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That one single hour in each day when I get in the "zone" and do week's worth of work in a single shot. Still figuring out how to extend that for the full 8 hours

Going offline.

Have a TV or radio ad and tell people to search "your keyword".

I believe this was successfully executed for phrase "seo found" in Australia. http://www.google.com.au/search?q=seo%20found I was first suprised to see a peak in search volumes in Google Keyword Tool and was later told that they had a massive advertising campaign for this phrase.

This is something I intend to try in the future.

seo-kwt.png

Google has endorsed use of breadcrumbs in several of their videos. They are a helpful device for website with complex structure or hierarchy such as eCommerce sites. They not only aid user navigation but also help search engines get a clearer picture about your site's structure. For example if you're using faceted navigation you could end up on a product page that has a long URL and ambiguous placement in the site's hierarchy. Breadcumbs can aid with this. Another neat thing is in the SERPs when you get little: Top Level > Main Category > Sub Category type links under your snippet.

I would use it at the top only, it's become a bit of a standard and people know where to expect it. Referncing it twice would be just a doubleup of the same set of links.

GWT > Your site on the web > Links to your site > Who links the most (More) > Download all links

csv will contain all your backlinks registered in GWT.

This works on every domain I tried so far.

I've recently discovered: http://explicitly.me/ and love it.

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200622210180

Whatever it sells for I'm giving to: http://www.beaheroaustralia.org/

Thanks guys,

Dan

There is absolutely no mystery about whether inbound links can harm you or not. Apparently Google is very good at determining whether it was you buying links or somebody trying to sabotage you. I had a chat with Tiffany from Google's web spam team at SMX in Sydney and she said that there has been no cases when they got it wrong when they issue penalties.

I have a different theory however. To get penalised you need to demonstrate consistent link buying pattern over time. What typically happens is that SEO people buy high PageRank links only with very closely matched anchor text. Often these links are sold to other webmasters with different site topics. This is very easy for Google to spot.

What happens though is that during this process the rankings will shoot up like crazy and if you were to try and sabotage your competitor you would have helped them in the process and also spent an incredible amount of money. All that for them to submit a reconsideration request to Google and be out of jail within weeks.

As far as I know attempts at cheap forms of link spam in order to penalise competitors have so far been unsuccessful.

This is a smart move by SEOMoz, this forum will take over dwindling SEO forums we used to visit which are now full of spammers and ridiculous content. Barrier to entry is the key to quality here. Well done.

Just to add that I would personally be scared of having domainname.co if I know my competitor has domainname.com - too easy to spell it wrong and send free traffic the wrong way.

Use H tags as they are meant to be used but if you can nicely embed your phrase within that would be great. How to use H tags? Same as you would with indentation structure of a bullet point list. Have them indicate document's topical structure.

For example:

-H1: Vehicles
--H2: Cars
---H3: Sedans
---H3: SUVs
--H2: Motorbikes
---H3: Dirtbikes
---H3: Roadbikes
----H4: Harley Davidson
---H3: Sportsbikes 
----H4: Suzuki
-----H5: SFV650
------H6: SFV650 Engine Specifications

Alt, although a valid signal is not as heavy as title for example, so I suggest that you do not compromise the integrity and quality of site for SEO purposes only and manipulation of this tag. Use ALT as it should be used and describe your illustrations, photos, products images and diagrams well enough so that a visually impaired may get an idea of what the image is. That's what Google expects you to do and is generally a win-win.

You can install the "Canonical URL's" plugin straight from your wp-admin interface: yourdomain.com/wp-admin/plugin-install.php?tab=search&type=term&s=canonical&plugin-search-input=Search+Plugins

(should be first result)

This plugin is pretty basic but you can tweak its settings in the plugin configuration panel.

You will now notice that your source code contains another line:

rel='canonical' href='http://yourwebsite.com' />

1. Understanding business they link build for (CRITICAL!)
2. Search skills (advanced search operators, semantic flow)
3. Use of our internal link management database (recording, categorising and tagging links)
4. Content writing / ordering
5. Establishment of a real internet persona
6. Natural email writing
7. Phone skills

My advice is not to be scared of document size. Have as much data in there as needed to inform and provide regular call to action throughout. Good semantic structure will help Google understand what you're really about. Don't stuff your TITLE with many things - I am guessing you're about a single product or service. Often people try to put too much in key areas, forgetting that Google will pick up miscellaneous other terms from the page and have it rank for it as well.

