Our website was designed in 2013 using a custom theme. Some of the plugins are built from scratch.

Ranking in our industry is hyper competitive. We are seeking a better interface and also to improve ranking.

I have read that custom themes use lighter code and can rank better. Does this apply to a custom theme from 2013? Will we have an SEO advantage using a custom theme? If so, will that advantage be significant?

We are using a discontinued plugin called "Firestorm" to display real estate listings. That plugin has been customized. Can we use that plugin on a new "custom" theme? How about on a "child" theme? In terms of the cost of future maintenance, will a "custom" theme require much more intervention (manual installation of updates) moving forward?

Which of the following options is best:

1. Adapt our existing custom theme
2. Create a new custom theme
3. Create a child theme

Thanks, 
Alan

We are in the process of redesigning our real estate website.

Our designer/developer is very quick and confident on Wordpress. He suggests designing directly on Wordpress and bypassing  wireframes and a mock ups. He is very confident in his Wordpress abilities.

Is it a mistake to take this approach? He has also asked that we select a real estate theme at this point. I would think that the theme would be selected after the wireframes and mock ups get done.

But there are certainly different approaches. Are there  best practices for  redesigning a webiste; any suggestions? Are there significant risks/disadvantages to bypassing wireframes/mock ups?

Thanks, 
Alan Rosinsky

Thanks, Martijn. Where can I post a question to the Wordpress community??

The idea being that I can atleast obtain an approximate idea of how long a task should take. I am in a position where I am vulnerable to being told a task takes 5 hours when it actually takes 10 minutes.

Thanks!!
Alan

Fortunately, I do have full control of the server and backups.

But I should have never agreed to allowing the modification of plugins. At the time I did not understand the implications.

Would it help a new coder if the previous developer  provided a detailed description of the modified plugins? What if I agreed to pay the old developer to act a consultant to a new developer?

My developer believes he is in the drivers seat and is charging me 3-5x what is reasonable and fair.  Result is that I can't afford to make any meaningful improvements to the site.

Are there any Wordpress forums where amateurs can ask questions about programming.

My intent it to better understand the complexity of certain tasks and what would be a reasonable amount of time to complete them so my developer does not rip me off by billing me ten hours for a task that takes them ten minutes.

Thanks, 
Alan

Since 2013 a Wordpress developer has coded my real estate website.

Their hourly rate is $24 but the programmers take too long to perform tasks and the service has become prohibitively expensive. Examples of unreasonable time estimates below:

|

|

1. Change theme settings so posts/pages do not display a date. -> 7 hrs
2.Google search results are displaying the breadcrumb on the top of each page rather than the URL. Please correct so this does not display. -> 3 hrs
3. Install SSL certificate to www.metro-manhattan.com domain -> 8 hrs

|

|

The above does not include 5-6 hours for testing.

I am considering changing vendors. Potential programmers have asked how the site was developed and to what extent is it is customized. Ends up several plugins were built from scratch.

My question is whether a new developer is going to be able to pick up a custom coded site. That without understanding how the site was built, any change will break the site. My concern is that current developer has made themselves indispensable, and created a situation where there is no alternative to using them and they can therefore charge any price they want.Any thoughts?

Also below are questions I asked my developer about how the site was built and their answers:

| 1. Was everything coded using a child theme?
No, is a custom theme.

2. Did you use any ready made theme or just plugins
We used the theme and and we've used plugins. Third party plugins and plugins builded from scratch

3. Can Wordpress and every one of the plugin be updated? 
Wordpress can be updated, core files was never modified. If after an update something start to work wrong is due to some radical wordpress change or similar

Can't be updated:

• FireStorm Professional Real Estate Plugin

Created at xxx:

• Form Submissions Report
• Miscellaneous Hooks and Filters
• NYC Check memory usage
• NYC SEO listings
• NYC Slider
• Sitemap Updater

4. Were any of the plugins customized and if so, which ones?
Yes, this plugin "FireStorm Professional Real Estate Plugin" |

Hi Again:

Will option #1 (keeping existing microdata) remove the duplicate h1 tag? Your suggestion listed below:

"So, wherever the

tag with the company name lives that is rendered and shown to the user, ad the "LocalBusiness" itemscope to the parent tag that surrounds it and its content. Basically you'd merge your Schema.org code with the user-facing content"

Hi David:

Schema was added to the site discretely provide location data to Google.

