Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hey Ruben,

I am seeing your page on the bottom of Page 2 on two different ISPs.  #19

I think that it will go a little higher.

That wasn't it - they didn't even propose a new budget and there was no reason to think we couldn't afford it at the time. .. Gartner group came and did an analysis of the sector and also backed off - saying the market was too fragmented for them to determine if it was safe to recommend investment.

That sounds very fair.  They didn't charge you for a market evaluation.  There are a lot of companies who would have given you a monthly price without the evaluation and a couple years later you would have pulled the plug on them.  This analysis could be true (then or now).

... the problem is that we would have to pay the equivalent of one year's salary to find out if that is even possible.

You pay your money and take your chance.  If you are not busting with confidence that you can kickass here then maybe that is the sign that you should look at a different project.   If I am not feeling kickass about something , I don't invest.

How Quickly I should Add products and categories in this new domain. We are going to start its promotional by google adwords and facebook.  I worrying about 10000's of product pages. kindly guide me.

To avoid huge losses, I would start with your best 100 products.  See if you can make money.  If you don't make money give thanks that you didn't go all in.

I wouldn't bet a lot.   It's really hard for anybody who is less than expert to make a profit in adwords.

What would be considered a realistic monthly budget - given that the business itself is quite small?

The realistic monthly budget depends upon the amount of work that needs to be done.  That depends upon the current condition of the site, the industry that you are competing in, and who you are competing against.  This requires an detailed SEO audit.  Anybody who gives you a number without doing that work is guessing.

The fact that this business is small is irrelevant.  If you don't have the resources to compete then you are wasting any lower amount of resources that you put into the project.   That means, anybody who just says.... We will do it for $5000/month is wasting your money if $20,000/month is needed.  It's like sending me out to fight the heavyweight champ.  I am going to get my ass kicked.

The problem is that the revenue from any one particular keyword term doesn't return enough sales to make the effort worthwhile - sales are scattered allover the product spectrum.

This means that you are poorly optimized, underpowered compared to the competition, are penalized, or are in a sleepy industry with low volume.   Or you have multiple of these problems.   So, the more of these you must solve the higher your cost is going to be.  Meaning. Anybody who gives you a budget number without doing a lot of work is spouting baloney.

Everyone here knows that SEM and SEO "experts" are everywhere.

Right... if you hire the right one, after an initial ramp up, you should be able to support the cost of the SEO with the additional profits generated.   You just gotta hire the right one.  The one who studies and understands before giving you a budget and refuses to allow you to talk him down to an amount that is lower than the resources needed to compete.

In our earliest days, one SEM "pioneer" company issued us a refund after realizing they couldn't do anything to affect our placement.

Maybe your budget was too low to be effective, so SEO said... just give them their money back, it ain't a lot.

Hi Adam,

I am really lucky and thankful that I am the owner here and don't have a board of directors.

If I was an employee and had a board of directors, I would tell them to imagine that we are driving on the highway and this guy is speeding.  I would then tell them what might happen if we start speeding too...  we could get a fine, we might have an accident, we might get there two minutes sooner.

If we speed with our domain we might get a ban, that would drop our revenue by $XXX,XXX per month, no traffic from Google, we could be down with that penalty indefinitely, if we speed, get above this guy for a couple of keywords that might increase our revenue by $xx,xxx per month.

So, based upon that analysis, I would not do anything about it.  I would keep working on our website to make it better.   THAT IS HOW I WOULD INCREASE OUR REVENUE.   You will always be passed by occasional speeders, I don't think that we should chase every one of them.  STAY FOCUSED ON OUR MISSION.

Then I would ask the board of directors, "What do you think we should do about it?   Just let me know."

Getting philosophical here...   If I had a board of directors who, in a situation like this, pointed at me like I am a kid in a school yard and saying "what are you going to do about it?"... I would have to respond by educating them first.  If they responded well to education then I would be satisfied. But, if they persisted in the "what are you going to do about it" attitude then I would realize that I am working in a situation that does not suit me well.

You are getting a lot of diverse answers but Moosa has identified the key....

My advice would be to get quick links, whoever is syndicating your content ask them to link to the main source plus try playing around with cross domain canonicals and that might really help if the people who syndicate your content can add it on their website.

