Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Ryan, I agree with Moosa here. Thoughtful and valuable comment posting can help you to gain authority among niche audiences, but adding your URL before you've earned this authority is quite spammy and might get you penalised by Google. If I had an extra four hours a day for SEO, I would spend:

• 30 minutes - Commenting and interacting with influential bloggers and communities in my niche
• 30 minutes - Keyword/trend research
• 2 hours - Content creation around these trends and keywords
• 1 hour - Promoting that content and managing social media profiles. Even if your assistant isn't skilled is social media management, it shouldn't take too long to get him up to speed.

Content creation and promotion is the best and most sustainable way to earn links, if that's what your primarily concerned about.

Good luck!

Hi Tom, generating a good range of longtail keywords is going to be more difficult without local or branded keywords, but it is still possible and it's a good way to gain a foothold in a competitive market. So terms like "oak table and four chairs", "antique oak bed" etc. may help to drive traffic. SEOMoz has a really thorough guide to keyword research here: http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo/keyword-research

If you haven't set up a blog, it could be a really good way to capture longtail queries, build your reputation as an expert in the field and improve your brand visibility.

Good luck!

Hi Joel.

Where possible it's always beneficial to write unique product descriptions. It can be tempting just to copy and paste the manufacturer's nice, professionally written description, but unfortunately this is problematic from an SEO perspective.

Penalisation for using the manufacturer's descriptions is unlikely, but pages containing duplicate content aren't likely to rank well. If you want to rank above your competitors (and hopefully gain some deep link juice to those all-important product pages), you have to offer something unique.

In an ideal world you'd have completely unique, appealing descriptions for every product. At the very least, focus on producing great descriptions for your best sellers or best earners.

It's definitely worth harnessing the potential of user-generated content through reviews and questions and answers. This is a great, low-cost way to add unique and useful content.

Good luck!

Alice

Hi Yoseph, the first question I usually ask myself when starting planning a content strategy around a keyword is - "What information would I be looking for if I entered that search term?" So, for example, someone searching for an online wildlife biology degree is probably interested in course content, structure, accreditation, price etc. Make sure you include these basic elements.

Then I'd use keyword research to help shape other content ideas (FAQs, keywords optimised around specific modules and topics etc.). Google auto-suggest in searches and the Adwords keywords tool and two basic places to start.

I'd measure the audience's response to this content carefully in Analytics  - which pages are most popular; where are readers spending longest; if you have a site search, what words are readers searching for; if you have a sales funnel, whereis it leaking. This data will inform your content strategy for providing content that will match your cusomters' needs. Good luck..

It is a high authority domain, and one of the few paid inclusion links that doesn't seem to fall foul of Google (probably because the fee is for an "editorial review" rather than the link itself). I've rarely seen a click coming through from the directory, so listing would be for SEO purposes only.

I've never seen any significant ranking increases as a result of listing with Yahoo (I'm based in the UK), but it can help increase trust. I would say that if you have a large budget it's worth a try, but if you're working with a small budget the cost probably doesn't justify the returns.

Good luck!

Hi Fraser,

I think the best strategy for internal linking is to keep things simple and consider what would give the best user experience for your customers. So, for example, linking from towels to bath sheets is logical and helpful, as it's closely related.

The same applies to anchor text - let the customer know what's on the other end of the link, and don't try to slot in unnatural phrases and keywords for SEO benefit. It's likely that excessive internal anchor text linking triggers a penalty (http://www.seomoz.org/blog/testing-the-value-of-anchor-text-optimized-internal-links), so try to keep anchors natural and vary them if the context requires it. So you might use "bath sheets" on one page, "buy bath sheets" on another, "our range of bath sheets" on another and so on.

In terms of keeping track of links, a site map or a spreadsheet should easily accommodate the information you want to track.

You might also want to consider page rank sculpting, which uses internal links to channel the page rank towards high priority and high value pages. However a well-structured site channels page rank naturally and doesn't require any sculpting. Matt Cutts deals with the practice here: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/

Good luck!

Optimising multiple pages for the same keyword can be detrimental. This can lead to "keyword cannibalisation", where pages are forced to compete with each other for the same query. This can result in lower overall rankings.