• Creating a lot of bad content is a bad strategy.
• Creating a lot of good content is a good strategy.

(Assuming it's done in balance with your capacity.)

Content is the king but a kingdom needs other roles to run smoothly so I would not completely sacrifice other SEO activities just to satisfy monthly content needs.

One example of content being a problem is when too many pages discuss the same topic and fragment your inbound links, diluting the effect. This would only be good if that was only way to get as many diverse inbound links.

In a natural link profile there will be both followed and nofollowed links, if you only ever get dofollow links and your link profile is big - it will certainly look unnatural. I like nofollow links which come from great places, especially if they mention my brand (citation) or bring traffic and recognition.

Your Google PageRank went down immediately after some of your linking websites lost their PageRank or cut their links to you. Toolbar PageRank updates rarely so you couldn't see it until now. Timing with Panda is accidental and not related to your PageRank change. Nothing to worry about and keep up with great content and good design. New thing to keep an eye on is user experience, however links are still very strong as a factor so you should try to earn great links as well.

This is not a question but something to share. If you click on all of these links and compare the results you will see why _ is not a good thing to have in your URLs.

• http://www.google.com/search?q=blue
• http://www.google.com/search?q=b.l.u.e
• http://www.google.com/search?q=b-l-u-e
• http://www.google.com/search?q=b_l_u_e
• http://www.google.com/search?q=b%20l%20u%20e

If you have any other examples of working separators please comment.

Youtube currently doesn't spend resources on video content analysis - only on a basic level. There are numerous instances of popular videos being recycled and reuploaded by multiple users therefore "fragmenting" video's true view count. That as far as I know is the biggest nuisance you can bump into (much like having two URLs for the same content page). Otherwise it will be fine.

If all you're doing is adding segments before and after than you might want to use YouTube editor to do this: http://www.youtube.com/editor

Browse to your .htaccess file in WWW directory and open it in editor (if you're using cpanel) or download edit and upload via FTP (safer option). You can do a find and replace on the file like with anything else. If you are unsure of the syntax create a single 301 in cpanel and see how it looks like when you open up the file.

Good luck!

Hi, I am a DMOZ editor for Mount Gravatt (Brisbane suburb) and I prefer to see listing like this:

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Public speaking coaching services. Features programme structure, meeting schedule and contact information.

Not like this:

Best Public Speaking Caching | 100% Money Back
We offer the best and fastest service in Brisbane. Call us now for guaranteed results.

Writing a nice objective description without sales jargon gets you in faster as well as submitting to the correct category. The internal DMOZ system is a bit silly and it can be a pain to move listings around - you basically get shoved into somebody else's backlog. Pick your category right, not by pagerank but by common sense.

Some editors are very busy - while others who manage very niche categories are not. Also the frequency of them logging in varies heaps. I believe an editor must log in and edit at least once every 6 months before their account is suspended.

Google is very good at figuring out that www and non www versions are the same site - so content duplication will not be an issue (this happens too often for them not to handle properly). One advantage you do have is consolidation of yoru link juice towards the same canonical version and therefore achieving better results. Set your preference in Google Webmaster Tools to a choice and stick to it - everywhere - even in your email signatures and printed material.

As far as www goes we've purposely dropped it and went with non-www, I personally think www is silly and meaningless however this means we have to from time to time police and correct how webmasters write down and link our URL and ask for www removal if found. Not too hard if you monitor yoru brand via Google Alerts.

Reporting them to Google will likely only help feed and improve their algorithm and not directly affect the competitor (unless they get audited manually). Turn grey? What is grey is a very grey question... buying links from known sellers and spammy websites as well as spamming yourself is not a long term solution. Doing something clever, that's a different story for as long as you don't push it too far. Gardening actually sounds nice... lol

Seriously though, I can guarantee you that it's possible to beat quantities with quality so keep that creative hat on and work on those link opportunities.

I'm happy to answer specific questions on link building ideas if I get to know a bit more about your situation / industry.

Ha! I was in the same situation recently and eventually decided to keep the page where it is and earn links towards the new resource rather than fiddling with 301 redirects. The reason was that both pages could convert (on both domains). I could have done a canonical and point to the page B, but that didn't seem fair either so I just left it as it is.

