Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Just noticed that this video spam is still killing the SERPs all over Florida.... starting with Sarasota...

SoleGraphics has it.  Try to get into the local results.

... and if that don't work try video spam like the guys at Finebloom.  I can't believe that those are still killing the SERPs for major cities all over Florida.

If they want to be found for "chocolate fudge cake" and "chocolate eclairs" then their work needs to begin with a dedicated page for each of those topics.  Those dedicated pages will need to be very high quality compared to what is already out there and that just the start of what is needed.

These are moderately difficult queries.

If you go to the SERPs for "chocolate fudge cake" you will see some formidable competition - FoodNetwork, Nigella, About,com, Food.com, Epicurious and lots of other important domains are there already and some of them have been there for ten years or more.   New content on these subjects is being added to other websites every month so ranking in these SERPs will be challenging and elusive.

To rank quickly, you need great content on an strong and established domain.  If you have a new site, a weak site, a tiny site, or a just a "not very well known site", then ranking for these queries is going to take time and a lot of work spent promoting the site and its content.  That means publishing content that is immediately impressive to the visitor, linkworthy and highly sharable.  Then it will need to be promoted to get it noticed by people who will share it, like it, link to it.

An unestablished site in these SERPs could spend a year or two or more of weekly publishing and promoting just to begin getting traction in these SERPs - because there are so many well established sites and a large number more that are hoping to "make it".

If my videos were about a range of products then I would include them on a category page.

I might also write an article about that range of products and post the video on that page.

This is a huge topic.

If I was going to attack this... I would consider that you are talking about one variety of "PMS" or a "practice mangement software".  These are available for physicians, dentists, attorneys, accountants and many other types of professionals.  There are also management systems for blue collar industries.

For this project my primary keyword would be "Medical practice management software" and then "system" or "solution" can be used as an add-on.

A content attack on this could begin with an in-depth article of a few thousand words with photos, illustrations and art that depict screenshots, document samples, flow charts, data entry devices, portable data entry stations, etc. Think about some of the awesome posts that you see on the moz.com blog or a big wikipedia article.

The typical PMS has many different abilities that are often sold as modules.  Their functions include appointment scheduling, insurance submission, billing, patient record management and many other facets.  Each of these many functions could be another page optimized for longer tail keywords that each have very monetizable search volume such as "medical billing software" and "patient record management system".

Data entry devices and mobile data entry units can be several more content pages, each with substantive text, photos, screenshots and more.  Then there are decisions about having the software on a server in your office or a web-based solution.  Each has its advantages and disadvantages in terms of how you pay for it, updates, security and the types of equipment that is needed for your office - plus the level of on-site expertise that will be needed.

Most people are trying to attack this, what might be a billion dollar industry, by tossing pages at it.  I would attack this niche with an entire website full of this stuff along with comparison charts of competing products and vendors.  The company who is willing to invest a  thousand person hours into a website like this... and then dedicates a good person to spend 1/2 of her/his time on keeping it updated could haul in buckets of dough.... and when they are finished with the physican's part they move right into the dental PMS market using the same template.

If I have a short video about "how to use Product X" then I place it.....

A) on the sales page for Product X

B) on an article page that tells more than you want to know about using Product X

C) i have a "help" page that links to all of my "how to use Product X" pages

My "how to use a product" pages often rank above my sales pages in the SERPs.  That's OK with me because I have plenty of links and house ads on that page to drive the visitor to where he can purchase.

I use them a lot.  I have not done detailed studies for with/without on same page.  The pages where I use them compete powerfully in very difficult root-keyword SERPs and also pull in tons of long-tail traffic.

So, speaking from my gut, in my opinion, they are second only to the <title>tag in their on-page optimization power.  </p> <p>I am using them a lot, but I am not using them enough.</p></title>

Although domain name age might not be important, other aspects of a mature domain could give support to rankings.

I redirected a domain that held #1 rankings for a commercial keyword unchallenged for ten consecutive years.  This was a domain, popular in its niche, that was getting over 500,000 pageviews per month.

Changing the domain resulted in the loss of over 1000 people per month arriving at the site through domain queries typed into the google search box, lots of direct visitors from the domain typed in browser address bar, probably lots of people clicking its entries in the SERPs because of domain recognition, loss of huge sitelinks.

Once you switch the domain all of that tribe support - measurable by Google - disappears.  BAM!

After 301 redirecting the site dropped immediately in the SERPs, recovered quickly to #2 and then retook #1 after domain queries were back up over 1000 per month. - but that took many months and lots of lost sales for the former level of tribe support to reestablish on the new domain.

