Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Jean,

Thanks for your reply! When you refer to errors on trojans and durex sites, are you referring to code (html/css) errors?

Thanks!

Thank you Donnie, that's a great suggestion!

Hello everyone!

I have a question whether we can use these types of images on our site without putting an 18 and over disclaimer.

http://www.onetouchcondoms.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/dreamstime_m_23674313-e1345035613207.jpg

http://www.onetouchcondoms.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/onetouch1.jpg

The site is for the next generation condom

In case we do need to put a disclaimer 18 and over, and technically the disclaimer page would become the home page with 2 links one to exit and one to enter site. However what about SEO wise would that make it a lot more difficult for us since the home page is not a content page  anymore and a disclaimer page instead?

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

Understood, thanks!

Hi Donnie,

The 320 volume is the local search exact match, however the broad match on IT Services Los Angeles is much higher, should I focus on the exact match instead of the broad match when choosing keywords?

Hello Donnie,

Thank you for such a quick answer!

I did another search on keyword difficulty tool IT Support Los Angeles vs IT Services Los Angeles and IT Services Los Angeles gets much more traffic, take a look:

http://pro.seomoz.org/tools/keyword-difficulty/results.html?utf8=%E2%9C%93&keywords=IT+Support+Los+Angeles%0D%0AIT+Services+Los+Angeles&engine_id=96&commit=Run+Report

Would it better to use something like this:

IT Services and Support in Los Angeles by Company name?

Also in your expert opinion:

How many keywords or keyword phrases do you recommend including in the titles?

Most of my competitors have a bunch of locations/cities that they service in their footers, like IT Support Los Angeles, IT Support Sherman Oaks, IT Support Encino, etc... as well as pointing to the same page (which from what I understand is duplicate content) and too many footer links. However 4 out 5 use them and I don't think they've been penalyzed as they've been holding the top 5 spots for some time now. Should I try the same tactic or avoid it and hoping that by not using these techniques it should help in outranking them?

Thanks again!

Hello fellow mozzers!

I've been struggling with my title tag and would like to get your opinion.

We provide IT services in the Los Angeles area. I've been doing keyword research for the past week and found about 400 keywords from various sources. I then looked at my top 5 competitors on Google and analyzed their homepage title tags, the most common keywords that they use in their title tags are:

IT Support Los Angeles
Computer Support Los Angeles
Network Consulting Los Angeles
Network Support Los Angeles
IT Services Los Angeles

Since it is recommended to have your title tag under 70 characters I've compiled the following title tag for my home page:

IT Services, Network Consulting, IT and Network Support in Los Angeles

which is exactly 70 characters, however my company name is an additional 9 characters, I think it would be wise to include in the title tag of the home page however I can't decide if I should exceed the limit by including the company name to the title tag or should I remove something from the title tag and then add the company name?

1. What do you guys think, is that a good title tag to use as is?

2. Should I add the company name without removing any keywords or remove  a keyword?

3. I'm trying to target local traffic since I can't compete with the big dogs yet, so I want to be in the SERPs when someone searches IT Services Los Angeles, IT Support Los Angeles, etc... Do I need to add Los Angeles after each keyword, or I can use a single instance of Los Angeles like in the example title tag that I have?

4. For the other remaining 400+/- keywords I want to use some of them to create static pages and some for blog posts, is that the way to go?

Any help or advice is greatly appreciated!!!

Thank you!!!

Hi Michelle!

EGOL has provided an excellent answer, however I do want to add one more thing. Like you I'm also struggling to find keywords for my site that are not too competitive or too difficult to try to get a piece of that pie. I found Market Samurai software to help find niche keywords using their "Golden Rules" Take a look at their training videos here:http://www.noblesamurai.com/dojo/marketsamurai/

Under Keyword Research

They walk through a real life example of keyword research and show you how to pick the right keywords, and the ones you want to avoid especially if you are a beginner.

Hope this helps!

I've been looking and asking for a good guide to keyword research myself here on SEOmoz and other forums. After reading many posts I was able to narrow down to 2 must have references/tools for keyword research.

1.  The Art of SEO book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-SEO-Eric-Enge/dp/1449304214/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1339725028&sr=8-11

2. Market Samurai video tutorials: http://www.noblesamurai.com/dojo/marketsamurai/

Under keyword research there are quite a few videos that show you how to do keyword research...

Also I strongly recommend their tool as well as it can save you hours if not days if you were trying to get all that information manually...

Hope this helps!

Hi there,

I think if you were to create a page with a DOWNLOAD link/button to the pdf file (put some info about the file and the benefits of why someone should download it, maybe also put social media share buttons), and then have vistiors/users link to that page or share that page via social media instead of the file you would get a lot more benefits.