Ideally each page should be optimised for a different keyword - e.g. your homepage could be optimised for "leather shoes" and your category pages could be optimised for "men's leather shoes", "women's leather shoes", "kid's leather shoes" etc,

Having one page for each topic/keyword and making it as useful and comprehensive as possible will attract more links than having three or four different pages about the same topic.

If you're worried about keyword cannibalisation you can use internal anchor text to indicate which page should be considered the authority for that keyword - e.g. your "men's leather shoes" page could have the anchor "leather shoes" that directs back to the home page.

Hi Riyas, using multiple H1 tags shouldn't have any significant effects on SEO efforts. Because HTML5 uses powerful sectioning elements, it's quite common to see H1s used for each section of a page.

However headings are also used to show hierarchy, and most pages will have one clear heading that takes precedence. There are exceptions - such as blogs.

So using multiple H1s is fine, and it's not a major SEO issue (unless they're stuffed with keywords), but most of the time it's unnecessary.

Hi there, it sounds a bit shifty to me... I don't believe that there's any such thing as a Google Preferred Agency. They might be referring to the certification programme that you mention (http://www.google.com/adwords/partnerprograms/), but then they should be using one of those badges rather than the Google logo.

As you say, these badges link back to a verifiable profile page on Google Partner Search. If the logo isn't verifiable, it's probably not authentic.

Hi Joao, some good advice from Duke here. A 301 redirect will solve this duplicate problem and help to consolidate the authority. However it's worth investigating to see what caused the problem and whether it is a wider issue, in which case canonicals might be more appropriate. Good luck!

Hi Mohit. As you say it's very difficult to give numbers - every website and every niche is different. A fantastic website with little or no SEO already done might see a 50% increase in traffic in the first month, but in my experience that's far from typical.

The usual pattern for sites I work with is a slow overall increase in the first three months (discounting short term spikes) followed by more rapid growth in the next few months. As sites gain links and regular visitors, traffic increases more quickly.

Good luck.

Hi Diane, link exchanges have the potential to do more harm than good, especially if:

• The link partner is low authority and/or low quality
• The link partner is in an unrelated niche
• The link partner has lots of other outbound links

One-way links give a lot more juice than link exchanges, so it's better in the long run to invest time and effort into producing quality content on your own site that might attract links. I would only ever consider a link exchange - on an individual basis rather than a scheme, which is against Webmaster guidelines) if the site was high quality, useful to my readers, in my niche but not a competitor, and had the potential to give me a lot of traffic through direct clicks.

Google guidelines on link schemes may help to clarify: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66356

Hi Paul, Irving has nailed it. This sounds like a link network and it's a prime candidate for penalisation.

Haha I like the section "Don't split-test the colour of your buttons (unless you really want to)" But it just goes to show the importance of testing as much as possible and basing all decisions on metrics

Hi Ian, I've had similar experiences to Donford. There have been a few glitches the past month or so but I've never experienced any significant problems in the 6 months previously. Good luck.

Hi, yes it's a good idea to think about SEO throughout the development stage. There are lots of things to think about during the build which may affect SEO, inlcuding:

• Has the website got more elements than it needs (multiple CSS files that can be reduced, lots of small images when one sprite would be better, redundant java files etc.)?
• Have you thought about the content of the site (one relevant H1tag per page, clean simple URL structure, all images have appropriate alt tags, appropriate navigation etc.)?
• How should search engines see the site (relevant use of rel="nofollow", relevant use of canonical links, 301 redirects on old links etc.)?

Adding quality, SEO optimised content on your blog is a good starting point. If you do link to the homepage before the site is complete, I would consider creating a holding page to explain what the site will be about and when full functionality will be launched.

Hi Bob,

It's not specifically related to Facebook pages, but this brought a smile to my face this morning:

http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33419/Shameless-Marketing-Tactics-That-Totally-Work-Infographic.aspx

Good luck with the new page.

Hi there, I would:

• Send DMCA notifications to the other major search engines and any web directories this site is listed on. This should get the site de-indexed.
• Send a DMCA notification to the Webmaster's ISP. This should get the site taken down,

Good luck.

Hi John, that's a really frustrating situation, especially when you feel that the national companies have thin content.

