Welcome to the Q&A Forum
Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.
HI Brent,
Thanks for the reply. As of last week the phone numbers were different on the rogue listings, but I just checked...and guess what...both now have MY phone number.
So it looks like I could claim them. It was advised that the best way to deal with these listings would be to just report them to Google, opposed to claiming them.
They mentioned it was against the rules for me to have more than one listing(even if my intention was to nix the two rogue listings.)
Care to share your input?
Unfortunately, Google has taken bits and pieces of my business and combined it with non-existent businesses and other rogue information. So now my business has 3 locations.
One proper listing that I created and manage.
One that uses my website address but nothing else is correct in the listing.
One that contains my name(incorrectly), but the address and everything else about it is incorrect.
I have reported these places many times but they continue to hang around and I am lost/confused on what to do next.
Please advise.
I've read varying things regarding the juice of the image alt text, and would have to believe that the h1 headers carry more influence overall.
I am specifically talking about the
tags being off page or behind the header image, and understand this to be against the best practices.
This is my opinion as well, but due to some of the minimal designs out there, it would be difficult to fit an appropriate
without disrupting the design.
I took a quick look a quick look at the plugin and it seems to explain what each area is for right below the boxes you are asking about:
Canonical: "The canonical link is shown on the archive page for this term." This allows you to modify the canonical output on the archive page for any specified category.
Breadcrumbs: "The Breadcrumbs title is used in the breadcrumbs where this category appears." You are able to modify the breadcrumb output accordingly for SEO purposes in regards to the specified category.
While I like the vast majority of the functions on the Wordpress SEO plugin, some of these options seem redundant, or would only be needed if poor site structure/naming was implemented originally implemented. If that is the case your time may be better spent correcting that.
There is a good chance it would be best to contact Joost directly since this is more of a support question for him than SEOmoz, but I hope my answers clarified a few things for you.
That would be a serious long tail.
Can someone please clarify whether hiding
I was doing some competitive analysis and noticed some websites were doing it, but it certainly wasn't egregious.
I would currently rate Ezinearticles extremely low on the authority of their content and links according to Google. This is simply based on the Panda update backlash that devalued ezine and similar article databases.
While it was extremely popular in the past, the popularity and spamming of content/links is what also led to the demise and devaluing.
You time and effort would be better spent elsewhere.
I would like to change my sites structure to be more efficient for SEO. I have a fear that the changes will have a potential impact on my current rankings, but know this would be a good long term decision.
My site is wordpress, so the changes are relatively easy to make.
What are some ways to change the site structure without damaging your rank? I would have to have to clean up a bunch of errors, so is the best way to simply do 301 redirects on the old pages?
Yah it says it right here. Thanks. I must've missed it when I was reading it earlier:
You may create one listing per practitioner, and one listing for the office.
With a few of the sites I am thinking of, they have done an excellent job with SEO and the site actually looks great.
They have done hidden text in ADDITION to all the best practices which seems to have put them over the top.
Two sites in particular, with hidden text, have not been punished in over two years. Go figure.
Hey all...
I've been doing some competitive analysis lately on different niches in different cities, and upon looking at source code have noticed MANY sites(typically 2-3 of the top listed sites in each niche) who have hidden text, blocked by a box/logo, colored the same as the background, or both.
Is this a typical practice?
My understanding is Google seriously frowns on this, so is it worth reporting competitors who are doing such things?
I don't see any grey areas in this matter and think it's a serious violation, but here these sites are at the top.
Hi everyone.
While I have read answers regarding this on Mike Blumenthal's blog, I have not been able to get an exact clarification on having multiple Google Places listings.
According to Mike Blumethal, Google accepts multiple listings in the Places area for specific industries.
e.g. One listing for a Dental office, one listing for EACH dentist. This could include a separate website for each.
If this is the case, how far away are we from having one maxed out business owning muiiple positions in the local listing space in the search engines. specifically Google?
I would love a good explanation of what is and isn't allowed to have multiple listings.
Welcome!
Obviously it would be rude not to mention the SEOmoz blog, but you must have already found that.
I follow the following blogs, and think they are a great place to start for local SEO:
For organic SEO I tend to follow:
Best of luck, and enjoy reading up!
With Rands latest Blog post about social media linkage and sharing, and upon the discovery of quora.com in his post, I was wondering what other important ones I might be missing?
There are certain obvious ones:
Foursquare
Merchant Circle
Do you guys know of any others that you find important, or see as useful in the near future?
HI Alan,
Great to hear. Could you expand on your experience with the site speed and how you improved it? Was it server side or due to site content? Location of server?
I believe having H1 tags are important on each page. The solution of style usually falls into the CSS so that it doesn't stick out that much. As you mentioned, you could put a banner or image over your H1 title, but I believe this would be classified as hidden text, so you're taking your chances.
Hi Marcus,
I have switched all of my websites to Yoast Wordpress SEO exclusively, and would highly suggest not using both SEO plugins at the same time. I chatted with Joost at length via Skype about a similar situation, and I can assure you it is against your best interest to try and use both.