You suggested 2 potential solutions:

1. Use Microdata...

2. Use JSON+LD..

Will these solutions remove the duplicate H1 tag?

We are concerned that the low rank of our URLs (80% are 1) are caused by duplicate H1s on each page.

Are these options relatively simple for an experienced developer? Is one option superior to the other?

Thanks for your patience in explaining these options, my programming understanding is limited. 
Alan

Greetings:

It was pointed out to me that the h1 tags on my website (www.nyc-officespace-leader.com) all had exactly the same text and that duplication may be contributing to the very low page authority for most URLs.

The duplicate h1 appears in line 54-54 (see below) of the home page: www.nyc-officespace-leader.com:

itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/LocalBusiness" style="position:absolute;top:-9999em;">

<span<br>itemprop="name">Metro Manhattan Office Space</span<br>

<img< p="">But the above refers to schema" so is this really duplicate H1 or is there an exception if the H1 is within a schema?

Also, I was told that the company street address and city and state were set up incorrectly as part of an alt tag. However these items also appear as schema in lines 49-68 shown below:

Dangerous for me to perform surgery on the code without being certain about these key items!! Could ask my developer, however they may be uncomfortable considering that they set this up in the 1st place. So the view of neutral professionals would be highly welcome!

itemprop="address" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/PostalAddress">
<span<br>itemprop="streetAddress">347 5th Ave #1008
<span<br>itemprop="addressLocality">New York
<span<br>itemprop="addressRegion">NY
<span<br>itemprop="postalCode">10016<div<br>itemprop="brand" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Organization">
---------------------------------------------------------------------------</div<br></span<br></span<br></span<br></span<br></img<>

Do you think the entire process should take 3-5 hours or more like 5-10 hours?

Also, we use Amazon CDN to host our images. So maybe this adds a few more steps.

I am willing to invest more for a good job, but 8 hours for SSL install and 24 hours for domain migration sounds excessive.

Hi Paul:

Thanks for this most detailed response!! The Wordpress plugins (what is the name of this plugin) that do the basic Wordpress migration in about an hour. You say that they will change all of the URL references to the new domain name, and updating them to reflect the HTTPS as well.

By this do you mean that they will create redirects or actually change them to the new domain? If I understand correctly (sorry I am a novice) it is imperative that I actually change the addresses rather than implement a redirect.

From what you are saying, a lot of the work is updating things like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Facebook etcetera. But it seems like even a novice like me could do that,

So do you think the following sounds about right:

Basic domain migration using Wordpress plugin: 4 hours
Update of third party tools: 3 hours
Redirecting website forms: 30 minutes
Install of SSL Certificate: 1 hour
Miscellaneous: 1 hour
Total: Less than 9-10 hours.

One thing I did not mention. We use Amazon CDN to host about 1,000 images. I don't know how this affects site migration but I would think it complicates it somewhat.

Important thing is good quality control for this critical task. Don't want to under pay and have problems. On the other hand I don't want to pay a multiple of what is should cost.

Also, should I install SSL after the migration has occurred or at about the same time?

InMotion Hosting hosts our domain.

At the moment, we use domain "A". Domain "B" redirect to domain "A" . Domain "B"" better represent our brand and we want to redirect domain "A" to "B". Our website is designed in Wordpress. It contains about 750 pages.

