Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Thanks for the insights.

It really helps

Hi Stu,

Why not approach one of these companies/individuals SEOMOZ recommends...

http://www.seomoz.org/article/recommended#link-building

Thanks

Iain - Reload Media

Hey Pat,

Good question. Firstly, well done for being involved with two very high Domain Authority sites. However (get ready for cheesy quote) with great power comes..... etc.

Strictly from an SEO perspective, 301ing pages from the specific product site to the main domain will transfer about 80-90% of the authority. You should see an increase in DA when you do this. However because DA is an exponential scale, it's difficult to say by how much.

I would definitely do it, making sure the pages are 301'd to equivalent pages on the main domain, not just the home page. I'd do this because it's easier to expand the content, and target new keywords.

However, the question you need to ask yourself is, "Is it the right thing for the brand?" especially as you have loyal followers for the specific product.

Hope that helps

Iain - Reload Media

Hi L E Nieto,

First of all congrats on a no.1 ranking. The On-page tool gives recommendations for ideally optimised pages. This is often required for competitive keywords. As your keyword isn't that competitive, Google is just trying to find the most relevant page, which it thinks is yours.

I'd strongly recommend that you do follow the recommendations from the on page tool to strengthen your position.

How that clears everything up for you.

Thanks

Iain - Reload Media

Hey Housing Interactive,

Good question. The answer depends on if you are targeting those paginated pages with different keywords to the main sub-category. It's highly likely you're not.

The other advantage of having those pages indexed is it's more internal links to point at your most important pages.

However, Search Engines only allocate a certain amount of bandwidth/processing power to crawl your site. If it uses that time up crawling less important sub-category paginated pages, it could miss the more important pages you want to rank.

Therefore in short, I wouldn't bother.

Hope that helps

Iain - Reload Media

Hey Carolina,

Jarno has nailed it.

Just on a side note, if you want to see the traffic for http://domain.com your web developer should be able to supply you with the server logs which will tell you similar stats to regular analytics.

This is achievable because log files record requests to a server. Google Analytics record requests for pages with the Analytics code installed.

Hope you can sort it

Iain - Reload Media

Hi Royboy,

It's a common issue with SEO, as we don't have the precise control the PPC guys do over our desired landing pages.

First step would be to optimise your internal links, make sure /cool-widgets is very well interlinked from within your own site.

Next build external links into that page. After awhile you may get both pages listed in one SERP, #win. Then you can re-target your home page to a more relevant competitive keyword.

Depending on your external link building, it can take several months though, but is worth doing.

In the mean time, put something very obvious on the home page pointing visitors towards /cool-widgets

Let us know how you get on.

Iain - Reload Media

Hey Greenhornet,

This depends on how the widget is made. If it's none accessible by Search Engines, i.e. it's made in Flash, then Search Engine can only read limited information from them. So in the Flash case, it's not of any really benefit.

If the widget is accessible to Search Engines, then better for the home page. However if it's on every page, you'll have issues with duplicate content. Therefore just have the crawlable widget on the home page, and start developing content for all your other pages.

Hope that helps, and good luck.

Iain - Reload Media

I know that pain! I imagine the perfect world, where all clients are on Wordpress.

Hope it goes well.

Iain

Hey Dean,

It's a common problem when dealing with a specific niche. Therefore you have to look to the wider industry they are in, home renovation.

As Keri says below, the articles will need to be unique to get them on sites that will make a difference to your SEO.

I can't stress enough, for your guest posting to really work, make sure the posts have valuable insights. One way to do this is to interview the business owner, they are the expert on the subject.

Thanks

Iain - Reload Media

Hi Hardley,

It's a good question, and one many people ask. Even though Joel's advice on using the link: search operator is a good one, you'll also get limited results with this. As Google will only show a handful.

As Dana mentioned, OSE only updates once a month. However as much as I love OSE and use it everyday, it doesn't have nearly as much data on links as Google does. Therefore it can take a while to find all your hard work.