It currently is at #3 with a couple big brands above it.  Revenue is down.

I can't say if it would still be holding off those big brands - because Google seems to be giving them strong favor these days - but if I could go back a couple years, I might not have changed the domain.

I make nice money from ads on html pages.  And, if you have ten chapters that each focus on a different keyword, then you have ten html pages in the SERPs with great optimization instead of one PDF with generalized optimization.  And when people land they look at many pages, often all ten.  Each of these earns ad impressions.  I am publishing for ad revenue.

There are many ways to handle this.

I have sites with lots of free pdf documents.   Each of those documents contains content that is not on the website.  Lots of people visit and print them.  Lots of people link to them.  When they are printed our branding is prominently displayed so that people can return for our site to get other similar documents.  We also have one or more links in those pdf documents so any links into them pass value into our website.  If someone else posts them on their domain the links again point to our website.  In addition, the properties of the pdf documents are edited to give them a title tag that will be visible in the SERPs and help them rank better.

It is possible to monetize pdf documents.  You can rent/sell adspace within them that can be linked or not be linked.  Many shopping carts allow you to produce "add to cart" buttons.  These can be configured to work within pdf documents.

A friend of mine has a situation like yours.  He has a collection of webpages that are each chapters of a single topic document that he also has in a pdf document with many pages.  People can view the html pages on his site for free (they are monetized by ads).  Or, they can purchase the pdf.  The pdf  allows them to print the document, search the entire document, view it offline or conveniently page through it linearly.  He has many of these pdf documents and even though people can view the same content free on his website many of them purchase these pdfs for the print/search/scroll/use-offline abilities.  He makes nice money from selling these pdf documents.

• If we don't offer the PDF option, people would have to visit our site to read the content (unless they bought a hard copy).
  MAKE 'EM PAY FOR THE PDF

• if visitors were able to download a free PDF, they wouldn't need to return to our site to read it.

MAKE 'EM PAY FOR THE PDF

• If our corporate clients (nearly all of our clients are corporations) could download a PDF, they could then post it on an intranet instead of posting a link to our site.

MAKE 'EM PAY FOR THE PDF

• In general, do you think a visitor would be less likely to link to our site if he or she were able to download the PDF? Or would the appeal of the PDF option make it more likely that people would visit and link to the site?

MOST PEOPLE WILL NOT LINK.  ONLY PEOPLE WHO WANT TO SAY... "GET SOMETHING AWESOME HERE".  THE PROBLEM IS THAT THEY WILL LINK TO THE PDF BUT IF YOU HAVE LINKS IN THE PDF THEN YOUR WEBSITE WILL GET SOME BENEFIT. BUT I WOULD BE SELLING THIS PDF.

• Also, if we offer the PDF option, are there any SEO issues related to duplicate content?

IF YOU HAVE 500 WORDS ON AN HTML PAGE AND THE SAME 500 WORDS IN A PDF THEN YOU MIGHT HAVE A PROBLEM.  BUT IF YOU HAVE 50 PAGES EACH OF 500 WORDS ON THE WEBSITE AND 25000 WORDS IN ONE PDF DOCUMENT THEN THERE SHOULD BE NO PROBLEM.  BUT IF YOU SELL THE PDF THAT CONCERN IS ELIMINATED.

• Finally, if we did offer the free PDF download, would you recommend that we ask for an email address before giving the PDF?

IS GETTING THE EMAIL ADDRESSES A GOAL?  IF THAT IS WHY YOU ARE DOING THIS THEN, YES, ASK FOR IT,  AND REQUIRING THE EMAIL  IN ADVANCE SUGGESTS THAT THE PDF WILL NOT BE INDEXED WHERE IT CAN BE LINKED TO OR HAVE ANY CHANCE OF BEING A DUPE CONTENT PROBLEM.  I WOULD BE SELLING THE PDF.

Could visitors engaging the ads help them rank?

In my opinion, yes, maybe.

How might your site benefit from this idea?

A) Those ads are google adsense, so you could sign up for adsense and run those ads too.  If they are getting clicked by the huge percentage of people that you suspect then you could make the same money that they are making.

B) You could make a nice portfolio of printable music and offer it for free.  Offer it conspicuously at the top of the site, just like those ads.  Lots of people would accept your generous offer.  That would get your site some great engagement and get lots of people printing sheet music from your website - which might bring people back to make a purchase.

C) You could get really aggressive and offer lots of free music.  You could do that in a variety of ways... offer them the first page for free... they could then try playing and see if it is at the right level for them, if it is an arrangement that they like, they can come back and buy the rest.  Offer tons of free music for beginners.   Offer a different selection of  free music each month.  Lots of people will come back over and over to see what you have.  Some of them will become buyers, all of them can be shown ads.