It does not matter who gets indexed first, adds new posts to sitemap, gets tweeted, gets fetched...  Google generally respects strength and generally obeys canonicals.

So can I please ask the community to tell me what course of action you would take, if this was happening to you?

I pay zero attention to it.  I keep working on my site.

we have A LOT of old blogs that were not well written and honestly are not overly relevant.

Wow.... it is great to hear someone looking at their content and deciding that he can kick it up a notch.  I have seen a lot of people would never, ever, pull the kill switch on an old blog post.  In fact they are still out there hiring people to write stuff that is really crappy.

If this was my site I would first check to be sure that I don't have a penguin or unnatural links problem.  If you think you are OK there, here is what I would do.

1. I would look at those blog posts to see if any of them have any traffic, link or revenue value.  Value is defined as... A) Traffic from any search engine or other quality source,  B) valuable links,  C) viewing by current website visitors,  D) traffic who enter through those pages making any income through ads or purchases.

2. If any of them pass the value test above then I would improve that page.  I would put a nice amount of work into that page.

3. Next I would look at each of those blog posts and see if any have content value.  That means an idea that could be developed into valuable content... or valuable content that could be simply rewritten to a higher standard.  Valuable content is defined as a topic that might pull traffic from search or be consumed by current site visitors.

4. If any pass the valuable content test then I would improve them.  I would make them kickass.

5. After you have done the above, I would pull the plug on everything else.... or if I was feeling charitable I would offer them to a competitor. 

Salutes to you for having the courage to clean some slates.

So, what do you think about my notion of using news articles with links to landing pages embedded as a means of getting page rank juice flowing and ultimately ranking the landing pages. Viable?

Yes.  I would do it.

I do that on my site.  In fact, I have a wordpress plug-in named "SEO Smart Links" that automatically inserts a lot of those links.  You give it a list of keywords and URLs.. When the keyword occurs in a wordpress post it is hyperlinked to the URL that you specify.   On top of that, the server-side includes as described above put links into new blog posts from the most relevant pages across my entire site.  Just publish a post and BAM!!!  Dozens to hundreds of absolutely relevant links.

I do that mainly for driving traffic... but I know that there is a small linkjuice benefit - especially if the pages where the links are published have a lot of inbound links from other websites.

If I want to do a linkjuice play I put the link in my persistent navigation.  I know that links in my persistent navigation are very helpful for ranking a page of content and I have over 100 links in the persistent navigation.  This is a PR7 site with a hundreds of PR6 and PR5 pages - so I think that it has the juice to support it.

• The community is convinced they can sell anyone on the community if they talk to them

They will NOT close one single sale by phone.

Unfortunately, I visit these places frequently and have done that for years.  The selling points really are.... Location (how far family has to drive to visit), price (can vary by thousands of dollars per month), quality of facilities and food, attention of staff to the daily needs of residents (rapid assessment is a quick check of toenails trimmed and teeth brushed), and does the place smell like pee (two steps into the building can clear your brain of the finest salesmanship).

If they want to close the deal they got to get the people into their facility and impress them.  The people who make the decisions about this purchase fall into two groups...

1. urgent buyers - these folks are really busy, really stressed, and often working on immediate deadlines because their family member is being discharged from a hospital or has lost a caregiver.

2. savvy consumers - their parent is already in one of these facilities and they are looking for something better.  They will not be fooled by BS on the phone.  They know the deficits of their parents' current living arrangement and are trying to make an important improvement.

The reputation of these facilities is often widely known.  If you have a great facility there will be a long waiting list to get in.  Salesmanship will not be needed.  When salesmanship is needed the buyer will believe what he sees rather than what he is told.

Could these be shopped for links and RSS'ed out?

Yes.  Lots of people know how to get an RSS feed without your help from a wordpress category.  But if you offer links to them then anyone who wants them can subscribe.  Lots of people subscribe to our categories by RSS.   Also, lots of links go to our category pages from industry niche sites.  Some publish our RSS feeds on their own sites.

Your use of "Link Earning" got my attention. 

