Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hey Dana... did the site of the first company tank yet?

Most of the stuff that people send to me and want published as "guest posts".....   you couldn't pay me enough to display them on my site.

how about searching for terms you think a visitor would find relevant

Doing this alone is great advice.

The best way to assure mediocre performance is to copy a competitor.

What you are asking for (especially #2) requires a lot of time, study and research to accomplish.

So, I recommend that you begin with self-study by getting a copy or "Advanced Google Adwords" by Brad Geddes and reading it carefully twice and practicing the topics as you read.

http://www.advancedadwordsbook.com/

It is really hard to make money in some niches with adwords - especially for common retail items.   To win you must have access to inventory and shipping at very low costs.  If you don't have that you will be eaten alive.

I can't say that my CTR has increased.  Nothing noticable.

I expect that the search volume for these terms varies by season - very strongly in some parts of the USA or world.

Where I live ready mix will not be searched during the winter and the use of forklifts also has seasonal change.

So, flux in the reported volumes should be expected.

How much should you keep your client in the loop of what you are posting on behalf of their company?

Based upon your questions, I think that it would be a good idea to talk with the client to see if she wants you writing content that represents her business.

I generally don't delegate that job for my business and the few times that other people have written something for me it always received careful review and heavy editing.

We put up version A and get data on a large number of visitors.

Then  we make a logical change to the position of the elements to produce version B and run that to get data on a large number of visitors.

These changes are not yet tweaking colors or fonts.  They are testing ad positions or navigation formats.

We watch the data for changes in things like ad yields, number of pageviews, time on site, number of sales - whatever metrics are important to you.

If you have a lot of traffic you can determine if a design is tanking in a short amount of time but if you have small amounts of traffic you might need to run split tests or separate tests for days, weeks or months.

After we have tested a few very different designs we then start tweaking ad colors.  This is done by creating a program to change ad colors hourly with a separate channel for each hour.  On one of my sites my first choice of ad background color was ffffee... then after testing many different colors I learned that ffffee had the lowest yield.

We found up to 10x differences in revenue from different formats and up to 2x differences in revenue from different ad colors.

It is much easier to double your income from your current traffic than it is to double your traffic.

Don't ask us and don't guess yourself.

Instead, toss up a version and test it on your visitors.... then try something different...

The response of your visitors is the only response that matters.

If you have a content management system it isn't a whole lot of work to try something different.

Some of the page formats on my site have been through 15 different versions and the income / engagement differences between them have been enormous.

About the SEO.... if you don't change the title, navigation links and other on-page elements of the design there should be little impact on the SEO.

Consider if you should be guest posting or if you should instead be putting that same content exclusively on your own site.

If you can place a guest post on this other site and it will deliver 100,000 visitors then giving them your content is probably a good thing.

However, if you instead place that same content on your own site here is what might happen.

1. Let's say that article pulls in just ten or eleven visitors per day that will be about 4000 visitors per year.

2. Let's say that just one visitor out of a thousand buys something from your site then in each year it will product four sales.

3. Let's say that ten visitors out of that thousand tweet or FB share a link to your article.  And those pull in another 500 visitors per year.

4. Let's say that just one visitor in 20,000 will link back to your site.

What will you have at the end of five years?  You will have the same number of links that you had from giving your content away.... You will have made about 25 sales and that article is still on your site.

To me it makes an awful lot more sense to develop great content  and place it on my own website.  I am not going to build the site of my competitor.

On top of that... if you give an article about a productive keyword topic to your competitor and their site outranks yours then you are just handing your lunch over to them.

So, if you are a reasonably smart person who can make great content then don't give it away.  Keep it for use exclusively on your own site.  The only time that you should be giving it away is if you know that the traffic from the other site is going to be absolutely an astonishing number.

Guest posting is enormously popular so there are going to be lots of people who agree with me.  That's OK.  They can give me their great content and I will enjoy eating their lunch.

In my opinion DA and PA are metrics that you can use to track your progress over time.

