Welcome to the Q&A Forum

I use feedburner.  It allows people to subscribe to the feed from my blog by RSS and email.

Works great!

Thumbs up!

I have heard lots of people complain about the tool giving high numbers and then when you point out that they are looking at broad match numbers they realize their error.

I think that you could charge people who want to link to your site.

I agree with all that you have said.

The variation that you have is tbat you are going after quality followers/likers.

That works.  Also, having a high count might attract a few extra people but probably not quality people..

But paying to have a bunch of drunks following you isn't directly going to be beneficial unless your mission is to give  away cheap wine.

From my experience in watching the links accumulate on my own sites, I have arrived at the conclusion that link value accumulates for all anchor text variations.  And, If I already have ranks for KW1 and a ton of links come in for KW2 there is a very good possibility that rankings for KW1 will go UP.

If that is the case then why isn't every adwords marketer on the planet yelling about it?

I don't hear them.

Who but Google could provide better information about Google?  And, since Google is going to make money from your ads they should do their best to direct you to the proper keywords.

Will adding another say 50 high authority backlinks with anchortext keyword1 hurt our rankings for keyword2?

I believe that "high authority" links will help you for any keyword that you are optimized for.  I believe that backlinks pass anchor text value, they pass link popularity and some of them pass something more powerful and that is "trust".  Just personal opinion.  But I think that I am right.

What i am trying to ask here, is can you dilute existing backlink keyword anchortext by gaining backlinks with different anchortext?

If the Pope links to you, the Pope has linked.  Does not matter if a few drunks add their link, you if the Pope's link is still there.  Just opinion.

I was thinking of purchasing the ExampleVirtualiztion.ie

Dude, what are you waiting on????   It will be gone by sundown!

This thread is already in the SERPs.

Its not how many people are following you, its who is following you.

I always like to use the comparison... which is more important "100 drunks or one Pope?"

The real value of a follower occurs when they are paying attention to you and when they take an action based upon one of your tweets.

I don't think that the 100 followers for $5 people are going to be of any value.

.... but some people like to brag about numbers - even if they are meaningless.

I think that this client just doesn't understand how twitter works.  I'd email an article to him if you can find something appropriate.

Thanks for the information about nofollow in the of the page.

However I have seen much talk about this whether this really ads any value to the actual site.

huh?  They must not be thinkin' very hard.

So By searching videos on Google my site will NOT come up in the results for any embedded video. What would the actual value be?

Sometimes SEOs should think about doing things to please the visitors to their website.  

A great article supplemented by some great videos can be kickass linkbait... earn tweets, likes, recommends, get emailed.  Videos are rocket fuel content.

The word "video" on your page can pull traffic from search.

If you take the site visitor perspective you can probably think of a lot more ways that a video can benefit your site.

Those sites do work great for pop culture news... but I like some of Stephen's ideas.  What happens if you shoot a tank.... what happens if one falls out of your truck.... what happens if one is in or next to a fire...

These are questions of curiosity and also safety.

Those might not earn the slashdot effect but a lot of people have wondered about those questions.   I would try it.  I think that such an article would be worth at least 1000 press releases and maybe 100,000.

You might be able to prepare a safety .pdf with an embedded link or two and offer it to other propane dealers or customers for use on their own websites.  A video would be even better.

I don't think that it will hurt you... but I don't think that it will help much either.

If you write a release with yada yada yada text - meaning nobody is going to read your release and email their friends about it, then you can get some really low value links that will be worth even less over time from the press release sites and their scrapers. We don't spend any time on this activity.

However, if you have a press release or better yet an informative article that you believe lots of the people who read it will email to a friend or tweet or like... then don't waste it on the press release sites.  Instead toss it into a couple of sites like reddit, slashdot or stumbleupon.  If it is really good that will be like tossing gasoline on a fire.   This is what we are shooting for.  It takes really special content to succeed there but if you connect you can get 100,000 visitors in a day.... and that often translates into a lot of links, likes, tweets, etc.

Most important... when you use sites like reddit, slashdot and stumble the content remains on your own domain.  You are not giving it away to feed competitors and create new ones.

The problem is that link value overwhelmingly favours B over A.

Looks like you have a great opportunity to increase the rankings of A.

I have done this using the same method that you described.  We did a page-by-page 301 redirect of B to A - but all was on my own server that allowed multiple accounts - so no added cost.

Nobody knows exactly how Google and other search engines treat nofollow links.  And even when they reveal a little information about how they treat them they can always change their mind and not tell us.  This is part of the history of nofollow.

I would not waste any of my time chasing these links.  Part of the signal associated with these links is:  "they paid us".... "they spammed us"... "we don't trust them"

We gave you advice for what in our opinion was "best practice".  That generally works best with Google.

Have you ever considered the possibility that the more strongly a YouTube video is promoted and used the greater its ability to get good rankings and pull traffic on the YouTube site and in the Google SERPs?