I literally just published a study which analyses link building process in attempt to solve the management of the entire process: http://dejanseo.com.au/link-building-software/

Soon there will be a followup article of all link building / SEO software we've trialed so far including: raven, ontolo, linkdex, diyseo, wordtracker and a few others that we thought were pretty good. Stay tuned!

Yes agree there are other more pressing issues to debate but I don't think this question is out of place. I welcome people to post any type of SEO question here no matter how silly they think it might be. We're all on different stages of learning, but more than once I have been inspired by a naive question to look up something which lead to a discovery of immense value and interest to me and others in the SEO community.

Brackets from what I can see do not represent a significant element, in theory they can act as a separator of different logical units of a URL (though there are much better ways to do that such as using hyphens). I would personally not use them and not sure if they represent a problem in way crawlers interpret URL structure.

I support this view. Let's not do the same damage to our branding as Yellow Pages did to various AAA Aarwark Plumbing type businesses.

Interesting question

When it doubt view the cached version of your site and click to see the text version only.

Example: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.google.com/&hl=en&strip=1

You are likely using tools like SEO Elite etc which send fast queries. This type of software can be set to slower hit rate. I doubt you guys search that fast to be booted without use of software. Check your plugins and software - that would be my first recommendation.

I do get this from time to time when I try to hack URLs to death... but it only happens occasionally 

Here's a tip.

1. Download your rankings from Google Webmaster Tools.
2. Calculate average CTR for each position.
3. Estimate increase in traffic for each phrase if it was: a) #1 and b) in top 10

Focus on phrases that bring best traffic increase.

Aside from that it's a good practice to clean up all easy phrases you're already ranking for (but not high enough to get the desired traffic).

I recommend you do precisely nothing. Leave the link as it is and in fact you should have it present on all pages (or as the case is usually in the footer) if it is meaningful to your users. Privacy policy tells Google something more about your site and it does represent an extra hint (e.g. blogs usually don't have one).

Canonicalising your privacy policy page to itself will do exactly that - tell Google that that's the correct canonical version of it and it would be useful only if you have various different URL versions of that same page.

Privacy policy page has PR4 because PR5 links to it - it's how it usually turns out (one down each link distance away). Also there is no such thing as "domain PageRank", PageRank is calculated for each individual page - with home page usually being strongest.

Given that your privacy policy does come up on the 2nd page could be due to URL length which plays role in sorting with site: command not necessarily the PageRank alone. If this page was the first page that comes up when you do site: command I would look at twice at your link structure.

As it is it doesn't sound like you have any problems of that kind.

Here's a dead obvious advantage of YouTube over Vimeo:

• YouTube profile page link is dofollow.
• Vimeo profile page link is nofollow.

Why is this important? Because PageRank flows to those pages internally and from other sources and in Vimeo's example it doesn't pass any love back to the author.

Exactly - Don't touch it. Start with new pages and you'll be fine. Even Google admits that 301 may not always pass all the goodness across.

For best results use: how-are-you.html

Spaces turn out to be how%20are%20you.html

Definitely invest in two unique copies of text. If there are thousands and you are unable to get them all done at once you may try variable driven text, however replacing one element and expecting Google to like it is a bit too much.

1. Compile a guide on how to deal with toxic materials (links, references and all) and pitch to gov and edu sites for inclusion.

2. Cross promote with industry operators (builders, painters...etc).

3. DIY guides that people will appreciate. How to fix a simple problem or step by step illustration.

Yes you can get links like that - and you know what works really well? Lies and misrepresentation. I know because I have seen it. Basically getting the link "Google legit" way (e.g. not buying links) but totally unethical in every other way. For example I know of a team who says they are a doctor of physics at some university and bull their way into gov/edu listings on the basis of false identity. Once their client found out they were fired immediately.

Hosting your own videos means less leak to outside channels and your own branding. Every hosted video platform has a way of getting users away from your site (ad, logo to youtube, related videos...etc). If you introduce your videos on Vimeo, Youtube and such they can provide a valuable stream of traffic and extra exposure much like eBay does for product sellers who also have an eCommerce store of their own. If the video goes truly viral however, the bills for hosted solutions could be hefty with some paid video hosting providers.

It could be the case of different browsers hitting different data centres which have not yet consolidated their rankings.

