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I'm looking for some second opinions on this one.  In talking with another SEO, he is of the opinion that if my company name is two words like Crazy Man, I should write some news release that have my brand combined as Crazyman because it is a variant of the brand name.  He claims that Google does not look at my brand as Crazy Man, but as one word and in Google's mind Crazyman as one word is my brand. What do you all think?

I keep hearing this term "over optimization" and people assuming they have received an over optimization penalty.  I also hear people say, "You need to optimize every page on your site." So at what point does a site become "over optimized?"  Are there any good reads around here that explain this better?

I sell a product that comes in 9 different sizes, two materials, and two different shapes.  People often search for this product by size, material and shape as follows: #9 material1 square widget #5 material2 circle widget The dilemma I'm facing is should I create 1 page for each of these products resulting in 36 different pages, or should I create one page that the users can select size shape and material? I'm thinking that from a usability stance, the 36 different pages are easier to navigate and determine price on, but I'm afraid that going the route that is easier for the customer to use in this case could hurt me duplicate content wise.  I'm all about making a good user experience, but don't want to hurt myself because the content on all 9 sizes is basically the same. Are images of the product enough to be considered non-duplicate content?  I also list out the dimensions of each product, but beyond that there isn't much to delineate the content. My plan is to create one page with all the content that relates to all of the products as a top level page with links to the individual products broken down, but just wanted to get some feedback from you guys before making the effort.

My campaign report says I have a 404 error for a sub page located at domain/products/contact.aspx My contact page is not in the /products directory so what I'm wondering is if this means that somewhere on a site I have a link pointed to /products/contact.aspx.  I've looked everywhere and cannot find the link if it is out there somewhere.

For the past 5-6 months I have consistenly ranked at positions #14-16 for snow guards on snoshield.com. The past 3 days I cannot find the home page anywhere in Google for that keyword.  The only thing that has really changed over the past two months is I placed 3 guest blog posts on pretty highly trusted sites that are industry related and created links to the site using suggestions from getlisted. I've read other reports of others seeing similar things happen recently.  I don't think this is a penguin thing, because I can still find the site by searching for the company name, I just can't find it when searching the keyword. I did notice that a different page on the site is now ranking in position #21 for this keyword, but this page is optimized for a different keyword phrase.  Is it possible that even though the sub page is optimized for a different keyword phrase, I am cannibalizing the site?

Does anyone have good tips for finding someone who can do guest blogging for me?  I don't have the time to track down good blogs to post on.

I'm looking at the keyword "snow guards" for two competitor websites: snogem dot com (SG) snoshield dot com (SS) I've been watching these two for about 4 months. SG stays in the top 5 SERPs consistently, while SS bounces around from 15-20 on Google. I've looked at the competitive link comparison and SS appears to have a much better link profile when it comes to DA. Page specific metrics in OSE show SS with a higher mozrank, moztrust, internal followed links, linking root domains, total linking root domains, and linking C Blocks. It appears to me that SG has many more links, but their links seem to be many site wide exact match keyword links, and paid for advertisements on a major site in the metal roofing industry. Honestly the linking profile of SG surprises me that they rank so much higher than SS after the Panda/Penguin updates. I have two questions: 1.  When competing against these sites, should I model SG's link profile? I'm nervous to because of my previous statement thinking they will get hit with Panda/Penguin like updates. 2.  What would it take to bounce SS to competing with SG on the first page?  Is the number of links the only thing this site is missing, or is there something else to focus on.

I have never had a local website, but I have a friend who owns a company that would be strictly local so it made wonder: If a company is located just outside a major metropolitan area, is it possible for this company to compete with companies that are located within the actual city. Here's an example.  A construction company located in Plano, Texas wants to rank for Dallas Construction Companies.  Plano is 15 mins from downtown Dallas.  Does this company have much of a chance ranking on the map for Dallas Construction companies when they have a business address of Plano, Texas?

I am curious if there is a way to get the on page optimization report card to not show a grade of "F" for a page that I'm not targeting a particular keyword for?  For example my home page has a lot of grade "F's" for keywords that are targeted on different pages.