There are many ways to structure free printables.   I have a website that offers lots of free printables (not related to music).   Printables had 160,000 visitors last month and 522,000 pageviews (not counting pdf views).  I don't sell the products that are given away for free, I make money from the ads.  The income was more than a lot of retail sites make.  Free printables can be a great business model.

Is article syndication still a safe & effective method of link building?

People only "thought" it was "safe".  Then penguin bit most of the websites that used article syndication.

We have an SEO agency pushing to implement article syndication as a method of link building.

When you only have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

I don't syndicate anything. Never have, never well.  A page of great content costs too much money to give away.   It feeds existing competitors and creates new ones.

I simply write good content, post it on my own site, and traffic has grown steadily over time.  The more good content you have up, the more keywords it competes for, the more traffic you get, the more money you make.

Right!

And there can be secondary effects.  If you are running surveys and people bounce back into the SERPs instead of answering the question, could that result in a ranking reduction because of poor engagement?  I have been running surveys and am cautiously watching my engagement and rankings.

PDF documents can be stubborn to get into the index.  If you are hitting it with plenty of links, be patient.

This is a really classy document.  Very nice. Well done.

If this was my document I would edit the "properties" and give it a title tag that will enable it to compete in the SERPs a little better. There is also some blue underlined text in the document.  Where those supposed to be hyper links? they are not working for me.  However, I see that BillBoneBikeLaw.com in the last line of the document is a working hyperlink.  That will allow pagerank to flow back into the main site.

This is a "best on the web" document.  Nice work.

I really enjoyed reading the document.  I used to be a hard core biker.   I've been honked at, yelled at, cussed at, throwed at, spat at, and hit by both accident and intent.  A long time ago I won one of the age groups at The Great Floridian.  I still remember Sugarloaf and a mad dog attacking out of an orange grove on the downhill.

This isn't an answer.  Just sayin' something that one google project is doing.

If you are familiar with Google Consumer Surveys, people who arrive at a page of content are asked to do a small task in exchange for unlocking the content.  They are normally given a choice of two tasks:  A) answer one or two multiple choice questions, or, B) share the content.

So, if Google is going to be slappin' people for the share, they will be slappin' their own project along with its publishers.

**So assuming I can create content that is unique interesting and engaging, where should I post it? My website blog, Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn an off site blog? **

I post my articles on my own site only.  I don't give them to anyone else.  I want my site to be the go-to place for the topics that I write about.    When I write an article my intent is that it will be the best on the web for that topic or truly exceptional for some aspect of that topic.

So  if I can create the content, how do I address the issue of optimizing and submitting to the appropriate places. Would an SEO firm add value in this area assuming they are pros and only engage in white hat?

I have a blog that gets a few very short posts each day about industry news.  These are simply a sentence or two about an interesting article and a link (these posts are noindexed btw but they do go on category pages).  That blog has slowly accumulated thousands of subscribers.  When I post a new article on my site I add a link to it in my news and that usually results in a blast of immediate traffic, shares etc.

I don't use social media myself.  My visitors do that for me without an prompt, request or incentive from me.  To make that happen you need content that they want to share.

Obviously I would prefer to allocate my budget to creating high value content and more of it. Which not hiring an SEO firm would allow me to do. But I don't wan to be penny wise and pound foolish.

You have to be honest with your self and have courage.  Honest that your content is good enough to merit sharing.  If it isn't then the method that I suggest will not be successful.  And you must be brave enough to stay on this path long enough to let it start building.

If you have an article that is truly exceptional it can very slowly accumulate links as long as you have traffic into it.  If the article is truly exceptional and it gets shared on social media that can sometimes be like throwing gasoline on a fire - but this best happens when the content topic is a bit provocative, surprising, funny, beautiful or possesses some other attribute that triggers sharing.

If you have an article that accumulates just two natural links per year that can become a major force over time.  How? Because if you have two hundred of those articles on your site then you have four hundred natural quality links coming in per year and that is better than one new link every day.

Most important, the quality of the links that you will get from this are 10x as valuable as those produced by the typical linkbuilder.  The typical linkbuilder is going to get you into a Penguin problem in his push to produce results.  Now that is going to make most of the linkbuilders who read this reach straight for the thumbs down - but look around and see how many people come here crying about a Penguin problem and how many people come in here asking how to build links.

Most people will not take the content route, because exceptional content is really expensive and requires hard work.  But if you go that route you will eventually have enough content on your site that its performance will be equal to having one of the most highly skilled linkbuilders working on your site full time 24x7.

