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Thanks!
That's why designer/developer links will never appear in the footer of any of my sites.
If the designer/developer expects these links it should be part of the discussion before any design contract is written... and they should feel free to quote a higher priced option for the work being done without the expectation of a link in the footer.
Do you think that keyword links in the footer of a site might look like paid links?
I agree.... I like to place huge product photos above the fold.
I agree with Anthony. Given the choice between spammy directories and guest blog posts I would go with the blog posts.
And I would be willing to do a little work to get them on the best possible blogs.
I am really interested in hearing what others have to say about this.
I know that .pdfs can be very valuable content. They can be optimized, they rank in the SERPs, they accumulate PR and they can pass linkvalue. So, to me it would be a mistake to block them from the index...
However, I see your point about dupe content... they could also be thin content. Will panda whack you for thin and dupes in your PDFs?
How can canonical be used... what about author?
Anybody know anything about this?
I am not answering because I don't know the amounts of traffic generated by your categories, locations, references, activities, etc.
So, I would be doing lots of KW research.
Also, I would be using hyphens instead of underscores in the URLs
When you say... "White Paper"... does that mean publishing it in .pdf? I would not do that unless you need it in that format for controlled printing or distribution.
Otherwise I would publish the paper on a standard webpage because they are easier to optimize, easier to monetize and fit into the format of your website.
If you do go with PDF, remember that you can optimize it to be seen in the SERPs, include links to your website and that many shopping cart links will work within a PDF.
Just sayin...
I would edit competitor's URL out of your post. This forum gets indexed quickly and ranks impressively well. I can already find your post ranking for competitor's URL plus one word.
I think that you will be surprised at how much work will be required to beat them.
Nice... great idea. Get enthusiastic customers to share.. and send a photo if they caught a nice one. They will probably link to it from their facebook page if their photo is on a fishing boat with a monster fish.
Great suggestions, William.
If you want to be the "fishing guy" you have to earn it.
Each citiy page is very similar (there are only so many ways to write about a type of fish or fishing). What would be the recommended way for optimizing this, keeping in mind the duplicate information we provide on each page seems to be important to people.
I am going to be straight and honest.
Write unique content for each city. Just do it.
(there are only so many ways to write about a type of fish or fishing)
I don't believe this... get to writing. If you want to be the "fishing guy" you should be able to do this no sweat. It just takes time.
I know you will not like my answer. But you know I am right.
More Content - This sounds like low-hanging fruit to me. DO ASAP!
Forum / User-Generated Content & Interaction & Social Push - Do you have the staff to support this today and ongoing?
Videos - great if the are really good
My top suggestion would be articles that are "first thing that a person should read" about the most important topics in your niche.
To be honest I have never heard of some one discovering spammy links to their site??
Blackhats build spammy links all of the time.
I own a few exact match domains for competitive keywords and will confirm that they are helpful in getting rankings. However, Google has turned back the importance of these domains and even before Google did that these domains were not invincible. I am getting my butt kicked in a few places.
I'm going to be honest, I hate how much weight is put on the EMD, Domain brokers are focused on purely finding these, buying them up and selling them way above there worth.
I used to feel this way then I paid a ransom to get one of these domains. (My wallet is still smoking.) But, for me, it was worth it. Not only did I get better rankings, my conversion rate went up (without changing the site) and these domains will get you more links, tweets, etc - in my opinion. You might not have the same results.
So, my suggestion would be to bite the bullet and buy one of these domains. It will cost you some money, you might need to deplete savings or take out a loan but then you will see their true value - which might be less than what you expect.
But at least then you will have one of these gems and see what you can do with it.
The bottom line... owning one of these domains for me is not all about the rankings. It is about owning a great virtual property that gives me enormous energy to work on the site. That will kick a lot more asses than the EMD.
That was a great post inhouse.... if you add a little more it might make a good youmoz post.
You made a low-effort attempt to get them removed.
Don't go to war over this.
If your site gets whacked... then go to war.
First place social sharing buttons on your site so people who can see it will easily have ways to share it via facebook, twitter, google, email.
