Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Yes I believe they do - I've changed a name once and it changed nothing except the name.  I do recall the 'you can only do this once so get it right' warning.

Also, I believe you can only change it once.

What do you think of this site?  This is the top, number ranking site in Halifax, UK.

No authority, no backlinks and high keyword density considering the low amount of content.

http://www.maknetic.co.uk/

Search term is SEO Halifax.

How is it number 1?  There's nothing in it and no user value at all!

I've attached a screenshot of what you should be looking for.  You need to go to your dashboard -> users -> all users -> then select any user.

There should be several fields including your bio area...as per the attached.  Mine is filled in with my google plus proifle.

Something I forgot to mention is that your user will also need to add themselves as a contributor to the blog on their Google plus profile.  I have attached a link to my google plus profile.  If you check out the about section you will see about two thirds down a section where is says 'contributor to'.  Here you add the url to the blog.  This links the two.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/101142923283224674423/about

1. You need to link the blog to the G+ Profile

2. You need to confirm in G+ that you are truly a contributor to that blog (or you could add any old superior influencer)

That should be it.

g+jpeg.jpg

You don't need a plugin to set up authorship for multiple authors.

All you need is that all your authors have a Google + account.

If you go into Users in wordpress and set up your users/authors. ( I presume you already have these users set up as authors if they are already writing content?).    When they are set up as an author, you go into the user profile and add their Google+ profile link into the section on their profile where is says Google + Profile URL.  You do this for each author on the site.

Then, when any author writes a post, they just need to ensure they are writing as their user profile name (i.e. they are logged in as themselves) and that should cover it.

The admin can change the author of a post by doing a quick edit on the list of posts - when it drops down there should be an 'author' section where you can select a list of authors.  This list is your users and each of these need to have their Google+ profile url added to their user profile in wordpress.

Hope that makes sense!

I agree with the previous poster.  SEO is a long winded and tough nut to crack - you either need to do it yourself or you need to outsource it to a professional SEO.

If you have made the decision to do it yourself, you need to learn how to do what SEOs do and that means starting at the beginning and learning from the ground upwards.

There is no one answer to your question, it's just a steep learning curve from the moment you accept taking it on yourself.

That said you are very much in the right place for learning how to do it properly. The only advice I would give is to do everything with caution and make sure your understand the actions you are taking for your site so you don;t end up getting penalised by not understanding the consequences.

Thanks Mark - Would you be happy with a dofollow branded link, or err on the side of caution with a nofollow link?

I agree I like to see them there, but I'm wondering how Google would view these links given the irrelevance of them on the actual site?

What are your thoughts on SEOs and web designers putting their own links in the footers of client sites.

For the sake of argument, lets assume that the client is happy for the link to be there. I'm referring to the SEO merits of the link being there from an 'irrelevant' website.

My belief is that this goes against what Google is looking for and that these are irrelevant links and likely to be picked up and penalised.  That's what I believe!

However, I see lots of sites offering SEO services that have dofollow links from their client sites, using exact match anchor text and they are all ranking highly.

Is it just a matter of time before Google sniffs them out and penalises them for it?  Or should I be going through my client sites and adding myself a dofollow link in the footer? (with their permission of course).

The highest ranking sites in any UK city do this.  If you search SEO Manchester, SEO Leeds etc and find the top ranking sites and check them out on opensite explorer, they are all using a disproportionate amount of dofollow backlinks form client sites.

you could try IFTT.com (if this then that) where you can automate your posts - i.e. if you post something to twitter, it posts it on facebook, tumblr etc.

I wouldn't really say that's a winner though and I don;t think the automated 'ping out posts' is a particularly good strategy. You need to be genuinely using more social media sites and engaging with your audience if you want them to become a loyal visitor to your blog.

It goes without saying that your visitors will return if they think the content is worth returning for.

Rather than searching for a solution for driving traffic to your blog, I would look to learn what makes a blog grown and become successful, encourages trust, loyalty and growth among your reader base.

Good keyword research and on page SEO for your articles will help you get organic traffic, but looking for a golden chalice traffic driver isn't the answer for any blogger these days.

Thanks very much Tom and eyepaq, responses much appreciated.

eyepaq, just wondering what tool are you using there in the screencast?