I looked at your site and saw that you do have content that can earn links.  Nice work!

I have a site that publishes similar articles but in a different industry.  Out best performing page to get links and bring people to the site daily is an industry news page.   We use a wordpress blog to post one, two or three sentence news blurbs that link to informative content or news that exists anywhere on the web.

We generally have six to ten posts scheduled to go out about three to four times a week.  These go out in a feedburner email message and lots of people subscribe by RSS feed.  Because those posts are so short the are noindexed but we have over 100 category pages that are indexed, bring in tons of traffic from search and attract likes, links, RSS subscrivers and tweets for people who want to follow a smaller niche.

This news index page brings a few thousand visitors per day to the site (in a smaller industry than yours) and has about 20,000 RSS and email subscribers accumulated over several years.  When we have new content it is given a post and that immediately brings in a lot of interested people who tweet, like, email and share.

We wrote a perl script that scrapes the category feeds and republishes a server side include for the eight most recent posts (by category).  That include is posted on each article page in that category and brings lots of readers to the news category page.  Another program scrapes the entire feed and publishes a server side include for the most recent twenty posts.  This include appears on our homepage.  Lots of people daily come to our homepage to look at that list and click what they want to read.

Since you are producing so much content a similar blog could be a good way to blast your content out there to interested people and pull them into your site when you have new content.

I see.

I think that there are a lot of different types of people out there.

There are a lot of questions..... Will the client have a skilled closer at the phone 24/7?  If not, they will probably miss clients in different time zones and who look for information at different times per day.

I would be disappointed if the phone didn't answer or if I got an untrained person... then I would be adding their phone number to tomorrow's "to do list"... no, I wouldn't do that, I would call their competitor.... no, I would not do that either because I would want to read, study and compare before I get an obnoxious deal closer on the phone.

So, a better route might be to serve the phone number while the deal closer is on duty and have a form to collect data when his is not on duty or on another phone line or in the crapper.  The deal closer could have a control panel where he pushes a button and the page gets changed from a phone pitch to a form.

Honestly.....   You don't want people who have no idea who your customers are, who your client is or what you are selling to be guessin' and kibitzin' about this.

You need to test this and see which one makes the most money.   If you don't test a bunch of different options then there is almost a certainty that you will leave a lot of money on the table month after month after month.

I'd be working on a bunch of options to test and a method of collecting good data.

How long have you guys been arguing about this?   The website visitors are the ONLY people with the answer.

I think that you got great information from Gregory and Yusuf.

Pages are a little thin on content.

I absolutely agree.  Many retail pages have no content.  Others have really thin content.   This site has potential for a Panda penalty.

And are those product descriptions copied from another site?

I grabbed a few random sentences from product descriptions and identical descriptions appear on dozens to hundreds of other sites.  This website will not live long in at least the Google SERPs with that much thin and copied content.

if you're on your lunch break and have 5 mins to hand....

Five minute advice is one of the greatest perils of Q&A.  If you are going to make a greater investment into this site (writing your own content will be very costly) it would be a good idea to have a full list of the necessary work so you can make a good decision before you spend more money.  You can learn more about Panda, Penguin and other problems here and possibly correlate your traffic drop date to a google update... and/or you can hire a person experienced with penalized sites to do an assessment.

I have a page on one of my sites (DomainA) that was originally published on another one of my sites (DomainB).  I have rel=canonical on the DomainA page pointing to the same page on DomainB.  I also have a link that says something like... "Originally published on DomainB.com".

It seems to be working great.  The page on DomainA does not appear in the Google, Bing or Yahoo SERPs.  The page on DomainB has kickass rankings in all three search engines.

Phil,

When I do the "Tampa Car Accident Attorney" query I see Ruben's site at #2 in the organic listings and the video at #3.  This is searching from Pennsylvania, using two different ISPs (tested chrome and safari) and not logged into any Google Service.

Too many blogs are "corporate blather'.

If you have been active in your industry for any length of time you should be able to do these things for your customers....

