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Can I ask why you chose to change the URLs?

If everything else is still the same, I'd image that you should see your results come back. I'm sure you had a process in place for handling changing all of the internal links? I wonder about this since you have so many pages and now the URLs are different.

You would definitely get a lot of tools with HubSpot, not to mention you could potentially add their product to your services. I've worked with Act-On, a product very similar to HubSpot, and I think you will find that you will spend a lot of time upfront learning and setting up the system.

I don't think that this type of system is a solution to your 'no time' problem. I'm not saying that you shouldn't give HubSpot a try, but you won't find yourself any less busy, and there won't be any less fires to put out.

It may help you appear more polished and professional, but there is a huge investment there where you could get the these results for potentially less of an investment by hiring someone to design your templates and help you implement systems.

Hi Brad, I think you are right on with your instinct. You are, after all, a consumer as well.

While it may not in fact hurt your rankings online to use the same photo for all locations, I would suggest that the end-user would appreciate the opportunity to see location-specific images. That is what they are there for.

However, if you do have the 10 photos, you could offer these up to what I assume are either your partners, franchisors, or licensees as a benefit while making the suggestion that they also get their own images.

This is kind of a vague question as we really have no idea about further details of your site. It's not bad to have keyword anchor text for internal links, but that is a general statement. Other details to consider would be how many links you have on a page, what the anchor text is pointing to, what the content of the page is, etc.

If your links are pointing to the pages for your various offers, and those links state what the page is about, then you should be fine. The biggest question you should focus on is does your content serve the reader, or are you performing these tactics solely for ranking? Focus on providing value to your reader/customer, and you should be fine.

Hi Wouter,

I think you might be mistaken on what is actually happening with Google plus. It doesn't matter which account you use. What is being discussed is when someone is logged into G+ or their gmail account, the search results give bias towards sites plus'ed by the user and people the user has circled. Essentially, the idea is that if you or a friend have plus'ed something (essentially saying that it is valuable), then you will probably like that search result.

For example, you are logged into Google with whatever account is associated with your Google plus. I am in one of your circles and have given a plus to a certain website. When you search for something related to that website, it will likely show up in your results since you are logged in, but might not have shown up if you weren't logged in. Since I, who am in your circle, have plus'ed a page or site, it follows that we are friends and you may find it useful too.

So, if you can increase the number of people in your market who have plus'ed your page, content, and/or site, the likely hood of other people in your market (eg. their friends) seeing you in search results increases.

Hi Karl,

I second Dany's advice. Additionally, and while it doesn't give you the direct data you are asking for, you can use Google Analytics Flow Reports to get a better idea of what your readers are looking for. Since you had mentioned conversions, this type of data will give you insights beyond just click numbers, and help you optimize the most sought after content.

-Josh

I think if you are looking entirely just to rank you will have to look at the competition in the space. Be sure to consider quality of the content just as much, if not more, than the quantity of the content.

Additionally, you should be focusing on creating content that serves your target audience. Can you produce enough valuable content to serve the market as an authority? Or, will people find your site and go elsewhere to find what they are looking for?

You should also focus on creating your content for multiple readership paths, i.e. - headings, subheadings, images, and links. Not only does this provide value to your audience, but will help in your rankings as well, contributing again to the quality rather than the necessary quantity.

Have you gone through your site to make sure that there are no longer any links to the old 404 pages? You probably don't need to worry about external links pointing in, since those pages are now redirecting, but I think it would be best practice to correct all of your internal links.

Dylan made a good suggestion. I'd just add to make sure that if you do noindex your tag and/or category pages, do a noindex/follow. This will ensure that the bots can find your content, but you aren't competing with your own content in the search engines.

Hi Mark,

A lot of sites use product descriptions either provided by the distributor or found on large e-commerce sites, like Amazon. However, this doesn't necessarily help you stand out.

You could leave the common description you have so far and then expand a little further using your own content. I'd definitely take Takeshi's advice on making some standard copy for certain categories with lots of products.

This is kind of a vague question as we really have no idea about further details of your site. It's not bad to have keyword anchor text for internal links, but that is a general statement. Other details to consider would be how many links you have on a page, what the anchor text is pointing to, what the content of the page is, etc.