They are not what determine your rankings on google or any other search engine.  They don't produce more traffic.  They don't increase conversions.   (If you watch the questions on Q&A you will see almost daily people posting.... "WAH!  my site has better DA and PA and they are beating me!"   That should tell you that Google uses something else to rank websites.)

If you want to know how much respect Google has for a particular website, just go look at how that site is treated in the SERPs.

If you want to know what people think about the website just visit the site yourself and decide if YOU think they are doing a great job or if they are farting around.  Don't you think that evidence is more robust than a couple of flat numbers?

You probably know a lot more about farms and gardens than Google or an algo that produces a couple of flat numbers.

If you are a reasonably smart person who knows an industry then shouldn't you bet on yourself rather than on calculations that know nothing?

And, if you have that expertise then maybe you should be keeping your valuable content for your own site instead of giving it away.... and this is more important that the DA/PA question.

(and highly trafficked)

There's your answer.

IMO further analysis is a waste of time.

Determine the basic core knowledge needed for success in your topic area.

Decide where you have writable expertise.

Do some keyword research to see what people are asking about.

Write where you can produce best-on-the-web content that will be valuable to visitors.

For me there is so many possible topics to write about I spend my time between...  A) basic core knowledge needed in the topic area... and B) what is fun to write

"B" gets most of my time because I am more productive doing work that is fun.

From what I understand you connect your Google+ account with your website much like the way you do with other Google products.

You then link the article to your Google+ and create a connection by linking back, seems to me this would be the best way of doing it, if indeed Google was going to come up with a system (AR).

Yep.... I have years and years of content that has lots of great rankings and lots of great links and lots of social sharing.   ALL of this content is posted on one website - not shared with anybody, syndicated or republished.

We waited for several months after google introduced linking your work to your Google+ page and I did it exactly as you describe.

I expected to get a huge boost in the SERPs.

Nuthin' happened.    Well.... my photo now appears in the SERPs beside my articles... but it had zero influence on my rankings.

Maybe Google did this to get good authors to sign up for Google+.  

In my opinion, a content strategy should be based upon.....

1. what people in your topic area are searching for

2. what you think those people should know (beyond what they are looking for)

3. your ability to produce content for topics that overlap 1 and 2

4. what content is fun for you to create

5. what content is going to advance your business goals or make money

If nobody is searching for the stuff in your topic area then you might need a new project.  If lots of people are searching but the content is hard to monetize then you might need a new project (unless you are doing this as a hobby).

The best situation when you have a convergence of 1, 3, 4 and 5.

From my experience....    bluelinkerp.com/learn/     or    bluelinkerp.com/learnmore/

would be kickass compared to using a subdomain.

Why?  All of your authority is concentrated in the root of your website instead of being divided into subdomains.

Can somebody explain why a younger site with worse figures gets a better position in Google ranking?

Maybe because the figures that you are looking at are different from what google is using to rank the pages.   I think that the figures that you are looking at are good for tracking your progress over time but they obviously are not what google is using.

I do recall reading somewhere that someone hotlinking an image is akin to a link.

I have hotlinking blocked via .htaccess on one of my sites.   It's been blocked for years because LOTS of people were hotlinking my images and we use terrabytes of BW without their help.  With that in place I don't feel that I have any trouble getting the website to rank.

Maybe if they can't hotlink your images they simply link to you?

I believe that creating kickass content is the best way to advance your website and I have been working on that for quite some time.

However, I can't say that AuthorRank does anything for you.

Just create content that is better than what already exists for your topic and you will probably be rewarded.

I would.... put the links in the top nav and place adsense at the top position of the left nav.

I think that doing a redirect is a lot more risky than just putting the new design out there to see what happens.

I agree with Keri,

Which is more valuable... cheers from 20 drunks or endorsement by the Pope?

I might blog on the Pope's site but the time spent doing it for the 20 drunks would be better spent on my own site.

I understand the content creation problem.  I have graduate degrees and decades of work experience in my topic area.   Content creation still is a laborious undertaking.