At the moment we do not have an SSL certificate. I would like to add the SSL certificate at the same time we migrate the domain. The data we collect on the site  are company name, phone number, email address etcetera. No transactions. I was told that the Auto SSL free certificate is fine and that there is no need to pay for a certificate. Is this correct?

My developer has told me that installing an SSL certificate would take about 8 hours. And that migrating the domain would take 24 hours, plus or minus 5 hours. My developer is very professional, and usually does a great job but this seems costly considering a $24/hour labor rate. It also seems like an inordinate amount of time.

Several well rated (100% approval) Upwork developers are willing to perform this job for less than $200. Huge differential!!

Also, Inmotion Hosting is willing to migrate the site  and install the certificates for free.  But pay nothing and the quality is usually questionable. Any thoughts??

Also, I have a lot to lose in terms of SEO  if something goes wrong. Are there any specifications that I should insist on to make sure the migration proceed smoothly? What do I need to modify on Google Analytics once the migration is done. Any steps I should take to ensure the maintenance of page rank?

Thanks!!!!
Alan

Hi Roman:

Sorry but 2 more questions:

Not sure what you mean by the below:
"I strongly suggest to optimize your PLP pages they are like the categories in your website, so they are very close to your home page and should be at the top of your content structure."

Also, regarding:

Lack of “Speaking” URLs

Is it more acceptable to rewrite the URLs of listing pages with very little page authority. I assume the redirect will make no difference if a listing has a page authority of 1-5.

If the new listing page is improves, the authority should improve.

We have about 350 pages. Do you think a good approach might be to start off trying to improve 30-40 pages to see if we are on the right track?

Thanks,
Alan

Hi Roman:

Thanks for this most detailed, terrific response!!

A few questions:

1. What does "PLP" stand for? (I'm an amateur, sorry)
2. What is search console?
3. How do I decided where to create the internal links between the pages?

REGARDING:
Optimal format Primary Keyword - Secondary Keyword | Brand Name 8-foot Green Widgets - Widgets & Tools | Widget World The above is a good example. Your suggestion to remove brand name is interesting. It provides a lot more space (characters). Good idea as long as removing brand from title is not detrimental.

But using the above "widgets" nexample what would we substitute "Brand Name" with?

What happens of some of the keywords get redundant? Like the neighborhood may be an important keyword
New York Office Space Rental / Chelsea Loft Space/ XXXXXX

We might have about 75 loft spaces, wouldn't this redundancy be bad?

Also, many, many searches use:
Manhattan office space
NYC Office space
New York City office space

And many permutations. The competition for these terms in Manhattan in insane!!! Google Adwords has many of these terms listed for $35+.

Do you think it best to have geographic keywords in schemas, title tags, descriptions or URLs?

Many of our URLS are poorly written. Do you think it best to re-write them or will the redirect reduce ranking?

Thanks again, 
Alan

My industry is commercial real estate in New York City. Our site has 300 real estate listings. The format we have been using for Title Tags are below.

This probably disastrous from an SEO perspective. Using number is a total waste space. A few questions:
-Should we set listing not no index if they are not content rich?
-If we do choose to index them, should we avoid titles listing Square Footage and dollar amounts?
-Since local SEO is critical, should the titles always list New York, NY or Manhattan, NY?
-I have red that titles should contain some form of branding. But our company name is Metro Manhattan Office Space. That would take up way too much space. Even "Metro Manhattan" is long. DO we need to use the title tag for branding or can we just focus on a brief description of page content incorporating one important phrase?

Our site is: w w w . m e t r o - m a n h a t t a n . c o m

<colgroup><col width="405"></colgroup>
| Turnkey Flatiron Tech Space | 2,850 SF $10,687/month |

<colgroup><col width="405"></colgroup>
| Gallery, Office Rental | Midtown, W. 57 St | 4441SF $24055/month |

<colgroup><col width="405"></colgroup>
| Open Plan Loft |Flatiron, Chelsea | 2414SF $12,874/month |

<colgroup><col width="405"></colgroup>
| Tribeca Corner Loft | Varick Street | 2267SF $11,712/month |

<colgroup><col width="405"></colgroup>
| 275 Madison, LAW, P7, 3,252SF, $65 - Manhattan, New York |

When I enter "Site: URL" to check what a search how Google displays  search result, a date appears at the very front. This takes away several characters, really valuable real estate.

