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CMS stands for Content Management System and Wordpress is one of the most popular of the many hundreds that are out there.  Thesis is one (again of many) themes that can be applied and modified to a site to give it a look and feel to a site.

There is really no such thing as best platform per sé in my opinion and there is a lot of spin out there about SEO ready and SEO friendly.

At the end of the day if your sites are going to be modest sites with useful helpful information for your clients it doenst make a difference what platform you sue once you follow solid site building and established content creation practices.

Admittedly Thesis and Wordpress (of which I use both regularly) make life easier for you but unlike clothes make the man platform does not make the ranking.

You can as easily rank with a set of static HTML pages as with a CMS as with a custom application for loading up images onto a set of pages.  The amount of technical nous to make your changes will vary however from one to the other.

The sites as you describe sound to me like internal or 'closed' group sites that don't really need to rank so I wouldn't sweat that and go for any of the many CMS that are out there like Wordpress that make the addition of content a lot easier.

Agree strongly Valery there (get it - sorry saddo response)

Strong is coming to the fore more as the default for bold on most WYSIWYG editors but I don't think Google worries too much about it.  There was a lot of activity in making your first use keywords bolded for the first paragraphs to help SEO but for product pages I would personally concentrate on adding content so for the T-Shirt page that you refer to here I would write a little blurb about the group, mention the material of the T-Shirt.  Even a short blurb as to what the image on the T-Shirt is about.

You are looking for people who are fans of this group (never heard of them myself) who search online   If this is one opf their songs then perhaps a YouTube link.  Looks like there are a lot of vendors out there selling T-Shirts of this type so make the page stand out.

IMHO bold/strong is the least of your concerns.  Work the group angle as hard as possible.  The T-Shirts aren't a cheap item so you should explain in the text what makes them worth the price.

Hi Brett

I had a very quick look at your site (if this is the one you are talking about) I think that for real estate you really aren't going to get buyers to give ratings for properties.  From looking at your site I would think a conversion is getting people to buy or sell (buy I guess is preferable).  I also think the perfect conversion for you is the phone call or email and your email form is buried a few scrolls down I think that it takes quite a few clicks to get to the properties.

Rather than a five star rating I would restructure your site to get buyers and sellers to the information quickly.  I don't think the site is currently doing this.

You have a lot of good information and data on the site that could be presented really well and drive the desired conversion.  I would think about simplifying and work out a conversion channel for people coming to the site so that you move them to the property and then the conversion you want phone / email / contact.

hope this helps....

Kieran

Either

Just make sure that if you choose to different pages that you choose good anchor text.  Its nice to get he offer of a link.  Also send them a nice note thanking them and keep in touch with them and don't run away after getting the link.

Just make sure that you don't redirect all HTML files.  I suspect that either way is equal.  What you are telling in either case i

"Hi Google we have moved but don't worry we have moved here"

Like the EGOL humour plus agree with EGOL 100% here.  100 hits and getting Facebook like is pretty good reward.  I assume that you are linking within your site as well to keep people on the site.

And to answer your question you should always try and write articles that are useful to the Internet community but also to you.  Socialize the pages as suggested but if you can write this quality on cities I am sure that you can also write it on Air Conditioners.

Hi Niall

Responsive design seems to be everywhere now and your point above seems to touch on this.  From a UX perspective there really isn't a perfect design that caters for every single display and user.  Google Analytics allows you to track screen resolution so I suggest that for any particular track this for a while and if there are mutliple types  then think of designing to cater for it.

However even though I am in website design I tend to head for he safety of the middle ground and have not yet fully dived into the HTML5 /Responsive area yet as most customers are not demanding it.

However as the tablet and smart phone become the default device as opposed to the fun one it may become an issue.

hope this helps

Kieran

In the footer of the page you have 3 links to these loactions but the links are just to the existing page.

Also when you say you have 99% covered the fact of the matter is that you never have everything covered and for a nice like yours I would spend time every day looking at my content working on various aspects, checking my keywords, and a host of other items.

From a conversions point of view I do not think the  landing page encourages immediate action for people arriving there.

Your Title tag

Compare Prices – Best deals offers on computer games for PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, PC | Cheapfindergames

looks a bit wordy and I am not sure if it is focused on your keywords (which you don't mention but I assume are games.

