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both are important for SEO - the filename in the URL should match up with your title tag. all filenames should be unique. for example
www.coolsite.com/kids-toys/blue-schwinn-bike
not
www.coolsite.com/kids-toys/blue-schwinn-bike/index.php
this latter example would cause you to wind up with Google seeing every page with the same filename index.php
Matt Cutts explains how the site command works in this youtube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qigo05nAqKw&feature=player_embedded#!
can you elaborate? our server is returning a 404
`Results of the GSiteCrawler Server-Test
Tested at 9/21/2011 12:13:46 AM / from 68.197.76.222:
URL=http://www.vitals.com/badURL
Result code: 404 (NotFound / Not Found)`
Does anyone know what determines when Open Site Explorer will ask if you meant to type in the redirected URL or when it will automatically change the URL to the www version.
example of a site I get asked the redirect question:
http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/comparisons.html?site=checkbook.org
Oh Hey! It looks like that URL redirects to www.checkbook.org/. Would you like to see data for <a class="clickable redirects">that URL instead</a>?
example of a site that redirects automatically:
http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/comparisons.html?site=healthleap.com
http://www.oluadeonline.com/home-theatre-universal-remote/
<cite>www.oluadeonline.com/tag/champigny/</cite> - CachedSorry, no posts matched your criteria. Search. Your Ad Here · Your Ad Here · Your Ad Here. Recent Posts. Starting A Practical Online Business ...
<cite>www.oluadeonline.com/tag/do/</cite> - Cached
Sorry, no posts matched your criteria. Search. Your Ad Here · Your Ad Here · Your Ad Here. Recent Posts. Best Work Site · EX CASE2 – Soft case for digital ...
If you are just 301'ing them they won't rank because it's not a site and not indexed. If you are doing this for type thru direct traffic that could work if you have really good perfectly targeted keyword domain names like dogdoors.com not online-dog-doors.com but since all good domains are already owned i doubt that is the case.
If making one or 2 page landing page/sites make sure those two pages have a LOT of content, like 2000+ words on each page so they don't seem flimsy to Google.
I agree with Ryan, if looking to create different domains you're better off making pages on your main site that are targeted for those keywords.
"What you are saying is that having domains that exist out of those keywords is pointless? I read that domains with keywords will rank high for those keywords?"
This is true, domain name is extremely important for ranking, but putting them all on the same server is obvious to Google and unless you plan on really investing in setting up all of these domains with unique content on different servers, you're better off putting the keywords in the file name and optimizing it on your existing site. EX. www.bestpetstore.com/dog-doors
Yes, hosting the video on your server is what you need to do if you want your site to rank for it, and optimize the page for it as well.
The less quality natural links you have the easier it is for a competitor to sabotage you. Brand new sites can definitely be sabotaged, but well established sites are almost impossible to take down because it's a good to bad incoming link ratio. Good SEO's always keep an eye on who is linking to them for this reason and vet their incoming links on a monthly or so basis.
Here is a great interview with Duane Forrester, a Sr. Product Manager with Bing’s Webmaster Program. In his interview, he has some very good tips on how to get great exposure in Bing.
http://www.stonetemple.com/search-algorithms-and-bing-webmaster-tools-with-duane-forrester/
It has been my experience that text ads definitely get more clicks than banner ads, especially if the text links are positioned within content and appear to be more integrated into the site, instead of a banner on the top of the page for example. People have been trained to ignore banners and ads that sit outside of the website.
You need to look at Google Analytics and review the traffic sources, entry pages, pages/visit and time on pages. You should be able to determine by looking at the above stats and contrasting with different time periods if the traffic is authentic and where the source of the traffic is from. Please report back if you see any anomalies.
I am seeing with Webmaster Tools that Google is trying to follow the text based truncated URL from SuperPages despite the fact that they are not in an anchor tag. The net result for Google is a 404 error as they try to access pages that do not exist. has anyone seen this issue before and any suggestions on how to prevent these errors?
A Superpage listing: The first link works fine, but the text based link shown below is cut off and as a result Google gets to a 404 page.
http://swbd-out.superpages.com/webresults.htm?qkw=dr+hylton+lightman&qcat=web&y=0&x=0&
| Dr. Hylton Lightman, MD - Pediatrician, Allergist, - Far Rockaway ... | |
| Dr. Hylton Lightman, MD, Far Rockaway, NY, Rated 4/4 By Patients. 26 Reviews, Patients' Choice Award Winner, Phone Number & Practice Locations | |
| www.vitals.com/doctors/Dr_Hylton_Lightma... [Found on Bing] |
He should write the article on Monday and then post a tweet and link on Facebook on Friday. If his blog posts are permitted into Google News, he may want to wait until Friday, since freshness matters most in Google News. In any event, the client's content and link building efforts are the tools to get good rankings and it doesn't really matter what day the articles are posted.