How can I stop Google from displaying these dates?

There are certain Wordpress plugins like "WP Date Remover" however the seem to only apply to blog posts. Dates are appearing on results on all my Wordpress pages. Is there an internal setting in Wordpress that will allow me to remove dates for these non blogpost pages?

We are a commercial real estate brokerage firm in Manhattan. Our site (w w w . m e t r o - m a n h a t t a n . com) is text heavy and somewhat uninviting. Ranking is fair. Conversions awful. Our niche is very competitive.

We plan on reducing the amount of text and making the site more visual. Among the planned changes:

-Reduce amount of text in home page and text heavy pages. More emphasis on product (listings)
-Much larger photos for listings
-Lighter cleaner design with more open white areas
-Use of more visible fonts
-Better forms

New design will be like: http://www.dernieretage-paris.com/

Theme and graphics based on Manhattan. More visuals. Better photos. Less text.

But are we shooting ourselves in the foot by reducing text? Is there a risk that Google will reduce our ranking?

Can we compensate for reduced text that is visible to visitors by completing meta tags more fully?

Any thoughts???

Thanks,
Alan

Will improving our site's graphic design but keeping identical structure, tags and text result in better Google? Are lower bounce rates greater time spent on a site by visitors rewarded by Google n the form of higher ranking?

We are a commercial real estate brokerage firm in Manhattan and plan on making the following changes:

-Much larger photos for listings
-Lighter cleaner design with more open white areas
-Use of more visible fonts 
-Better forms
-Potentially less text and more emphasis on product, which in our case are real estate listints.

Our existing site:  w w w . m e t r o - m a n h a t t a n . com  is a bit ordinary and uninviting.

The redesign will have a concept similar to
http://www.dernieretage-paris.com/
The theme behind this real estate site is the city itself, which is quite clever and applicable to Manhattan.

Our home page as well as other URLs use lots of text. If we reduce text and use more images to make the pages more engaging, will our organic ranking decline?

If we reduce text can we compensate by fuller completion of meta tags?

Any thoughts???

My real estate brokerage firm is promoting a listing via advertising on LinkedIn. The advertising links to a landing page: http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/MidtownLawOfficeSublet3300SFBelowMarket

Rather than photos, the landing page has a 1 minute video. So far we have had about 10 visits to the page. Visitors leave the landing page after a few seconds. So they are not looking at the video.

Would it be better to replace the video with photos?  Or is engagement generally better with video?

My thinking is that business owners may not have the patience or the time for a video and they would more likely have the time and willingness to click on photos.

I would be willing to test this further, but at $5/click it could get costly!

Any thoughts?
Thanks, 
Alan Rosinsky

My designer has created a landing page with a dark background. Text is white and other colors. Does a dark background impact the conversion rate? Is it better to have a white background?

I am concerned that a dark background may distract visitors. The landing page is: http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/MidtownLawOfficeSublet3300SFBelowMarket

We plan on using this landing page for LinkedIn advertising.

Thanks!!

My commercial real estate brokerage ie firm is targeting very specific lists of businesses. We send them emails regarding specific properties. For instance email to partners in law firms with 1-10 employees in the 10017 zip code. Response from email has been maybe a decent customer for every 1,500 emails. But it is inexpensive.

We would like to try to reinforce and enhance the results by perhaps using social media tools such as LinkedIn and Facebook.

Would it help us eventually advertise to our very specific segments if we Facebook like the individuals we are targeting? We would like both the individuals and the company pages. Any utility to this? We would also follow the individuals on LinkedIn.