This is how great content can defeat SEO over time.  But most people will not try this because they fail in budget, creativity, content knowledge, time, patience or faith.

The greatest risks in taking this path is that your opinion of great content is set too low or you decide to start taking shortcuts.  You need content that is of the same quality as an article on National Geographic, the New York Times or one of the many posts that you read on the Moz.com blog.

Need to do what I can myself so I can invest in services that add the highest value.

Right,.  I agree.

Is this out of the league of someone who is not an SEO pro but is tech savvy?

If I think that the job is important to do and it is something that only needs to be done one time, then I would hire someone to save me the time of learning and the risk of doing it wrong.  If it is a job that will be done many times then I would learn how to do it and save money like you want to do.

But, if this company is simply saying... "you should have your links cleaned"... then I would be skeptical about doing that work because every site that I own that has never had any linkbuilding done by anyone still has a lot of crap links.  Those links have come from scrapers and spammers publishing mashup sites, cobbled directories and other crap that they produce.

If I need a new garage door I can replace it myself and spend a ton of time learning how to do it, a ton more time actually doing the job, and a lot more time tweaking it the next several years because I didn't get it quite right.   And, I would probably have to buy a lot of tools.   Then the thing would probably fall on my car or my kids.

So, when I don't quite know what I am doing, I hire a pro and drink beer while he does the work. 

But, before I hire the guy, I make sure he knows what he is doing... then I can enjoy the beer.

They are of the opinion that it is imperative to remove the toxic domains

But one question... Is your site having problems?   If it is not having problems I might not have this SEO company remove any links.

....but the product url will always be there.

I agree..... but if you never link to that page then Google should not know about it.

I am not familiar with Wordpress and Woocommerce, however, the shopping systems that I have used all allowed me to create "add to cart" buttons.  I could place these anywhere on the site - even in pdf documents.  I have never used the product pages that my shopping systems produce. Why?  I think that I can make product pages that are better optimzied for search and better arranged for customers.  So, I have lots of pages on my site that list multiple items and almost no pages that list a single item.  This has saved me a lot of time, I think that my site competes a lot better, I think that it makes more convenient shopping and I believe that I sell a lot more.

Awesome coral!  Awesome.  http://austinaquafarms.com/product-category/acans/

If this was my site, I would make it just a few pages.  One page for each type of coral.

The individual product pages on the site right now have almost no information. So, I would put all of the information on a huge category page and optimize it perfectly for the type of coral.  Plus I would add several authoritative paragraphs of text onto the page - maybe in the right side bar with background info about the type of coral, how to care for it, tips for making it do well in your tank.  This extra content will enable the page to be more competitive and will pull in traffic for long tail keywrods.

Eliminating the product pages will eliminate the 404 problems, simplify maintaining the site and when visitor lands on the Acans page they will say WOW!  I think you will sell more... from this presentation... no guarantees, just my gut.

I also believe that it will pull all of the power that has seeped into the product pages back into the category page.    From my experience, a compact site with a small number of pages competes a LOT better than a larger site with a bunch of pages with very thin content.

Those thin content pages also put this site at risk for Panda problems if it does not have them already.

From my experience, that is a frightening number of pages that have not received a visit.   I would definitely be taking some type of action.  This hits to me like a site in very bad health.  I have lots of little pages on a weak little site that get a lot more traffic than none since January.   This would be high on my priority list of things to solve.  Solving this could bring major income so this is potential opportunity as much as it is a problem.

To diagnose, I would check....  I know you and suspect that you have looked at all of these but just making a list, just in case.

A) Duplicate content problem?   Does this site have lots of pages with very similar other pages on the same site.  Does the company have another site that is running the same product descriptions?  Does the site run product descriptions that are used from a datafeed supplied to vendors?  Are affiliates using the same content?  Have other websites stolen the content?

B) Have you been scraped and republished by a strong website?  Just one is all it would take.  A strong site was once scraping and republishing some of my short content pages and that killed the traffic into a section of my  site.  As soon as I asked them to stop traffic was back within days.  One site can hurt you like that or numerous small sites - even minor sites in Asia can do this.

C) Lots of thin content?  Do you have a lot of pages that might only have two or three unique sentences?  Google could be disrespecting your entire site because of this.

D) Technical problem?  I would be looking at robots.txt and .htaccess, noindex, badly coded links, content management system causing duplicated title tags or other problems?  Faulty analyitics that make it look like these pages are not getting traffic when really they are.

E) Content cannibalization?  Lots of separate pages for red widgets that are being filtered from the SERPs.