The Homepage URL disappeared because you deleted the file so it no longer exists.
Redirect the old index.html URL to the new wordpress homepage URL using modrewrite in HTACCESS. You need to do that to pass the homepage PR2 pagerank juice to the new homepage URL or you're throwing the PR away and most sites homepage is the one with the highest PR.
Yes Trellian keyword discovery, it's not free but it's good.
http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/engines.html
Keyword Discovery collects search term data from over 200 search engines world wide. As a result we have the largest keyword database that contains nearly 38 billion searches. KeywordDiscovery also offers many language specific keyword databases sourced from regional search engines and users from those regions, including: Australian, Canadian, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, UK and US with plans to offer many others.
It should go away on it's own once you removed all the offending malware code from your site.
Call your hosting company and they will scan your site and remove the malware for you. A lof of people don't know that their hosting company will be more than happy in assisting removing hacks or viruses present on your sites at no charge. It's probably still on your site if you're still getting the message days later.
I'm seeing it too - It looks like it's coming from Superpages but the truncated URLs are not actually hyperlinks, so why is Google following them is a good question.
http://swbd-out.superpages.com/webresults.htm?qkw=Find+A+Physician&qcat=web
I'm fixing this on my end with a modrewrite in HTACCESS, all of my sites truncated URL problems either end in ".." or "..." so any URL that ends in those two instances will get 301 redirected to the homepage.
I know there are many opinions on how to handle paginated pages. My opinion is to just use a noindex, follow meta tag on all the paginated pages. The thinking is that these pages don't have any intrinsic value of being in the index themselves, but you still want the engines to be able to crawl to all your products from your internal links. I would only use the next and previous tags on paginated articles or galleries. The canonical tag is meant for duplicate pages and doesn't really make sense to use for paginated pages.
I think you really need to take a strong look at your own site. You are using some known spam techniques on your pages and it wouldn't surprise me that Google is finally penalizing you for trying to game them. Also, you may be trying too hard to fit your keyphrase on the page and the bot may feel that this is a spam technique. For starters, I would get rid of this entire footer:
We offer with Free Advice, Free Consultations and a full guarantee - Weight Loss Hypnotherapy, NLP Courses, Gastric Band Hypnosis, Life Coaching, Business Coaching, Fear of Flying, Stage Fright, Irritable Bowel Syndrome Therapy, Anger Management Therapy, Hypno Bands, Stop Smoking Hypnotherapy, Phobia Therapy, Hypno Gastric Band with full guarantee in Cardiff and the following areas: Aberaeron, Aberavon, Aberbargoed, Abercarn, Aberdare, Abergavenny, Abergele, Abertillery, Aberystwyth, Amlwch, Ammanford, Bala, Bangor, Bargoed, Barmouth, Barry, Beaumaris, Bethesda, Blaenau Ffestiniog, Blaenavon, Blackwood, Blaina, Brecon, Bridgend, Briton Ferry, Brynmawr, Buckley, Builth Wells, Burry Port, Caernarfon, Caerphilly, Caerwys, Caldicot, <a title="Cardiff Hypnotherapy">Cardiff</a>, Cardigan, Carmarthen, Chepstow, Chirk, Cilgerran, Colwyn Bay, Connah's Quay, Conwy, Corwen, Cowbridge, Criccieth, Crickhowell, Crumlin, Cwmbran, Denbigh, Dolgellau, Ebbw Vale, Ewloe, Fishguard, Flint, Ferndale, Glynneath, Goodwick, Gorseinon, Harlech, Haverfordwest, Hay-on-Wye, Holyhead, Holywell, Kidwelly, Knighton, Lampeter, Laugharne, Llandeilo, Llandovery, Llandrindod Wells, Llandudno, Llandudno Junction, Llandysul, Llanelli, Llanfair Caereinion, Llanfairfechan, Llanfyllin, Llangefni, Llangollen, Llanidloes, Llanrwst, Llantrisant, Llantwit Major, Llanwrtyd Wells, Llanybydder, Loughor, Llanfair, Machynlleth, Maesteg, Menai Bridge, Merthyr Tydfil, Milford Haven, Mold, Monmouth, Montgomery, Mountain Ash Mochdre, Narberth, Neath, Nefyn, Newbridge, Newcastle