When you have superb content share it with a site such as slashdot, reddit, stumble, digg, which will quickly get your title and a sentence in front of a lot of people (not your entire article - these sites deliver the traffic to you - not someone else). If your content is really good that could entice some people to your site and they - if they like your content, will share it with others and they with others and so on.
Study what is succeeding on these sites from your niche and learn what you need to beat.
Getting that type of sharing is not common.. so your content has to be really really good - some of the best on the web in your niche.
You can also contact some bloggers who observe your niche and link out to what they think is interesting. But don't do that often. Only when you have superb content.
Don't overestimate the quality of your content. When you think it is great, improve it, add images, get photos, interview an expert, add video, hire an editor. It has to grab the reader's attention at the start and hold it through the details.
I am not a big fan of using pagerank, moztrust, domain trust, etc to decide why a site is beating me. Google uses a couple hundred factors and these look at just a few.
Tossing that aside, here is what my site would look like if I was in your space.
It would look like the competitor that you are complainin' about.
When a person lands on the site their face is SLAPPED with "Firecrackers"..... "Missles".... "Sparklers"........ ALLLLL of that stuff that gets a fireworks guy's blood pumping. YES... these guys have what I need! And google sees that they have all of this stuff... every freeking thing that a fireworks guy would search for... right out there in front and center.... one click away. Awesome!
What they would not see... A bigass image that google probably doesn't read..... two huge paragraphs of corporate chest thumping... and bunch of news that very few people care about.
Links to the blog all have same text... blog content is really thin.... it's over at blogspot!. Do you think people are really watching those videos? I don't.
Just saying what I think and what I would do. Trying to be really honest.
Your competitor puts what the visitor wants right in his face... you have what he wants but its buried.
If I owned your site I would dump the homepage and put the catalog page in its place.... but my catalog page would have a LOT more content. A LOT.
If you do that, I still doubt that you will jump up and beat the #2 site. I am betting that they have some good things going for them that are not in the PR, MT and DT metrics.
I have been using Adwords since the service was launched.
At first costs went up rapidly as more competitors arrived.
From what I have seen costs are driven more by the number of competitors entering your niche, their level of expertise and the discount at which they can obtain their merchandise.
Then when they introduced quality score the costs for many people actually went down.
If you are not expert, expert at quality score then becoming an expert could decrease your costs next year by making your ads more relevant, blocking negative keywords, etc. Also, increasing your conversion rate could allow you to increase the amount that you pay per click and allow you to capture more sales.
You listed three options.....
Another option is, remove some or all of these links.
Another option is, instead of using these links, figure out how to get the people to use them to a category page where all of these links are presented with a beautiful menu.
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(If this was my site I would probably add MORE links to that left nav and follow all of them. Don't know if this is the right choice for you but on the sites that I know adding more keyword-rich links brings in more traffic. The minor pages get more juice and all of the keywords in the left nav combine with your page content to bring in more long tail. Might not be highly targeted traffic but its more traffic.)
I think that you are putting way too much analysis into this. (Engineers tend to do such things 
Here is my suggestion....
Go build your kickass tool. Place it on a page with a title tag and optimization that describe that tool perfectly.
Be sure that you explain it clearly and perfectly. Be sure that it works flawlessly (Engineers will pick at very tiny problems 
When it is ready for use and for other engineers (who will try to break it) then share the URL with some engineers who blog. Share it on a couple of engineering forums.
If your tool is really valuable then taking the steps above will be like throwing gasoline on a fire. You will have people calling and emailing to ask if they can have the calculations so they build the same tool on their own sites. People will be writing to you asking you to explain the calculations.
Don't launch prematurely. You will get their good attention the first time but not on a relaunch or a repair.
Good luck.
(I hope that you already have some highly related content and content that supports people who will use this tool. If they see your tool AND other information then your site can become a "go to place" for that topic. If you don't have other related and supporting information try to get it ASAP... preferably before launch.)
Second goal would be to improve conversions.
I would begin here as this is the bottom line. You want the best you can afford on this job.
Ryan recommends SiteTuners. I have used them and they are very good. They will take one of your pages and give you back a proposed new design (for that page) that you can test.... and tweak as they provide guidance. Then when you have a kickass conversion rate then build the rest of your site design around it.