Hi there,

Google does penalize for duplicate content... I assume you want to do some A/B testing, is that why you have 2 home pages (indexa.php and indexb.php), correct? If so I would remove the 2nd duplicate home page until you have another unique home page to the A/B testing. (I'm not 100% sure as I've never done A/B testing myself, but I think you need to set it up in your GWT account so that Google is aware that you're doing A/B testing, I might be incorrect on this)

Also use the SEOMoz Open Site Explorer: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/ See if you have any bad/negative links that might of reduced your rankings.

Hope this helps!

Hi Keri,

Thanks for your response! I mostly agree with you, however I'm not talking about just dropping a link as a response to someone's post. I would provide an answer or partial answer on that forum for a specific topic and then put a link for the reference or for a full answer... I don't think this should irritate any forum admins. In the tech community people reference many sites as their answers (now I'm not sure if they're trying to do this as well or not) but sometimes its easier to post a link to an article or a video instead of providing an answer that has to describe 20-50 detailed steps for a user to follow...

Thank you EGOL & Mat for your responses!

I kind of see what you're saying EGOL, however I'm not talking about creating a link for every single post, as that would definitely fall under link spamming. I do want to respond to your answer about you answering that way here at SEOMoz. SEOMoz is more of a closed and tighter community than your average Google or Yahoo group. Most of the time people answer questions with very poor English, directions, instructions, references, etc... If I take my time and knowledge and create an easy to understand blog post with good content and easy to follow instructions and examples and reply to some topics (probably a few week) why would you or THEY think it would be a "sign post" and/or spam links?

Hi Mark,

Well one big change in the last 6 months, is MYSELF joining the game (LOL). I would strongly recommend reading SEOMOZ's Beginners guide to SEO, it was updated on May 22nd which is fairly recent and will refresh your knowledge and updated on the latest http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo

Hello fellow Mozzers!

I've been brainstorming about getting links for my site and thought of the following scenario, let me know if its a good idea or not.

Who we are: an IT consulting firm.

There are many tech support forums and groups on the internet including Google, Yahoo and a few other big dogs...

I thought it would be a good idea to browse them on daily basis and find questions/topics that haven't been answered or don't have any real clear good answers, or are very popular. Then create an article in the blog on our site describing the same exact problem with a solution. Then would post a response under that question/topic with a link back to the solution that is located on our site.

Hoping that this will bring in more traffic, links, and authority...

However I also thought about the possibility  of getting spammed, since there are many spam sites that scrape forums and groups for web site addresses, email addresses, phones, etc...

So what do you guys think, is it a good idea or should I stay away?

Thank you!

Hello,

What do  you mean you migrated your site to HubSpot, do you mean hosting? I thought HubSpot just provides marketing services.

Hello and welcome OJ!

I also started with SEOMoz not too long ago. First thing you definitely need to read the SEOMoz Beginners Guide to SEO http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo

Here is the link to the help section that describes the tools and how to use them:

http://www.seomoz.org/help/

on the left side under tools click on the one you need help with.

Hope this helps!

Hello Christopher,

Thanks for a quick reply! I'm a newbie to SEO so if you don't mind I'd like to pick your brain about 301 redirects ( I will have to research this subject in more detail). However from what I understand:

Create a subdomain hp.domain.com and do a 301 redirect to www.domain.com/hp

Now my question is this, so my content for hp.domain.com technically resides on www.domain.com/hp   correct? or it resides on hp.domain.com ?

Question #2, why would I want or why is it recommended to do a 301 redirect on a subdomain to a folder on a main/root domain?

Thanks!

Hi Joseph, do you run into any SSL errors by using absolute links especially with images? I hate when you get an error message on secure pages saying that some content is not secure would you like to see it... do you think leaving the http part out is a better idea for sites that have SSL pages, use something like www.mydomain.com instead?

Thanks!

Hello everyone!

I have a question about whether we should be using sub-domains. We are currently in the process of redesigning our site so this would be the time to do it. We are a reseller of brand name IT equipment (servers, storage, etc...) should we create a sub-domain for each brand for example:

hp.domain.com

dell.domain.com

or should we just use folders instead like:

domain.com/hp

domain.com/dell

does one have any more SEO value than the other?

Thank you!

Hello Tom,

That's a great tip, I will definitively try to implement something similar on my sites. One question, the design is that all hand coded or there are some tools or templates that you know of that could design this on the fly?

Thanks again!

I might of answered my own question. Dan Price suggested using HubSpot Videos to learn a little bit about marketing in this post, I've bookmarked it but haven't had a chance to go through it... So in my own search I started going through all my notes, books, videos, and bookmarks. Take a look at this video from hubspot which gives a pretty good example on keyword strategy. I think it cleared everything up for me.

Hello fellow Mozzers!