Just wondered whether you think the footer text here on tis page constitues 'keyword stuffing'.

I think it does but wondering why they haven't been penalised for it.

http://www . lippyliciouscakes . co.uk/

Thoughts?

Many thanks.

I use flare and can't say there has been any significant negative impact in terms of speed.  It's a nice plugin, very clean and fresh looking, I can't fault it..

Does it happen on all images or just some of them?

Are you adding the alt text when the image is loaded into the page, or are you doing it in the media library?

Hi Grant.  I might be interested in this  I work on my own as a freelancer.

I have to say though that I would never advertise myself as a link builder  though. I view SEO holistically and work on creating content that earns links and also I recommend (and build) a strong social media presence..

If you are interested drop me an email jo@socialitesos.com.

More than happy to have a Skype call to run through the details with you.

Cheers

Jo

I just wanted to add my views.

I don't think there is such a thing as 'Google Images'.  Google is returning a search result of images that exist on peoples websites, with links through to those websites.  The purpose of those images is to drive people to those sites they are attached to, not to take directly from Google.

If your posts are along the lines of 'what to do in this city', you'd be better off approaching the people and asking if you can feature them on your site?  e.g. if one of the things you are suggesting is 'visit this theatre, or visit this restaurant, I'm sure the theatre and restaurant would be delighted to get a mention and willingly let you use their images.  You should link to their sites and they may well give you the benefit of linking back to you as you are featuring them as a 'good things to do when you are visiting x'.

The bottom line is always ask permission.  Chances are, if you are giving credit to the photographer, or the owner of the images (i.e. the restaurant, theatre etc), they will be happy to let you use them as you are promoting them.

You can get into some hot water by just taking them and it's not fair on the owner not to receive some credit for their work.

From my initial glance, it does look a little like you are overoptimising for lifestyle magazine.

If it were my site, I would be rethinking my approach on that keyword altogether.

I would concentrate heavily on optimising all the articles for the content that they represent.  For example, the article, members of staff too scared to take time off work.  I would be looking at changing you title tag and optimising the content to appeal to people searching for articles, news, tipes etc specifically around that subject matter.  You'd need to get creative for each one and do the research into what the exact message of each article is and who your audience is.  What might they be searching for etc.

The title tags of each article do not need to be the title of the article. I would start with optimising each article one by one.  The backlinks will come as your readers find exactly what they are looking for on an article by article basis.

If you optimise the content on your site for what it actually is, you will become known as a lifestyle magazine just as a matter of course.  I'm not saying don't optimise for that, but I think you are focussing on the wrong topic.

If you do find people nicking your articles, try sending them a polite message telling them you have no problems with them borrowing your content as long as they link back.  If they don't, give them the heavier email!

If you have several duplicate pages (with the exception of location), I do think you run the risk of being penalised for duplicate content.

Does each local area actually have a branch or is it all run from one location, with all the additioanl pages being written to garner the local belief that the service exists as a 'local service'?  I've seen businesses do this and it doesn;t feel right to me.  I agree with the previous poster that you'd be better building a national brand that services different parts of the country rather than making it look like you are a network of branches.

If your client does have several branches/franchises, I'd be tempted to make every page unique and about that local service.  Use images specific to each location and title and alt tag accordingly.

Hi Derrick

Back in November I built a website for a client that is already ranking between 1 and 4 for several keywords and I had similar concerns at the outset.  One thing I noticed about that report you ran was that all the directory style competition had very low page authority scores.  Good page authority can outrank directories.

What I've written below is based on what I did...It started off with a lot of work in the initial set up, but it's generally just a couple of hours maintenance a week..

As it's local, get a google + page and link the page to your site and focus on getting some good social signals for each page - tweet your pages, facebook like and share you pages, google +1 your pages and so on and if you are blogging, do the same.  A good bit of content and plenty of social sharing can work wonders.  Set up social media accounts on a few of the main networks and use them to really connect and bulid relationships, rather than churning our rss feeds.

Also ensure you have cast iron on page, pick a keyword per page and make sure the page fully reflects that keyword so that when a search lands on it they are truly finding what they are looking for. Have that keyword in the title tag and a good meta desc that tells the user what your page is about.  Don't stuff the page with the keyword, just make sure it appears a couple of times, particularly in headings if you have it broken up.