Their work will probably include input on aesthetics... so I would not have someone expensive design a new site and then hear SiteTuners tell you it sucks.
I agree. Most of the articles that I have written have taken at least 8 hours. Some have taken over a week with a photographer/artist helping me with images.
I know that lots of people don't believe that we spend this much time and think that 20 minutes of yada yada text is going to be competitive.
If your blog posts pull in traffic then sitting on them is like walking away from money.
How much money will it cost you to sit on them. How many likes, tweets, links will it cost?
If not much then publish them.
Even if you post them all simultaneously and you can still promote them individually. (This is one of the problems with a blog... it chronologically posts your content. If you were publishing on webpages they could be indexed and on the site but not brought to the homepage until promotion time.
I believe that the answer is YES... and that is how my sites are set up.
Blogs are in a folder of the root domain.
I redirected all subdomains into folders of the root about a year ago and the results have been kickass.
I would see how much human traffic is coming into those satellite sites. If very little I would redirect them to main site. Then I would place all of my efforts into the main site.
The owners might not like that recommendation because they thought making the satellite sites was a kickass idea. But if you show they are producing zero traffic or that the traffic bounces off of main site then the sale will be much easier.
I really like GeneralZ's answer....
Just tossing out another opinion....
Is site B related by topic to site A? If not then the links will be worth very little.
Does site B have 400,000 pages of unique and substantive content? If not then the links from that site will likely be worth very little.
Does site B have lots of links from outside of your network of sites? If not then the links will be worth very little.
That is my technical analysis.
My opinion based upon a small number of observations is... if you put 400,000 links from site B into site A the rankings of site A are likely to remain unchanged.
If my competitor said he was going to juice his site with 400,000 links from a Q and A site I would not be very worried.
I think that the private question that can be asked each month is one of the most valuable services offered. You have access to a diversity of smart experts who will give you very valuable advice - easily worth $100 each time. And, done in private.
A couple of months ago one of my competitor's had a designer toss their redesigned site up with noindex follow on every page. BAM... they were gone from the SERPs in 48 hours.
We had a great laugh over it and checked their site daily to monitor how long it would take them to figure it out. The site was out of the index for a couple of weeks and then they removed the noindex. Within 48 hours they were back in the SERPs at old rankings.
The amount of time required to get back will be related to the power of your site and how many spiders are coming in. If you have a new site with very few links it could take weeks for it to come back. However, if the site is crawled heavily you should be back in a few days.
When I search my competitors link profiles, I find just hundreds and hundreds of crappy reciprocal links, splogs or the like.
Maybe that is a signal that there is easy money to be made?
but i'm nervous about marketing it coz spending 5k and the video only getting 300 hits and not going viral would suck!
You can't hit a homerun if you never step up to the plate.
I think that it would be totally honest to have several videos on your site with only a fraction of them going viral. If you tell everyone that you hit a homerun every time that is not a good way to control client expectations.
I don't have any problem with a person submitting his website to a few directories... but if I want to beat my competitor, I will not mimic his methods. Instead I will do something clearly superior and kick his butt properly.
If I was the boss at a video production company a good portion of the production staff's time would be spent making videos for our own website.
Video production companies are where webmasters often go when they need some awesome linkbait for their own websites. Not only does it serve as great linkbait but it is also a great way to "strut your stuff" for anyone who visits your website.
Perhaps you don't make that type of video but maybe it would be beneficial to consider. It could open a whole new line of business for you.
I don't get it?
I think that google is smart enough to know what part of the page is the content and what part of the page is the wrapper. So, I spend zero time on tactical coding.
I think that the stuff that you show the visitor at the top of the page is a lot more important that what is at the bottom. Otherwise it would not be at the top of the page.
So, I am going to put the items of jugular importance there and load that part of the code first... actually I am going to simply do top-down, left-right coding so my code has the same structure as 99% of the sites on the web.
I think that when you try to do cool wizard stuff that you actually paint a target on your butt that says.. "I am an odd duck".