1. answer the questions that customers repeatedly ask about (receptionists, sales people and others who have first-contact-with-customers can tell you this)

2. answer the questions that customers are not asking but they really need to know (the guys in maintenance and repair can tell you this)

3. tell customers the things that will surprise them (these are amazing customer testimony, performance stats from manufacturer testing, data from your repair guys, comparisons with competing products... this is the stuff that your R&D staff and customer service people can tell you - have them chat it up with enthusiastic customers)

Honestly, nobody is going to thumbs up, share and link to "crap about your company" even if you think that it is "real company shit".  However, they will thumb up, share and link to the three items above.

Move the focus from "your company" to "your customer"  You need to tailor the message... "To what your customers want to know, will find useful or find interesting, entertaining or helpful."

This is "real customer shit".

I really like Alan's answer.

I think that the three questions one must ask are...

Q1: Why are you writing?

Q2: What is the content quality?

Q3: Why are you linking?

A1: On my site I am writing because I have something to say that I genuinely believe that people want to know and should read. I am also doing a lot of writing because I know that there is search volume for the content. I am trying to produce a quality content resource for the visitor. I am not blathering.

A2: My goal is to produce several hundred to a few thousand words of content with several great photos, interesting graphs, attractive graphics and tabulated data. Before I write, I make sure that I am going to produce content that will be one of the best pages on the web for that topic. It is high quality content deliberately produced because people are searching for it. I am not blathering just to get a page up. This content can take several days per page to produce.

A3: When I link, I am linking to additional information that the reader might want. Often that content is on my own website and for that my links are similar to the in-content links on wikipedia - where a keyword links to another page on my site that matches the topic perfectly. I also often link to several other pages on websites that I don't own and those links are going to content that is superior to mine in some way. Again like wikipedia.

If you are writing and linking with a purpose then you might be doing well. You can assess that by determining if visitors are "liking" or "sharing" your content. If that is happening then you are doing fine. If that is not happening then maybe you are blathering because you want to put links in the content. If that is the case I would post less often and post higher quality. It will be a greater bang for the buck.

Arbitrageurs killed the penny Adwords clicks about ten years ago.  Today, I think that you will be lucky to find any clicks that go for less than ten cents each.

Today you can find a SERP with huge traffic and no ads.  You will think "I can get cheap clicks there".  They do not exist.  Google will run your ads for a few thousand impressions and then force you to bid an amazing price.

I just want to say....  "Nice work!"  on creating some content that went viral.

Here is something to think about for the future....

If you are receiving lots of traffic from other countries on a regular basis you could use Google's Double Click Ad Server to display income-producing ads to visitors from countries outside of Ecuador.    You simply create a dedicated space on each of your pages where the ad will be displayed.  When a visitor from Ecuador arrives that person will see an ad for one of your Spa products.  When a person from outside of Ecuador arrives that person will see an adsense ad.

Just typing this has given me an idea on how I can profit from this on one of my sites.  The reward of commenting on forums.

Good luck!

<title><strong>Secrets</strong> xxx xxxxxx xxxxx xxx xxx</title>   Everybody wants to be in on the secret.  Mystery, controversy gets lots of clicks.

<title>xxxx xxxx xxxxxx xxx <strong>Only $XX.XX</strong></title>    If you can't outrank the manufacturer who charges MSRP, then offer a fantastic discount.  You can rank and #2 and take ALL of their sales.

<title>xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxx <strong>Ships Immediately</strong></title>  Everybody wants their stuff yesterday.  Lots of people are in a hurry.

<title><strong>Free Beer</strong> xxxx xxxxx xxxxxx xxx</title>  Everybody clicks just to see if its true.

<title>xxxx xxxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx<strong>?</strong></title>  (questions elicit more clicks than statements)

<title><strong>OMG!</strong> xxx xxxxxx xxxxx  xxxxxxx</title>  Every dumbass will click this.

<title><strong>Who says that</strong> xxx  xxxxxx xxxxxxxx<strong>?</strong></title>   Dumbasses are suckers for this too.

<title>xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxx <strong>Free Shipping</strong></title> People hate shipping charges more than sales tax.

<title><strong>My Sorryass Brand:</strong> xxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx</title>  Unless you are so famous that your brand name alone will elicit clicks, don't put your sorryass brand on the front of the title tag.  Nobody cares.  Instead tell them you go what they are looking for.