Plus as an FYI our Wii/ PS3 / Xbox links are only directed to the home page at the moment so might be worth correcting (actually I wouldn't have them twice on the page

Saw this and tried the following which isn't automated but is one way of doing it.

• First install SEO Quake plugin
• Go to Google
• Turn off Google Instant (http://www.google.com/preferences)
• Go to Advanced search set the number of results you want displayed (estimate the number of pages on your site)
• Then run your site:www.example.com search query
• Export this to CSV
• Import to Excel
• Once then do a Data to columns conversion using ; as a delimiter (this is the CSV delimiter)
• This gives you a formatted list.
• Then import your sitemap.xml into another TAB in Excel
• Run a vlookup between the URL tabs to flag which are on sitemap or vice versa.

Not exactly automated but does the job.

Hi Derek

There was a time when I was in the camp that content was enough,  however the statistics tell us that although content is a significant part of the pie chart of factors it is still only one of them.  Like you I held onto the hope that if I build great content and sat back that the people would find me and the rankings would come.  However mostly from this forum and from extensive reading elsewhere I have let go of this grip.

, would it be possible to rank well without putting much emphasis on backlinking if your content is significantly better than the rest of the ranking pages?

The short answer is if the niche is non-competitive then possibly but if there is any element of search traffic then no.

But all is not lost.  First however do not become fascinated with an actual word count for your posts as length does not equal quantity (in fact break it up into a 2-3 part articles if it is good.

But back to the question.  If you have good content and believe it is better than the others than you should work on publicising it and encouraging people to link to it through the many link building methods available.  Even when you say that you have a 2,000 word  article of good content I am immediately interested personally in seeing it.    Have you put it out on Google+ which is now open to everyone?

Do you Tweet it, Facebook it and put it on your Feedburner even? Have you emailed your friends, customers and colleagues telling them about it.  This isn’t link building per sé but it is a small part of the many things that go on.

** or has the game not changed that much?**

Again what I realise more and more is that the game IS changing every single day as new tools approaches come into play.  However saying that I would say pick 5-6 strategies and work these for 3-4 weeks while continuing to build the quality content you mention.  Work these hard (look here on SEOMOZ for some of them).  Track your performance for desired keywords.  Revise strategy, maybe change an approach and start again.

It is hard work and I consider myself a super-novice compared to others but it is about applicaton, assigning your SEO block of time per day then just doing it.  In fact I think SEO is even becoming a depreciated term  as I often think of it as site public relations more than optimisation.  If you publicise your site well the results is good rankings as people line up to link and publicise it for you.

Hope this helps ??? (send the link would like to see the site!)

Some other Useful SEOMOZ Resources to Have a Look At

• The Definitive Beginners Training
• An excellent SEO Powerpoint Deck from Rand which I 'borrow' from a lot
• This Q&A Forum will help but use the search function as well as nearly all the bog posts and articles are well thought out and well written from intro to advanced

Best of luck

Kieran

I read this post and it reminded me of when this actually clicked with me recently.  I have read thousands of words on blogging, writing good content and the list above resonates across the top bloggers that you can read who all beat this drum constantly.  I was recently in the process of putting a guest post together for a blogging forum when after a day I realised that I had put more effort into the guest post than any post that I had for my own blog.  So I **abandoned **the planned submission and used it on my own blog.  I had spent 2-3 hours tweaking, looking for good images, deleting wasted words,  working on all the formating and so on.

A lot of us who are email slaves and quick content junkies should revert back to our English High School class where we spent time on our essays for exams and tests.   I have even applied this logic to forum replies like this.  In the past I would have been much pithier and not as informative (I am being informative I hope !!)

It is worth looking at some of the blogging resources out there Problogger to see that they constantly expound on this topic.  Even guys like Matt cutts say it again and a again about making your content STAND OUT like just thereWe

You may say how do I do this for a product like a Blue Widget.  At first glance this may seem impossible.  But if I am looking to buy a blue widget and am doing research over the web I would like to see

• Product Information in depth
• Reviews
• Some usage of it
• How to use it in different situations.
• A user forum
• Some evidence of good product support
• Some social media juice about it and some fan love

Replace blue widget with website design (my area), cameras, puppy dog collars and so on.