F) Inadequate linkjuice?  This is not a huge site but not a small one.  Does it have a nice amount of linkjuice coming in?

G) Does this site have pages that are really deeeeep down in the linkstructure?  Many clicks down?  Fix that either with a new linkstructure or some kickass powerful links that hit nodes deep in the site to force spiders down.  I would solve with linkstructure.

H) This isn't the site that had all of the content behind tabs that I remember from a while ago?  (My memory is really bad so it might not even be your site.)   If you have pages like that I would get rid of those tabs immediately.    I have a personal opinion that Google does not treat content hidden behind tabs as well as content that is out in the open.

I) Are there a lot of other sites - strong ones - publlishing very similar pages - like product description pages - competing for the same keywords.  If that is the case you could be crowded out of the SERPs and receiving no traffic on these pages.

J) Does this site have a bad history?  Does it have something that might be causing a penalty or filtering?

After doing all of that you might have something that is really worth fixing.  If you can't identify the problem I would be slashing, hatcheting those pages from the site right away.

Giving a final nudge to lead the serps

Final nudge to lead the SERPs?

I guess we have been doing the final nudge for at least ten years.

Two people, all day, every day, working hard on new content.  Two people make it rain and one person takes care of business... and a couple part time people and some contract help also doing content or taking care of technical details.

That is enough effort to get one site ranked in moderate to heavy competition and a couple more held in the SERPs in light to moderate competition.  It's really hard to "lead the SERPs" when certain powerful websites are above you.  There are plenty of places where I look and decide that we are outgunned, will always be outgunned, but I can still get a ton of traffic on the long tail.

You competitors could be noobs or they could be smart, strong and hungry.  WHO they are will decide what you will need for this "final nudge".   Our final nudge or perhaps better "daily nudge" is to throw content at it as fast and as hard as you can, making sure that your content is better than what anybody else has produced.  Even with that there will be places where you just don't have the resources to compete.

SEO is a battle of resources.

there's an over optimization risk if they exact match?

Who is saying this stuff?

I have this on LOTS of pages.  LOTS.   Have been doing this since the 1990s.

My pages rank great.

Why would google penalize for this?  This is giving the visitor a page that is named exactly what he saw when the title tag was displayed in the search engines.

I don't think that Google engineers are in the Plex saying.  "Let's screw people who use identical title and H1."  "Gotcha you sneaky weasel!"

If somebody is getting a rankings reduction for this I bet that they have awful spammy title and H1 that on their own deserve a markdown.

<title>Best Green Widgets | Nice Green Widgets | Cheap Green Widgets</title>

If anybody knows where a credible SEO is publishing stuff like this, backed-up with good experimental data involving lots of demoted pages, please post a link here.  And, if I am motivated enough by it to go out and change a huge number of pages, I'll let you know.

Do you suggest we keep the site navigation link to the blog in its current location or move it some place else in the footer or in the header?

If they are proud of this blog and want people to read it then it should have a link that is slappin' the visitors' face.

The bounce rate for the blog is over 81%. What is a reasonable goal for a bounce rate for a blog on a business website? What are some tactics to improve the bounce rate?

The best way to reduce the bounce rate is to give the visitor something juicy to click.

If you want people to read a second article then featuring the best posts that your visitors will want to see, in a way that visually stands out and mentally speaks to the visitor.

I would get rid of the wordcloud and change the category names to something more meaningful.  For example: "Church"... I would make it "Church Accounting"..... "Payroll" would be "NonProfit Payroll".  In the content manager I would change the visible title tag for this to "Church Accounting Software" and "NonProfit Payroll Accounting and Software".... Right now your title tags are simply "church" and "payroll".  Add more detail to compete for better traffic.

The blog also need some visual appeal.  I would change that tiny gray font to something larger, blue and clickable - put more space between the lines to make them more readable.

Do you suggest including a call to action to sign up for a free trial on the blog home page and/or individual posts?

Yes.  And, a sign-up for people who want to receive an email message when a new blog post is published.

Do these guys get lots of questions about the software?  If they do then "tips" might be good subject matter for the blog.

My response here is not an answer to your question.  It is a starting point for a possible brain  storming session with the client.

Thats why its good practice to compete on price but not go nuts as if you do its just a race to see who is out of business first,

I agree.  Lots of these people can not do math.  They don't know what their profit margin is.

I understand what you are saying.

One of my retail sites sells a line of products that range in price from $79 to $279.  I sell them with little or no discount.  I sell the quality brands.

But Amazon and a couple other e-retailers sell a cheap, plastic, model for $49 that breaks right away that I would not think of selling to my customers.