While I am a fan of AIOSEO, I have found the Yoast plugin does everything and more and love it.
They are not meant to work together so your time would be wasted attempting to do so. Just make sure you are maximizing each plugin. I would recommend working with Yoast.
HI Mike...
I'd love to discuss with you a couple of my findings, any chance you're on Skype?
I believe distance from the city center has also become extremely important. It seems this took a back seat for a while, but may have made a comeback.
HI Justin,
If I were in your position I would first take a look at the competition for the keyword or keyword phrases to try and assess the level of difficulty to surpass them in the rankings.
Once this is known, you will have a better understanding of their popularity, related backlinks(quality, quantity, targets) and at that point should consider your best course of action.
I personally do not trust the links done by the vast majority of services that offer link building. Again, depending on the level of competition, I like the concept of trying to personally build a number of links each day that are of substantial quality. That way you know you will not be punished at some point for being found in a bad area, and will also have a complete list of your presence on the web. Over a 30 day period, you would have the ability to build 300 quality links, and will not put the future of your online presence(or lack there of) into the hands of somebody else.
It might take some time, but it would be worth the effort.
In addition to that, you might be able to build some quality connections with people within your industry, and start a network that could help your SEO a great deal in the future.
I always have a tendency to use Youtube as well since they are owned by Google. I believe there is a good chance that makes Google have an affinity for the site.
One of the issues I found embedding Youtube code while using Wordpress is that many validation errors appear, which I despise.and Google doesn't appreciate either.
I would highly suggest using this plugin, which will correct to valid code:
In addition to this, make sure you have filled out all of the content, titles, and geo elements properly following the upload to Youtube.
As wtih everything, the size isn't what matters. It's what you do with it. Anywhooo...
The CSS attributes should not effect any legitimate style choices, unless the search engines detect hidden text due to size, placement, or color.
If they are not doing it now, they will be soon I am sure. Why? Since it would be great for business.
I have little doubt that discount travel companies utilize the offline data to signal what type of deal they may offer your or accept.
Depending on what Zip code you are in, or if you use a regular bank card or Platinum American Express to pay.
This will no doubt translate to individual user results via search engines.
This question also got me thinking about the potential of an "Online ID Card" or license to surf the web. While I hate the idea, it would lessen the problems for anti-piracy groups and crime (tracing IP's and proving who did what etc), and would be a marketers dream know exactly who was doing what on the internet.
It would certainly ruin much of what makes the internet great, but it would bring some type order to it for government and corporations.
Sorry I mentioned it. 
I think you might need the help of a professional SEO company since you have so many specific questions and theories.
Currently, you are cherry picking a few odd examples, when I believe your time could be better spent making sure you have registered at places that are relevant to your business, onsite SEO, offsite, SEO, linkbuilding, content building, following David Mihms guide...while this will take away from your investigation, it will put you a position to improve your SERP.
Dwelling on a competitor can be a huge waste of time and effort since you can only control what you do. I very much doubt the paid positions are helping him at all.
Although not the question, I believe we would go for all three sites. 
While I agree with Dejan, there is always a decent chance that Google and other search engines may begin to understand the relevancy in relationship to the site in question. It hasn't happened yet, but we only need a "Hulkster" Google update to change that, if you know what I mean.
Hi...
The ability of gaining an SEO advantage by utilizing article sites, and to a lesser extent PR sites, was all but abolished by the Panda/Farmer updates. It can be disheartening since many spent so much time, money, and effort trying to get a leg up producing content for these sites.
Only Google knows for sure, but my speculation is that certain PR sites are better than others, and the ones I am thinking about usually are of the paid variety. The need for payment usually prevents spammers from utilizing the service, and from the things I have read, these paid PR sources end up sending the PR's to quality sites that have high local and organic authority.
My guess is that MANY people have had this problem, and it is time to build better content on local sites and social media, and build strong relationships that will help build trust and authority.
The more I learn about SEO, the more I realize it's all about the basics, and doing them correctly.
Best of luck.
You've asked quite a few questions in one post, but I will do my best to answer a few.
If you are focusing on local SEO, get into as many local directories as you can, and make sure you Name, Address, and Phone number are IDENTICAL in each directory as it is found in Google Places, Bing Local, and Local Yahoo.
When you are listing in the free directories that Google seems to appreciate, e.g. Yelp, Kudzu, Hotfrog, Merchant Circle the search engines will more than likely find them on their own. However, if you are worried about them being crawled/indexed or not seen in a reasonable time frame you could always post the links to your profile to Twitter or Facebook, or in your blog which will also show up in your RSS feed.
While you shouldn't over do it, this can potentially help the process of being found.
Attempt to get into the powerful free directories before you start spending money on the paid, IMO.
Classic. Well maybe he shouldn't change anything if he is currently ranked #3, but I assume that is due to the strength of his domain, stupid.com.
All of this talk about bacon reminded me of a couple of fellows here in Seattle who come out with a new bacon product every year, and to promote they also come out with some type of bacon art.