You might say that this sounds like complete overkill but believe me it isn't as the effort will pay off as over time your site will become a rich resource of solid quality information that can't be gotten anywhere else and there will be good payoffs.

There is a well known saying you wont get better by doing the same things every day so work on your blue widget page today then move onto the red widgets and keep going.  Then revisit them all and polish again.

Hi

I would recommend starting with this to at least get an appreication for the business of SEO http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo

Read the questions and answers here on the forum and spend time looking at the blog posts and Webinars that indeed confirm that there is no magic wand

Update: On re-reading this I also realised that it may have been a bit trite.  The most important thing is that from the beginning you are thinking of it and it is part of your focus.  Make the entire team aware of the importance of this.

I'd tend to agree based on your response with irldonalb and your post is quite pertinent as there is an YouMoz Blog by chadburgess post that doesn't exactly point to this (it is realted to noindex but the tactics to get back on Google eyeline are still relevant)

To possibly (badly) summarize some of his tactics that relate to you

• Create some fresh content 1-X pages depends on your capacity and do some internal linking and Google will see this.
• Get some social juice going with your links and recruit some help of friends and associates to spread the word.
• Resubmit your sitemap to Google Webmasters

The full post is here and it is quite an interesting one - http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/accidental-noindexation-recovery-strategy-amp-results

Good luck with it and report back with your success levels..

Kieran

See Googles statement on this

http://www.google.com/intl/en/analytics/privacyoverview.html

Unless the person is using an IP address cloaker the IP address that they are coming from should be taken at face value.

I would second / third this.  And don't put coming soon write a short spiel that says 2011 Super Widget is coming soon and should be this color and size and we will have ht charger when it comes out.  What other items do you think the widget should have as accessories.

Feedback from Matt Cutts recently hinted / said that having the keyword in the domain although helpful isn't as significant a factor as before.  And on the answer to your question.the order should not be significant really.  Having a Generic word may even help a little to give the site some color as may people go for the generic and having a descriptor may help.

Best of luck

Hi Adrian

Well done on ranking for Collectibles in the UK it is a competitive  space with lots of search – I didn’t see you at number one however so I would suggest you check with personalized search turned off.

**However I feel we may be held back by our Domain Authority score. **

Now you mention Domain Authority.  Your domain authority is currently 32 so growth is of course Welcome.  A lot of that comes with linking from high authority sites.  Your site looks like is a powerful source of information on collectibles on first glance but on closer inspection it also looks like that a lot of it is curated news.  I would think about developing your own news and information.

Your blog also is on the WordPress.com platform and is not self hosted. I would work to correct this and bring the blog back onto your local site as you are moving traffic off of your main site.

We are well set up for a content based strategy due to "News" nature of the site. My ownly concern with link building is i've heard that it could potentially negatively effect us.

I am not sure what you mean here.  Lnk building is something you should be thinking of even through organically spreading good news and articles that people link to and share on the Net.  If you produce an excellent article with an interesting slant on a collectible then it may get added juice and get links.

Or is the risk of link building only really associated with black hat methods?

Link building done well and professionally (as I with the ethics of a professional as opposed to paid) should be part of your marketing plan.  Many companies now employ full time Internet marketing experts doing just this as part of their brief.  Link building is not equal to black hat.

One last thing. I've been using the Google keyword Tool to judge competition for specific search terms. Is this useful for organic search? Or is it only relevant for PPC?

On accuracy of the Keyword tool irldonalb is right and the tool is inaccurate and should be used along with Insights and some of the tools here on SEOMOZ if you are a member.  But it is still a good indicator and shows the level of activity.

It is relevant to both search and PPC.  Google never claims for it to be 100% accurate either but it is used by most people these days as on of their go to tools for their keyword research.

Finally it IS worth while reading though here a bit (if you havent done so already for more ideas and tips for your SEO campaign.  I visit it regularly and it is one of the best references.

http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo

You should be able to write your .htaccess to cope with generic paths and URLs There are tons of good sites out there on how to write a good .htaccess and to be honest it is time and effort to wade through the site and get it back in shape.  I have been there and feel your pain.