In the biotech and medical areas your writer needs a strong background in the content area.  Without that he/she will quickly be spotted as a noob by people who know their stuff.   This is long, careful writing that most people don't want to do.

Anybody who says "yes" or "no" without further clarification is giving you a lazy answer.

Penguin problems can result from links on crap sites or links from great sites.   If you place lots of links with optimized anchor text on a lot of great websites you could still have problems.  Google knows by that artificial anchor text that you are trying to manipulate.

So, it is not only WHERE the links are placed but HOW the links are anchored that is important.

Honestly, the best way to get links is by publishing great content.  If you can do that the links will arrive naturally with zero work from you.   I do almost zero link building.  The anchor text for most of my links is a domain name or a URL or simple words like "here" or "this website" or "this article".

Mike....

You have rocket fuel that is not being used.  A source of power that is very easy-to-get.

Your site has a collection of .pdf documents in the "Handouts" section.  Do the following to everyone of them.

1. Open the documents and add a link to your website in the footer of the document or make the name of your organization in the header a live link.  Right now, all linkjuice that goes into these documents dies and is not being passed into your website.  I might also add a link to a relevant category page of your website or a relevant blog post or relevant article.   These pdfs probably have natural links from other sites.  Get the power of those links into your main site.   These links will enable visitors to click to your site for more info and perhaps a conversion.

2. While you have these documents open modify the "properties".   Add a title and description.  These will appear in the SERPs as title tags and turn your pdfs into competitive pages in the SERPs.   After doing this I would "lock" the pdfs.

3. On the "Media" page, these documents open into small windows which are separate URLs on your website.  If these pages had some text content and title tag they might compete in the SERPs.  They might also attract some links.    As above these pages should each have one or more links back to your website to pass power and deliver traffic.

Be careful that these media pages do not become "thin" content or "duplicate" content.  If you can give them some unique beef they should perform well for you.

We have a website with rankings that are almost totally supported by popular pdf documents and pages that support them.  You can do this too.

Good luck.

During 2012 the ranking of our best retail site for its "trophy keyword" (singluar and plural) (which is an EMD by the way) fell from position 4 to position 8.   However, sales on that site were up about 40% because we attacked all of the minor keyword to the point of keyword cannibalism and we added a few more products.

The amount of traffic coming into the site for the trophy KW is tiny compared to the more highly qualified buyers coming in through the longtail purchase-intent keywords.

Yes....  and... how much SEO activity are your competitors engaged in?   You can look for evidence of this going forward using SEOmoz tools or backwards if you have historical data.

If you have evidence that competitors are making war then you might want to let the boss know about it because if they are shoveling more resources into it than you are then your ranks could go down no matter what you are working on.

Nothing is a better justification for more resources than the enemy on the attack.

**This gets into the realm of opinion pretty fast **

I like your side attack based upon logic rather than opinion.

The directive is to take our Website from a PR3 site to a PR5....in 6 months.

I know a couple SEOs outside of the USA who got directives like that because the boss wanted to start selling a few links.  

But, if you are in the USA, this sounds like a directive from a person who really likes bling... wears big gaudy rings... who thinks that size is everything... and who likes to pull out a fat wallet at the store... drives big fancy cars...  and...   maybe has hair like Donald Trump.    

Now if you are working at a place like that then you better get busy on raisin' the PR... and lookin' for another job.

If you are in a biz niche where most of the sites are very low PR then you are going to be stuck buying links to pull this off.   There I would look for another job first and then worry about the PR.

How comfortable are you asking the boss if he would prefer an increase of PR from 3 to 5 or if he would prefer an nice increase in your profits?  A company can spend a lot of resources raising the PR...

This boss might think that PR is the secret to SEO and that you are not workin' on it.

If I was comfortable asking questions I would go in and say...  I can work on a limited number of the following over the next six months...  tell me where you want me to spend my time....

--- improve conversion rate

--- bring in more traffic

--- make site look better to improve corp image and maybe improve conversion

--- get us ranking for new product lines

These things hit our bottom line....