There are some good keyword research tools out there. SEOBook features some of them here. (about 1.5 years old)
http://www.seobook.com/archives/001013.shtml
I have used keyword discovery, wordtracker and the adwords tool. All have performed well. However, I think adwords tool does a great job and that, combined with my brain, and some very occasional competitor checking is enough time spent on the task for me.
Why check the people below you? They are the ones who might be kicking your butt tomorrow.... and the most dangerous competitor is the one who has not yet arrived.
Pick the competitors who are beating you in the SERPs... and a few who are not.
Then visit their sites and sniff their keywords.
Also... when I use the Adwords keyword too, I look at the list of KWs that they provide and then start typing in some that I think of. I can usually add a lot to their list because I know my industry very well.
To get advice instead of guesses you should post the URL or give a very detailed description.
There has been a long-time recommendation of 100 links or less.
I honestly don't pay any attention to the number of links on a page. Most of my sites have way more then 100 links on a page. And, I have some pages that are resource lists - for example, linking out to employers in a certain category. I have pages like that with hundreds of links per page and they rank #1 in google with better than moderate competition.
Some ideas...
if you have a blog you could write a post about one of their products, maybe they would like to write the post... then you write a post for them and they feature you as one of their customers/retailers
if you have a category page featuring their products and they have a great demo page you could place a link on their category page.... they could link to you on their page saying "buy it here"
you could make a page that lists all of the important brands that you carry
on my site I have links to "service providers" on an "about us" page... I thank some service providers on that page... maybe they would do that for you
Before you go out asking them for links, examine their site to see if they link out already. You might be able to get a link on their "dealers" or "support" page just for asking - especially if you are one of their better customers.
If they have a blog you could offer to write a post on a topic that would please them.
If you have demo material on .pdf documents, xls, ppt, etc give them the .pdfs and say "post them on your site"... then each .pdf has a link to your site nicely placed as an attribution. Those documents are not web pages but they accumulate PR and pass link value.
- is it ok to add links to the brands they sell in those shops on every business-page? It's a link to the product listing they sell of that brand
I would do this.. if it is not going to be a briarpatch because of changes.
- I wrote a generic text about the business where I can replace city, street it's located, ... Is it ok to use that kind of text on the local business pages?
If that is a small part of that page then this is OK... but if this is the main content of these pages then most of them will be filtered from search results.
I would try very hard to get evergreen content for each location. Maybe you can create a webform that managers at each location can type in something unique about their store. Or call each one and talk with manager to get good unique text on each page.
- anybody some ideas I can write about on those loca business pages?
verbal driving directions... square footage, store exterior description, nearby businesses, write a pitch to nearby universities, large employers, business plazas
whatever you write, keep it evergreen... you don't want to be updating this every few months
I agree with Robert on all points.
A few other thoughts.....
If your customers are "creatures of habit"... who visit once every six weeks, buy the same items and leave then I would not be changing homepage very much - at least not the parts that these people use. I might have a few items that rotate and I would do that with server-side includes that are rewritten by a perl script.
If you have lots of repeat customers who visit and buy diverse things then a homepage with more activity might make sense. However, if most of your repeat visitors arrive once a month or even once a week then changing homepage daily is quite a lot.
The statistics: increased the average visitor's time by forty seconds and average pageviews by 20%.... are for visitors entering the homepage from a google search.
These videos were both on multiple pages.... and the visitor had the option of viewing the video on the homepage or clicking to a deeper page that holds the video plus an article.
Both of these videos were on the homepage - one at the top of the page, one at the very bottom - well below the fold. The video at top was 45 seconds, the video at bottom was 3:00. About 20-25% of visitors watched the top video and about 15-20% watched the lower video (data from CrazyEgg).
This is a homepage with a lot of diverse information so 20% of visitors viewing is very good in my opinion. More people clicked the top video than anything else on the page.
I think that the length is not as important as the audience retention. The 45 second video retails 90% of visitors for the entire length of the video. The 3:00 video retains 70% for the entire length of the video.
Go have a few beers... check OSE in 60 days.
If I was google I would be using averages... or % of people who backbutton out in under ten seconds... this will allow for some people who are distracted.
I am working hard to hold visitors longer. Just added two videos to one of my homepages and increased the average visitor's time by forty seconds and average pageviews by 20%.