Your attempt to sneak a second video into the SERPs might actually be successful in getting you less total traffic.

I still vote for using the YouTube video everywhere to run up the popularity stats.

Just an opinion.....

Don't worry about PR.  Give them a followed link.

If you nofollow the link you are sending these potential signals....

- this site paid me to link to them

- I don't trust this site

- this site could be spam

So, if you nofollow the link why should any clean power flow back to you?

I am not saying that the above is fact.  Just how I think about it.

I agree with Stephen.  Tons of lyrics websites out there.

If you want to get your site more visible write a couple to a few hundred words about each song and post it on the pages above or beside the lyrics.  Then you will have something unique.

Try that on a couple dozen pages to see what happens.  Give it a few months.

When I have new content I can't wait to get it indexed.  So even if I am not promoting it yet on the homepage I will put up links to it on relevant pages just to get spiders into it.

Five articles is no worry.

A couple years ago I had about a hundred pages that described closely related substances.  Their title tags consisted of the name of the substance and a few other words.  I launched those pages and saw where they ranked and decided to change the words in hopes of better rankings.  It worked good but not great as I was hoping.  So I changed them again, and then again... BAM... my rankings droped big time.  Like from bottom of first page to third page.  They stayed there for a few months then moved up.  Now almost all of those pages rank near the top of the first page.

Based upon this I think that Google is tolerant of a little bit of experimentation.  But when you really go at it you might get demoted for a while.  Now I don't monkey with title tags.  I research first and then launch.

Sometimes "perspectives" are more valuable than "answers".

Since most of the people who post in public Q&A are donating their time to your question maybe it is best to view their response as a  gift that can be ignored or accepted.

If I was going to hire an SEO I would have them explain in detail where my links would be coming from.  If I was going to hire an SEM I would ask them to explain in detail Google's quality score.  Answers to those questions would end lots of interviews quickly.

Now, getting to your question.  There are lots of people out there who are very very smart and know SEO and SEM inside and out.  There are plenty of people who could do either job better than most of the competitors out there.  If the scope of work needed on both the SEO and SEM side is limited I would try to get both of these jobs done by same provider - if I could find one who could impress me with both of the above questions.

However, if you have a big SEM campaign spending a lot of money you want to hire a person who really knows his stuff and who will watch over your wallet carefully. It is easy to blow an awful lot of money on SEM.  The same can be said for SEO.  Easy to blow a lot of money on someone who is unable to deliver.

A risk that you have with the above is that Mr SEM or Mr SEO could outsource your work or delegate it to someone of lower abilities.

That's my two cents.

...... Aaron, you seem to be a smart and ambitious person.  You are here at the right place asking good questions.  The more you learn the better position you will be in to hire and monitor the people who provide these services.... but maybe you would consider learning and doing one or both of these jobs yourself if you can get company support for training sessions, a daily hour ongoing for continued education and the rest of your time to keep these jobs in house instead of worrying about who is doing them and how?

Yep... I want to rack up the view count because that might influence how strongly YouTube promotes your videos.

I simply use the embed code provided by YouTube.  Works reliably and they cover the bandwidth.

Things look normal here. I don't see people crying in the forums.

You have a large, established site with great rankings and you want to tear it down and use the pieces to build a few hotdog stands?.... and you think that visitors are going to trust the hotdog stands more than they trust the large comapny who has expertise in covers of all kinds?

Lots of people would bet against your strategy.

Consider reversing your thinking from "what will be my loss to panda" into "what can I do to make this site kick ass".

Reach for opportunity, extend yourself.

If this was my site I would get a writer on those product descriptions to make them unquestionably unique, beef them up, add salesmanship and optimize them for search.  This will give you substantive unique content, that converts better, pulls more long tail traffic and moves out of competition with other sites that do the minimal.

Sure, it will cost money but in the long run it could bring back a huge return.

My only caution on this is that if you make this investment in writing you need to do that on a site that has can pull reasonable traffic.  If you do this on a site that has no links it will not do you much good.  It is part of a marketing plan not a single item on a "to do" list.

I agree with Sheldon, especially if there are cross-selling opportunities between the related services.

One challenge that you have is that insurance companies and medical groups already offer these services to control costs and direct patients to in-house services.

Best long term answer is beat their content. Another solution is to beat their links, but you are one panda-style update away from losing any questionable links.

There you have it in two clear sentences.  The methods and the risks.

Thumbs up!

If you believe you can provide this type of quality then repost in this thread and tell me and I will contact those of you who can for a sample order and select who I will use.

Jared,

You came into this thread asking a very different question.  Now you are soliciting us like we are content shops.  That's not a recipe for winning.

Please reread  my replies to your question above. It directed you to find a person who is already an effective writer and proven expert in your field.  These are people who write about a topic because they are experts who love the topic.  Not a person who needs to do a pile of research to meet the minimums of what you perceive to be good content.

Your post above tells me that you think that content in a specific field is a commodity that you can buy from almost any vendor for a few dollars per article and threaten the provider with bad feedback if the try to give you spin.