They outrank me.  They probably sell more.  But that does not change my mind.  I am not selling that crap because I don't want the phone ringing.   Does not bother them to sell it because you can't call them on the phone.  It's really hard to get in touch with them.

I'll be honest and say that I spend zero time on this type of analysis for my own sites.  Why?  To understand why they are ranking you have to look at an awful lot of factors.  Too much time.  Not worth the return.   I am out to beat people with informative content and then entice the huge traffic produced into Adsense or to sales pages on my own site that compete with adsense because they are promoted with house ads on the Google DoubleClick ad server.

I looked at the top three that you listed.  If I was going to pick any site to run as my own, based simply on the design of the horse rugs page my choice would be ..... Fast Track Direct.  I am betting that site converts like crazy.

I see where you're coming from but no I avoid site like that at every turn.

I think that you should try what you don't like about the competitor's site and see what happens.

The competitor has an excellent page, IMO.   EXCELLENT.

I will bet big money that the competitor has an asskicking click-through-rate and conversion rate.   I bet lots of people return to this site by domain queries and brand search.

HIGH CTR

Look at his title tag... **Horse Rug Sale | Discount Horse Rugs | Clearance Horse Rugs  **the only thing that would make it better is "free beer while you shop".   People love a sale, love a discount.  They will click this in the SERPs.

HIGH CONVERSION / LOW BOUNCE RATE / HIGH TIME-ON-SITE

Then, when you land on this page...  Look at those red ribbons for discount prices, and look at those yellow ribbons for free shipping.

Look at his top banner... with the subtle "Free Delivery"... also trust marks on the left

VISIBLE TELEPHONE NUMBER / EMAIL

Their phone number and email are at top of site.  Kickass.

DEAL OF THE DAY

This is a great idea.  Look at the banner at bottom of page.  I bet that brings lots of people backk to this site.  They might type the domain into google, or into chrome.  Deal of the day will make lots of people request your site by name.

Can you see why people might really like their page, make purchases and return?

Great to hear that your content is bringing in good results.

One thing that you might consider, if you don't have it already, is a way to give people easy access to your new content.  I have a blog where I make very short posts (these are noindex because they are only a sentence or two) about great content in the industry niche.   I make five to eight posts per day (you could also do the same but once a week or once a month) and these are sent out to subscribers by feedburner.  This has attracted thousands of subscribers.  The advantage of this is... when I publish a new article I give it a good position in the feed - and it goes out to 15,000 people.  That instantly produces some sharing, maybe some links and a lot of traffic.

Find a way to build your tribe.

I'm trying to split my time up between content creation and link building/PR. which area should be focused on most.

If you are working on an established domain take a look at where your articles will rank without any linkbuilding.

When I toss up a new article (this is something substantive that might have 1000 to 3000 words and several photos or pieces of graphic art) it will rank deep in the SERPs.  But, over the next six months to a year it will slowly climb the SERPs and often rank on the first page of google - many of those will eventually go to one of the top three positions.

As an example, I published a new article eight months ago.  Right out of the gate it ranked at about position #160.  No worries I knew that it would move up.  Slowly, very slowly, it climbed the SERPs.  It took about five months to make it to the first page of the SERPs.  Then, today it is at #4 and pulling nice traffic.  No linkbuilding done by me but a bit of a wait for rankings.  I don't think this page will get to #1 because wikipedia and a couple very powerful sites with good content are up there, but who knows what will happen.

I am very happy with these results and instead of spending any time on linkbuilding, I am making my next page of content.

If good content on your site does that then in my opinion, linkbuilding is a waste of time - unless your article needs immediate results.  Consider spending 100% of your time into building content.  Every piece of great content has the ability to attract links, the more you have up the more links you will attract without any effort from you.

If you content on your site does not do that then one (or more) of these three things are holding your back.

1. visitors are not responding well to your content, then could be bouncing, not sharing, not linking.  For that to happen you have to honestly look at your content and ask.. "Is this the best article on the web for this topic?"  if not that then it must offer a very unique perspective of very high quality that will resonate with readers.  If your articles are not that high in quality then I would spend my time making them better.  The "no linkbuilding method" will not work unless your content is asskicking good.

2. your site doesn't have enough authority yet to project pages into high rankings, in that case you might need some linkbuilding to get your site strength up

3. you are in an extremely brutal competitive environment and will need to do more linkbuilding.

That's how I decide, and I am 100% on content building for all of my sites.  My comments here have nothing to do with hummingbird or any other google update.  This is not about Google's algo or updates, this is about building a great website.

If you use links passed through a shortener some people will not click them because the destination is unknown.

I never click shortened links.

I used to have lots of microsites, then built one big site that beat all of them.

