sudden loss in rankings or links is related to duplicate content, 404s, soft 404s, aka broken links to pages or deleted pages that were once ranked/cached with Google.
Hope this makes sense.
Did many of those pages have duplicate content problems. Do a quick audit on the website using "Screaming Frog". It's free to use and is fast. You can also export csv reports and study in excel. Let me know what you find!
Yea check this too; great answer here. I just don't know why people are doing this without 301 in a .htaccess file to new location. But it's hard to tell if the poster is having problems internally or externally?!
These links were probably diluted by the late and famous Google Penguin Algorithm. This algorithm was targeted at websites that have over optimized link building. This including using the same anchor text over and over.
Use Majestic SEO or Ahrefs to look at the link profile.
You can certainly do an audit on your links and determine if you have enough resources to go through a disavow process.
I would focus on instead setting a budge for quality directory submissions using branded keywords and or press releases for new content your website produces.
*Also avoid doing too much link building in a 0 to 90 period. You just don't need as many links anymore!
This should help you move forward.
You can also message me if you have pains with certain parts of your project. I have tons of resources I can help you connect to. Good luck
I am not sure I understand what you're asking here.
Are you asking is not using alt tags on images will hurt you? It should not have anything to do with your link profile. The only thing that could hurt your link profile is using exact anchor match on your link building.
Using too many alt text on a page will certainly hurt your page(s) from ranking. Also using the same keyword over and over on multiple pages is something you want to avoid.
The alt tags were for disabled people that obviously have trouble seeing images. They have special system that would play the audio from special tags like this to tell them what the page is about.
If it is not organic or natural;try to avoid spamming!
**1.) You want to check first for duplicate content issues. **
*SEO MOZ has a great tool suite here that ran a full analysis of the website from multiple angles.
**2.) You want to study their link profile and anchor text. **
If they were hit hard (not due to duplicate content), then their website probably got smashed to bits by Google Penguin algorithm. This is an over-optimize-algorithm that Google used to destroy websites that had thousands of links using exact anchor matches.
*You want to use brand anchor text and mix up your anchors when link building
*Research link prospecting and anchor text diversity
*Use majestic seo or ahrefs to study your link profile and determine if the site engaged in this damaging link building tactics.
*You certainly can try to disavow links through Google Webmaster Tools, but I don't think it is a good use of time.
*Focus on high quality directories (tons of curated list online just search), free directories, press releases using the website brand name anchor text
3.) General Marketing Persona Map - Learn Who Your Target Consumers Are
Also user site bounce rates can really become a sign of website that has worthless content. I would asses the goals of the website, product, and services and start with a general marketing persona map for surfers/customers. This is huge because it will lead to a better conversation algorithm to help you build out a marketing plan to reach your target audience at each stage of their though process and decision making.
**4.) Plan your content map and **strategy
You need to setup a schedule for custom content creation, on page call to actions, and a syndication schedule to help generate social signals of engagement to your website.
Also your blog need to establish Authorship and put a face behind the content you produce.
After doing this you need to create ideas for link bait opportunities like guest posting and info-graphics if possible.
*To do all of this, I suggest getting organized and setup a team of people within your organization to help you with each stage of the project.
This will keep you busy for a while! Hope this helps. Don't be afraid to Google the concepts I mentioned if you don't understand. This is how I learned back in 2004!
You can use, Screaming Frog. It's a free program you should include in your website audit. Very powerful and produces reports to csv you can study in Microsoft Excel.
The bulk of your main content needs to be above the fold. This is the same area where your h1 tag should reside. You can certainly see this with many ecommerce stores.
i.e.
"h1"
"content here"
try to link to two inner pages if you can for additional content that cannot be fully explained on this page. Also try to have a 1 or 2 % keyword density in a 200 word paragraph.
You should be set.
*Keep your keywords in your h1 tag and title tag to the left!"
Yes it is possible. I will start with a saying in this business.
SEO Organic rankings will largely depend on how organic friendly your content is. I have never seen a website that had very share-able, power, dynamic content that not rank. The power is in what you offer. If you what you offer is not very powerful in word-of-mouth; chances are you are in very a emotional roller-coaster ride.
A large part of what many webmasters miss is that your product, service, information, website/blog has to be very useful. What will become of a very useful website, product, and or service is the link profile for your website and very high rankings.
People ask me, "So how does SEO play into such a powerhouse?" Or why do I need SEO if my product, service, website is so raw!
SEO is more than just manipulating links and content. Keyword research will help you silo your website by targeting long-tail-keywords like you mention earlier.
Keyword research helps you ensure you setup a series of implicit and explicit conversation with your user, which will develop into many landing pages with a targeted conversion. That conversion could be to filter into a semantic-powerhouse email program (designed to generate revenue), coupon offer, instant discount on some product to checkout, a phone call, a lead, something.