In a perfect world we could advertise posts of below market, especially desirable properties to our target market; the same people we are emailing to on a regular basis. We are generating the emails through a CRM called "ZOHO" which we find very useful.

Is it worthwhile to add a social media element to our marketing effort? While the email has been very inexpensive and shows signs or being effective, the amount of effort to compile the lists and set up ZOHO was monumental.

Looking forward to feedback, thanks everyone!!!
Alan

Thank you Kelly and Michael for these excellent answers to my query.

Another related question: if a recipient clicks on a product pages (an office rental in Manhattan) and goes to my website, I have the ability to send them an automated email once they click the link or even several hours afterwards.  Will doing so increase my conversion rate? If I do not set this feature up, am I missing a key opportunity?

Also, the package I am working with allows me to send a follow up email if the recipient opens the my promotional email. Is it best practices to set this up?

I don't want to harass of spam any potential customer. At the same time I don't want to miss an opportunity. So what is best practices?

Note I have a mailing list of about 12,000 and intend to send emails targeted by industry during about 10 business days a month. Don't want to send more than one mailer a month to each recipient, scared they will opt out if I over do it.

Any thoughts????

Thanks, Alan

For business to business email, should we avoid sending on Mondays and Fridays? The nature of the service is commercial real estate brokerage for office space in New York City.

We are mailing to corporate decision makers in various industries (technology, finance, law). Should we avoid mailing during certain times of day? Or is there a best time of day to send the email.

Thanks, 
Alan

I keep getting the following error in my Campaign Dashboard:

“Our connection to your Google account was lost. Don’t worry, you won’t lose any data”. Please reauthorize now.

I do reauthorize but by the time I log out and log back in, the same message gets displayed.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Alan

I run a New York City commercial real estate in New York City.

Lately, I have started to produce 30-second videos about property listings and neighborhoods. I have noticed that the engagement for these videos on Facebook is much higher that for text posts.

Should adding these videos on our website (hosting them on Youtube) result in increased visitor engagement? Could there be a positive SEO effect such as more links and higher quality links? Anyone have any experience with this?

Thanks,

Alan

Interesting that you mention video. Do you think, that if well done that attracts interest that is equal or better than an article? Also, as a B+B service, do you think that Snapchat would be appropriate for posting? Are links that originate in Facebook and Snapchat "follow" links? I know that YouTube is no follow. As a B+B business (commercial real estate) I am hoping to find the best sites for posting information. Recently we have been creating promotional videos of listings and informational videos of neighborhoods and are trying to figure out where to post them. From what you are saying it is key to post these videos on our website. Our few experiments have been on YouTube.

Hi Brett:

Makes sense, thanks!!

So let's say I have a useful article about renting office space in Manhattan. Would I be best posting it on a social media site with a link back to our site? Or better to add the article to our blog and then promote it on social media like Twitter and Googe+ and then like back to the article?

Thanks,

Alan

What is the best way to use articles from a "thought leader" to build high-quality links to my website?

I have heard that it is possible to pay bloggers to post business articles that link back to a website. That assuming these blogs have domain authority this is a good technique to improve ranking. Is this in fact true, and if so where would I find blogs to post our content. The purpose would be to promote real estate brokerage website.

Any suggestions? Is this possible, advisable, best use of quality content?

Alternatively, where else can we post engaging content to create links back to our site? Social media? The nature of the content would be such topics as how to find the best value in Manhattan office of loft space rentals, etcera.

Thanks, Alan

Excellent response!!! I apologize for the delayed response as I am travelling in Europe at the moment.

If I understand correctly, there are 3 entities, the business plus the 2 partners. When you refer to "unique set of local business listings/citations for each partner" what are you referring to? I understand that the business wold have a Google+, GoogleMyBusiness, GoogleMaps listing, however are you suggesting that the partners have listings for themselves that link back to the site, and if so where should these listings be?

