Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Heather,

The ranking is based on a keyword against a page.

So while in your control panel - Keyphrase "Apples" may have a grade of A against page www.yourwebsite.com/apples, against a different page not optimised for the phrase Apple it will get a Grade of F...

Your key phrase is obviously ranking against two different pages ,you can change this in the backend. As in select the appropriate word you want to rank against on any page

Hope that makes sense

John

Hi Greg

Yes, you are right and we actually put this forward to the client, there was actually more benefits to doing it this as we saw the situation. If nothing more than the fact its all under the one "domain"

But after we established with the client that we would need two sites, be it two separate domains or using sub-domains, the client actually insisted that they wanted the two domains option.

We found it difficult to put a concrete case in front the of the customer to justify going down the sub-domain route considering they were so adamant to use two separate domains.

Customer in king, they pay the bills, we rolled with them on the two domains ...

I would be interested though how the sub-domain option would have worked to be fair, we had planned to use the main domain as more of an information portal , utilize that for targeting their key-phrases, it would have left us a lot more room to be more versatile with actual content as with all e-Commerce stores.

Its defiantly the more conventional approach people take ... but their is nothing conventional with this client

John

Well on the contrary, I am not so sure the term passe comes to mind ... Different situations call for different approaches, you got to be versatile in this game, there is no fire sure remedy for each and every client or project.

We have an e-Commerce client who want to target both the  UK and Irish markets with immediate effect, and after a lot of consideration ,and due to their nature of business, we and they decided to go with two e-Commerce stores to two separate domains (.ie & .co.uk).

In all senses of purpose, they are the same websites, well selling the exact same products. Same site structure, same CSS, same JS etc etc.

The approach we took was to vary the product descriptions, have different URLS for the same product on both sites, have different image names and alt tags on both sites ... create different topics about the product categories on both websites, and lastly for the onsite optimisation ,we created two separate blogs on both websites with totally unique content (no cross over for the blogs).

Off page ,we started two separate social campaigns along with two separate online marketing campaigns supported by two separate ad words campaigns.

Granted there was more work involved than creating one website and target two countries, but with regards to budget for the client, it was relatively similar doing it the way we did it.

So the results ,well its rare it happens but we where pretty happy with the results so far 3 months down the line, both sites are fully indexed and ranking  well in the SERP for their respective countries ...

The major key-terms we need both to rank for last week broke into the top 50 in the UK and is 11 in Ireland (really high competitive term), but this is to be expected regardless of how we ran the campaign, but the LTK and less competitive terms are already ranking first page already ...

We have been totally able to optimize each website for its respective country, from link building through to dynamic content

So does it work, yes, is it worth it ,well that depends on your business and clients situation, is it more expensive, well that depends on how your look at your budget, or your clients.

But one thing I can say for sure, would we have achieved the success we have for the client so far had we one website targeting two separate counties, not on your Nelly would we have, no way by 3 months into the campaign.

Just thought  bit of perspective from someone going through the situation live might help

Regards

John

Ping it ...

Will help it get indexed quicker.

I would suggest using your RSS feed to get the page indexed by listing the address but you don't have an RSS feed.

You really should if you are taking blogging seriously and trying to engage with your customer database ..

Regards

John

Hi all

Just wondering, what service do you use to manage multiple social profiles ( in excess of 50).

Curious as we have used http://commun.it for twitter accounts, but gets tedious as we need to log in on several different accounts, although great service

Also use Hootsuite but reporting is terrible ...

Really looking for some platform that offers lots of account management, building networks while offers decent reporting. And preferably some platform that expands beyond Twitter and FB only

Thanks in advance

John

Thanks all. I meant rel=publisher , just really wanted to establish that Google verification didn't mess with Rich Snippets, and well that's seems to be the case ,as it doesn't.

Just had a look through a lot of sites with rel=publisher, and there is no image displayed to the best of my knowledge

Guess I'll find out for sure in a  few weeks hopefully

Hi Folks,

So ,we have a website that we have fully configured with Product Rich Snippets (its an e-Commerce Store), including product image and the usual.

We are considering verifying the Authorship of the website for the client as they will have an extensive blog.

My question is, if we verify the Authorship of the website, which will Google use in terms of the rich snippet photograph in the SERP, will it use the product image as detailed in the Product Rich Snippet or us the company logo we have on the Google Plus page (Verified Author)

Or is it a case we only add the rel:author tag to pages without products.