Google updates public PR rarely these days... you could have a good site with PR0 for months so not a very good way to judge the risk or benefit that way. In fact if you have a history of buying links with same anchor text from high PR sites over a period of time you could trigger a penalty more so then with crappy little low quality links.

I can tell you exactly what happened to one of our client's websites. We went into a similar debate over a .de and .com domain and as a result of inability to come to an agreement (between SEO and developers) both were released with no canonical handling whatsoever.

The outcome was good, perhaps due to a bit of luck. What happened was that Google figured out that this was another geographic region site and allowed for both pages to be indexed, cached and found in results (one for google.de and the other for google.com.au / google.com). So when I searched for the same sentence in "quotes" it would bring up both results without omitting.

If I can make an educated guess, it would be a mix of geo location (contact details, tld) and the fact that layout added a substatntial amount of difference to both sites (as one layout header, nav, sidebars and fotter were in german and other in english).

In what timeframe are you looking to add german translation to your pages?

It will not pick it up automatically, however if you go massive with it or somebody reports you and you get a manual audit then you could be in trouble. There is a way of getting links without asking for links - and that is to create a need and reason for linking. For example you can provide them with optional code snippets that would save them time explaining the rules of the competition (T&C?) and other handy devices which would save webmasters time.

Firstly URL effect is minor in comparison to the actual navigational hierarchy.

I give preference to short and neat URLs however www.company.com/category/sub-category/service doesn't sound terrible to me. What would be my primary concern is if this is how you get to that page:

Home > Category > Sub Category > Service (3 clicks)

If this "Service" is a key service to your client then it would be wise to create navigational wormholes to drill through from say home page or top level category page and label it as "popular" or within a piece of text.

In a website with 200-300 pages PageRank distribution and indexation should not be a problem (assuming you have decent links) so there is no huge need for flattening site architecture to the point where you have 1000 links on each page.

I have heard Matt Cutts validate this point in at least two or three of his videos stating that linking your main content from as high as possible is the key.

Not coming up for a term that is within your domain is not a good sign:
http://www.google.nl/search?q=spelenroulette&pws=0

At this point I am thinkiing penalty or ban, however ban is not the case as you still rank for an exact domain search:
http://www.google.nl/search?hl=nl&q=spelenroulette.nl

Only 11 pages on the site (or indexed):
http://www.google.nl/search?hl=nl&q=site%3Aspelenroulette.nl

Your site seems pretty poor in content and purpose so it could be an algorithmically assigned penalty. The thing is that my dutch is not that great so I cannot evaluate (I am also not sure if the new algo applies to Holland yet).

Link command shows no links:
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=link%3Aspelenroulette.nl

You're in a very spammy niche and I wouldn't be surprised if there was some sort of filter or penalty applied.

Search for: "spelenroulette.nl" -site:spelenroulette.nl brings 37 instances where your domain was mentioned (or perhaps linked) and they don't seem that flashy.

What was your link building style?

Having a TLD specific to a country/region makes sense not only from SEO but also business point of view. I understand what it means to start again and building links again from scratch however you have a good headstart and a super relevant link from your old juiced up site. Google will figure it out it's the same brand, country specific and will start treating it as a family of websites. Make sure you use all local signals (phone, address, business reg numbers and are present in local directories). When interlinking own sites ensure good disclosure is in place.

Well, one would assume that quality content = ranks well. It's kind of a loop, isn't it

Demand is a very interesting point!

If there are 200 content pieces on a topic versus only 2 pieces of content and one is really good value would undoubtedly be much higher where there is less such content available.

It's better to sort out the problem in the source rather than patching it with rel canonical. One thing you can do to help the situation is to teach Google about your URL parameters in Google Webmaster Tools:

url-parameters.PNG

Under ordinary circumstances I would just go ahead and do it, however lately I am seeing an increased activity of Google taking action against link manipulation. I would put proper disclosure on the landing page explaining why users are seeing it and if you do get in trouble it's a very simple explanation to Google.

If you, however, trigger an algorithmic filter then the solution is to nofollow all the links and wait for Google to pick it up.

If you don't want any dramas to start with use nofollow straight away.

I wonder how many Serbian SEOs on SEOMoz? Raise your hand everyone.

Pozdrav!

One pattern I've noticed is that if you have a site with a large number of useless or thin content pages your good content will lose rankings as a result. basically one drags the other down. Could this be the case with you?