The Keyword Research will evolve into marketing persona project that will help you understand how to direct users throughout your website to an end result.
After the Keyword Research, Persona Map and Content Conversation-Conversion Map,you'll need to silo (Google it tons of blog post our there on what this is and how to do it) your website and come up with a schema that interconnects your website for site-usability and crawl-ability is critical to ensure that you can rank for just about any keyword relative to your niche without having to resort into blackhat/grayhat linking. You can just do high-quality press releases, directories, and community advertising to promote your content.
*This is pretty much the only strategy that can ensure enough natural organic links develop to your root page on your server and any other inner directory or page in your site.
Hopefully this is a little clearer.
Yes it is possible. I will start with a saying in this business.
SEO Organic rankings will largely depend on how organic friendly your content is. I have never seen a website that had very share-able, power, dynamic content that not rank. The power is in what you offer. If you what you offer is not very powerful in word-of-mouth; chances are you are in very a emotional roller-coaster ride.
A large part of what many webmasters miss is that your product, service, information, website/blog has to be very useful. What will become of a very useful website, product, and or service is the link profile for your website and very high rankings.
People ask me, "So how does SEO play into such a powerhouse?" Or why do I need SEO if my product, service, website is so raw!
SEO is more than just manipulating links and content. Keyword research will help you silo your website by targeting long-tail-keywords like you mention earlier. Keyword reseach helps you ensure you setup a series of implicit and explict coversation with your user, which will develop into many landing pages with a targeted conversion. That conversion could be to filter into a semantic-powerhouse email program (designed to generate revenue), coupon offer, instant discount on some product to checkout, a phone call, a lead, something.
The Keyword Research will evolve into marketing persona project that will help you understand how to direct users throughout your website to an end result.
After the Keyword Research, Persona Map and Content Conversion Map. you'll silo (Google it tons of blog post our there on what this is and how to do it) your website and come up with a schema that interconnects your website for site-usability and crawl-ability is critical to ensure that you can rank for just about any keyword relative to your niche without having to resort into blackhat/grayhat linking. You can just do high-quality press releases, directories, and community advertising to promote your content.
*This is pretty much the only stratgey that can ensure enough natural organic links develop to your root page on your server and any other inner directory or page in your site.
Hopefully this is a little clearer.
What is GWT? Can you give a description or link? Thanks in advance!
I would definitely say your off-site seo would be the first place to start.
If you are new, you need to make some investment on time building links.
*There are a few ways to do something like this.
1.)You can start with free and paid directories.
=>spend sometime finding niche specific directories for free listings
=> spend sometime on premium directories
*only submit every 90 days like to 5 or 10.
*also use your brand name instead of exact anchor matches.
2.) You can try to do some custom link building by looking up blogs and building relationships with blogging experts. This is very white-hate-seo and naturally takes time. Don' get anxious in trying to get a ton of these links. Last year's algo Penguin rocked the SEO industry in over optimizing in links (the amount) and the exact match of the same anchor terms (keyword phrases) and Google devalued them.
*Try to use a variety of phrases instead of the same anchor over and over. Make your custom links look natural and do 10 - 15 each month
*Use link prospecting like "list hunting" top 10 blogging (keyword phrase) and you should be able to find websites or blogs listed as hot or the best.
*Offer to send your product or service to them for review in exchange for link.
3.) Produce better content!
->Syndicate your content with Web 2.0 bookmarking and forums.
-> Again this is also white-hate-seo and will take you time.
-> I suggest doing some research to find your users "paint-points" and making a map of your content.
This content should be well thought out. You'll need to get inside your consumers-visitors heads.
Think implicit thoughts and explicit thoughts. (Google if you don't know much about this)
Make a spreadsheet and start tracking the results you find.
*I find forums are a great place to find out these thoughts, pain-points, and your demographics.
*Great content will produce natural links for you. If it is really dynamic, you get social signals and other quality signals that will help your site rank better.
Also silo your website (Google silo website for seo) and start planning how you are going to inter-link your inner pages. The bigger the website the better. This will help in distribution of your website for other pages that you want rank or long-tail-keyword you want to target.
This should get you start; you have an arsenal of info here and research to do.
Tools:
Use Majestic SEO to study competition back-link profiles and you own as it progresses. Great way to find broken links of expired domains or against older competitors and reach-out to the webmasters they use to have links to and try to get your site's link there. All around great tool
Ahrefs is another web-based to tool to study back-links
Authority Labs will help you track many keywords you want to target. It's free for like 30 days
SEM Rush will help you study competition and counter them.
Good Luck!
Defiantly agree with the Penguin Algo.
*When you do initially build out your directory links or custom links, try to use randomization on your anchor phrases. You can do search within searchengineland.com and searchenginejournal.com for post on junk anchors and random anchor phrases.