Would just like to verify before we continue on as

Thanks in advance

John

Combination of both ...

Regards

John

Hi Robert,

Firstly and most importantly ,do not get some automated tool to do this for you ,as tempting as it might be ..  as reassuring as some of these software's sales pitch is, do not use them !!!!

Second thing, one good link (from an authority) is worth 20 low level links ... So focus on quality as opposed to quantity,

Build links that are related to your community, for example if you resell a service or products ,ask your supplier to link your website, try and get linked off any authorities within your industry (I know you mentioned there aren't that many but they would be worth a lot more than any low level links.)

Have quality content on your website (you never mentioned what type of website you built), have content that people would want to share, make it interesting, relevant, make it content people would want to share.

List your business on Google places, this will help immensely with local searches.

There are some high quality directories you can list your website on, they mostly charge, its really down to what you're budget is. It really depends on your business, but I and plenty have ranked websites well without having to pay a fortune out.

Start building your social presence, really important now, get people liking your content, get them building your links for you, try and build a community around your website ....

That should help you for a start, its not easy so don't expect it to be, but if you do it correctly at the beginning ... you should reap the rewards in the future (yes cliche but true).

Regards

John

Last week we had three terms for a client dive out of the top 100, they all ranked against a particular page, the three terms where where core words for the clients website ...  strategic to his business. I assumed that it may have been due to the latest update by Google

I assumed it was due to some poor inbound links to the pages (clients re sellers) and a slight abuse of anchor tags.

The terms contained one keyword and two variations, a well know software brand. We ranked as high as number two, continually fighting the actual brands main website., but none the less outranking all other re-sellers.

This week we are now back ranking higher for the main term (outranking the actual brands website) and the other two are back to where they ranked. Obviously I had organised to sit down with the client tomorrow to discus.

Should I bury my head in the sand, rejoice at some fortune and hope the problem is not as bad as I thought, and hope the results stay static going forward ... or is this a chance to rectify those issues I saw with more clarity after the dive bomb of the three phrases last week.

Has anyone else noticed anything similar ? Offer any advice ?

Cheers

John

Yes, Goggle will see these as duplicate content, and all your sites be effected by this. Parked domains are a big no no.

I would suggest you set up redirect for all the othe r7 domains to the main domain you want to use, Google advises this and well it makes perfect sense also.

You can actually do this from c-Panel as per your screen shot, or you could use your .htaccess to do this

Regards

John

I would also have a look at Rich Snippets, that way the one you intend to trying to rank can be displayed in the results as you would like

We have used them for lots of videos for clients and got great success optimisting the results we are looking for

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=162163&topic=1088474&ctx=topic

Could be lots of reasons from my own experience, if your site has not been penalized, which I am sure you would know and have not said ... I would start looking at content:

Are you pages optimized enough, or indeed over optimized.

Have competitors naturally pushed your results further down the SERP.

Do you monitor your backlinks, have some of these been removed from affiliates.

Is your content optimised for mobile, more and more people are using mobile devices to browse.

That is where I would start at least and see if you can get any answers there

Regards

John

Without trying to rub salt into the wounds of anyone hit hard, on the flip-side did anyone get some good news.

We have one particular client that was effected in an immense positive way today, for the last four months we found it difficult to outrank one of their competitors ... but they have vanished of the face of the earth today, well Google's earth .. which meant our client moved up the SERP for a number of their key-phrases, which gave me a sense of immense delight.

I could see exactly what they where doing, not so natural link building, creating a lot of sub-directories, naming each index file by the key phrase and linking all their internal links, while disturbing all their backlinks form the same source to each index page ... I wondered of they stayed under the radar cause each term was a sub-directory almost.

No doubt they will be back, but not after a clean up and a restructure to their website

Anyway I digress, anyone else seen any major improvements

Links are aren't that important, quality links are important ... but they are not everything (but they are important to getting the results you want, but don't ignore other aspects also).

But there are other major factors which are as important as well, just adding keywords to titles is not really optimising your website ..

Other factors which are as important is content, content and well content, insure your page contains quality relevant content for the phrase you are trying to rank for.

Insure you pages are structured well and easily acccesabile

Build a social profile around your website, this plays a huge part these days

There is no 100% proof way Jonathon ,but just adding a few backlinks and adding a keyword to a  title is not a sure proof way to get results, you got to work at it.