Emlyn, Newport, Newport (Pembrokeshire), New Quay, Newtown, Neyland, Old Colwyn, Pembroke, Pembroke Dock, Penarth, Pencoed, Penmaenmawr, Pontardawe, Pontypool, Pontypridd, Porth, Porthcawl, Porthmadog, Port Talbot, Prestatyn, Presteigne, Pwllheli, Queensferry, Rhayader, Rhuddlan, Rhyl, Rhymney, Ruthin, Risca, St Asaph, St Clears, St David's, Saltney, Shotton, Swansea, Talgarth, Templeton, Tenby, Tondu, Tonypandy, Towyn, Tredegar, Treharris, Tregaron, Tywyn, Usk, Welshpool, Whitland, Wrexham, Ystradgynlais, Ystrad Mynach,We offer our Trance Band Hypno Band all over the UK including: London Hypno Band, Birmingham Hypno Band, Leeds Hypno Band, Glasgow Hypno Band, Sheffield Gastric Band Hypnotherapy, Bradford Hypno Band, Edinburgh Hypno Band, Liverpool Hypnosis Gastric Band, Manchester Gastric Band Hypnosis, Bristol Gastric Band Hypnotherapy, Wakefield Virtual Gastric Band, Cardiff Hypno Band, Coventry Hypnosis Gastric Band, Nottingham Gastric Hypnotherapy Band, Leicester Hypno Band, Sunderland Hypno Band, Belfast Hypno Band, Newcastle upon Tyne Hypnotherapy Gastric Band, Brighton Hypno Band, Hull Hypnosis Gastric Band, Plymouth Gastric Band, Stoke-on-Trent Weight Loss Gastric band, Wolverhampton Virtual Gastric Band, Derby Hypnosis Weight Loss Band, Swansea Hypno Band, Southampton Hypnosis Band, Salford Gastric Hypno Band, Aberdeen Hypno Band, Westminster Gastric Band Hypnosis, Portsmouth Gastric Hypno Band, York Hypnotherapy Gastric Band, Peterborough gastric band hypnosis, Dundee weight loss system, Lancaster gastric band hypnotherapy, Oxford, Newport, Preston, St Albans, Norwich, Chester, Cambridge, Salisbury, Exeter, Gloucester, Lisburn, Chichester, Winchester, Londonderry, Carlisle, Worcester, Bath, Durham, Lincoln, Hereford, Armagh, Inverness, Stirling, Canterbury, Lichfield, Newry, Ripon, Bangor, Truro, Ely, Wells, St Davids
For Google News entry this strategy would simply not work. I also wonder if a single page would make you a subject authority. The bots may sense that you are trying to game them. with all those 301's.
Updating old posts will not allow you the benefit of having your article getting into Google News. Here is what I would suggest.
1. Create a category page with links to all articles on that subject. Add some content and recent photos and videos to the category page.
2. On your related articles that are surfacing on top in the search results, link on top of the article to the newest article
Wow, every single link in your site navigation is nofollowed. You're basically telling Google to get lost.
I'm seeing you rank for specific location searches in google.co.uk so there is no issue except for the fact that you have one page only with little content.
Not sure how much more you will get ranked for with a one page indexed site in Google. You should create tageted pages for different types of flowers and baskets, and allow those pages to get indexed and then they'll have a chance to rank for things like "Flower Baskets in Bridport" for example.
Look at how this site is doing it: http://www.gifttree.com/
Good luck!
Ricky, the .net site appears to be penalized, go to google and type in akinsseptic.net - results show for the .com site. Also, if you simply type in akinsseptic in google you get neither site. This is an indication of trademark suppression AKA Google penalty. Your first step would be to unwind the penalty, until the sites are cleaned up you won't get rankings unfortunately.
I definitely believe that domain name age plays a large part in rankings out of the gate. I have heard that it is better to let Google find your site on it's own (from following links on the web) rather then submitting your URL to Google, because if you submit it Google they start the clock from when you submitted it. I have not tested this but since it's possible I never submit new sites to Google URL submit tool.
Totally agree with Ryan Kent. You should write a paragraph of content that is unique to the company featured. The chart is not unique enough and you will get flagged as having a high ratio of duplicate content. You should also look at all the other SEO elements on this page, understand what keyphrases you are targeting and modify the title, meta and H1 tags.