<title>xxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx - <strong>My Sorryass Brand</strong></title>  This is a waste of title tag real estate too.

<title><strong>Grass Skirts</strong></title>   Sometimes your keyword is all that you need.  Don't stink it up with your ego or a bunch of SEO crap.  These short title tags can rank really well and pull in the clicks.

Before you  write your title tag, ask yourself what the searcher is really looking for.  Then if you offer that get it in the title tag.  If you don't offer that you better get it.

Go out and look at your competitors title tags.    If they are offering <title>Haircuts - Only $5.00</title>  then maybe you want to say  <title>We fix bad haircuts $25.00</title>

Learn more here http://moz.com/learn/seo/title-tag

I don't want my home address or phone on my websites because I don't want people coming to my house on business matters and I don't want the phone calls.  There are many legitimate reasons why a person would not want these things published.

But, Google has a definite bias towards people and businesses who list their name address and phone on a website.  Here is a quote from one of Eric Schmidt's books, as quoted in a SearchEngineWatch.com article at http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2241704/Eric-Schmidt-Google-Will-Give-Higher-Rankings-to-Content-Tied-to-Verified-Profiles.

“Within search results, information tied to verified online profiles will be ranked higher than content without such verification, which will result in most users naturally clicking on the top (verified) results. The true cost of remaining anonymous, then, might be irrelevance.”

The part of this that bothers me is how difficult google makes it to speak to members of their product team such as adsense or adwords.  Their business model is based upon allowing machines to do all of the work.  Part of that is being one of the most-difficult-to-contact companies on this planet - yet they want all other companies to be on an available for interaction 24/7/365.

I'm concerned google will see links to a blank page no-index page and find it suspect.

I don't know about the SEO impact.  I simply would not want pages of smutty stuff looking like it is on my site.

How much work is necessary when doing competitor analysis? What things do you analyse?

I look at the content on the first page of the SERPs for the keywords that I will compete for.  If I think that I can beat that content or at least be reasonably competitive then I will start working.  I don't look at anything else other than make note of which domains are competing.  If the domains are ones that I have not heard of then I feel that I have picked a good place to compete.

lol...  if you really want a grin, I should forward some of the crap people send to me.   I have decided that most people who send me infographics are doing that because they can't write articles.... and they can't create infographics either.   So I have blocked their entire domains from my inbox.  PTL that gmail allows an unlimited number of filters.

There is an opposite of "asset" and that is "liability".

Some infographics are assets because they are artistically well done, informative, and about topics that people want to know about.  However, infographics that are poorly done artistically, contain factual errors or have other problems can be liabilities because they stink up your brand.

Most of the infographics that people send to me and ask me to post on my website are weak assets because they are poorly done or of zero value to me because they are irrelevant to my website.  So, something that is an asset to you might have no value to me.

Great.  I think that will help a lot.  Please post here if you see improvement.

My bet is that the Pasco page competes better than the Tampa page because the Pasco page is the one getting a site-wide link in your footer navigation.

This is the URL in the footer nav...

http://www.kempruge.com/personal-injury/

Link to the Tampa page in the footer and I think that you will have better results for two reasons:   The Tampa page is optimized for the "Tampa Personal Injury Attorney" query... and the Tampa page will have site-wide link, telling google that it is more important than the Pasco page (which receives very few links on your site from what I can see.)

I would also make a link from your google plus page to the page that you prefer in the rankings.

This page is optimized for Tampa Personal Injury Attorney

http://www.kempruge.com/location/tampa/tampa-personal-injury-legal-attorneys/

The title tag is:  <title>Tampa Personal Injury Attorney | Free Consultationtitle>

The page below is optimized for a different query - so it would not surprise me if it competes poorly...

http://www.kempruge.com/personal-injury/

The title tag is :  <title>Personal Injury Attorneys, Lawyers | Pasco County | Free Consultationtitle>

==========================

When I search for Tampa Personal Injury Attorney I don't see your Tampa page, I see your Pasco County Page.   So, I am suspecting some problem with the Tampa page.

Is that what you are seeing?

What KW phrase are you talking about ?

