Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hey Tracy- I would say yes it absolutely carrys more weight to get links that are relavent to the country you are marketing for. Look at it this way, if you were marketing insurance for Australia but you only had .fr links do you think it would help or hurt you? As you said, intuitively, it makes sense. With all recent algorithm updates centered at improving relavency and trusted sources, I think you should follow your intuition here. I'm not saying just .com links don't carry weight but I think you will find .au link will be better for your strategy, especially if you are appealing to local customers instead of selling worldwide. Hope that helps, good luck! Mike

As long as your blog is optimized for SEO and your blog is a part of your website and not hosted somewhere else you shouldn't see a difference in SEO performance by having it open or not open in a new window. For convenience if your blog is hosted with your website I would not have it open in a new window. If it's hosted somewhere else then I would absolutely have it open in a new window to help minimize your bounce rate.

Hope that helps,

Mike

Google went through 65 changes for Aug and Sept, not all related to search mind you, but some of these changes were aimed at "helping find more high-quality content from trusted sources". So if half of your external links were coming from link farms or sites that Google deems untrustworthy, that would explain it.

Hope that helps.

Mike

After quickly glancing at your site my only suggestion would be to be careful how much you stuff your keywords into your content. Don't get me wrong, it's important to integrate your keywords in the content of your website but here is an example of a bit too much and can easily cause Google to flag your site as spammy.

"Flowers Edmonton,  For Flower delivery Edmonton AB.  Our Edmonton flower shop will ensure that your delivery are fresh and beautiful every time.  Our Edmonton flower shop is a part of the FTD flower network and we have made great relationships with florists all across the country. Send flowers in Edmonton or Canada wide with our same day delivery guarantee. 100% guarantee on all our products and gifts.  Edmonton flowers done right.
Click here to see a page all about our Flower Shop in Edmonton!"

I would work with a copywriter that has experience with SEO best practices to improve the content on your site, I think this would really help with your on-page optimization.

With regards to your local SEO, again make sure that you are careful with using too many keywords. Here is the current description on your local listing:

"“Send Flowers Edmonton. Best Florist in Edmonton. Send flowers for any occasion. Sympathy Flowers. Local Florist in Edmonton Alberta. Flower Delivery to Edmonton, Sherwood Park & St Albert"

This is suppose to be a description of your business or a message from the owner and it's just filled with keywords. Google is very good at identifying and penalizing these practices.

Improve your content, build quality links = improve your SEO.

Good luck

Mike

Before you can even starting thinking of regaining the lost opportunities, you need to identify the source of the problem. How can you solve the problem without identifying it first? Since you didn't lose any rankings for your targeted keywords, it sounds like the strategy you have in place for your targeted keywords is fine and the lost opportunities are stemming from your non-targeted keywords. Find out what keywords have taken the biggest hit, locate the associations of these non-targeted keywords to your site and identify what about your site was causing it to hit on these particular keywords. Only when you answer these questions can you begin to strategize how to regain your lost opportunities.

Hey Wendy-

I haven't seen any data on the click through rates on the places tab for search results so I can't be much help there but fundamentally the places local map system, from my experience, is typically dependent on a more industry specific keyword rather than a product keyword (i.e. "Flooring company" rather than "non-slip floors"). With that said, I have seen product searches generate map results but the search volume has to be at a certain volume for a map to be generated without having to click on places. I think in the case of marketing a non-slip flooring solution I would focus more of your attention on organic, ppc and other marketing avenues.

Good luck!

Mike

Hey Prime85-

With regards to your question, I have found that the more information you provide on a blog subject the better. However, that does not mean that every blog post needs to be super long. It's good that your focusing on creating unique, fresh content for your blog. I can imagine it's difficult to really get a cult following from a blog on storage bins but providing relavent information and addressing consumer and commercial storage concerns and techniques will give your users the best information possible.

Some feedback for your blog.. and I mean this in the nicest and most constructive criticism way :).. maximizing the user experience for your blog is the best way to gain a loyal following and consumer trust. Not only in relavent and informative content but also in design and usability. As a third-party looking at your blog for the first time I have to say that it's not very appealing to the eye. It looks a bit cluttered and your color scheme could use some work. Consider color matching more aspects of your site to your logo to create a uniformity that flows on every page.

Good luck with sales!

Mike

Hard to give a definite answer here but if you look at some of the most popular sites on the web, the majority of them don't pass link juice.

I think you would be well advised to proceed with caution here, especially if your site is already making "very good money" from adsense.  You say your site is not a directory at all, but then say you have State pages that lists vendors and are considering adding a paid option for these vendors... well, without knowing anything more about your site, it sounds a lot like a directory to me. I would set all as nofollow just to cover yourself because the last thing you want is to take a hit from Google and lose all that very good money from adsense!

I think you would be well advised to proceed with caution here, especially if your site is already making "very good money" from adsense.  You say your site is not a directory at all, but then say you have State pages that lists vendors and are considering adding a paid option for these vendors... well, without knowing anything more about your site, it sounds a lot like a directory to me. I would set all as nofollow just to cover yourself because the last thing you want is to take a hit from Google and lose all that very good money from adsense!

Hey Prime85-

With regards to your question, I have found that the more information you provide on a blog subject the better. However, that does not mean that every blog post needs to be super long. It's good that your focusing on creating unique, fresh content for your blog. I can imagine it's difficult to really get a cult following from a blog on storage bins but providing relavent information and addressing consumer and commercial storage concerns and techniques will give your users the best information possible.

Some feedback for your blog.. and I mean this in the nicest and most constructive criticism way :).. maximizing the user experience for your blog is the best way to gain a loyal following and consumer trust. Not only in relavent and informative content but also in design and usability. As a third-party looking at your blog for the first time I have to say that it's not very appealing to the eye. It looks a bit cluttered and your color scheme could use some work. Consider color matching more aspects of your site to your logo to create a uniformity that flows on every page.

Good luck with sales!

Mike

Hey Wendy-

I haven't seen any data on the click through rates on the places tab for search results so I can't be much help there but fundamentally the places local map system, from my experience, is typically dependent on a more industry specific keyword rather than a product keyword (i.e. "Flooring company" rather than "non-slip floors"). With that said, I have seen product searches generate map results but the search volume has to be at a certain volume for a map to be generated without having to click on places. I think in the case of marketing a non-slip flooring solution I would focus more of your attention on organic, ppc and other marketing avenues.

Good luck!

Mike

Before you can even starting thinking of regaining the lost opportunities, you need to identify the source of the problem. How can you solve the problem without identifying it first? Since you didn't lose any rankings for your targeted keywords, it sounds like the strategy you have in place for your targeted keywords is fine and the lost opportunities are stemming from your non-targeted keywords. Find out what keywords have taken the biggest hit, locate the associations of these non-targeted keywords to your site and identify what about your site was causing it to hit on these particular keywords. Only when you answer these questions can you begin to strategize how to regain your lost opportunities.