Thanks,  Alan

Basically the question is what are best practices for multiple business phone numbers on a website. How should they be added without having a detrimental effect on local SEO?

Does anyone want to venture an opinion on this? I would think this is a potentially common issue.

Thanks,

Alan

Yes, that was the issue, thanks!!!!

MOZ Campaigns has been displaying a blank page in the last 2 hours. Is anyone else experiencing this outage?

I have attempted to access MOZ via an iPad and an iPhone using Safari and Chrome. My geographic location is France.

Since 2006 www.nyc-officespace-leader.com has promoted my commercial real estate brokerage business. I have been the sole broker listed on the site. As a result, the same phone number has appeared consistently throughout the site.

Now I will be adding a colleague to the site (in addition to me) and I am struggling with how to best display my colleague's phone number. The 2nd broker will be adding property listings and blog posts. It was agreed that  my phone number would be replaced by my colleagues phone number on his listings and blog posts. Pages that existed before would remain with my phone number. The idea being that leads generated by the 2nd broker's new content get directed to him rather than me.

My concern is that having a new phone number listed will introduce an inconsistent phone number and harm our local SEO. I have read that it is absolutely critical that NAP (name, address, phone number) must be 100% consistent otherwise it can cause harm search engine ranking.

What are best practices for displaying different phone numbers for different personnel on the same website without harming local SEO efforts? This situation is certainly common, so I would think there must be some work arounds. I have seen "Contact" icons that when clicked show phone numbers. Is there any standard solution for this issue that keeps NAP data consistent?

Also, what if we keep the same number in the header but use different numbers in other locations? Is the header a location where we should be extra careful to display the same phone number?

Thanks, 
Alan Rosinsky
Metro Manhattan Office Space, Inc.

An example of inconsistent listing pages are:

-http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/listings/386-w-38th-street-office-lease-2370sf
(Broker "#2)

-http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/listings/329-545-eighth-ave-office-lease-525sf
(myself)

An example of inconsistent blog pages are:

-http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/blog/the-tech-explosion-impact-on-chelsea-2
(Broker "#2)

-http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/blog/office-space-build-out-cost
(myself)

Hi Donna:

I seem to recall that in 2013 we migrated to Google Analytics with "Goals" set up. This was set up in a manner that did not use tracking code. I am not a developer and it was 3 years but I distinctly remember extensive efforts to implement this more sophisticated tracking.

Today my developer confirmed that traffic has not dropped in the last few months, however Google Analytics has not been able to detect of track this traffic since the Zoho Java script for the Sales IQ product was installed.

Any ideas or suggestions???

Thanks,
Alan

I forgot to mention the Zoho Sales IQ Javascript code that was pasted into the site was the following:

Could this cause a traffic drop?

Starting November 1st, organic web traffic from Google dropped from an average of about 60 visits a day to about 5 per day. So we are more than 90% off!!!!

At the end of September, we modified the header of the site to simplify it. We also added a snippet of code to each page to enable Zoho "Sales IQ" to work. Sales IQ enables us to track visitors and engage in chat sessions with them. Apart from that no changes have been made from the site.

Any ideas as to what could have caused this drop in traffic? Was there a Google update at that time that could have caused the drop? Or could the recent site changes have caused this?

I have attached a Google Webmasters Tool report showing the drop in traffic.

I would very much appreciate some insight into this, as all organic traffic to our site has ceased.

Thanks,
Alan

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Our commercial real estate site (www.nyc-officespace-leader.com) contains about 800 URLs. Since 2012 the domain authority has dropped from 35 to about 20. Ranking and traffic dropped significantly since then.

The site has about 791 URLs. Many are set to noindex. A large percentage of these pages have a Moz page authority of only "1". It is puzzling that some pages that have similar content to "1" page rank pages rank much better, in some cases "15". If we remove or consolidate the poorly ranked pages will the overall page authority and ranking of the site improve?