You can also get yourself some free decent directory links - proper local business directories, not spammy ones and industry specific national directories.

The verified google plus page is invaluable and you can well optimise your google+ page, get reviews etc.

Very helpful answer thanks (even though it wasn;t me who asked the question!).  If a forum allows lots of low quality dofollow backlinks, e.g. in signatures, would they be penalised?

Thanks for your reply, very helpful.  I'm trying to do the same with rel publisher to get my clients logos appearing from their google plus page.  I mainly use wordpress sites and using authorsure plugin, but I'm still getting to grips with it and running lots of tests.

I think the ghostwriting is the best option.  The director of the company will be happy to use his image, but he doesnt (or didnt) have a google plus profile.  I've just set him one up.

Does authorship really only benefit by showing you the face of the author is or there actually any additional 'google points' for it being a highly engaged and highly circled account?

Thanks for your response anyway, much appreciated!

I don't like to see people asking for likes, it does sound kind of desperate.  There are also lots of groups on Facebook where people help each other out by liking each others pages.  In fact, I think there are even groups on linked in geared around getting people to like each other.

On balance, most of the people I have spoken to don't like to be asked for likes.  The want to like a page because they like a page.

As far as I understand it, likes, plus ones etc don't really count for a great deal in social signals.  Shares, retweets are believed to carry more weight.

I've attached a link to an interesting article on social signals, breaking them down into post, comment, vote (like, +1), reshare and bookmark.

http://socialmediatoday.com/danaraam/1233876/google-social-signals-map-you-didn-t-know-existed

Hopefully this will give some food for thought.  I think we need to keep a close eye on social signals.

I will say though, that I pulled off an interesting report on a client the other day and found a site with low DA and PA but had been +1'd a few times (and liked) and it was surprising higher up the rankings than sites with far higher DA and PA and better on page reports (A's and B's)

Completely agree.  Additionally, any software that sells itself as being able to help your rankings is either lying, or using dodgy techniques that will be picked up and wiped out before long!

Hi Marisa.  We do agree, that's what I said - " the longer one tells you what the site is about ".  That's my reason and it has the additional benefit of the keyword.

SEOmoz isn't affiliated with any of the search engines so there is nothing that SEOMoz can really do to actually help you achieve higher rankings for you.

The only way you can improve your rankings is to employ tried and tested best practise techniques and use the SEOMoz tools available to help you research, track and improve your chances of progression.

I don't believe there is a piece of software out there that can genuinely improve your rankings.

It's a question of personal choice in this instance. While the shorter one might be easier for people to remember, the longer one tells you what the site is about and if on the offchance you get people searching how to look 21 forever, you have your keywords in the domain name,

Personally, I would go with the long one.

How do you deal with Rel author on blogs for your clients?

Suppose I'm a contributor (or rather, the only copywriter) to a clients blog - which happens to be about DIY.  The blog articles are written from the business perspective and published from 'the business'.  not from Me.

Should I be adding myself as a contributor and using my own personal Google profile on these blogs?  If so, then it's my face that appears next to the blog post and I'm not sure that's what I want for a blog about fixing shelves etc!

Am I misunderstanding how I should be using rel author?  Is it for SEOs to work into client strategy, or is it just for our own personal blogs?

Hi

For the official line on meta keywords form Google, I've attached this link:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html

Google officially announced in 2009 that meta keywords was not a factor in ranking at all.   I also believe that the description isn;t a ranking factor - the reason you need to focus on the description is to ensure that it has a strong hook that accurately reflects the content of the page to entice the searcher to click on the link.

Have you drilled down to see which ones they are claiming are duplicated? I'm guessing that it probably is blog articles that you've written.

As you've got a create.net site, it's pretty difficult to control (if not impossible) because you'll never get within an inch of any of the code to be able to effect any necessary changes.

I'm not exactly sure why, but I believe it's to do with the pagination and the page being crawled when its on a different page - maybe someone else can offer an explanation on that.

If you go onto the create.net forums one of their own tech's might be able to provide a better answer.

The problem you get is that the content also gets duplicated, not just the page titles.