Unfortunately there's no quick way to leap frog those national companies - being big and reputable, their sites are considered to be authoritative and they have a good range of links. You'll have to build up authority and high quality links over time to overtake them. JakubMovic's advice about contacting local journalists is a good way to gain links from authoritative sources.

I also don't see a Google Local Business listing for your site - is this something that you have implemented yet? This can be a really great way for local companies to compete with national ones (with the listings often appearing first in the search results), and it's free. http://www.google.com/local/add/ If you do have a  local listing it might be a good idea to review which keywords you're targeting so that you appear for the highest value keyword combinations.

Good luck - it sounds like you've made a great start and with a bit more time hopefully you'll reap the rewards.

Hi Ud U, Kevin's recommendations are all excellent.

I would add that building relationships with quality, relevant sites is a good long term strategy. For example, one of my clients offers pub tours. On my client's site we created a profile page for each of the pubs on the tour and contacted the pubs for input. The majority of them then linked to these profile pages without us even requesting it. We also got links from tourism sites and travel blogs.

The result was good quality content for my client's customers to read;  a good set of longtail optimised pages; and over 30 relevant, high quality links. The bottom line is that building relationships with relevant sites (and I mean genuine relationships rather than some sort of linking partner) and quality content generation really can work for all parties involved.

Good luck.

Hi Ben, it seems like you've got a pretty solid strategy in place. I appreciate that social media can be a tricky platform to negotiate when you're working in a sensitive industry like this, and maybe you'll find that some networks simply don't work, while others do.

One thing that I might suggest is to spend some time deciding on the niche you want to reach through social media. Connecting with potential patients in this way might be difficult for the reasons you state above (privacy, reluctance to share/like/discuss openly). Establishing your reputation and increasing your visibility among the counselling community could be achieved by joining Twitter conversations, connecting on LinkedIn, commenting on blogs, answering questions and, once you've built a following, sharing your own content.

Perhaps patients are better reached through SEO-promoted posts rather than social media promoted posts (link building, solid guest posts etc.). Having said that, there are probably lots of ways to utilise social media - e.g. awareness generating campaigns, conducting research and sharing interesting statistics and findings etc.

Good luck!

Hi Joao, yes a 301 redirect would be preferable to a canonical. A 301 is more "absolute" - it lets search engines know that they should ignore the redirected page. A canonical is more like a piece of advice for search engines.

Canonicals are useful if you don't have the development skills or resources to implement a 301, and they can also be used when it's not practical to add a 301 to lots of web pages.

In short - use a 301 if practical

Hi Pete,

Sorry I was referring to the titles themselves. If Google doesn't think that the title is a good match for the query (maybe it contains different keywords or is too spammy), it will select another snippet of text to show in place of the title in the SERPs. This obviously isn't ideal as it takes the control out of your (and you client's) hands.

Hi there, if it's a "relevant and quality" blog it probably will be considered natural. This is fine once in a while but I wouldn't rely on it as a tactic - too many reciprocal links will devalue the link authority.

Hi Dena,

I wouldn't say images are strictly necessary, but it would certainly be much more of a challenge to create a good user experience without them.

Stock images are cheap and even standard digital cameras can produce high quality photos, so it seems like a bit of a no-brainer to include them given the importance of visual stimulation on the web.

Good luck with the client!

Hi Aaron,

I would conduct keyword research in the normal way - search volume, competition, relevance for your wesbsite etc. Niches that are filled with spam are just like any other competitive niche - except the competition is easier to beat once you establish authority.

Once you have a bank of keywords that you feel would drive quality traffic, begin to work on producing quality content around them.

It will take work and patience to differentiate yourself from the spam. Building links from authoritative sources, press releases, social media promotions and generating quality content can help to establish the site as an authority on the subject.

The bottom line is that search engines and searchers hate spam. By differentiating your website from the spam and working to gain trust and authority, the chances are that you will be rewarded.

Best of luck!

Hi Christopher, that's a great question. I was actually thinking about this earlier in the week. I think there's a lot of guest blogging that is spammy, low quality and manipulative, but I don't see Google imposing some sort of penalisation on all guest blogging.

