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This is Google's new 'frequently mentioned on the web..' feature. They have been testing it for about 8 months or so now. It is based on their knowledge graph which is their database of pretty much every existing thing - people, places, films, music etc.
To get on there you should probably have a descriptive Google+ page and have good schema mark up on your website. This will help Google understand the connection between your college and Vancouver.
I remember a member of the SEOmoz team explaining that it was an issue with their system and both Great Britain and United Kingdom yield identical results. It is just two names for one Google.
I think they are looking into this further.
You will get minimal, if any, SEO value by submitting your RSS feed to directories. Do not submit them to paid directories either, as Google have been penalising sites that pay for links.
The only reason to submit to directories is if they are relevant to your industry/content, and you if you will receive targeted traffic from these directories.
I think these 3 links will answer your question:
Starting link building:
http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo/growing-popularity-and-links
Bit more advanced:
http://www.seomoz.org/article/the-professional-guide-to-link-building-2011
Manage your link building efforts:
Yes, there is a great article by Google on their knowledge graph. They also wrote a good article about the use of knowledge graph in search.
In terms on getting on there- I'm not too sure, I haven't seen any studies or done any experiments. It has worked for clients when setting up Google+ pages and making sure they are clear and linked to the website. It also seems to help to have good schema mark up. For example, if you are a famous person you should have a good use of person schema, have a Google+ page and also make sure your Wikipedia is up to date and clearly defined.
Google claim that they do not use click through rates or bounce rates as ranking metrics. Also, no Google Analytics data is used in the ranking algorithm. Matt Cutts confirmed this in this YouTube video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLmO1GE4GvI
OSE is not working for me but I suggest searching using ambienmed.com (without the www.) as on Google they rank with ambienmed.com
This is a different subdomain and would be the reason there are no links to www.ambienmed.com
As well as that they are also in a fortunate position of having the keyword ambien in their domain name.
Bad reviews are a common issue with SEO as the sites that host these reviews often have high authority. The only way you can really remove these from the results page is to create better, valuable content that will eventually outrank the reviews and push them further down the results page.
An exact match to the title of the post is useful for the user because there will not be any confusion when they arrive at the blog post.
You do have an SEO opportunity when manually linking. It is a good opportunity to maximise your keyword usage in your anchor text. Try using similar terms in your link -
This should not create confusion for your user because the content is still being reflected. And it will allow to potentially rank for alternative, similar terms.
Or,
I use method 1 as I prefer to have all my data in one place. If you want to do this you need to go to:
Admin
Tracking code
Standard
Select 'One domain with multiple subdomains'
Paste the code into your site
You will then be able to track your visitors on the mobile site as well as other subdomains.
Bit.ly uses 301 redirects which will pass 90-95% of the link juice to your URL (almost the same as a direct link). If a URL shortener uses 302 redirects then they will not pass any link juice.
For this example you should create a 'view all' page where all the content is listed in one single view. You should then point the canonical tag to the this page, so that all content is indexed.
If this is not possible, then you should use rel="prev" and rel="next" tags to show the relationship between each page when linking. Google can explain this better than me here!
There has been LOADS of examples of this happening before (so you are not alone) but I have yet to see a really good answer to the problem really. I'd love to know the answer to this too!
The link on your Pinterest page is a do-follow link which will benefit SEO. However, the links on pins that you post and re-pin are no-follow so will not affect SEO.
In regards to best tips: what you have at the moment is great! I like the themes you have going. It would be great to see past events that you have put on. You can also use it yourselves for inspirations. This may also interest and inspire your clients/potential clients too.
I would recommend Wordpress for the same reasons as Moosa and Tommy.
As for books, I would suggest reading Content Rules as this not only discussing blogging but also other useful content such as Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks etc which can all boost SEO.
Best of luck in your blogging adventures! Enjoy.
They provide a calendar here - https://seomoz.zendesk.com/entries/345964-linkscape-update-schedule - The last update was earlier this month - 6th July
The aim is to update it every 4 weeks but this cannot be guaranteed. The next update is due on 3rd August 2012.
It is not necessary for you to add your URL to these sites unless you have ZERO links - even then it isn't a guarantee. If you have even just a few inbound links then the search engine bots will crawl and index your site.
In regards to how long that will take - it depends on the inbound links. If they are from large sites that get updated regularly then chances are the bots will crawl your site relatively quickly.
Hope this helps!
Those buttons will have been created by the company themselves and styled to look like a Facebook button. I'm sure they will create post to their Timeline saying something along the lines of "I want this...insert link to product".
You can do this using Open Graph. If you have no experience with it I would suggest starting here:
I have always implemented authorship the Google way and it has worked everytime.
You're right, it is surprisingly simple!