Oh ,and just to add, your placement is the SERP is not something that will usually stay static, there will always be movement, and lots of factors that will cause this, like your competitor out ranking you and naturally pushing you down .... but dont expect your website to always stay att a spot for a certain key-phrase ... there will be movement

Hope that helps a little

Regards

J

Well on the contrary, I am not so sure the term passe comes to mind ... Different situations call for different approaches, you got to be versatile in this game, there is no fire sure remedy for each and every client or project.

We have an e-Commerce client who want to target both the  UK and Irish markets with immediate effect, and after a lot of consideration ,and due to their nature of business, we and they decided to go with two e-Commerce stores to two separate domains (.ie & .co.uk).

In all senses of purpose, they are the same websites, well selling the exact same products. Same site structure, same CSS, same JS etc etc.

The approach we took was to vary the product descriptions, have different URLS for the same product on both sites, have different image names and alt tags on both sites ... create different topics about the product categories on both websites, and lastly for the onsite optimisation ,we created two separate blogs on both websites with totally unique content (no cross over for the blogs).

Off page ,we started two separate social campaigns along with two separate online marketing campaigns supported by two separate ad words campaigns.

Granted there was more work involved than creating one website and target two countries, but with regards to budget for the client, it was relatively similar doing it the way we did it.

So the results ,well its rare it happens but we where pretty happy with the results so far 3 months down the line, both sites are fully indexed and ranking  well in the SERP for their respective countries ...

The major key-terms we need both to rank for last week broke into the top 50 in the UK and is 11 in Ireland (really high competitive term), but this is to be expected regardless of how we ran the campaign, but the LTK and less competitive terms are already ranking first page already ...

We have been totally able to optimize each website for its respective country, from link building through to dynamic content

So does it work, yes, is it worth it ,well that depends on your business and clients situation, is it more expensive, well that depends on how your look at your budget, or your clients.

But one thing I can say for sure, would we have achieved the success we have for the client so far had we one website targeting two separate counties, not on your Nelly would we have, no way by 3 months into the campaign.

Just thought  bit of perspective from someone going through the situation live might help

Regards

John

9 months is a long time to see results, granted it depends on what those results are

Did your agency not give you some sort of objectives and plans, can they demonstrate that they are indeed doing the work. Can they explain progress as of yet ...

I mean, with any of our clients, we show them detailed reports of work, measured against expectancy .... After nine months I would expect to see some results ...and if not ,why not.

Yes SEO can take time, but nine months with little or no results, and further more little or no explanation why is a little worrying

Remember you are the customer ,you are paying these guys for a service, you should expect answers why you aren't getting results, if they are reasonable answers why they aren’t getting results, fair enough, if they aren’t reasonable, you are within your right to question their skillset

I can also add, I don’t think one of our clients would pay us if after nine months we should little or no progress and we weren’t able to offer a reasonable explanation why we aren’t achieving some progress

Great blog here which can help answer your questions ...

http://moz.com/ugc/is-your-website-being-replaced-with-google-plus-local-listings

Regards

John

If you are getting some link juice form the blog, I wouldn't take it down, not in the short term for sure

Can you not start the new blog from a blank canvas, I appreciate you have 18 entries in your current blog, but in the greater scheme its not that much.

You could of course create new similar articles within your new blog, and then eventually redirect your old blog to the new one, that way you retain most of your link juice.

Defiantly do not copy the text ,even if you are taking the pages of the first blog down, just because you remove something from a web server, it does not mean the page is still not indexed, it might be a while before the robots come looking again.

Really I would suggest create the new blog and start from their, as you add similar posts to the new blog as is on the old one, redirect the old post to the new blog.

If you feel you are getting no benefit from the old blog, of course you can reomve it, but I would'nt just copy and past the data to the new blog until you knew it was unindexed, you could use copyscape to verify within a few days because even requesting Google to unindex can take weeks to happen

Regards

John

Regardless of all the above David, 9 months with little or no results, and avoiding explaining why is worrying.

Its all well and good some "agency" creating content, blogs, working on social media  etc etc, I am sure most companies could ask a receptionist to do that, if they are not showing any progress ,and avoiding answering why, after nine months you are within your right as a customer to question why ?

As I have said, if they comeback with a reasonable explanation why, demonstrate some sort of progress .. or indeed not even progress, but meet the expectations they set out with their clients initally .. .and they meet with the clients satisfaction ... then fair enough

I hear all too often of people paying hand over fist for SEO services that fail to produce results ... without little or no explanation why !