Try using Majestic SEO. In my opinion they don't do as good as job summarising link info, they have a bigger index of link data. It's likely your links will show up there.

As with any SEO/life subject, get data/opinion from multiple sources and make an educated guess.

Hope that helps

Iain - Reload Media

Hi Editable Text,

In short if you show Google a crawlable link to the content with the dynamic header/content, and the content is driven by the unique URL, yes it will index it.

As with any SEO/life question, there are a few t&c's with this.

1. The pages need to be unique enough not to be classed as duplicate content
2. Make sure it's intelligently linked internally
3. You have external links pointing deep into the site
4. You have a decent site architecture

To answer you second question, you'll need unique pages for each location, unless your content would be so thin, you'd need to group them. The URL doesn't have to include the keyword, but it's damn helpful if it does.

Hope that helps

Iain - Reload Media

I agree with Edward here.

However for bonus SEO points if you 301 redirect the page where the external link is pointing to, to a relevant page, you'll take full advantage of that links power.

Iain - Reload Media

Hi Raphael,

The simple answer is yes. You can see this in the below link...

http://goo.gl/7JjAL

Thanks

Iain Reload Media

Hi Michelle,

By any chance are you taking impression data from Google Webmasters, or a the linked version of Webmasters in Google Analytics?

If so, these figures are extremely rounded up. For example I doubt any impression % are round numbers. Therefore I wouldn't pay any attention to them.

Focus on which group of keywords resulted in the drop in traffic, then focus your optimisation efforts on them.

Hope that helps

Iain - Reload

I see. To get the city-state pages indexed then they must have their own URL. If you can only access it via posting a form (assumed for using the search feature), the a search engine can't see it.

To get round this, you could put a links underneath the search box to popular searches. This will get them indexed.

Does that answer the questions?

Thanks

Iain - Reload

Hey Dean,

It's good to see you're doing link building for your site. However as Vikas points out, you'll need to be careful not to stumble into the duplicate content area. Also unless the article directory is an authority in your niche, you'll get limited results with this tactic.

Try reaching out to blogs in your niche and write specific posts for them, that targets their readers. That should help you get better results.

Just another word of warning, don't solely rely on guest posting, article directories etc for link building. Make sure you get a diversified back link profile, so when the next update comes it won' t affect your rankings.

Thanks & good luck

Iain - Reload Media

Hi Monster99,

It's a great question. As with anything is SEO/Life it depends on a few factors. Here are the main pros & cons of both..

Hosted

Pros

*** Others sites will link directly to your domain, when linking to a video* You have greater control over the videos, i.e. no ads, recommend videos etc **

Cons

*** Cost * Technical Setup **

Embedded

Pros

*** If you're a less well known brand, can help your video get shared* Can help build your You Tube Channel * It's free!* Very quick to setup**

Cons

*** Websites tend to link to You Tube* You can have ads shown* Shows other peoples related video **

If you're just starting out and you're not making very unique linkable content, I'd go with the embed option.

Hope that helps

Iain - Reload Media

Hi Bromtec,

You're not alone in this situation, lots of site owners have had to go through this process.

Firstly it can take several months for Google Webmasters to update the links it knows about. The time period depends on when the pages with the links removed get indexed. If they are back pages, that only get indexed every 6 months or so, it will take a while. Unfortunately you'll just need to be patient.

Google employees will be looking at live links, not what's reported in GWT. They have much more detailed tools to analysis your links. If they are rejecting your reconsideration requests, you have more links to clean up.

Have you been using the disavow tool?

Thanks

Iain - Reload Media

Hey DDLUX,

I see where you're coming from. The important question is are any of these pages in Google's main index? If so don't remove them. Also check if any are receiving SEO traffic directly. If so, don't cut those either.

However thin/low value pages need cleaning out otherwise you'll get a visit from Google Panda!

Thanks

Iain - Reload Media