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The problem is even if you own a trademark for a term, people can still bid on the term using broad match and also variations of your brand terms.

I have seen this numerous times, I have worked on a big telco client, and daily we have affiliates and competitors bidding for brand terms, you have to put in the complaints via email to Google on a daily basis to stop it from happening, but affiliates always find loop holes.

But looking into your specific site what is the trademark term "hamilton island" is a generic term, so I am curious to what other term you are referring to.

The first indexed version means:

1. When you make an original article and Google first crawls this article it is the "First Indexed Version" which means if another site picks up the content after you have it on your site it is duplicative content.

Ideally you want to have unique content on your website.

That is going to work best all of the time.

With News websites it becomes more complex, if you have Wires content or AAP content Google will treat the first indexed version as been the most trust worth version of the copy. Google may treat "syndicated" content in a sense that if it is only on 10 high quality websites it is going to be ok but in the end of the day it is still going to favour original content day in day out, the only benefit of Syndicated content is that it is used by businesses which may not have the time to produce the content.

I hope this helps.

Kind Regards,

James.

Step one: sign up to <cite>www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster</cite>

Submit a site map and check if the site is indexing correct.

Some areas which bing focus on (similar to Google)

• Backlinks quality, build high quality backlinks.

• Anchor text use on posts - Make sure you have good relevant anchors.

• On page optimization tactics

• Age and authority of the domain, from my analysis Bing treats aged and trusted domains over time more effectively.

• also focus on targeting sites via Yahoo such as yahoo directory.

• work out who is ranking well for terms and reverse engineer what they are doing.

Hi,

Add this button will provide the same basic elements as a direct share button, that been said AddThis has run into some trouble in the past with hidden links via the share buttons, a good post on this here: http://phill.co/seo/dont-use-the-addthis-social-sharing-toolbar-its-bad-for-seo

I do not know if they currently still do this, personally I use the sharing is Sexy buttons and also some direct ones on most of my sites.

Hope this helps.

Their is going to be no/ lower market for rubbish SEO services who only offer poor quality services. But in my eyes now is the best time for high quality services. People say link building is dead! Low quality link building is but high quality link building and out reach which is natural is in demand at the moment.

In regards to the original question, yes most of the services those SEO companies did for you are easy to do and they yield lower quality results, but in my eyes if you are a business owner you simply do not have the time to do link building, my advice would eb too look for a well known respected SEO company in your area.

You can try the following:

• Hire a student fresh out of uni.

• go to uni and say you are looking for an intern.

• hire and established writer.

• Look for niche blog in your sector and ask for content writers.

• Overall finding a good writer can be done in many places you just need to test them before you hire them with some basic content work too see the style.

To be honest I think the best thing to do is look at the back link profiles of big e-commerce websites for your direct niche.

If you look at the link profile for Amazon for example it may be too diverse.

Also giving an exact number of no follows or do follows for links and also the exact numbers is going to be hard every one is going to use different numbers, my advice look at your e-commerce niches, work out who is doign well and reverse engineer what they are going, you can get an estimate on all your above figures by looking at the top 10 websites for your niche.

Hi,

you have two options:

1. 301 redirect: this is where you can point the domain to the new page or website.

2. Built the site out into a niche website which will rank.

Personally it depends how strong the other domain is if it is a great keyword rich domain, I would make it into a mini site and put a logo saying part of XYZ company.

You can employ a similar strategy to what SEOmoz does, where they link the profile of the author on the blog to their Google+ profile, my rel author profile shows for some posts I have done on SEOmoz.

My guess is you can also link the specific post content to that Google+ author profile with a similar anchor text, if that user has the blog in "Contributes to" my guess is it will show up.

I have not tested this one personally but I have seen it in action on a few other sites.

I had a quick look over your link profile, I feel you have been hit by Penguin.

I notice you have been doing some ok link building in terms of using varied anchor text in your link profile,

But I also notice you have been targeting some lower quality directories for your dedicated page "<a class="clickable title link-pivot expanded" title="See top linking pages that use this anchor text">personalized wedding favors"</a>

For example I notive you have a link on this directorie: coloradosph.org

http://coloradosph.org/index.php?s=A&c=363&p=17

Google has totally de indexed the URL for this low quality directory, If you take a similar sample accross more of these directories I see more like this.