These two pages have very different title tags.  One is targeting a city and the other a county.  So, if your keyword represents a geographic query these pages might not be expected to replace one another.

Would it be beneficial for our PR to have an author?

Maybe.

Depends who is the author.

Although most press releases are written for an organization that is not a law or a requirement.  Imagine a press release written in the first person by Chris Christie on bridge traffic... or by Dr. Richard Besser on a new measles vaccine... or by Pope Francis on "Who am I to judge".  Those would get awesome attention.

Now, if Joe Schmoe is writing about any of those topics... people will not care about it.

So, if you have somebody who is somebody who will be doing the writing it might be to your advantage to use them.

And, if you are thinking about this from a google authorship perspective a sleepy press release written by a schlepper might have negative value compared to something inspiring written by the nameless author.

If you were to write a technical article in a magazine for example, you would typically cite anyone you referenced in your article to give them credit for the piece you referred to. So, if you write a blog post for your site, why shouldn't you do the same? It seems normal and authentic to do that and if you are going to credit them, why wrap a nofollow around it?

I agree.  If you write an awesome article and it includes reference links out to other websites that are superior to your page on some aspect of the topic then your article becomes a much more valuable document for the reader.

The more valuable your article to the reader the more likely it will be that your article receives links, likes, tweets and other positive attention.  That is the SEO and social value of the citation links.  So, in my opinion, they do indeed have value and I often include them in my articles.

In addition, there are many pages on the web that link out to hundreds of other webpages.  Let's say you are linking out to all of the medical centers and physicians who provide treatment for a rare disease.  That is something that you can't find in a simple search and could take hours and hours of expert research to compile.  It could be a lifesaving resource for some people.  So a page that is nothing more than a list of links and one paragraph of explaination can be quite valuable and merit links and social attention from many directions.

Hi Guy,  I remember seeing you at SEOChat a while back.

If you have figured out how to fulfill the giveaway with no problem then it sounds like a great thing.

I don't see anything about giveaways that suggest that they are anything less than white hat.

Almost everybody loves freebies.. So, I would go for it.

Cyto,  that is one of the best analyses that I have seen in a long time.

Thumbs up!

Thanks for the laugh.. Gagan.    That is a really funny quote from Buffet.

I am going to go make a page like this just so my competitors will get their panties in a wad. 

I am running giveaways with increased traffic but no effect on organic rewsults.

Depends what your giveaway is.

If you are giving away free downloadable files or free access to a tool or anything that does not cost you continued time and expense then it might work.  For example the free tool access or free file downloads might result in people typing your domain into google as a querry, it might generate links and likes for your site... and if these digital giveaways are not causing people to call you on the phone for questions and assistance then I would keep offering them.  I have some giveaways of this type on my sites and I think that they might be helpful in the SERPs because people are asking for my site in google search by name and people link to the giveaway stuff.  I also earn ad and affiliate income from the giveaway pages.

But... if you are giving away physical product like baseball caps, t-shirts, etc that have to be mailed that is very different.  These are going to be a constant spend of money, a constant stream of emails and phone calls from people who are wah wah wah... I didn't get one, mine did't fit, can you mail one to my brother? his address is Crater 10 on Mars?  Can you send one for all of the kids in my class... there are 425 of us? 

These giveaways might bring people to your site but most of them don't give a damn about your site - they just want the giveaway.

we doubled her traffic and were just waiting for the off site seo to start to have an effect but she said it was taking too long and went somewhere else.

Hey... if bolding the keywords was a kickass method you would be seeing it EVERYWHERE!

I don't do that on my site because it gives the site a bad odor.

Don't worry so much about why she left.  Start thinking about how to handle it when she returns. These guys could build a ton of junk links for you.

If you have copies of the files when you stopped work, you will not have to search the entire site to remove the code that these people have added.

Federico... I am starting to read more and more of your posts.    Giving you lots of thumbs up!

I see your "historical moz points" line is getting steeper because lots of people are starting to read your posts and give you thumbs up.

http://moz.com/community/users/372560

Nice work!

Looks like you have unique content.   But I don't see much reason that this site should rank for those queries.

Here are some things that should help....

