My recommendation would be to spend the time building more backlinks to your site, not someone else's.

Why only earn a small share of the link value when you could get the lot? You'll get better return on the time you invest link-building.

I'm my experience it's best to just move on and build the next link than worry about the one you've already got. Do your research first, check the domain authority and the page authority of articles that are currently in the same place on the site that you expect your article to be posted. (That way you can estimate the likely page authority).

Another thing to consider when guest-posting is direct traffic. Check the number of subscribes blogs have and see if you can get guest-posts on those. Look at the content that works on their blogs (the ones with the most tweets/comments) and the kind of headlines that seem to work. You can often see patterns!

Hope this helps!

As Chris and Houses have said, the focus should really be on what works for the readers of your blog.

In my experience, tags don't tend to work very well for people .As long as you've got good navigation, some well thought out categories and site search then this is enough.

The problems for search engines is that these tag pages can create lots of duplicate content if not implemented properly (just like categories). They'll also increase the number of links on a page.

If you want to surface related content, then in-line links to older content in proper context is better, and/or some related content listed at the bottom of the article can work.

It does depend on the goals for your blog pages through. Links to related content can decrease the number of comments that get left.

The question you need to ask is whether people using your tags? What does your analytics tell you? How many people are viewing tag pages and what are they doing next. How many people leave your site from a tag page, or a page following a tag page? Is this higher than normal?

If you're going to tag articles, don't just tag them because the article mentions you keyword. Try to think along the lines of "if I click on this tag, and look at this article, am I going to find what I expect". Try to think about topics of interest rather than keywords.

Fewer is better than lots. The more options you give people the more friction that causes - too many and people will just ignore it.

The performance of your snippet on the search result pages can be pretty variable and affected by a whole host of things.

The first big problem is advertising. If your ranking #1 on a SERP that has a high volume of ads then they will be diminishing the visibility of your site.

The ads you're competing with have a big advantage over your organic SERP. It's much easier for the advertiser to put specific language in their ad to entice searchers to click through. Matching the users intent and adding compelling benefits / reasons why they should visit their site. (eg: Prices you can't beat, free estimates, fitted in 1 day etc...)

Your snippet describes your business but it doesn't tell me "what's in it for me?" if I click though on the link. Your first words are "Custom Fabricator" which causes me some friction - This sounds like you might be b2b. Do you sell stuff direct to customers?

EGOL has some great advice about sharpening up your snippet.

You've got some reviews and testimonial - What is it that really matters to your customers? Sometimes it's not always what you think it is, or described in the language you'd use (as you're in the trade).

Another question is how much traffic is there for this search term and how "SEO" aware are your competitors. I've noticed that for some competitive terms the real search volume isn't as high as you think it is. I've come to the conclusion that certain terms can be inflated due to the amount of rank tracking going on!

How are your other keywords performing? Are you getting better results from keywords like "granite counter installation St Louis" for instance? Can you compare the CTR between keywords with a similar intent?

The thing is, you don't know what a good CTR for that particular SERP is. You don't know what you competitors (in ads, organic and local) are getting so it's difficult for you to say if you're earning your fair share.

Don't agree that that H1 tag should be your logo and I don't think this is what Yeost was getting at either.

According to this article on his blog, he suggests that the H1 tag on the homepage should be the "Blog's Name."

http://yoast.com/blog-headings-structure/

Single posts then have an H1 equal to the title of the article, and category pages would have the name of the description/tag.

You've got to be careful not to confuse the semantic structure of the content and the branding.

The function of the logo is to provide your content with a consistent brand across all page types. This isn't specific to the home page.

Besides, there are lots of logos that don't spell out their names of the entities they represent so you might want to have both your logo/ident and then say your company name spelt out in the H1.

You could also argue that the subject matter of the home page is not actually the brand/entity name but the value proposition - the "what's in it for you" and I've seen that used at the H1 heading too...

Just ask yourself what makes things easier for visitors to understand/interpret the content on the page depending on the type of site/organisation etc.

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From a "pure SEO" point of view, whitepapers (like any rich content) can really help get some good long-tale content on the site, and may earn some links if they're good.