Would taking the following steps help?:

1. Remove or consolidate poorly ranking unnecessary URLs?
2. Update content on poorly ranking URLs that are important?
3. Create internal text links (as opposed to links from menus) to critical pages?

A MOZ crawl of our site's URLs is visible at the link below. I am wondering if the structure of the site is just not optimized for ranking and what can be done to improve it. THANKS.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/oqchfqveelm1q11/CRAWL www.nyc-officespace-leader.com (1).csv?dl=0

Thanks,
Alan

Your Pinterest page looks very good. And apparently, it ranks very well. It is the first really effective use of Pinterest I have seen in the real estate industry. Was it complicated to set up? It is something I would certainly be interested in exploring. Could it be done in a manner that could also help improve my website's ranking, say linking back to the site?

In terms of our website, do you think it would be best to set the 350 listing pages  to "no index, not follow"? Or alternatively, is there a way I can use the listing content to improve my rankings? For instance,  if the listings were short descriptions placed on neighborhood or building pages, would that stronger?

I added a Google+ Page for my business several years ago.

Now when I click on "Search Console" within Webmaster Tools  it is asking me to provide business information that I entered several years ago for Google+. Is this normal? Should I fill it out? It seems that this info is redundant with what I filled out for Google+.

When I enter the name of my business (Metro Manhattan Office Space, Inc. ) in Google, a listing appears to the right, so it seems that Google already has my details.

Thanks,
Alan

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We have added very little new website content in the last year. Our domain is www.metro-manhattan.com. Would adding a brand-new blog post once a week help improve our ranking in Google? A few years ago adding new content would've had quickly had a positive effect. Is that still the case? Or should we focus content creation resources in other areas such as social media?

Thanks, Alan

We operate www.metro-manhattan.com, a commercial real estate website. There about 550 pages. About 300 pages are for individual listings. About 150 are for buildings.

Most of the listings pages have 180-240 words. Would it be better from an SEO perspective to have multiple listings on a single page, say all Chelsea listings on the Chelsea neighborhood page? Are we shooting ourselves in the foot by having separate URLs for each listing? Are we at risI for a thin cogent Google penalty?

Would the same apply to building pages (about 150)?

Sample Listing: http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/listings/364-madison-ave-office-lease-1802sf

Sample Building: http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/for-a-new-york-office-space-rental-consider-one-worldwide-plaza-825-eighth-avenue

My concern is that the existing site architecture may result in some form of Google penalty.

If we have to consolidate these pages what would be the best way of doing so?

Thanks, 
Alan

An SEO provider suggested we add breadcrumbs to the top of each page about 3 years ago, which we did.

3 years later we are going thru the site and find it really busy with lots of redundant and distracting elements.

We would like to remove the breadcrumbs from the top of the pages. Is there any real SEO downside to doing so?
All URLs are listed on our site map so I don't see why Google would not index all pages.

Our domain is www.metro-manhattan.com

I have uploaded a sample page with a breadcrumb.

Thanks,
Alan

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How does Hubspot compare with MOZ? Doe it provide similar features or is the functionality very different?

Is Hubspot complementary to MOZ or could it be used as a substitute? If we stopped our MOZ subscription and subscribed to Hubspot would we lose anything?

Thanks, Alan

Our Facebook business page is: www.facebook.com/MetroManhattanOfficeSpace/. Facebook suggests we change it from:

347 5th Ave, # 1008
New York, NY 10016

To:

347 5th Ave
New York, NY 10016

Google Places shows our address as: 347 5th Ave #1008, New York, NY 10016

The Facebook change deletes the Suite number and eliminates the comma after "NY". I am concerned how this will effect address consistency and local ranking. Shouldn't the Facebook address match our Google Places address precisely? Isn't it critical that our address format and info appear exactly the same everywhere?

Will complying with the requested Facebook address change have a negative impact on local SEO?