I've been reading quite a few books and forums on SEO for past few years. Finally a few weeks ago I decided to dive into SEO a lot more seriously and start building and optimizing our ecommerce site. We sell brand name servers, workstations, storage and related replacement and upgrade parts for them. I've read many articles, browsed all the popular SEO forums, watched SEO training videos religiously. I'm happy to say that I now (more or less) understand how to optimize a site/page for SEO (On page optimization, unique content/blogging, link building, social sharing, off page optimization, etc...) However the biggest challenge I'm have with is Keyword Research (which I think is the first and most crucial step). I can't seem to find a tool that will help me find good keywords/phrases that I can target in my business profile. Since its an ecommerce site, and we have about 2500 products which means about 2500 pages. the good thing about product pages is that there are part numbers which get searched quite often so I have no problem with selecting keywords for product pages, however for the home page its a NIGHTMARE. I searched the word "server" in Google keyword tool, and it shows that it has 40,000,000 monthly global searches with low competition. That's great news (right? high search volume, low competition) However when I google server or servers, the 1st page is filled with sites like: Dell, HP, IBM, Wikipedia, and a few more with a very high domain authority and thousands of links. So I'm assuming trying to target "servers" as my keyword for the homepage is probably a bad idea, correct?

When I google "buy server" i get mostly irrelevant content like "how to start a calling card business, a few articles(also irrelavant).

I guess my question is this: Can you please provide some advice or information on the keyword research articles and/or tools you use? Something that would provide relevant keywords based on a main keyword. Or am I not using the Google Keyword Tool properly

I also checked out our main competitors site to see which keywords they use, to get an idea, but when trying to google the keywords they're targeting they're not being displayed on Google for those keywords on the first few pages.

We are almost done building our new site which will have a few tools like online server configurator, Q&A section, Server Talk (Forum), Quick Product Finder(Suggests products based on entered criteria) and a few more Which  most of our competitors don't have, and I pretty much have an idea on which keywords to use for those pages and sections of the site, but I am completely clueless on the keywords to use for the home page.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Also forgot to add, should I just use the company name and a few simple keywords for the home page like servers, buy servers and then write weekly or biweekly article that are server related like Does a small business need a server? How do I choose a server for my business? Should I upgrade my server or buy a new one? Do I collocate or host in-house? Should I virtualize my server? Obviously adding links to products and services within these articles and try to create brand awareness that way?

I've tried to search your post and google displayed as the 1st result, take a look at the screenshot...

http://imgur.com/TOCqx

TOCqx

Hi There,

I'm not an expert in SEO yet, so please don't shoot me if I'm wrong. Unless you have a 1 page website or your home page is mainly concentrated on "iphone repair" then it is better to link to a page like www.mysite.com/iphone-repair

In google search results a URL is displayed, and I believe that people often times notice that and would prefer to click on something that would take them directly to the page that seems like  what they're looking for instead of a homepage.

Good to know. Thanks Kevin!

Hello everyone,

Wanted to  know if anyone has any information, if a dedicated IP address for a website or having your site hosted on a virtual dedicated/dedicated server would have any impact on search engine rankings versus hosting a site on a shared hosting account or shared IP?

Thank you all!!!

Understood now. Thank you so much!

Thanks for a quick reply, I made a mistake in my previous post. The domain names that I was referring to were itsupportla.net and itsupportla.com ...

Hello EGOL,

Yes that is on my to do list.

Thank you!

David, if I may ask for your professional opinion in regards to domain names. I provide IT services to small and medium size business, haven't advertised online or did any kind of marketing in the last 5 years. I currently have a website (which I am in the process of completely redesigning and optimizing for SEO) which is 911PCTECH.com

I did a little research of my top competitors for similar services and found out that IT Support LA is a very high volume keyword phrase with very low competition. I went out and got the itsupport.net and itsupport.us (itsupport.com is not available and there is no website built) My services are locally based (southern California mostly) from the 3 domains which would you recommend I use? I read the article that Kevin suggested above, and it recommends to use keyword rich domain names, so do you think its better for me to switch sites and start using itsupportla.net or .us? Thanks again!

Thank you David for the clear explanation!

Thank you Kevin! The article did clear things up for me.

Thank you Anthony for your response! If its not too much trouble can you give me an example of a tiny category name and a good/recommended category name for SEO purposes.

Servers <- this is obviously tiny

Dell Servers <- is this a tiny or an ok one?

Dell Rack Servers <- is this optimal or it can be improved for example "Dell Rack PowerEdge G11 Servers"?

And what is the recommended depth of sub categories, would 3 be ok?

Dell Rack Servers > PowerEdge R710 > Products

Also for the sub category, should I put the word server after PowerEdge R710 or is that automatically implied by the top category?