===================================================

If you want to rank for "best lsat prep" then you need a page with a razor sharp focus on that query.  I did this search and did not find any pages that made you a competitor.   Where is your page that kills that topic?

If this was my site I would create a page that is all about that topic and present it without trying to shill myself.  Include  a title tag that is provocative and elicits the click.... maybe... "What is the Best LSAT Prep for You?"   (questions usually elicit more clicks than statements).    I would have hard hitting video, full transcript plus links to supplemental documents that hit that topic hard.   Maybe printable pdf check list...  "Getting your best LSAT prep"... and other genuinely useful documents that continue to target this topic from different angles and are well optimized.

Well optimized pages have "best lsat prep" on the left side of the title tag and on-page elements that make the page relevant for that exact query.  That includes H1, phrase in text, and substantive unique content.

Well optimized pages also contain images, media and links to supplemental documents that are all about "best lsat prep". I might embed a video that has "best lsat prep" in the title and speaks directly to that subject.  Not a side-swipe.  Directly.

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Your site is not as strong as the competition.  Not as well optimized.  Can you produce some content that would be fantastic resources that university department websites and law schools might link to?  Right now your link profile is thin and low quality.   How about some free guides on What is the Best LSAT Prep for You?   These will deliver power to your site, and traffic who might seek your service if you impress them with what you do for free.

The pages on your site that focus the best on LSAT Preparation are marketing your business.  If you want to build a powerful, highly trafficked site that demonstrates your expertise, attracts recommendations and visitors I would put the focus on being helpful first and marketing second.

The sites that I own that sell the most are the most helpful to potential customers in their business niche or the most helpful site that offers a product.

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Another problem that your website has is inconsistent URLs.

If you do this search.... you will see several pages of your site listed with both the www (www.advisein.com) and non www (advisein.com) URL.   Note the "Letter from our Founder" listing.  It appears twice as does others.

This should be fixed with a 301 redirect to your non www URL.   Perhaps your server allows htaccess files.  Also, all of your internal links should be without the www.  Most of them are from what I have seen.

Correcting this should increase the power of your site because you will not have all of those duplicate pages out there.

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As you can see, most of my recommendations are things that should be done by the owner of this website and not by the SEO.  The owner needs to get his expertise out there and make a site that attracts traffic because it has assets that attract visitors and recommendations.

Good luck.

I agree.  I think that the BBB is not a paid link.  You are not paying them for a link.  You are paying them for a rating and paying to give your customers a recourse to complain about you.  Your rating can drop to a  D if your  customers complain or stay at an A if you treat them well.

Anyone who is concerned about this should spend the money required to purchase an EMD.    If you think that the EMD makes a difference in the SERPs this will be the easiest and fastest SEO that you will ever do.  Just find the guy who owns it, pay him his price and write a decent page of content.  DONE!

All of my websites are EMDs.  They do have a tiny advantage in the SERPs if you publish decent content on them.  I am willing to pay good money for an EMD when I decide to build a new site (which isn't very often because the cost of a good domain and the content for a good site is quite high).

Up until a couple years ago an EMD was a huge advantage in the SERPs.  Then Google cranked back their impact upon SERPs.  Today in light competition an EMD can rank you above thin competition with the effort of writing decent content for the topic - but at the same time they can be easily defeated by a person who is willing to work.  In heavy competition the EMD is a very small advantage compared to the other work that must be done to win those SERPs.

In my opinion, the conversion rate on an EMD can be higher than on other sites.  That is worth the price in my opinion.  Also, owning the EMD gives me mental energy to work on the site.  That makes all of the difference in competion.  They guy with mental energy beats everyone who is slacking.

5)  Maybe there's another option I haven't considered.

Here's how I determine the value of my blogs...

A) how many visitors do they pull in (these generate ad income)

B) how many of those visitors are bouncing

C) how many of those visitors buy something

D) how much social action and linklove is being generated

If you ask those questions about your existing blog you might have a better perspective on killing, pimping or cutting loose.   You might also discover what is working on that blog and use that as guide to creating more of what has worked in the past.  In addition, if you find dead wood on the blog you know what to cut loose and what to avoid doing going forward.  The analytics of the old blog can inform your future path.