My personal view is that whitepaper are more useful when it comes to conversion.

Whitepapers can be used to support your offering/your proposition by providing evidence that you've understood the prospects needs, delivered a great solution to ther problem that delivers real benefits to the customer. (and explain the unique benefits of your solution that they wouldn't have received from your competitors)

Such whitepapers, like other good content may attract links too (unless they're hidden behind a subscription form)

Well presented solutions to problems that your target audience experience are of interest to people who, as Casey mentioned, may be willing to provide their email address, join a mailing list in order to receive the whitepapers. Think about the value of building such a mailing list for the business.

I'd take a step back and think about what you're trying to acheive and how you can use white papers to support these goals.

Hope this helps.

If the user needs to read the title text to understand the link then you've probably got your anchor text and context wrong. Using them just to get a few additional keywords in your copy isn't going to help and might actually act as a distraction/source of confusion for users...

... and touch screen device users find it hard to hover.

Best practice is great starting point, but you need to work out what works for your audience, your offerings and your business.

For instance, having a call to action in your title can make a positive difference ("find" is a bit generic, but things like save, download the guide, buy now, etc can work, if it connects with the searchers intent.)

Luckily page titles are pretty easy to test - you'll need to keep an eye on your rankings and traffic and measure click-throughs for a suitable period depending on the search volume and taking into account any seasonality etc. As well as the traffic you receive, also look at the conversion rate too - especially important if you're testing for intent.

You can always tried a couple of variations in Adwords to see how they perform, especially for you more important keywords / pages.

The approach you take regarding your titles also depends on the type of page, the nature of the business, your specific business goals, the strength of your brand etc.

Take a good look at the other sites appearing in the SERPS and the titles/descriptions they're using. Put yourself in the place of your audience and try to see what's going to work and what isn't and how you might be able to differentiate your page from the rest.

Also remember that titles have to work in conjunction with the description. While the description isn't used for ranking, it can take some of the load of the title when it comes to supporting click-throughs.

Another point to consider is that Titles aren't just used in search engine results, but also when the page is shared / linked to etc. Depending on your site, you may want to adopt a slightly different strategy for your blog content than you use on a product catalogue for instance.

It might be a better user experience to create a specific landing page for these services at either the old URL or using a 301 redirect from the old service page to the landing page. The page doesn't have these visible in the menu and explain to visitors that the service is no longer being offered by present the partner site as an alternative.

That way the redirect doesn't come as a surprise, it provides some value to your visitors (who'll be able to find someone offering the service) and give you partner site a link.

Would your client be happy to referrer real life leads to the partner/friends site?

You might just have to wait to be re-crawled, but if you've got your site registered with Google Webmaster tools then you can try using the fetch as Googlebot feature.

You can find this under Health | Fetch as Googlebot in Webmaster Tools.

You can find more info here:

Google Support : Ask Google to crawl a page or site

Best way to get your pages indexed regularly is to keep adding good quality fresh content  and linking to older pages within your new articles (although do this is a natural/authentic way.)

Hope this helps.

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It's probably a bit of a balancing act. The advantage of using web fonts is that it makes the text that you would have "hidden" in images accessible - goof thing for SEO if the text includes keywords and/or describes the content.

As you say, the downside is the additional load time. This depends on the particular font and of course where it's hosted. I've used the google hosted fonts on a project and not had any significant problems with speed.

Speed can be a red herring though as you would have had to download the images before. If you're replacing lots of images with web fonts then you may actually be delivering fewer bytes.

Perception can be different though as the browser has to download the font before it can render the text.

My recommendation is to think about where your target audience / customers gather. You want to be where they are. This is going to vary greatly depending on your market/niche. Look for authoritative link opportunities from sites relevant to the website you're trying to promote.

An entry in a local directory is great for local tradesmen, but not so good for enterprise level business consultants.

Do your customers care that you're in DMOZ? Would they be interested in a review in a trade journal about the benefits your service/product can bring to their business?

Remember it's not just about links to improve rankings, it's about attracting relevant traffic to the site. So links that also get you direct traffic are also a win!

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