This algo update rocked the seo industry and many of the over optimize links-anchors were diluted in seo value.
Hey, if you need other advice or help with analysis; I usually can point you in the right direction. Good luck!
You Heading Tags also know as your h1 and h3 tags are important for on page seo.
Especially the H1 tag. You should probably define a css class for styling because this tag can be big, bulky, and ugly; however, Google uses this as a large signal for what a web-page is about. The title tag is also the other most vital signal and it should match the h1 (I mean the keyword phrase you are targeting).
I emphasize everyday to internal departments where I work about the importance of on-page-seo. In competitive search ninches, these on page scores and organicness (if that is a word) will matter in stable rankings.
Also where you have your h1 should be above the fold (nerd jargon), right under the top nav. The h1 followed by a simple paragraph that has useful content and one or two links to direct users to targeted pages or directories.
Hope this helps.
I have to add in Ahrefs. I checked them out but I never really got engaged.
Also citation labs has Link Prospector tool. Which is great for link building from list standpoint to find websites that could be viable options for links.
This would be a mistake; you don't every really want to try and adapt a project down the road. You can do it, but it will be painful! The biggest investment really is the time you put into the project. Right now time might be your friend and you have plenty of it. But once things start rolling time can become a valuable commodity to your project time lines and task activities set with certain cost. You'll have to start buying time and maybe hire someone to handle some other task you cannot do on your own to solve upgrading your website.
*I suggest planning the scope of your content, product paths, and list them on a white board or piece of paper first.
*List things (in human code) you want and would like to have and come up with a date to upgrade. This could be options, graphical appeal, and many other site usability issues.
*You'll find this to be more manageable and goals set for yourself and business.
I once tried to change the design of a website I ran years ago and it was a very hard process, because I had to keep up with content development, adding custom pages, doing pictures, videos, custom landing pages, competition analysis, link building, content syndication, social bookmarking and other email campaign filter programs and much more.
The SEO part of adapting your site design can also cause some problems too. Typically you want to avoid sudden changes to the complete layout and look of your e-commerce store. You can certainly make small changes overtime (aka upgrades like framework, style of elements and navigation structure).
*If you do decided to redo anything avoid deleting directories, or files that Google has crawled; instead just use 301 redirects to avoid missing pages. Google can be weird. I remember when I launched SecurityCameraWarehouse dot com website, Google took interest in my discount cctv dvr page and other similar ones and ranked them. At the time I decided I wanted to offer a better page that targeted a different keyword, and different design. I actually ended up doing that for like 30 pages and it caused my website trouble. Like Google eventually deindexed my website. This was like 6 years ago!
Day in and out, I have to do on page analysis and off page analysis; so screaming frog is one great desktop software that I use to see lengths on title tags, meta desc, meta keywords, on page content, keyword density and other internal linking b/w pages.
The offsite I use and cannot live without Majestic SEO backlink profile lookup and SEM Rush to see overall trends when studying competition. These two are web-based and offer a free version; however, the pro version is worth the money!
I use Authority Labs to track keywords that reports tracking for all three search engine platforms. They offer reports to you and show you up and down movement on all your keywords and even the long-tail-keywords!
Hope these tools help with your post!
301 ones are fine and infact the best thing you can do to pass link juice; never be afraid of doing a 301. Make sure you have plans for that content to be at another domain/location on the server.
I do have one question that is in my mind; how long has this domain been active?
Yea just think above the fold for your nav and links.
You can always design-silo the website to direct your users throughout your site.
This will help keep your home page in a healthy range for the number of links and you're most important ones at the top!
Using fresh h3 tags on other pages throughout your website with simple links will help a ton!
Yea you can certainly do that. The only case where I see websites being on the same server are unique things like directories and other Internet utility websites to keep cost low.
Using C-class ips can get very expensive if you have a big network or plan for dynamic content on separate domains.
The only time I would use different domains is if the content is so different or you're content strategy is targeting something completely different to engage users in implicit or explicit conversation. You can use this angle to start a massive content algorithm system to funnel people into your main website. This is good tatic for white-hate-content development and conversion building. Hopefully this makes sense!
I would suggest using Majestic SEO to look at your website's overall trust for links coming into the website.
They have a great graph that shows the "trust flow" and "citation flow" of your link profile. The closer to the orgin point the better those links are and chances are Google will trust those links voting for your site.
There is also on-page seo too. Make sure you audit each website ranking over you in link profile and on page seo. Things like too many characters in title, meta description, meta keyword matter! On-page-content and or keyword density matter too; you don't want keyword density higher than 3% (if you're using static type of content), this too will be a make or break difference in where you sit in Google's SERP!
Also the delivery of actual content has a lot to do with were you'll sit for certain keyword phrases. The more organic and useful the page to the user; naturally your social signals will increase, organic links will increase and thus stronger more stable ranks for certain phrases keywords.