You should also grow your social media activity. Sites like Twitter, YouTube, Google+, Facebook and others will often have a higher authority than review sites. If you build your community up then these sites will often appear high on the results page when branded searches are performed. This will in turn push the negative reviews down.
Plus, it will help build up your online brand. Win-Win, right?
I always try to use the rel=canonical tag wherever possible - however, it is only a suggestion to the search engines. They can decide not to use your suggestion.
301 redirects should really only be used when the page has permanently moved or dramatically changed (by this I mean the layout, design etc.) - domainA.com/content to domainB.org/content. By using a 301 redirect you will lose 5 to 10% of link juice and you will also lose any social shares received.
The size does not necessarily matter from an SEO point of view. If the H2 is being used when an H1 tag would be needed (i.e. the headline) then there will be issues but it does not seem the case in this scenario.
You shouldn't have a problem.
If the content will be duplicated then yes, you should 301 redirect to the preferred domain.
It really does depend on which domain you think best for the client. If they are a local, UK only company then it may be worth while using the .co.uk version as this will aid local searches and helps brand them as a UK company. However, .com is considered to have more 'power' - although this is becoming less important in ranking factors.
Which version currently ranks on Google when you perform a branded search? .co.uk or .com? And which version has the most backlinks? This will help in your decision.
This tool would have seen huge amounts of usage since it was first announced (there are many sites in your position). I think it may be a little too early to give up on it as there has only been a few weeks since you submitted it.
I suspect Google will be implementing the results of the tool for high authority site first and then roll it out to lower authority sites. As your site is of low authority I think it may be a casing of playing the waiting game to see if the results come through. Don't give up just yet! Focus on gaining high quality links through valuable content and Google will eventually pay attention.
Faster than your competitors!!
I'd say 2 to 3 seconds is 'acceptable' but for SEO you really need to look at your SERP competitors to see how fast they're performing - then aim for faster!
I use Pingdom - http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/ - as it gives you a great deal of insights and grades your page so you can see how well it performs against others.
A bounce is when a visitor leaves immediately after entering your site. The bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave without visiting another page.
Exit rate is the percentage of people who leave the site when on that page. For example, this could be the thank you page of a contact form or the confirmation page of an eCommerce site.
The reason you suggested would indeed give a high bounce and exit rate as people would be leaving your site having viewed that page. Usually high bounce and exit rates are bad but in your case they may be good as you want visitors to leave and go onto the affiliate site.
I would recommend setting up event tracking in Analytics so that you can measure the performance of the links and analyse the click rates etc.
Hope this helps.
Usually you would need to add noindex to the meta robots tag in the of your web page. Because your sitemap is an XML file and not HTML you will need to do things differently.
You can add the code below to your .htaccess file, which you can find in the ROOT folder of your server. Open the file in a plain text editor and insert the following:
Header set X-Robots-Tag "noindex"
This will stop search engines indexing your sitemap without restricting them from crawling it.
Note: Replace 'sitemap.xml' with your file name - if different.
You will probably need to wait a little longer - it depends how often your site usually gets crawled and indexed.
However, robots.txt does not always stop search engines from indexing your pages. It will stop them crawling a page on your site but it tells them that they can still index that page. If they find links from external sites then the URL may still appear in the SERP.
That's correct - having both www.site.com and just site.com causes duplication issues.
You do not need to have redirects in place to solve this though - you can use a rel=canonical tag in order to specify which 'version' you wish search engines to use.
Here are a few posts that should help you:
Google's Explanation -
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394
SEOmoz Best Practices -
http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/canonicalization
John Doherty's blog post - "Should I use a Rel=Canonical or 301 Redirect?" -
Yes, results can differ when searching on mobile compared to desktop. Ushave usually differs different intent when searching on mobile and search engines will react to this.
Google does favour responsive design. One of the key reasons for this is because the problem of having duplicate content is significantly reduced. Previously, you would have had at least two URLs - one for your mobile site and the other for your desktop version. With responsive web design, all content is held within one site with a single URL. This not only benefits the user but it also allows search engines to crawl your website much easier.
You can read more about Google's recommendation to use responsive web design below:
https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/details
That is a good recommendation but ultimately search engines will make a final decision on crawl frequency. Take a look at your 'Crawl Stats' on GWTs and this will give you an idea of how often your site is crawled.
Definitely try rewriting the content (this will also keep it fresh and up to date). If it is good, valuable content then it would be a shame for you to have to remove it from search engines as they could potentially drive a lot of traffic to your site.
No, it would not be problematic. Exact match anchor text is very usual on the homepage.
That's a great point about social media. Often, social media sites will have a much greater authority than the review sites. If you build up a strong online presence on even the basics:
Then you will be pushing the bad reviews further and further down the results. Even better than that, you will be showcasing the solid community that you have built up. People will go on these social sites and learn more about you and if you are communicating well then they will surely like you. It will give you a great competitive advantage.