May I present to you, Bacon Kevin Bacon:
I agree with Ryan.
The best practice would be to include the full name and/or description of the product. It is doubtful that the Bacon Dental Floss competition is extremely fierce, so the first link with proper title tags and content will most likely end up as a top result, but why not do things correctly for maximum impact over time.
I do not expect any free bacon dental floss for my participation in this thread.
Hi...
I definitely can understand how frustrating it is to be in such a competitive market and industry, especially when people seem to be using blue/gray/blackhat type of strategies that seem to be pushing them ahead.
My best advice is to stay the course and know that these get to the top quick schemes will eventually be dealt with by the major search engines.
In the meantime, try to learn as much as you can about:
Organic SEO techniques
Local SEO techniques
Social Media Marketing
Genuine link building, which includes building relationships with local businesses, communities, and blogs.
Building relationships with your customer base
You have to start somewhere, and like I have said before, Rome was not built in a day. So work on each strategy, and move on to the next. By the time you are done many of the search engines will have caught up to your work and your rankings should improve.
SEOmoz is a fantastic place to start, from the beginner seo guides, to the forum posts. If you think this will take too much time, consider becoming a client of one of the pros.
Best of luck
Excellent post. Thanks for sharing EGOL. The Matt Cutts example of the multiple autho profiles usage, rel="me" makes things extremely clear in the purpose for the author page and the potential intention by Google in recognizing this data.
Hi Bill,
As I currently understand it, the proper use of an author tag will allow Google to collect data on relevant content. As an author produces relavent, popular, and accurate data, Google may give this person an authority type fo status. This could increase the validity of a site that has published the data, or possibly allow Google to figure out where superior content is showing up in the present and future.
The code itself makes the data consistent and easily seen, similar to an hcard.
Hi Elias,
While the mention of certain keywords and phrase may be important, I think the value of such news articles ends up counting on popularity. So creating articles that will draw interest with exceptional copy, great content, and will be considered link bait are ideal.
I am sure you could flood Google with 100 articles that are optimized to the umpteenth degree according to certain statistics, but one single article comes out from a competitor that is headline grabbing, goes viral, and puts the 100 articles to shame.
Interesting content is key with copy that will create sharing/linking.
While Google might account for spelling errors, and possibly the understanding that a "z" is sometimes used as an "s", I dislike it when the "z" is used, speaking as a consumer and business owner.
While not use an "a" at the front of the domain, or "my", or "your"? www.mykeyword-guides.com. Or even better, without the hyphen, mykeywordguides.com?
Going back to the spelling aspect of things, I have always disliked it when a business uses a "k" for a "c", e.g. Johnny's Used Kar Lot, and the same goes with the z.
My suggestion would be to use the keyword tool Google provides to look at the organic and local numbers regarding those keywords and phrases.
I took a quick gander and saw a number o great keywords and phrases, but depending on your experience with SEO, budget, and understanding of the process, some phrases may be too competitive.
Keywords I would taget would include:
Airport Parking
Parking in Airport
Cheap Airport Parking
Cheap Airport Car Parking
Airport Parking Services
Car Park At Airport
Airport Park
Take a look at the list you can come up with, and rank them by number of Global or Local searches.
As long as this is only part of your site you will not be hurting yourself. While it may help a small bit for SEO purposes, I can see that the crawl rate may significantly increase, as well as the indexing rate of new material that is posted.
I would just make sure that I have enough original, unique material that the yahoo feed doesn't overwhelm your site.
I found a relatively "ghetto" approach to silo using wordpress, since I don't have the time or technical skill to implement it perfectly. Using a specific plugin, it will compare posts and reference a set number of related at the bottom, creating a link structure similar to a silo. It's not perfect but it is easy.
I found a relatively "ghetto" approach to silo using wordpress, since I don't have the time or technical skill to implement it perfectly. Using a specific plugin, it will compare posts and reference a set number of related at the bottom, creating a link structure similar to a silo. It's not perfect but it is easy.
Lara,
Contact the person/company who HOSTS the website. They should have the knowledge to do this properly with very few negative repurcussions. That is how I typically move mine if I am working on a dev wordpress site.
Your hosting company should also have a decent backup system, and if the backend is run on Cpanel that would be awesome.
I am wondering what the keyword/keyword phrase is for your subpage, as it must be well optimized for it, at least far better than your index page.
If the page that IS coming up currently is informative, impressive, and educates the visitor on said subject, why would they not visit the main page as well? I believe they will if they need your servies. As much as we want our index page to be the main portal of entry into our site, this could be of benefit for you in some way.
Excellent job! WHat a wonderful way to start the week.
Agreed.
I spent some time working on a hybrid silo structure in my blog, and proper cross linking on the main area of the site thanks to the discussion here.
Ultimately, the silo process just takes a bit of time for each new post making sure it links to another category?
I know there are plugins for wordpress that will do automatic linking based on any word you input, and it will link a set or random number of times throughout your site.
It could be worth setting up for me and just include some keyword phrases in the correct articles just to get the link process going properly.