I can also work on.....

--- solving tech issues that could damage our rankings

--- work on thin/dupe content issues that could damage our rankings

These things reduce risk.  We don't want 50% of traffic to disappear.

Or, I can do the following that will increase our PR - fast - like in six months (PR is a log scale - yaknow)

--- buy some links

--- rent some links

These things might increase our PR and have other unintended benefits.

You're the boss.  Tell me what you want me workin' on.

what they need to be doing to win the online battle.

This is really true and I have been very guilty.

Some of the biggest mistakes that I have made are.....   Not betting on myself.

I am willing to bet that changing 300,000 anchor text links will result in a penguin attack.

Asking an SEO company to accept  "payment for results" is asking them to accept your business risk.

In most good money niches your competitors are not sitting on their ass.   That makes SEO a "battle of resources".   Your competitor throws more money at it and you must throw more money at it and the battle escalates just like Crocodile Dundee and the knife.

Lots of webmasters go into a fight without the proper knife because they limited their SEOs budget.   He applies pressure, competitors respond and defeat is assured.

So, if you want the rankings be prepared to pay for the attack and then be willing to pay for an escalation... and then there is the most dangerous competitor of all - the one who has yet to arrive.

I think that most good SEOs have gotten their ass kicked at least one time and they know not to accept pay for results contracts.

I don't have any worries about occasionally checking my rankings with SEOmoz tools.

(they don't get me ranks but create a website they own which then passes leads to me- kinda clever since they could then start charging me per lead or my competitors)

This is like paying someone to compete against you.  You better not stop paying.

Look for programs that will build equity on your own properties not theirs.

"Another truth is that using “text-indent: -9999px”, or hiding text (keeping text out of the user’s sight in a browser), is common spammer’s technique to hide off-topic keywords and/or links to manipulate search engine rankings."

She says it's SPAM.

Google has top-secret algorithms designed to detect when text is hidden/positioned off screen. If this type of hidden text is detected, our important red phone rings,

lol....   "RED PHONE"

Photos that show product features in detail.

Photos that show the product being used.

Visit some websites that sell the same products that you sell.  Look at their photos and then produce photos that are kickass better.

I'd like to work with the top 20 products (top by sales last year).

This is a good idea.  Work where you might make a big impact.

How do I add lots of content without the customer looking at all of those words and not reading it and leaving?

The products that I write about would be absolutely boring and of no interest to most people.   However, those who are interested in the products read this content, watch the videos and stay several minutes on the page.  When some of these people write to us or call on the phone we can tell that they have read the content and watch the video.  They key is to know the products that you are writing about well and explain them thoroughly.  If you can't do that they you are not the right person for this writing job.  If you are working on the 20 most popular products there should be a lot to say about them.

Right now most of the information is in bullet points, I don't see how to keep the customer's interest.

Bullets work great for presenting product features.

Photos may help but I don't think that's enough.

Great photos are kickass in my opinion.

I'm assuming adding content would result in more long tails and more sales.

Absolutely you will get more long tails.  You will get more sales if you know what you are talking about and answer the most common questions that people ask about the product.   If you don't know what you are talking about or what people are asking then you are not the right person for this writing job.   Bullshit will not increase your sales.  You have to answer questions and explain the value in the product.

Oh... one thing.... I don't know what content management system you are using... but with some, if you change the title it will change the URL.

Changing the URL is to be avoided - but you probably know that.

I update articles a lot.

I believe that there is more upside than risk in doing it.

Some of my articles have been updated many times over several years.   Each update adds more content, sometimes more images.

Many of these articles rank well in competitive SERPs.

I would bet big money that your bounce rate is higher on the current site....

• most of the clickable links on the new site deliver hidden content instead of sending to a new page  (the old site seems to have had lots of links that took visitors to a different page)  (are you certain that these are working in the browsers that are used by your visitors?)