Thanks, Alan Rosinsky

Our site (www.nyc-officespace-leader.com) markets commercial real estate for lease in New York City.

Any potential negative impact in terms of ranking and traffic by using our blog post in an unconventional manner? I am considering publishing a weekly post describing the latest commercial listings for lease. The post would be formatted and resemble classified advertising appearing in such newspapers as The New York Times. The ads are concise and appealing.

Property listings drive a high click thru rate, so I believe blogs posts based on property listings and formatted like old newspaper ads might really improve visitor engagement. Each add could have a link to a corresponding listing page.

Would using the blog in this manner every week have a detrimental effect or could prove beneficial?

Thoughts???

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In the last year traffic to our site has dropped in half and ranking has dropped significantly. Very little no content has been added in that time. We would now like to improve ranking by adding new content.

2 domains effectively exist for the site. The existing domain is www.nyc-officespace-leader.com. But www.metro-manhattan.com redirects to www.nyc-officespace-leader.com. Our company is Metro Manhattan Office Space, Inc..  We registered www.metro-manhattan.com and created the redirect to www.nyc-officespace-leader.com in 2012. www.nyc-officespace-leader.com was registered in 2006. Many links to the site show www.metro-manhattan.com and I believe this may be a source of confusion for Google.  Would it be best to make the domain consistent at this time by redirecting it once and for all and to do so before adding new content? If this is done correctly can we avoid taking a hit on ranking?

Note:

-www.nyc-officespace-leader.com is the old domain.
-www.metro-manhattan is the new domain but has existed since 2012 and has been redirecting to the old domain since then
-The company name is Metro Manhattan Office Space (similar in branding to the new domain)

Am I correct in assuming that having the 2 domains may be causing issues with Google involving domain authority? Change the domain before adding content or add content before?

Interesting...

Can Facebook ads target, business function, industry, company size and geography?

If I seek to test both platforms, do you have a suggested minimum budget for each? How about comparing the two to Google Adwords in terms of effectiveness for B+B marketing and lead generation?

Thanks, Alan

Does anyone have experience with  LinkedIn and Google Adwords for B+B advertising? I own a commercial real estate agency in Manhattan. We aim to generate qualified leads of business tenants seeking to rent office or loft space. The advertising is not meant to build an image or branding.  Approximate total adverting budget is $3,000-$5,000/month.

LinkedIn appears to have the advantage in being able to target a particular demographic (industry, geography, job function, size of company). But I wonder if it is not geared towards branding rather than generating warm leads.

In terms of cost and quality of leads does anyone have insight as to how these two platforms compare?

Thanks, Alan Rosinsky

My company is a commercial real estate agency in New York City that helps businesses acquire office space. We are thinking of running a PPC campaign on Google Adwords. However our targeted keywords can cost up to $30 each. Perhaps we can spend $2,000 to $3,000 per month. Is there any way to predict if this campaign would be cost effective?

If only 1 out of 15 site visitors generated by the PPC campaign contacts our firm, and one out of ten of those is a viable prospect, and we close with one out of five of those, it would mean that it would cost 750 clicks per transaction. If an average click is $20, that means that we would need to spend $15,000 per transaction. Our average commission is $20,000. So this is very marginal. Is my calculation overlooking something?

A few keywords we would be competing on are the following:

Manhattan office space rates
Manhattan office space for lease
Rental office Manhattan
Midtown office space for rent
Office space for lease nyc

I might ad that we are competing against huge companies like Loopnet, Weworks,  Regus, and several large real estate brokerages and landlords.

Also, many of PPC visitors are running office space like searches when they are looking for shared executive office suites with very short term leases. This is not our market, we are seeking tenants that need their own demised space for a lease term of at least 3 years. Is there any way PPC can filter out clicks so we don't pay for visits from the executive office suite market?

The site that we would be marketing is www.metro-manhattan.com

Thanks,
Alan Rosinsky