Google search results pit page-against-page with the overall strength of the site also counting towards the rankings.  So, it is better to attack with one battleship instead of ten potato guns.

I believe that google would consider these to be "cookie cutter pages".  That is when you have a standard page and several words or phrases are swapped in and according to the product.

Google started targeting these pages  several years ago and they are getting better and better at identifying them.

Their response to these types of pages can be....

-- filter most of them from the search results, this only hit the cookie cutter pages, but if you had lots of these pages it was a waste of the page rank that went into them that could have been used to support rankings on other parts of your site.

-- recently these are starting to result in a panda problem which can tank the rankings across your site

When you are offering these types of products the time required to write unique descriptions can pay off big time.   My approach is to make one page for several closely related items, offering all of them on a single page.  That makes a rich page instead of multiple near-duplicate pages.

Keri asked an extremely important question....

You probably know that the niche you are in is ultra super competitive.  So what I said in my first answer to you will apply......

** If you are in a competitive niche I think that this much work is not going to move the needle for you at all.   Why?  Anybody who is serious about winning is spending way more effort.**

Ok the reason i wrote this is because I'm getting mixed messages and still as above , people contradict each other.

You can decide "what" you want to believe or "who" you want to believe.... or a combination of the two.

Offers of ...  "quick".... "easy"....  "cheap".... Are going to be the wrong offer 99% of the time.

"We would like to do our best to ensure the redesign has a minimal impact on the rankings but aren't sure if there's anything in particular we should be doing to avert a severe dip in results."

A design change is the time when you should be striving to improve the rankings - not worrying about a "severe dip in results".

You should be looking to improve your...

** on-page optimization

** internal navigation

** visitor time-on-site

** bounce rate

** conversion rate

** htaccess and CMS to prevent duplicate URLs and other problems

You need a plan to IMPROVE every one of these.

If you have any doubts about how to improve these then you might want to hire someone who has successfully done the redesign of many sites and understands how improvements in the design that will lift the rankings.

If you give your content to other websites that will place them in competition with you.  This feeds existing competitors and creates new ones.   It also creates duplicate content in the search engines that can result in your site being filtered from the results or demoted with a panda problem.

Your goal should be create a site that is a unique source of value.  If you give your value away then nobody needs to visit your website.

You are going to receive conflicting advice on this.  I hope that you have the strength of mind to build a site of unique value.

I spend almost zero time link building.  Instead, I spend that time on more or better content.

Most people spend almost zero time on content and all of their time on linkbuilding.

Which website do you think will be the most successful?  You know where I am placing my bets.

Each week we have 3 articles written, 2 x 300 word articles and 1 x newsletter

First, I am glad that you are making content and working to get a plan for using it effectively.

I don't know who you are competing against... but 900 words a week is not going to do much in most niches.  If you are in a competitive niche I think that this much work is not going to move the needle for you at all.   Why?  Anybody who is serious about winning is spending way more effort.

If what you can afford to do is about 900 words a week, I would make one 900 word article with great photos and graphics and publish that on my own site.  My newsletter would include a one paragraph teaser for this artlcle that the subscribers can click through to see the whole thing on your website.

Look for content that you are already making and get twice the use out of it.  When someone writes an email to you with a question, write them a fantastic reply and then beef it up to a nice article.

I run a three person office.  We have two people working 90% of their time on content and another person who takes care of orders, inventory, shipping, just about everything else.  Most of our content is going up for adsense but we also solicit some retail sales through a small store on the site and a couple of niche retail sites.

Try to double your effort on content and when you can do that try to increase it a little more.

it is working better for my KWs.  

Duplicate content.

More duplicate content.

That combined with lots of really thin content might be the traffic drop problem.   It could be a Panda hit... .

Other problems include....

-- a light weight site optimized for brutally difficult head terms

-- enormous opportunity for going after geographic queries not being taken

-- smarter onpage optimization could capture enormous longtail traffic

-- this site has about 300 pages and a puny persistent navigation

-- usability is really bad, it is a crazyquilt of page formats and navigation changes

-- pages resolve under many different urls... http://gaport.com/default.htm     http://gaport.com/    http://www.gaport.com/default.htm    http://wwwgaport.com/   http://gaport.com   http://www.gaport.com

That is a ten minute look.  A deep dive would find a lot more I am sure.  Lots of potential here if expertise is brought in and the Panda problem/vulnerabilities eliminated - and a professional design job is done.

Improvements could make a lot more money with this site.

1) why would so many companies like Hubspot, others require email for content exchange if putting on site would do as well?