My only advice is to see what Create can do about it and if you aren't getting anywhere, consider moving to a wordpress site and getting your own website.  It's probably cheaper in the long run as I know that create is about a tenner a month.  The more control you have over your site, the better it will be for your SEO.

Lots of create sites do rank very well though when well optimised, so it's not all bad.

Hi Laura

When I checked (and I've just checked again), the real time results show that the title tag is showing the company name.  If you, or another person have made these changes, they haven't been saved and effected the change.

I've attached a screenshot of keyword analysis for that page - only showing critical and high factors.  You can see that it references the Title Tag in two areas as being unticked.

The number 2 in your url will be fine and shouldn't cause you any issues at all.  As a starting point, your title tag and your images titles and alt tags should resolve it. You can then work at marketing that page etc.

I would really recommend the moz toolbar, I don;t think I could live without it to be honest!  When you know what you are looking for, it tells you exactly what you need to know in an instant.

electric-radiators.jpg

Are SEOMoz looking to integrate Facebook Graph Search (the web search section) into the product?  At the moment we can measure and track rankings for Google, Bing/Yahoo, but not Facebook graph search.

What are the general thoughts among the community?  Do you think it will be adopted as a real search engine?

I'm not overly concerned - I reckon it will take a lot to change people behaviour and have them moving away from the other search engines.

It's throwing up some interesting results though in searches!

Hi Laura

I just took a quick look at the page and did some analysis with the SeoMoz toolbar - you can download that as a chrome extension and its brilliant for a quick healthcheck on your individual pages.

The first thing I noticed was that you have the Title tag <title>as your business name - The Electric Heating company.  I would start with immediately changing that to Include your keyword at the beginning.</p> <p style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">I only checked a few of your pages, but all were named with your business. A classic no-no as Google definitely uses the title tag to find out what your page(s) are about.</p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">Another thing, you have a couple of images on there named radiator3 and radiator4...consider renaming those images and adding alt tags to include 'electric radiators for conservatories and EHC Electric Radiators.</span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">I also noticed you have a wordpress site.  I'd really recommending adding the Yoast Wordpress SEO plugin.  That trains you how to optimise your pages and I have had great success with that.</span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">Hope that helps - that will definitely help you get ranked for the term.  </span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">Thanks</span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">Jo</span></p></title>

Hi Robert and welcome

I would definitely include Bloomington Illinois as searches are going to be for your specific local service.

Have you checked out the Google Adwords Keywords tool for some suggestions yet (not that it's  the be all and end all).  I just had a quick check and some suggestions were along the lines of 'back pain specialist', 'back pain clinic', 'back doctor', that sort of thing (with the local town name included).

I would also strongly suggest setting up a Google Plus Business page and linking it to your website - when you have set up your page you will see an option in your 'about' section to do this.

Google Pages are showing up more and more in local search, so a Google Page is pretty essential. It should also be well optmised, i.e. full profile details and a rich description of the services you provide.

Good luck and if you need any further help with that page, let me know!

Hi Robert and welcome

I would definitely include Bloomington Illinois as searches are going to be for your specific local service.

Have you checked out the Google Adwords Keywords tool for some suggestions yet (not that it's  the be all and end all).  I just had a quick check and some suggestions were along the lines of 'back pain specialist', 'back pain clinic', 'back doctor', that sort of thing (with the local town name included).

I would also strongly suggest setting up a Google Plus Business page and linking it to your website - when you have set up your page you will see an option in your 'about' section to do this.

Google Pages are showing up more and more in local search, so a Google Page is pretty essential. It should also be well optmised, i.e. full profile details and a rich description of the services you provide.

Good luck and if you need any further help with that page, let me know!

Hi All.  Just wondering what your experience is with using Facebook graph search?

I have a site that ranks highly for a good number of keywords on google, yahoo etc, but when you use the facebook graph search, it either doesnt show up at all or is buried away in page 5 or something.

I'm talking about the 'Web Search' bit where it returns web results rather than searching for pages likes by my friends etc.

Any thoughts?  Why is my site way behind the competition in Facebook?  I'm a white hat kind of girl and can't think what I might have done to offend!

Have you come across any good resources advising how to optimise for facebook graph search for web?

Thanks

Jo