The main reason we're re-installing the forums is for SEO value. HOWEVER, since our forum content will be on another domain, will we have an issue?

I think that you smell the problem.

I would be looking for a different host....  One that does not require me to run my forum in an outhouse.

Women's health issues can vary geographically.  Those of concern in your area can be different from those in other areas.

In most communities there are a few physicians, professors, social service workers, who are experts on this type of topic.  They might be found at universities, hospitals, physicians offices, home health providers, county/city government.

You could develop a content plan that includes interviews with several of these types of professionals, each sharing his/her expertise on one or more issues in your area.  The physicians or administrators at your client's office might be able to help select these people for a number of topics.  Perhaps they would want to do the interview instead of you because they are conversant on these topics and familiar with these people.

The professional being interviewed can be a source of the questions because they know the issues and know what message they want to get out. This might  even be done by questionnaire, asking them to identify a few important issues and elaborate.  IMPORTANT:  Each interview should conclude with "where to get help / more information" on the issues covered.

Their website could become a rich source of information.  It could have charts/maps/time lines showing issues compared among age groups and other demographic variables.  It might be referenced by government agencies, schools, health care organizations.  If done superbely it would be a real white hat for the client to wear.

Glad you are looking to prioritize.

My first priority would be to get an education.   The more education I have obtained the better my results.  However, I only use adwords for a very small percentage of the items that I sell.

If you want to compete in adwords you should pick a product that you can purchase in volume at a fantastic price, pack and ship efficiently and at very low cost.

Why?  Because for most products you are competing against a person who is able to purchase at 60% below MSRP instead of the 40% below MSRP that most people receive.  He also has a website that is finely researched and tested to obtain an extremely high conversion rate.  And, he has high volume purchasing that gets him rock bottom prices on shipping, shipping supplies... along with an extremely efficient warehouse that gets orders out at lowest possible employee cost.

Adwords is a mathematical game of profit margins, bid amounts and conversion rates.  You need to become a mathematics expert to find the sweet spot among bidding levels, conversion rates and profit margins.

I have posted information about getting an adwords education here...  http://moz.com/community/q/adwords-training-resources

Some information about an adwords alternative here... http://moz.com/community/q/seo-is-dead-long-live-adwords

As I understand authorship, the goal of google launching it is to identify authors who are popular and authoritative.

The person who produces great content has the best opportunity to benefit from authorship, and his/her clients will benefit at the same time.  At present, google might not be using it to rank pages in the SERPs, however, it is very likely that they will use it in the future.

A person who is producing utility content might receive very little benefit, or even dilute the value of his/her best content.

So, what I am doing is claiming authorship of the premium material that I produce (that being defined as a page of content that is one of the best on the web for its topic) and not claiming it on utility writing.

Part of authorship is claiming YOUR brand.  If you produce great content then people who search frequently in the topic areas where you produce content will see your photo beside your content in the SERPs.  That can build a tribe of people who like your work and might earn you higher CTR over time.  This will benefit you on all future author-claimed work.  It can also benefit your clients - which can make you a more valuable author - especially if authorship becomes an important factor in ranking webpages.

I run my buttons through forms.  Thus no links and no "product pages" generated by the shopping cart.

This enables me to produce most of my sales from minor category pages with multiple products or multiple varieties of single products.  I believe that these single pages compete better in the search engines that four or more separate pages.  I also believe that they result in more items being added to the cart - because the customer sees the variety.

Eliminating all of those product pages gives me a much smaller and more compact site that I believe competes better in the SERPs.  It also enables me to produce custom product pages that are not possible through the cart's product page template.  They can be optimized like finely crafted arrows instead of being made by a cookie cutter program.

If you don't know how to produce form code, ask your cart provider for help.   My code looks something like this.

<form action="https://secure.example.com/cgi-bin/addtocart?MERCHANTID=EGOL&ADD=id-tool-225" method="post"><input type="<a class="attribute-value">image</a>" src="/add-to-cart.gif" width="<a class="attribute-value">105</a>" height="<a class="attribute-value">35</a>" border="<a class="attribute-value">0</a>"  align="<a class="attribute-value">middle</a>"></form>