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If it is done professionally then do it, because it is still a good way to promote your web presence as well as generate high quality backlinks to your site and provide additional traffic. Penguin update was designed to target spam links only, so if you are not spamming then you are safe. You can achieve a lot with social bookmarking if it is submitted to the correct social news sites and targeted sites for your specific niche/audience.
Hi Alan,
Here is one great SEOMOZ article on choosing the right domain name.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-choose-the-right-domain-name
I would suggest the following tips for your domain:
1. Try to stay with .com and do not use hyphens
2. Shorter domain name is better
3. Must be easy to type and memorable
4. With keywords related to your website
5. Need to have commercial appeal
Hope this helps. Good luck!
Hi Ryan,
Google will always be going after any different SEO methods sooner or later. But you are correct that the Penguin update is designed to penalize anchor text links, but only if these built links are not related to the niche or there are duplications of those links created by some sort of auto software. Anchor text links for blogs/forums are still the major SEO components. If done manually and related to the niche, then there should be no issues. Nevertheless, I totally agree with you that earning links from others is much better and safer method than building links.
Above example of anchor text is just to show Hans how links can be created for blog comments or forum pages where there is no link tool.
Just to add to others... when you start creating your backlinks, make sure all your links are related to your niche and to your keyword phrases. bloggerlinkup.com is a good start to find your niche. Use only white hat techniques and don't use spam methods. You can easily create 5-20 manual links per day on a regular basis.
Most important part is to use the anchor text. Below example shows how to create a link with the anchor text.
/* Put your target keyword here" */
I hope this helps. Good luck!
Just like Kyle said, you could be hurting your website's Google rankings with these 301 redirects. You will also have a bigger chance of being penalized if some of your URLs have some identical content. Your question also pops up in another SEOMoz question: http://www.seomoz.org/q/can-penalties-be-passed-via-301-redirect
Joel, it is hard to say, because every site has its own unique design, content, on-site and off-site SEO methods... If you are talking about full maturity then it is probably around 2 years for Bing, but just like I mentioned before - it all depends on your website. Here is a few articles directly from Bing:
Domain age will be a big factor in Bing SEO, but most of the known off-page and on-page SEO methods will help in all known search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo. Many SEO experts just perform SEO for a website and not for a specific search engine. If you concentrate on the website then search engines will follow.
In most cases branded keywords consist brand name, so in your case both Blue Widget and Blue Widget Company are branded keywords/phrases, unless these are patented names of some other company.
There is no exact time after which a site will get out of the sanbox affect. It can be 2 or 3 months, it depends how many quality link you are building on a monthly basis.
SearchFit is a very powerful shopping cart software and one of the best out there. Starts with $79 per month with $39 for 1st month. They also have 14 days trial.
Just like Kyle said, you could be hurting your website's Google rankings with these 301 redirects. You will also have a bigger chance of being penalized if some of your URLs have some identical content. Your question also pops up in another SEOMoz question: http://www.seomoz.org/q/can-penalties-be-passed-via-301-redirect
In most cases branded keywords consist brand name, so in your case both Blue Widget and Blue Widget Company are branded keywords/phrases, unless these are patented names of some other company.
Hi Alan,
Here is one great SEOMOZ article on choosing the right domain name.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-choose-the-right-domain-name
I would suggest the following tips for your domain:
1. Try to stay with .com and do not use hyphens
2. Shorter domain name is better
3. Must be easy to type and memorable
4. With keywords related to your website
5. Need to have commercial appeal
Hope this helps. Good luck!
Domain age will be a big factor in Bing SEO, but most of the known off-page and on-page SEO methods will help in all known search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo. Many SEO experts just perform SEO for a website and not for a specific search engine. If you concentrate on the website then search engines will follow.
[This response edited by SEOmoz staff. This answer is a copy of http://www.ecreativeim.com/blog/2011/03/google-panda-change-seo-impact-on-ecommerce-sites/ and the answer below has been truncated to respect the copyright of the original author]
Google Panda algorithm change could have consequences for many smaller eCommerce sites — or even large ones that haven’t been putting in their SEO time. Unfortunately, far too many eCommerce sites run afoul of things that Google considers low-quality content, especially eCommerce sites with a very large number of products.
Google webmaster tools can be your first stop for your sitemap. Most of indexing is done between 2 days to 3-4 weeks. Depends on the quality of your website and work that was done for on-site and off-site SEO. What you can do for faster indexing? Submit manually your website to all search engines and do social bookmarking for your website. Site structure and popularity of your website are the main factors. Also, if the your domain name has some good history to it then index process can actually take just a few hours.
Just to add to others... when you start creating your backlinks, make sure all your links are related to your niche and to your keyword phrases. bloggerlinkup.com is a good start to find your niche. Use only white hat techniques and don't use spam methods. You can easily create 5-20 manual links per day on a regular basis.
Most important part is to use the anchor text. Below example shows how to create a link with the anchor text.
/* Put your target keyword here" */
I hope this helps. Good luck!
The concept of trackbacks, a protocol by which different sites could notify each other of referencing links, first emerged back in 2002. Since then, the blogosphere has grown in leaps and bounds, but the requirement for each site to explicitly implement this protocol has always stood in the way of adoption. Many are not familiar with Trackbacks, just think of it as automated Google Alerts for all of your pages: you publish new content, Google scour the web for pages that link to it and build automated reports for you right within Google Analytics - simple as that.
These reports provide another layer of social insight showing which of your content attracts links, and enables you to keep track of conversations across other sites that link to your content. Most website and blog owners had no easy mechanism to do this in the past, but Google see it as another important feature for holistic social media reports. When you know what your most linked content is, it is then also much easier to replicate the success and ensure that you are building relationships with those users who actively link to you the most.
Hi Ryan,
Google will always be going after any different SEO methods sooner or later. But you are correct that the Penguin update is designed to penalize anchor text links, but only if these built links are not related to the niche or there are duplications of those links created by some sort of auto software. Anchor text links for blogs/forums are still the major SEO components. If done manually and related to the niche, then there should be no issues. Nevertheless, I totally agree with you that earning links from others is much better and safer method than building links.
Above example of anchor text is just to show Hans how links can be created for blog comments or forum pages where there is no link tool.
There is no exact time after which a site will get out of the sanbox affect. It can be 2 or 3 months, it depends how many quality link you are building on a monthly basis.