Also in regards to your "Blog Comments" I notice some poor quality links from this area example:

this looks like it is a blog comment on a link network [comment made 28th Feb 2011), I mean their are 100s of other spammy comments this isn't really going to do any thing apart from have a negative impact on your SEO.

http://mommies.genuineinteractive.com/blog/post/Connecting-with-Alpha-Moms.aspx

To future proof your strategy you need to target higher quality link building strategies and do not let the lower quality stuff work.

Google has been very harsh after the last update, work done by agency's 5 years ago can get hit I have seen it over and over, from my experience "Quality" will be the winner in the end

Easy way to do it is as follows:

1. Add link to Google+ Profile from blog with the following anchor text i.e: Brad Google+

2. Go to Google+ in the about me section "Contributor to" add the URL for your blog.

Takes a week or so to show the rel author in SERPs.

Regards.

Still waiting on my T-Shirt and Trophy, I have 2,462+ Moz points, maybe Rodger Bot does not post to Australia hehe All good maybe Rand will deliver it to me at SMX Sydney next year lol?...

Had a quick look at the site some points:

• Mobile optimization and m-site not much at all.

• URL structure has some parameters in it not advisable imo.

• you seem to have many images on the site the image/text ratios are not the best imo.

• 200 pages is on the lower side, have you thoughts about getting a blog?

- micro formats optimization?

• a few lil coding issues too nothing to worry about too much.

• also look at your internal link structure, could be some opp their.

to be honest Ezines are going to yield smaller results, you really only want to target the big ezine websites which are high quality and indexed by Google news.

In regards to what other strategies you should use to build backlinks for your ecommerce site some good posts can be found here:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/creative-link-building-for-ecommerce-sites

http://backlinks.com.au/15-ways-to-build-backlinks-post-google-penguin-update/

I would look at using more of the above methods over lower quality article submissions

I think it is more to do with the PR flow of your internal link structure, sure you can have 500 links per page but its going to drop the overall level of PR flow. I feel 100 links per page or below is a good number to run by, but as above if you keep adding more and more links the PR flow internally will be lower. Matt Cutt's even states this in the video, which is an important point and states target the important pages.

I think the best areas working for Google+ from my experience are people in the IT and Photography, yet I see an uplift in some work we do from a fashion front on the site.

But if you want an example of real world engagement look at H&M, they always have fashion fans on the G+ page, sure they do not have crazy numbers but it is enough for me to say hey this is interesting.

That been said I would not invest all my time into Google+ I would use it as a top 5 social sites strategy and put a few hours each month into it, and post content every 2 days from your brand.

SEOmoz is more of a blog:

Here is a good list of sites:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/best-seo-blogs-top-10-sources-to-stay-uptodate

Depends what CMS you have, can be easy or hard, you can do the redirect in the htaccess file using a 301 for the correct page. Some more information here: http://www.tamingthebeast.net/articles3/spiders-301-redirect.htm I would also talk to your developer if you are not sure how to do it.

Kind Regards

You need to place a 301 re direct from the www to the non www (or vice versa)

Ideally you need to pick the most authority version URL for the website,

In my eyes the non WWW is a strong choice in today's market.

It is hard to give an accurate percentage, in my eyes if you want to be in the clear just make unique content on pages if it is not unique content then place a canonical tag to the right page.

I mean Google is coming down harder and harder on sites for poor quality content/duplicant content if you play by the rules and do things right tit will be a long term strategy.

If you check site:website.com.au

and it has been de indexed then yes it has been dropped, my guess is for quality.

google has removed around 1 million+ blogs for quality issues.

question: how do you get it back?

answer: you need to pimp your site out, add heaps of great content, remove the ads, make it look like a website, remove any paid links or bad backlinks you can.

then you submit a reconsideration request -http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35843

This has happened too many people, most of the time low quality content + Over use of adsense is the problem.

Kind Regards,

James Norquay

Did some consulting for a plumber a while ago.

It is a very competitive area that is for sure.

• Some advice from what has worked:

1. Get people in the office to make a blog, take photos of jobs, document things online, write blog posts online.

2. Take photos of jobs - Upload them to flickr and other websites, drive traffic back to the website.

3. Take videos of testimonials/jobs and put them on Facebook/ YouTube (link back to the site)

4. Find associations and build badges back to your website, suppliers anything.

5. Do some community work if you have time and get links back from community websites.

• Make sure you pick jobs which look good I know plumbing is a dirty job

I mean all this stuff is not easy but even with a budget of under $1,000 you can do it you just have to be wise with the money.