If you are looking for filler content you can probably get that for a few bucks per article and it will often be spin.  it will not attract links or climb the rankings.

My suggestion is to find the expert and be willing to pay several hundred dollars, maybe a couple thousand for one piece of best-on-the-web content.  Then promote that content like the treasure that it is.

If you want content experts who can do the above you must go out and find them not advertise.  That's my experience.

Or you, as a SEO guru, are telling us: just focus on [exact match] and forget the rest...

My advice was either:  A) get more links or B) rewrite all of the descriptions.

If I owned a site with this problem I would rewrite the descriptions.  It would be expensive but I bet I would make a lot of money. 

It sounds like you are looking for a "magic bullet" answer?

How to beat them?

Lots of people would say... "Beat their links"....

If this was my site I would say... "Beat their content"..that means a rewrite of the standard yada yada yada text that everybody is grabbing from the manufacturer's datafeed.  Then you are not competiting with the competitor on a lot of the long tail terms and you might be able to reoptimize for parallel terms that searchers are still using.

What are your thoughts one paying an SEO to do linkbuilding?

My thoughts on linkbuilding are different from those of most SEOs.  I attack rankings with content and let linkbuilding happen naturally.  That makes the links happen slowly, but nearly 100% of my time goes into producing permanent equity for the website.... and instead of paying a linkbuilder I would rather pay an author.

but sites that have a high domain authority will have to be manually done by someone in house.

I agree.  Although we generally do not do link building we occasionally request a link from an authoritative website.  I make all of those contacts myself.  If they will be linking to us based upon the merits of our content then someone who can speak to the content will be the most qualified for making the request.  The more technical in nature your content becomes the more important it is to have content area expertise making the contact.

The answer depends upon how much your content is changing and what type of links your are "building".

If you are getting links into articles that will be on the same URL before and after the rebuild then getting links into them now is fine.

If your content is going to move to new URLs then getting links after the move will have best results.

If your content is going to change significantly then webmasters who link to you now might not like what you have up later and it might be easier to get them to link to improved content.

As for methods of getting the links... if you are buying them or getting them from sites who have some partnership with you  then you don't have to worry about editorial decisions... however, if these links are to be given on the basis of merit then you should wait until you have super design and best possible content before you spend time on linkbuilding.

See... the question is complicated.

To answer your question....  In low competition SERPs, onpage optimization is very important, however, as competition becomes extreme you are engaged in a "battle of links."

In your situation... travel.... you are going into a battle of links although there can be some long tail plays where overwhelming linkstrength is not required.

I am just starting with the SEO and I have a client in the travel industry whose website is not ranked well on the search engines.

If I was a new SEO I would probably cut my teeth on local sites rather than going out to battle the heavyweights in travel.  Based upon the level of SEO understanding that you revealed in your question....  I think that you need to do a lot of studying fast or get an experienced SEO to help you with this job.   Just my two cents.

Based upon watching a limited number of sites I believe that Bing is more influenced by onpage factors than Google... and Google is more influenced by links and domain authority than Bing.

We are working our butts off to do eveything else.

When I do a search for my domain name in quotations.... such as.... "example.com"... the SERPs returned come close to my opinion of "important pages".

Right... they are not my most important pages.... although for some sites the index pages of their main folders could be their most important pages.

It depends how you define important.  To me important pages are linkgetters, moneymakers and traffic fetchers.

This is really bad for the little guy who might have superior product and service and information but who doesn't have the resources to go after all of these bells and whistles.

When I do site:example.com for my websites it returns the index pages of my folder structure.

My important pages in terms of pagerank or traffic or even link structure are deep in those SERPs.

How do I track its effectiveness?

AddThis has analytics for your account.  You can go in there and see what is getting shared, what service it is shared by and a lot more.  If you change location of the widget you can see if it changed the number of actions that you are getting.

You can even see how many people click on the shares via facebook.  If it gets more than 100% rate they call it "viral".

Would you use Addthis widget or manual buttons on ecommerce?

We have add this on every page of every important site that we own - retail and information. We have it at two locations on every page of our information site.  The big buttons in the header and smaller buttons within content.

Find out how much traffic you would be walking away from if you block them from the index.   My category pages bring in huge traffic - more than most websites receive.  I sure would not block them.  Also those pages attract a lot of links, likes, etc.  If I block them from the SERPs those benefits would be gone.

My advice is to understand the website better..  Then make a decision based upon data.

If you have lots of very high quality content it will attract natural links faster than a human linkbuilder.  And the quality of those links will be higher than what a human linkbuilder would acquire.

This will not work if your content is low quality or mediocre.

I post all of my content on my own site, I don't give any of it away by syndication and guest posting... and forgot about linkbuilding a long time ago.

I can tell that you are a very energetic person who can write copious content.

I would spend the next several months writing My Message and spend zero time worrying about links.

You received the same advice here from iNet SEO.