Absolutely not an issue, hyphens are just a little bit more SEO friendly. A lot of sites choose to leave legacy URLs when there is a chance at losing revenue by changing them. 301 redirects do lose a little bit of PR, so it makes sense to be apprehensive. It just looks less uniform.
I would suggest moving a small handful of them over and run a specific ranking report on just those URLs to monitor any loss of rank instead of moving them all in one shot and risking loss of revenue.
Another issue with excessive linking on every page is that you are diluting your page uniqueness and you may get flagged due to having a large ratio of duplicate pages. I would strongly recommend you limit the number of links on your primary landing pages to the links that people are most interested in and/or mostly related to the page content. In the same vein, any mass of content (author bios, disclaimer, etc..) that is on every page of the website needs to be examined and optimized.
I am attending SMXEast and one of the speakers is strongly encouraging to use the markup from schema.org. Does anyone have experience with the markup from schema.org and were you able to track any outcome in the search rankings based on adding this markup?
No, varied anchor texts are the way to go, just make sure you have "used tires" in that order.
"used tires"
"keyword used tires"
"used tires keyword"
"keyword used tires keyword"
Also internal linking on your site should have proper anchor texts as well. I would concentrate on that first, and stay away from paid linking.
Brand new sites can sometimes take up to a year before Google trusts it enough for real rankings. But looking at your site, you basically took the same page of content and simply changed many (too many) instances of the location.
http://www.akinsseptic.com/alpharetta-septic-tank.html
http://www.akinsseptic.com/athens-septic-tank.html
I would rewrite each page as much as you can, including the generic "About Akins Plumber & Sewer" footer content, and maybe lower your keyword density so the pages don't look over optimized. Whoa easy there 
Less is better.
<meta name="keywords" content="septic tank, septic tank service, atlanta septic, atlanta septic tank, septic tanks, septic repair, septic tank repair, septic pumping, septic tank pumping, sewer line, sewer repair," />
alt="athens septic tank services, septic tank services athens, septic tank service athens, athens septic tank service, athens septic tank chemicals, chemicals septic tank athens, athens septic clog, athens septic clogs, clogs athens, sewer athens, sewers athens" title="septic services athens"
try this generic code:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]
Alternatively, try your code but lose the $ at the end of the first line like this:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.harrisonlighting.co.uk [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://harrisonlighting.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L]
I would take a look at how you're handling redirects. Any page that I remove the www from the URL takes you to the home page and not the www version of the page. That's a huge mistake. I would suggest fixing that right away.
http://harrisonlighting.co.uk/lumigos-princess-candlelight-philips.html
It is absolutely possible, Google is very smart.
a) Remove your external links to any penalized sites.
b) If you have links from penalized sites pointing to internal pages on your site, let those pages 404 and make new URLs for them. If you have bad links pointing to your homepage that is much more time consuming because you'll need to reach out to all the webmasters and have them remove any bad links pointing to your homepage.
c) Submit reconsideration requests in webmaster tools, explain exactly what happened and what steps you're taking to remedy the situation. Include something new that you did in each letter so they see the progress you are making. Good luck! Don't buy or sell links!
I don't have any recommendations based on your low budget, so hiring someone inhouse or working with elance should work for you. However, I strongly advise that you understand the tactics being used to obtain the links. If any of these people are using questionable methods or getting links on known spam sites, there may be some very negative consequences. The link builder should keep a spreadsheet of all links obtained. No money should be spent on links without your prior approval. Hope this helps.
I suggest you download the SEOMoz Toolbar and look at the link data. The competitor site far surpasses you in all the important factors like Moz Rank and Domain Authority. You can use Open Site Explorer and see exactly who's linking to your competitor and try to obtain these links as well.
I am not keen on using the canonical tag as an upfront solution. I would say to take the time out to highlight the slightly different features of each product and put each of them on a different page. If you find that difficult to do, then you can noindex the pages you that are duplicates and nofollow all internal links to these pages. Finally, I would highlight the difference of each product in the title of the product or Google Shopping will have a very hard differentiating these products.
mozRank is a great indicator how you fare against your competitors in terms of external links and it's rank is based on the link quality of the links. Google's SERP algorithm goes way beyond at just looking at the external links and I recall Matt Cutts saying that there are over 200 factors in the algorithm.
If you created targeted landing pages then you are hoping to get those pages ranked for those search terms I assume.
Link to the internal targeted pages if you want them to rank for that keyword, unless you see the homepage already ranking for that term, if it is, then the homepage has a definite chance to rank even better. If nothing is yet ranking then go for the targeted internal landing page.