Kind Regards,

James Norquay

If your brand is been mentioned alot on line it can be good for the following:

• It can have a positive impact on Auto Suggest if people search for it a lot (Brand+ Term)

• You can research out to websites who mention your brand and ask them to link back to you with the article, I would track brand mentions with Google alerts.

• But overall if you have heaps of people just typing your brand term on a bunch of websites it is not going to help your overall link building efforts, you need to do the hard work to reach out to sites to acquire the links.

Its all relation ship building.

Over SEO means the following:

• Building a huge amount of links with a similar anchor text.

• Over optimizing titles so they are like "Money Loans | Buy loans | Loans Texas" ect, titles need to be more natural

• Using non ethical link strategies

• Using a high percentage of the same keyword on page, key word spamming.

Overall you just need to be wise with your SEO efforts and be more natural with the SEO process.

I have heard similar stories, I would note the links you can not remove in the re consideration request, I would provide as much information as possible in the reconsideration request to be honest. I would name every link that you can not have remove and say you have tried your best to have it taken down.

Where does this leave us?

• If you have received the warning you need to go over your link profile in Google Webmaster tools, you need to remove any paid links, you need to request to remove any very low quality links or blog network links.

What have we done wrong?

• You have use paid links, over use of anchor text on links, blog networks for links, low quality links in huge numbers.

What works going forward?

• Remove all bad links then put forward a re consideration request with Google, it can take up to 4 weeks for a reply to be had.

what type of quotes are they, is it breifs for speicifc jobs and if the word count then I would split it out over a 6 month process on a weekly basis.

Recently we had a client who had internal newsletter content which had never gone on-line we have gone with an above strategy which has worked quite well.

I wouldn't put it on a new domain imo, only if you are worried about the quality, best place would be on a sub folder.

Hi, I would first look at your internal link structure of the website to make sure you have the best appropriate pages linking to specific keywords. You would want to target the most competitive terms via this.

Once this is complete I would then move onto high quality link building for the website as said above I would then focus on utilizing varied anchor text and brand terms.

Ideally you want to have sub folders on the website rather than sub domains, due to the key point if people are externally linking to the website it benefits the whole websites rather than just one sub domain.

In September 2011 Google did make changes to count sub domains as one main site but I still have some concern in regards to the usability of a sub domains vs. a sub folder and also the external link value.

Hi,

My advice would be to check the files in your FTP for the specific site, look over your website files too see if any thing should not be in their such as malicious files, directory's which have been made by the hacker. Did you also check if the hacker has made any new pages on the website?
Did you also change all passwords after the site was hacked from the CMS level? Also depending on your CMS you can get plugins to scan for malicious files.

I hope this helps.

Google has recently pushed out some advice in regards to this they have the following statement:

"Google works hard to prevent other webmasters from being able to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index. If you're concerned about another site linking to yours, we suggest contacting the webmaster of the site in question. Google aggregates and organizes information published on the web; we don't control the content of these pages."

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=34449

Directories are not that bad if they are related to the site, I would look deeper into the link profile, to me it sounds like a decent site if their is numerous quality content and they also have a decent amount of traffic and keywords driving traffic to the site I say go for it.

Moz con is a must in my eyes, I have watched the videos from it and they are all killer.

Price is also great for what you get as your are a pro member - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/announcing-mozcon-2012

BlueGlass is also good, similar to the MOZcon in my eyes.

SMX  are good conference's too and also SES is worth it in my eyes.

hi,

you can start by doing an analysis on Open Site Explorer -

http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/

Then you can do on page analysis of the website too see what factors they have, you can use SEO Xray, you can do an onsite audit, check the internal links.

I would also advise to use other software such as majestic, I would also look over google to see onsite metrics, also check social metrics for the website.

Many factors come into play when a website is ranking number one for a highly competitive term.

Kind Regards

To be honest I think a good strategy could be:

1. Make the .co.uk focused on - UK content, UK host, and uk specific data.

2. Keep the .com for US based clients with a US influence.

I mean if your only market is .co.uk and you only want to gather uk traffic I would look at implementing a 301 redirect from the .com to the .co.uk domain.