If your links are pointing to the pages for your various offers, and those links state what the page is about, then you should be fine. The biggest question you should focus on is does your content serve the reader, or are you performing these tactics solely for ranking? Focus on providing value to your reader/customer, and you should be fine.

You should be completely fine. If for some reason there is a duplicate content issue, Google will just show whichever it thinks is the original video. Giving them different titles and descriptions should also help to differentiate them.

Since you are hoping to take advantage of search for your videos, it will be helpful to link from one of your videos to the other. I'd suggest putting a link on the Vimeo (on the Vimeo site) version pointing to the YouTube version, since that is the one you are hoping to rank.

So, my question here then revolves around relevancy to the user. If someone is searching for "fitness management software" and sees your site in the results but your page's title is "Client Management Software" and your competitor's title is "Fitness Management Software", which do you think they are more likely to click on? Furthermore, lets say they do click on your page, your reader will not be sold as well as they would if the landing page addressed their specific need. If they then decide to compare your solution to a more targeted solution, who do you think they will pick?

You could use your blog post as a means of explaining how your product solves their specific problems. Or, you could create a whole new page dedicated to fitness management software, which would have a much higher chance of ranking well in the search engines and would probably convert better than a generic page.

I'm pretty sure if you just chop off the last tag, , you are going to be perfectly fine.

There should be one canonical tag and it should point to the URL of the original document or the version that you want search engines to view as the main document.

I just did a search for both of your examples and it appears that the answer is, yes. You should be perfectly fine whichever way you go. However, if you know that your audience/customers/prospects use a specific way of writing the keyword over the other, then that will be the one you should go with.

The first example that comes to mind is Freecreditreport .com which actually is ranked #2 for the term 'free credit report'. I have never heard of search engines marking certain words as spammy. You should be perfectly okay.

Thomas made some great suggestions. I personally use, and love, Team Treehouse (http://teamtreehouse.com/).

Distilled U is also great, you can find a Moz perk for them here: http://moz.com/perks.

I would definitely just start with HTML. More than knowing how to write simple tags, you should understand the structure of a webpage. Then focus on how java and php actually work. You may not need to learn a whole lot of java or php to do a great job at SEO.

I agree with Mike. Stay away from automated tools if possible. One of the major social bookmarking sites is StumbleUpon, I believe you can also promote pages on their site as well. Just like every other social site, you will want to be somewhat active and contribute in order to get the best value.

I believe this is what is being referred to as negative SEO and what many fear will be the result of the latest updates. Do you know if these links are in articles that contain any of your content? Could these be scrapers?

Are you experiencing negative effects as a result of these links?

I can't say for sure as to whether it's safe to use or not. Are you asking if you can use it over and over again, or to have some sort of automated process for adding links to the tool? I'm fairly certain you can use it more than once. And, if you were planning on automating, how would you know which links are good and which are bad?

Here is some text directly from Google regarding the disavow tool:

"This is an advanced feature and should only be used with caution. If used incorrectly, this feature can potentially harm your site’s performance in Google’s search results. We recommend that you disavow backlinks only if you believe you have a considerable number of spammy, artificial, or low-quality links pointing to your site, and if you are confident that the links are causing issues for you. In most cases, Google can assess which links to trust without additional guidance, so most normal or typical sites will not need to use this tool."

So, if you are not experiencing negative effects, I would just keep an eye on it in case something happens. If you still want to use the tool, Google also recommends that you do your best to get the links removed from the sites. The author info might not be available, but you could possibly reach out to the site owner.

The confusion potentially comes from the citations associated on the various accounts. You didn't mention phone number, but I am assuming that is the same for both businesses as well.

Having two separate sites, since they are focused on different segments makes sense. However, every detail should be treated as these being separate businesses if they are going to be represented as such.

When you talk about their rankings, are you talking about website rankings or local places rankings?

What is the purpose of the wedding site? Is it a single landing page or a full-on information rich site with multiple pages?

Also, you say that they are sharing a blog, how is this set up?