Also is there a limit or recommended number of top/root categories to have on the homepage?

Thanks again!

Hello fellow SEOmozers!

I'm rebuilding out e-commerce site and have a question about categories. We sell branded  servers, workstations, storage and related parts/upgrades. I know that nesting categories too deep is not recommended (and slows down the shopping cart), however if were to create more main categories then I'm affraid of keyword stuffing or spamming, do you think this would be ok or what would you recommend I do in my situation?

<colgroup><col width="131"></colgroup>
| Dell Rack Servers |
| Dell Tower Servers |
| Dell Blade Servers |
| Dell Storage |
| HP Rack Servers |
| HP Tower Servers |
| HP Blade Servers |
| HP Storage |
| IBM Rack Servers |
| IBM Tower Servers |
| IBM Blade Servers |
| IBM Storage |
| Dell Workstations |
| HP Workstations |
| IBM Workstations |
| Dell Hard Drives |
| HP Hard Drives |
| IBM Hard Drives |
| Dell RAM | Memory |
| HP RAM | Memory |
| IBM RAM | Memory |

Thanks for all your input, opinions, and comments!

Hello fellow SEOmozers!

I'm trying to register a domain name that contains keywords for my business, however the .com is obviously taken (however its just a parked domain without a site) so I have an option to get either .co .us or .net

I wanted to know if the domain extension makes any difference for the search engine or does having .com gives you an advantage over having .co .us or .net?

Thanks for your input!!!

Hoping its not true, as I am investing a ton of time and money to learn SEO...

Hello Rufus,

Thanks for taking your time to help me out. However I'm still not 100$ clear on how I should proceed.

For question 1: Would it be ok to combine keywords/phrases in the title tag like this "IBM, DELL, HP. Servers, Workstations, Storage" (would the search engine use the best combination of any of the following or would it rate it differently if I were to use something like this:

"IBM Servers, DELL Servers, HP Servers, IBM Workstations, etc..." ?

For Question 2: Do you recommend to use a combination of CMS & Ecommerce for a single site, would that be of any benefit?

For Question 3: You recommend to create a seperate page for each keyword phrase and write some good content using the targeted keyword(s) and then have a link on the home page to that page, correct?

So for the homepage would you recommend using keywords that target our brand OR a few of the product keywords that we think would bring the most traffic in from search engines?

Just to confirm, the home page (index.html) wouldn't necessarily have a higher ranking vs let's say (dell-servers.html) just based on its hierarchy or being the home page. (obviously excluding the SEO work)?

Thanks again!

Hello Everyone!

I have a few simple questions about picking/using the best keywords for my website. Just to give a little background on the company, we sell branded servers (IBM, HP, DELL) workstations, storage, and related hardware and software (memory, processors, hard drives, operating systems, management software, etc...) I'm trying to pick the keywords to use on the home page but have these questions:

1. This question is a little hard for me to explain, but we would like to show up in the search results whether a user types in: Dell server(s) or IBM server(s) or HP Workstation so for the title tag can we use: DELL, IBM, HP Servers, Workstations, Storage or we need to use DELL Servers, IBM Servers, Dell Workstations, IBM Workstations, etc... Basically what I'm asking is can we combine keywords in the title tag or we need to write them out (hope this make sense) if not let me know and I'll try provide a little more detail and few more examples.

2. This question might not fall under this category of topics and might have to start a new thread but here it goes. We are re-designing our site on a new eCommerce platform using x-cart shopping cart, its a very configurable and inexpensive shopping cart however one of the drawbacks is its speed. Most users of the x-cart shopping cart software report on average of 2-4 seconds page loads, which is kind of slow. even with some heavy optimization you get about 1.5 - 2.5 seconds page load. I've heard that if you want to be higher in Google's search results speed is a big plus, being in the 0.5 second range is a huge plus. I was thinking of creating a static html home page that would include some company info, content with relevant keywords, some links to main categories... (basically kind of copy the google.com page but with a little more text) Would that be a good idea to implement? Hope this question makes sense as well or stick with the default shopping cart home page and try to optimize it as best as possible?

3. We probably have about 10 - 15 short keyword phrases that we want to concentrate on, again they would be:
DELL Servers, HP Servers, IBM, Servers
DELL Workstations, HP Workstations, IBM Workstations,
DELL Memory, HP Memory, IBM Memory
DELL Hard Drives, HP Hard Drives, IBM Hard Drives

What is the maximum or recommended quantity of keyword phrases to try to include on the home page? Is it also recommended to maybe create a separate page for each keyword phrase? Does a home page get better ranking then another page on the server just because its a home page?

Hope my questions aren't too dumb and make sense. I appreciate everyone who takes their time to read through and answer my questions or guide me in the right path.

Thank you,
Igor Pinchevskiy