*In SEO today the best thing you can do is study what your competitors offer in content on the page and beat'em. Syndicating your content to places where people can share you're great content or product (whatever) is really the best way to direct your overall efforts!
You could certainly do with more content on the page.
Problem is you want to maybe try to direct with your content that is currently above the fold. Also the format of the page is always an issue. Pushing down your dynamic content would probably never be seen by a user and Google will be able to read that with your bounce rates, time on website and overall clicking action from users once they land.
The key to good on-page seo is starting with the usability of the page first. This will help you to ensure your website content is perfectly balanced and higher up on the page to show importance.
Also include some H3s and break up your subjects and offer more brief but engaging content.
Currently only have 63 words. So you might want to push for 300+ words and keep your keyword density at 3%. Just divide how many times you use the keyword phrase online dating by the amount of words to determine if you are at best seo practice.
Your Title Tag has 37/60 characters max; this okay, might want to see if bump up a tad with something really organic or slogan with your keyword as far to the right of the title tag as possible
Your Meta Description 138/154 this is a descent range; just include a click to action. This is what will help users engage your website from the SERP results. Also try to offer something you can deliver so your click-to-action and on page conversion does not result into an immediate bounce. HEADLINES and delivery is vital here!
Your Meta Keyword 2/10 max. You can use 5 to 10 different keywords in this tag. Although this does not have much significance anymore; it can't hurt. Use each keyword once!
Hope this helps a bit.
There is many reasons why you could certainly fall in Google's index; however, I always start with an analysis on your backlinks. Specifically what Majestic SEO calls "trust flow" and "citation flow". As you can see in the graph you links to the overall domain is light.
Links are still a vital statistic that will show how well you rank organically. You might want to try and find a way to rearrange how your website is inner-linked to your inner pages. This is consider a white-hat-seo tatic to help pass page rank juice throughout your website.
If you want to return, try and create some relationship with bloggers in your niche and maybe offer free products for reviews and have specific links to your inner pages.
The next thing you want to examine is if you have duplicate content. Google duplicate content checker or install screaming frog's free version of their SEO spider to get more data on other SEO factors like:
1.)on page seo
-best practices on your title tag, meta description, meta keywords, keyword density, and how organic of your content.
*biggest deal here is the length on each of these on-page-seo factors. You want 54 characters in your title, meta description about 154 char max and meta keywords 5 to 10 although not a heavy metric or factor anymore. Your keyword density should stay 1 to 3% if you can help it. Just divide the number times you use a keyword phrase by the amount of words for your page.
Hope this helps you get started. See image for Majestic SEO mention.
Having your most important links in a top nav is great for crawlability and significance to Google about what directories or pages are of importance. Removing the nav is okay unless you can ensure keeping sitelinks from the home page of importance above the fold.
I professionally would avoid removing your top nav and maybe focus more on the mechanics of css/javascript-jquery to deliver better appeal to users for click-throughs and conversions
Hi,
As long as the content is not the same, you should be okay. Google will see them both as sister websites.
Avoid going after exact anchor match keywords that you might be thinking of targeting. Google came out with EMD (exact match domain algorithm) that is targeted to downgrade websites using this tactic to rank high in the search verticle. Also try to avoid .info, .org, .biz unless you plan on branding a community like SEOMoZ; hopefully this make sense!
Hi,
I am sure you have heard of Google Penguin Algorithm that rocked many of the webmasters that use paid links to try and connect their websites/blogs to certain keyword terms.
Don't be afraid to pay for links to high-end directories like Yahoo.Com, Business.Com or any of the directories SEOMOZ list. Also try to do only a few every 90 days.
If you want great traction to your website, you need to start a content algorithm. Meaning you need to do some research and determine what pain-points your potential target audience has and start figuring out a conversation you need to have with them. That means both implicit and explicit thoughts.
Build out a frame-work of content first and then come up with a plan for syndicating the content.
Find communities or follow experts in your niche and reach-out to them to host or sample your content to start generating natural links.
Overall to answer your question. You can do paid links. However, do paid links of quality. Directories, Press Releases. Vary your anchor terms and do not a ton of paid links every 90 days.
I believe user reviews to work for local audience targeting. You can certainly add user reviews and ratings with Yelp and various others. I know a few engineers who use SENUKE to help manage creating the accounts and submitting reviews.
However, I would not recommend this as a stratagem to rely on for strong link signals. Remember last year's algorithms was targeting too much of the same link schemes to rank. I would include this in your SEO but balance it with a full content algorithm to help your brand target your customer's pain points. Sharing and syndicating this content will help create the social signals, which will in return have Google trust your full link-foot-print!
Also if you do this, try and get on a 0 to 90 schedule and only do it once or twice!