Here are two answers:

A) they want to spam you with email and sell your email to everyone on the planet;

B) the value of a sale is enormous, so they would rather have a sale than the ad clicks

Does the type of industry: B-B, vs B-C make a difference in how you would approach or is your answer blanket for all types B-B,B-C?

Publishing for everyone makes more sense for the B-C business because the number of potential visitors is enormous compared to the B-B.

If we go the route of publishing to site (not pdf)  does it make a difference whether a 12 page ebook is one long scrolling page or should the content be 'click to read more' which advances to another possibly optimized page?  If multiple pages then each page would likely be optimizing for pretty much the same content?

I put a few thousand words on a page but if you have more then I would break it into separate pages.  I would break the ebook into chapters or lessons each targeting a different keyword.

Has there been any correlation between top step (main menu) and 2, 3, 4 steps below the main navigation on relevance (with same content) in rankings?

Yes.  The deeper you bury the content in your navigation the deeper it will rank in the SERPs.   If you want to promote this for traffic, income, links, tweets, signups,  I would think that you would be showing it to every person who visits your website.  That's what I do when I have something hot, valuable and important.  If you fail to do that you lose the opportunity.

a) we potentially loose the opportunity to periodically drip other helpful info over time as we are not requiring name/email for this content. correct?

I think that you are giving up a FLOOD to collect a drip.

My experience has been that I get a LOT more traffic from the SERPs than I can get by collecting emails.

If you publish awesome stuff you can still collect emails... "Sign up for free updates by email".

If we do publish without "gate" then does it make a difference if this page with pdf is part of main/sub navigation or if we exclude it from that and make if available from pages within site?

I would not publish on pdf because they do not perform as well as html pages in the SERPs and they are harder to monetize.

Instead of excluding this from your navigation.. I would be shouting about it on my homepage and every relevant page of my site.  Drive as many people into it as you can.

**Does how far a page is from main navigation make a difference in relevance/importance from SEO Point of view? **

Yes.  Pages in your main navigation get more linkjuice and often rank better than if they had just one or two links into them.

I would be monetizing this content with ads.  They can be adsense, another network, or they can be house ads promoting your own products.

I go for D.

Publish the whole thing on your website and link to it from every page of your website...  so that anybody anywhere can view it for free at anytime with no limitations.

If this ebook is fantastic then you want everybody everywhere to see it, be amazed, tweet, like, link, emal, share and bookmark.   All of that traffic will come to your site and the cycle will start again.

It's like throwing gasoline on a fire.

We also have our own network of sites that have links in their templates to our main site. I'm fighting to get these links "nofollow"'d but upper management seems scared to alter this practice.

This past year we've found our rankings have dropped significantly and suspect it's due to some spammy backlinks or being penalized for doing an accidental link scheme network.

Those spammy backlinks might be the ones from your own network of sites?   I hope that they don't have money terms as anchor text and are in a big block in the footer?  If they do then upper management might want to reconsider in an effort to get your traffic back.

This site does sell physical product.

The homepage has three vertical columns.  The right column is entirely content.  How to use the products, how to select them, product comparisons, how to repair them, history, printable instructions, videos,   The first link in the top navigation goes to an huge page of free information.  The last link goes to a blog and the next to last link goes to a youtube channel.

Make your site the "go to place" for your product niche and you will get a lot of traffic, receive fewer questions by email and kill your competitors in the long tail.

I run adsense on every page too, but block my hard core competitors.

Here's what I do with new content.

• Publish it on my website.

• Promote it on my homepage and on relevant pages on my website.

Usually, I do nothing beyond that.  The page initially ranks deep in the SERPs but starts climbing over time.  Slowly the traffic grows, a few of my visitors share it and that brings in more visitors.  In several months the page is visible in relevant SERPs and pulling in increasing amounts of traffic.

Rarely, I will contact a blogger or two who regularly point at interesting content.

Usually, I write additional articles that are closely related but compete for entirely different keywords.  These will start pulling in traffic and as the collection grows all of the pages rise in the SERPs.

Most people don't have the patience for that, but instead of spending time on promotion, I am preparing another page of content.  After doing this for a few years I have a lot of traffic and a site that ranks well for most pages that I publish within a few months.

Surely this is a serious case of duplicate content?

It is not too serious... because it can probably be fixed without a huge effort.

I have not done a thorough study of the problem but you might be able to solve it by changes to the CMS or with rel=canonical or with redirects.

Any idea why a web developer would do this?

   This is really common.    Lots of developers are developers and not SEOs.

IMO you have a much larger problem.   The pages of this website have almost zero content.  Almost guaranteed to perform poorly or be hit with a panda problem.