I had great success on a client side. In a nutshell, here is what I did:
1. Beefed up content on all pages across the site.
2. Zapped tens of thousands of worthless pages
3. Inserted the robots tag and set to "noindex, follow" on all of their pagination pages
Google probably uses Wikipedia pages as one of it's many indicators to verify a company's value. Wikipedia cross-links from top competitors will also provide Google hints that your company plays in the big leagues. Just take your time to set it up properly.
So you have four different sites, on different TLDs? Basically clones of each other? That's not the way to go - basically you can do two things:
a) Use only the .COM domain and Geo-Target the different language/country folders in Google Webmaster Tools. (my recommendation) or
b) Have your four different TLD's each with unique content. This is more work and more maintenance, and no longer the preferred strategy now that Google Webmaster Tools lets you assign different directories for your .com to different regions. Also, if the languages are different, such as French, German Etc Google knows already by virtue of the language which Google.xx engine to show those results in.
I would recommend taking a look at slash vs non slash pages and seeing how many non slash pages on your site are listed as 404'ing. Look at your 404'd pages in Google Webmaster Tools. If this happened to one URL chances it happened to many across your site and if so this is a big issue but can be resolved very easily by appending the slash to the end of all URLs.
Some code might have broken or been improperly or accidentally changed by a webmaster, because if the slash URL version was originally there then that used to be the standard and something technical caused it to go away. This could have broken if you changed from Microsoft to Linux or vice-versa - the .htaccess file or modrewrite would stop working if that was the case.
Since link building is a very time consuming process, you would be better concentrating on getting people to link directly to you.
If you get a link to a site that links to you, the PR from that original site is distributed equally among all the links on that page and you only get a very small fraction of that PR being passed to your site, so it's really not worth it.
That being said, links for the sole purpose traffic are completely legit, while links intended to manipulate search results are are not recommended at all.
Check your analytics, if your traffic hasn't dropped significantly then it's the tool. Also, as mentioned manually check your rankings.
Also do a google trademark search for your domain to see if the site is not penalized itself. Just go to google.com and type in the name of your domain with everything stripped away for example if your site is:
http://www.mygreatsite.com then go to goole and type in "mygreatsite"
If you're not in the top results your site may have a trademark suppression. Or you can use an online Google penalty tool checker but no guarantee that that tool isn't broken as well
The Walrus is correct.
301 is more for obsolete pages that you want to point to new pages so you can retain PR (although 301's still lose a little bit of PR) and also used to avoid any guests from getting a 404 error from bookmarked or links pointing to that page.
I would also advise you not to link from the high quality site into the low quality site. Outbound links to spammy sites may cause guilt by association. Also, do not overlink from the low quality to the quality site as Google may flag that as well. Do not be concerned about the AdWords penalty. I know sites that got bounced from AdWords and nothing ever happened to their rankings.
Just to add a little bit to Manischa Mittal's response. I would recommend you spend a couple hundred dollars with SEM and test out several ad variants and see which ad gets the highest CTR. Take the creative winner(s) and use it to build your meta description tag.
Just to add a little bit to Manischa Mittal's response. I would recommend you spend a couple hundred dollars with SEM and test out several ad variants and see which ad gets the highest CTR. Take the creative winner(s) and use it to build your meta description tag.
In my experience, the sequence of the H tags didn't matter at all, but if the H1 tag doesn't deserve to be on top of the other heading tags, I would suspect something may be wrong with your page layout. I don't recommend more than one H1 tag.per page. The H2, H3 and H4 tags are meant for sub headers. If you don't use the header tags as intended, your pages may be flagged as spam, so use cautiously. I have seen so many webmasters unwittingly abusing these tags, like by putting their brand name in a H1 tag on every single page.
A starting recommendation is too get rid of the spammy footer on every page
"Brampton, Burlington, Burnaby, Calgary, Cambridge, Chilliwack, Coquitlam, Dartmouth, Delta, Edmonton, Guelph, Hamilton, Kanata, Kelowna, Langley, London, Maple Ridge, Milton, Mississauga, Montreal, New Westminster, North Vancouver, Oakville, Ottawa, Port Moody, Regina, Richmond, Saskatoon, Sherwood Park, Surrey, Toronto, Vancouver, Vernon, Victoria, West Vancouver, Winnipeg, Woodbridge".
I have over 10 million monthly visitors on my health sites and I can help you a lot more. Feel free to contact me for additional help.
We do exceptionally well with Bing and we never felt that there was something we needed to do special for Bing. Just follow all the best SEO practices and that will work for Bing and Google.