Questions created by HMCOE
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To link or not to link | Do Follow or No Follow?
I want to link to an event on a separate ticket website from at least 20 major pages. Is it OK to post a description & title & links on those 20 pages that are the same? (duplicate - but account for less than 5% of total on-page content) Do you Link as Do-Follow or No-Follow? ... and why? Or should I just use their ticket widget and plug that registration form into those 20 pages. (There still is a link - do-Follow, but everything stays on the website) I have been getting a lot of confusing answers as to whether have external links as follow or nofollow. If you know of any RECENT resources about the topic based on evidence rather than opinions that would help a lot.
Web Design | | HMCOE0 -
How important is URL length?
Is URL length really that important? I have many articles that would lose meaning if the URL was shortened and for most, they would have to be under the root domain instead of under the category in order to fit. Has anyone tested if they were negatively impacted by URL's that are too long?
Web Design | | HMCOE0 -
Can someone recommend a guide to getting started with Rich Snippets?
It's a bit tough to find info about getting started with Rich Snippets and how to start associating that information with the website. I'd appreciate some links to guides on how to get started, followed by how to get good at it. Thank You All in advance
Conversion Rate Optimization | | HMCOE0 -
Hard Lessons Learned... What's yours?
So I got a whole lot of help these past two weeks and my rankings have been skyrocketing. Then I decided to start working on the on-page SEO in the lowest category of meaning, specifically on long-tail URLs. So I shortened a few of my best keyword pages so they can be fully indexed... Let's just say that I neglected to remember I had built over 2 years some 30+ PR4-6 links to these pages. Rankings for these keywords dropped from 1-2 US listings to non-existent. Lesson Learned. But I'm still smirking 🙂 What was your big lesson/mistake in the past week?
Web Design | | HMCOE0 -
Underscore or Hyphen
I've heard a lot of conflicting views on this. Some SEO gurus consult to use _ (underscore) whenever you need to use words like "for" "and" "to" when defining keywords in URL structure. Others say to use - (hyphen) in everything Others say not to use the connecting words (to, for, and) at all What would you recommend?
Web Design | | HMCOE0 -
Geo Targeting for a City / State - is it possible?
What are the best ways to geo-target for a specific city? (Please share your top 5 ways to do so)
Web Design | | HMCOE0 -
Setting a Preferred Domain
Should you set a preferred domain? www.domain.com or domain.com Does this influence your SEO strategy?
Web Design | | HMCOE0 -
How to Link sub-pages of a category without cannibalization?
What's the best practice to link to sub-categories without cannibalizing SEO? Main page title = Dog Sub page title = dog collar Sub sub page = spiked dog collar I used SEOMoz program and it showed the link from the main page to the sub page as cannibalized and also as duplicate title Same thing for the sub-sub page. How to avoid it? Please provide examples Questions: Would you use: dog_collar or dog-collar for the sub-page? How would you link to the sub page from the main page? How to title the sub pages to avoid duplicate titles? How would you link to the website from other websites? What kind of tags would you want used in the links?
Moz Pro | | HMCOE0 -
How to Minimize HTTP Requests?
What are the best and simplest programs to minimize HTTP Requests? for JS Images CSS My site is built on a Bitrix CMS
Web Design | | HMCOE0 -
Is it better to get a new site instead of maintaining a category? I'm stuck.
If you had a website "Food for Dogs" and: Food for German shepherds was improving in search traffic & conversions Snack Food for German shepherds had no change and never resulted in conversions but resulted in many leads for #1 Food for Poodles was unchanged but improving conversions Here's the kicker... Food Container for Dogs was super high traffic but with no conversions or any activity to other categories Would you redirect "food container for dogs" to a different site and delete that tab from the original site completely? It's still related but does not offer any $ value or leads to any of the other categories. Just note that we have a different interest in this category that will support the other categories at one time, but not any time soon. We also have a major group on LinkedIN that's grown to thousands of members for the "food container for dogs" category. On top of it all, the "food container for dogs" has been increasing in rank on Google for several keyphrases to positions 2-5 (nationally) Other important question: Would keeping "food container for dogs" influence the ranking of the other keywords? (by dilution of the site's PR or any other reason?)
Conversion Rate Optimization | | HMCOE0 -
Page URL - Hyphens or Underscores?
What's better for SEO and why? (any references would be greatly appreciated) For the purpose of a URL of a page is it better to use: Hyphens Underscores Would hyphens or underscores be better for Google Adwords?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | HMCOE0 -
Should you include Website Title in all page title tags?
We recently spent analyzing some of the best SEO software companies on the U.S. market fishing for the best practices in SEO and I saw one thing in common : They all had website titles in all the page title tags separated by " | " Is that the best practice for SEO or is it just for Branding? Interestingly enough, the website titles were completely unrelated to the pages' content or keywords. (Here's my personal opinion on what it looked like: "riding on a bicycle" | Ferrari ) But when I looked up the keywords ... ranked #1 or #2 spots, in some serious competition. (So in the example above, "bicycle" would be in the top spot)
Algorithm Updates | | HMCOE0 -
Content: How Much and What Kind for top Keyword Rankings?
Aside from well optimized meta tags, alt tags, captions I could use some help figuring out: What's the recommended number of words (original of course) on page? What should be the keyword % ? We've recently engaged an SEO company to provide an audit, and hired another for comparison and guess what ... 2 different viewpoints. I consider this to be the worst $3 grand we've ever spent! I look forward to your opinions
Technical SEO | | HMCOE0 -
Does Page Load Time Affect SEO Rankings?
I was curious about how much page load times affect rankings. Here's what I did: I put together a lot of interactive media on specific landing pages Time-on-Page from organic visitors went from 50 seconds to average of 34 minutes Bounce Rate decreased by 20% Page Load time increased from 1 second to 6 seconds and at peak times to 8 seconds (on 56KB test) In the meantime the page was re-indexed and re-cached My question is three-fold: Would the time on page give higher rankings for keyword Would decreased bounce rate enhance rankings? Would the page load time decrease rankings? Did anyone do a similar test? What were the results?
Search Behavior | | HMCOE0 -
Are PR releases good for Link Building?
I'm having a bit of a conundrum with Press Releases: I recently sent a press release on PRWeb (which I personally think is just "average" compared to others as it focuses mainly on the CBS network and is not focused at all unless you pay for an expensive release) and got over 100 incoming links from high PR news sites (according to Webmaster Tools) but these links had PRWeb in subtitle, so for all I know these were syndicated releases and not "Pick up By" as PRWeb reports. Will this affect Page Rank value or rankings for any keywords? Are these links treated only as temporary links or permanent back links? (I know sometimes they appear in Google News or Yahoo News, but disappear the next day) Was it valuable to the company? Our business is in health sector exclusively on East Coast U.S. and the release was seen all over the world and not one of the links coming back was from a health-related section. They were high rank online sites, but is there value in such links? added 11/30: I was reviewing competitors' link backs I found they did a lot of press releases and gained a high-level link back from each one. These were the best/highest-authority links they had. The syndicated releases were not even listed anywhere. And then I reviewed their SERPs... and guess what, their ranks increased with each one. (So I don't think "duplication" is an issue. If anything only the syndicated copies were penalized, but not the original one)
Link Building | | HMCOE0