That's because a lot of guest blogging is high quality, heavily shared and of high value. I think that done correctly, everyone can be a winner with guest blogging - the writer gets a new potential audience (and inbound link), the blog owner gets a quality piece of content and the readers get valuable information.

Low quality articles and articles with unnatural links will get hit by other algorithms. I would say that as long as the post is good, on a good website and goes easy on links, Google won't mind. A lot of journalists were using guest writing as a way to expand their readership before SEO existed, so it would seem a little unfair if Google decided that this was bad practice.

What's your opinion?

Hi Vikas, I would be very cautious about this... it's a grey-hat area. If you're providing good quality content and including relevant links, you may see some benefits at first. But as ITRIX suggests, they're likely to be recognised as a blog network.

And of course, each blog would have to gain link authority before being able to pass much link authority on. A better strategy would be to dedicate that time and effort into putting quality content on your own site and earning links to this.

Good luck.

Hi Claire,

Article marketing can still work if the articles are high enough quality - but if they are high enough quality it would be more beneficial to submit them to a high authority niche site rather than one of these directories.

I tend to go with a 90/10 rule - 90% of my content goes on our own site, and 10% are guest posts on a blog with a strong reputation that will earn trust and authority. I think your time might be better spent writing one really great post for a really great site rather than 10 decent posts for directory sites.

Good luck!

Hi Sudha,

In response to question 3, I would say that if you already own the .co.uk domain, and you're targeting audiences in the UK, it's definitely a good idea to take advantage of it.

Users often prefer to click on a familiar ccTLD because of the trust that they associate with them (consciously and subconsciously).

You wouldn't have to build a whole new website or stop using the .in site. If you use canonicals and geo-taregtting (through Webmaster), you'll avoid major problems with duplicate content.

Good luck!

Hi Ron, yes well-placed, relevant links with well-written, non-spammy anchor text should help your other pages to rank higher.

Hi Cesar, reducing the number of links per page is probably best practice. Google may decide not to index or follow all the links, or if the anchor text is very keyword driven it may be considered spammy. Pages with 1,000 links are probably passing on very little page rank at any rate,

I do understand your point about improving the user experience, but unfortunately algorithms probably won't understand the reasons behind this.

Is there a way that you can refine/restructure the results pages so that users don't see a very long list of results/links? E.g. for a page that has 1,000 results, could you paginate according to letters of the alphabet?

1. It could possibly help you. There's no penalty for having too many links per page (unless they appear spammy), but some restructuring could ensure that internal links pass on more link juice.

2. If these pages are not linked to from elsewhere, they probably will see a drop in ranking/page authority.

Good luck!

As Saijo states, your site has not been de-listed, it's just not ranking very well. Have a look at the Google update history (http://www.seomoz.org/google-algorithm-change) and see if the drop in rankings corresponds with any of these updates. This could help you to pinpoint what the problem is and how you can rectify it.

Good luck!

Hi, it would be a good idea provided that the sections aren't keyword stuffed like you say your competitors are. Information like shipping, schedules etc. sound like they'll be useful for visitors, so it could be a win-win situation if done correctly. Good luck!

Ah I'm sorry I misinterpreted you - so it's essentially about pagination? Rel Next/Rel Previous is probably the best way to go - the first page will be given the equity and the pages won't have to compete with each other for ranking. Google have a pretty comprehensive guide: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1663744

Hi Daria, in my opinion Rand's guide is still one of the best around. It may be three years old, but like most good white hat advice it has proved itself to have a fairly long shelf life. Good luck!

Hi Antonio,

I've seen great results from all match types, and usually get the best results from a combination of the three plus some negative keywords. Good keyword research is vital to make sure you're not wasting time and budget on undesirable keywords. For example, if your keyword is "Madrid information", selecting broad match type could result in your ad showing for search queries like "information technology Madrid" or "Information on the University of Madrid."

Exact match type is generally the "safest" option, as your ad will only be triggered the phrase you've selected and nothing else. However don't be afraid to experiment with phrase and broad - you can set your bids lower to make sure you're not wasting unnecessary budget. Then monitor keyword performance closely and use the data to hone your adgroups (pausing keywords that aren't working, increasing bids on the ones that are, expanding your keywords, adding negative keywords etc.)

Good luck!