This use to be the case but recently Google now treats the sub domain as internal links see the changes here: http://searchengineland.com/new-google-classifies-subdomains-as-internal-links-within-webmaster-tools-91401

Overall I do not think this will be a problem having your sub domain and your main url rank for a term, that been said if both the sub domain and main website have unique content and are well linked it can be a good strategy.

I remember one website in a local insurance niche doing this well for a long time

Well yes they do count as internal links,

If you have a website with say 20,000 pages you can use anchor text specific titles on the navigation, so it can give you a boost to your "internal link juice". As an example you have a page about "Soccer Boots" you link to that in the title, sure you also have your main product specific pages too and main navigation pages.

What you can also do to supplement your main header navigation is to have a footer navigation.

You must also bare in mind that you do not want to target more than 100 links per page, this is a guide from Google.

Hope this helps.

AddThis does have the hidden links to their website in the toolbar which is a concern - http://phill.co/seo/dont-use-the-addthis-social-sharing-toolbar-its-bad-for-seo did a good write up on it, I mean if you want to give some one a free site wide link this is something worth looking into.

That been said their are plenty on the market Sharing is Sexy was a good on, I would research into the specific plug in before using it.

Depends what type of products you have to be honest,

I see a lot of brands running local social media channels for the local market, you can manage every thing in software such as Hootsuite.

For example you have TV Brand (Australia) Facebook page and you have TV Brand (UK) facebook pages, you can then also have the global page.

Sure enough with geo specific messaging you can also get away with having one global page but things can get messy if you deal with a huge brand.

In my experience you would want to have two seprate sites with seprate content for the Global market and for the AU specific market.

Having the same content on both the .com and the .com.au is not exactly going to do any thing good for your clients website.

Also with the re directs, I have seen some really messy ones in the past which can also block the ability to crawl the site.

Social does play a bit into the over scheme of things.

some would ask to what extent, in the recent SEOmoz survey 2011, I bleive social media accounted for around 10% of SEO efforts.

Yet after Google+ is pushing the social media message I feel it may be up to around 25% in today's market, even moving up to a larger extent.

How can you get involved?

**- Grow your fan base on Google+, post out messaging, make sure you get +1's and peopel re share your content with the masses. **

- Grow your Fan base on Twitter.

- Grow your fan base on popular social bookmarking sites.

**- Social Media is really about crowd sourcing, you can have a huge Facebook property so think of ways you can leverge this user base to assist your link building and your social efforts. **

Hi I have been seeing it a bit too recently for Youtube videos and also non youtube.

Quickest way to remove it imo would be to remove the video embed from the page.

Also do you have this page in a video sitemap? Possibly remove the link from the video sitemap.

The best back links you can build for free is where you find a list of resources on a highly authority website you then find the who is data of the website and call them up or you email them.

For example you find a list of information with only 4 links on a government website, you can then contact the web master and ask if they will add your related link.

My advice to find these links is to use open site explorer and to scan competitors for high authority links or use the Link Analysis Tools.

Here is a website with the top forums around the world: http://www.big-boards.com

You can also break it down via niche,

Most forums will delete you instantly if you do on to use them for SEO, the best way to use forums from my experience is to go on make a name for your self, talk to users, help out with questions build a few posts so people know you are a real user, then place a link or 2 in related sections yet do not be sneaky about it.

Hi,

This happens when you have a business which is very close to your business or when an old business is in the location or when you do a bulk upload and the listing is merged. I recently did a job where we had over 700 locations for one client, several business locations had images from other stores which were old or next door. What you can do is upload your own photos for the location (hard when you have 700+ locations) or you can click on:"Report inappropriate photo"' Hope this helps.

Kind Regards,

James Norquay.

Ideally your home page is going to be your highest authority page, also target a few sub category landing pages with related content to that specific page.

Ideally you want to only target 3 keywords on each sub category page with related content to that specific keyword.

Best practics:

1. Use different content on both the NZ and AU website.

2. Target links from the NZ websites for the NZ.

3. Try to host locally for the NZ site (not a huge concern)

4. GEO target the .nz domain in Google web master tools.

5. Use GEO specific locations, addresses and contact info on the NZ site.