• the huge image at top of page may discourage visitors to explore, also the first image is not a very impressive roof - even after you put a new one on.  Have any better examples?  (my family does roofing and I have worked on a few flat roofs myself)

• the new site has lots of changing content.  top image changes automatically - faster than I can get a good look at it.... testimonial box changes automatically - a lot faster than I can read it

• all of your great services are hidden under a drop-down menu...  I bet most people who visit your site never see them.  I didn't until I started writing this

I'd dump the cool features (changing content, drop down menu, hidden text blocks) and go back to simple, click to a new page and read with a persistent navigation that shouts the services you offer instead of hiding them.

I am willing to bet one-month of roofer's pay that most of the people who visit your website looking to get a roof fixed are not the most web-savvy people.  So cool design features are a hinderance to communication.

"I was thinking social/email marketing to keep my company's brand at the top of mind of some of these other CPA's."

I'd be cautious about this.  I think that anyone who is smart enough to be a CPA will be quick to call these efforts spam.

There are some smart competitors in this space and they have no problem generating special pages of content for the various terms that might be search terms for their services.

"Is it simply building content that includes them?"

If I was entering this market I would have a site with lots of "service" pages, each with generous content.  I would also have a blog that gives lots of free tips for producing a great essay and editing it yourself - before turning it over to a professional for final review.

I would also offer a "writer development" service where you not only edit their essay but you review the edits with them by phone so that the client can gain an understanding of how to write better in the future.

Is it getting links utilizing anchor text?

This is not an easy business niche.   Your competitors have been around long enough that they will not be defeated quickly or with little effort.  I think that you will need great content that teachers and professors will link to as examples of how to improve student writing.  Lots of this has been done before.  You will have to do it better and attract attention of the people who will want to share what you have created with students.

I don't see the point in building separate service pages for those other keywords; I think that's a waste and bad site architecture practices.

If you were in a niche with a few naive competitors then you could get by with just a few service pages.

I think that those separate service keywords are typed into search boxes by people with a different mentality.   The "fix my essay" guy has a crappy essay that he hopes you will turn into Sterling by 7:30 AM and he gets in touch with you at 6:00 AM.   The "essay editing service" guy probably has an essay that needs a lot less attention and is not on such tight deadlines.

But, since you are offering an essay editing service writing generous amounts of interesting service pages along with a great blog shouldn't be as tough for you as a guy who sells hydraulic jacks.

I would not spend one moment checking the authority of my pages.

Not one moment.

Instead, spend that time getting generous product descriptions on those pages and create great images to display the product.  All of those words will pull traffic from search on long tail queries.   They will show google that you have a substantive site.   They will inform the customer about your product and help make a buying decision.   The images will help sell the product and reduce the number of product questions that you receive.

Creating a great site with great content is what produces results.  Page authority produces nothing.   It is possible to develop huge page authority but be completely ineffective at the goals of your website.

Create pages and sites that serve your intended visitors.

Maybe they only work 5 minutes per month?

The links could be purchased, rented, traded or simply uploaded to one of their drop/grab sites?

How the links are acquired and their long-term persistence might be more important than how much these guys are workin'.

From what I have seen, Google turned down the EMD benefit in February 2011.

Spammy EMDs were tweaked back a couple months ago (let's say those on the border of a Panda problem or a Penguin problem).

But if you have an EMD with good content the domain still gives you some advantage.

When I use "EMD" I am referreing to domains like DigitalCameras.com and not to domains like SamsDigitalCameras.com for the "digital cameras" querry.

"The question: does anyone have a guess as to what is making it perform so well?"

Your hard work.

Stop allowing them to use your content and they should not appear in your SERPs.

In my opinion, FB likes don't generate any direct search engine benefit.  However, if you have content that people share and those shares lead to visits - then you have something of value - maybe.

Funny, OMG, weasel and rant topics will generate more traffic than any sort of biz generation.

Easiest thing to do is to call your designer.

Have you tried Adsense for Search?   It produces killer income on my sites.  If showing some ads above the SERPs is OK then you might make some nice money.

I honestly don't know.

Since it has been there for a year, I would probably not move it.