For one of my sites I am working on I outsourced SEO about 3 years ago.  One of the "tricks" the SEO used at the time was to pay for several Blog posts to be "sponsored" by this web site using exact match keywords for the domain. 1 Where do I look to determine the spammy links pointing to this site? 2 Have you had success getting rid of these bad links?

On one of my sites I have 61 notices for Rel Canonical.  Is it bad to have these or is this just something that's informative?

One of my competitors site's jumped from about 4000 links 2 months ago to about 10000 links today.  That seems REALLY unnatural to me given the market (roofing products), but if it isn't what are they doing?  My gut tells me it's fake, but I'm just curious what some of your takes on it are.

I'm looking for a coach who can help me get to the next level with SEO and help me determine what's junk and what's true advice.  Are there any recommendations any of you have out there on where to find such a person?

With the recent Penguin update, I've seen this term "natural links" thrown around a lot.  How do you build natural links?  That to me seems like an oxymoron. If I'm building them aren't they synthetic in nature as it is?  Can anyone give me a sample of a natural link?

I am looking for some ideas on what best practices are for pages that contain lists similar to this page: http://www.backcountrysecrets.com/outdoor-sport/15/places-to-swim-and-swimming-holes.aspx Is it better to break up the list into seperate pages of 25 listings or keep everything on the same page?

This is a question that has been nagging at me for more than a year now.  I've played around on Twitter and LinkedIn, and am a frequent user of Facebook. I really struggle to see how a small business can utilize Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Let's get the obvious, "Tell your friends about your business" post out of the way.  I have a friend that posts about his business everyday, the same thing, over and over.  I have since blocked his feeds because they are annoying.  I always pay attention to when someone makes a post about a new business they are starting because I want to watch and see how they use social media to grow, but it never seems to develop into anything more than a simple "I have a new business." I don't want to be the guy at the neighborhood Christmas party that everyone ignores because they think the only thing I will talk about is my business. I've also tried doing the "Build real relationships on Twitter" approach.  It seems like everyone I chose to follow and try to become friends with was a bot. They didn't post anything, but "Inspiring Quotes" and "Random Facts". I think my real question is "How do small business use social media, WITHOUT being annoying?"

I just read a discussion that was originally posted by Steve Ollington on May 22, 2011 where he states that many people are asking the wrong types of questions on this forum.  He said that he wonders if he will see a shift from people asking questions on "how to rank" to questions dealing with "how to work out the best KPIs" (Key Performance Indicators - yes I had to google it). I was once told we learn more by asking questions about a topic than by just listening.  I've also been told that sometimes the right question to ask is, "What questions should I be asking?"  So here is my question, what types of questions should I be asking to be better at SEO?  Perhaps these are some of them: Is it possible to be good at SEO when it is not a full-time job? It is very tempting to look for easy answers when you only have limited time. What are considered KPI's?  Are they different for every industry? How do you know what is junk information vs what is truly good SEO advice?  Is it just simply trial and error?  It seems to me that if people find truly good SEO information, they aren't going to be sharing it so easily.  It's the whole, "You get what you pay for". Maybe some of you can tell me more of the questions I should be asking.

I've hit a road block of sorts and my mind is having trouble thinking out of the box.  I'm in a relatively small niche with a roofing product called snow guards.  I am struggling with ways to build links and content for my website at www.roofthings.com.  I've used some forums, blogs, and directories. After going through my competitors link data, it seems that one of the biggest links they have that I don't is a DMOZ listing, but that can take awhile and I have submitted about 7 months ago.  It also appears that a lot of their links I cannot get are coming from construction magazines they paid to be in.  I don't have that kind of budget at this time and so I'm trying to compete via organic rankings.  My biggest thing I am struggling with is how to gain more back links.  My biggest competitor has over 40,000 links compared to my 2700. I'm somewhat new to SEO and am just looking for a couple suggestions.  Any help will be greatly appreciated.