Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Jeff, I've taken a look. It seems like your problem is coming from the fact that you seem to be running some sort of plugin that redirects your links. Every link on your site seems to have this structure: http://www.crmsoftwareblog.com/flow/post_click.php?OtherVariablesHere If you insist on using this redirection/tracking (I'm really not sure what it is) then I would argue that you need to exclude that link from the process. Google is not picking up the link as going to your Author profile on Google+ as it is redirected through another link. You pretty much need a naked link straight to your Google+ profile with the rel="author" tag attached in order for it to work. The good news is that your Google+ profile seems to be set up correctly. Come back to me about that URL redirection and we'll see if we can get you sorted. Regards Mark

Sorry, for some reason the formatting on my comment got removed. Hopefully you can still follow.

Hi Paul, Assuming you're trying to rewrite to the www. version, cold you try replacing your code with the following RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www. RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L] We use that code for all our redirects. Obviously an easy check is to try to visit the non-www version and see if it redirects to www. (Your current redirect doesn't.)

Yeah please provide us with the URLs and I'll happily check it for you. I've done a number of these just recently and have seen some peculiar occurrences. Hopefully we can help.

I think the great thing about photography is that you're generally creating share-worthy content. If you're producing some really cool photos, people will take interest.

A couple quick tips for you would be to:

• Make sure you're using Facebook, Pinterest & Google+ effectively. These are all social networks where posts with visual appeal are rewarded. Build a network of fans and show them what you've got.

• There are a number of photography "directories" around. Be sure to add your site and/or at least some of your photography to them to peak people's interest.

• Enter photography contests. A perfect photo could potentially lead to a lot of business for you and a lot of interest in your work.

Remember, your industry is a competitive one. You really need to make sure you've honed your skills and are producing photos that are absolute quality.  Do that, and people will share.

Hi LW,

What system is backing the online store? Are you using a CMS-driven e-commerce solution?

My suggestion would be to create an automated sitemap for the products. Pay careful attention to the priorities you assign and the update frequencies. (Hourly/daily is fine) I definitely think that you'd be spending far too much time on updating a sitemap if you had to do it manually.

This method will result in you having a more accurate sitemap on crawling.

Also, if you are planning on offering the same project in future, it might be an idea not to remove the product altogether, but rather have a page saying "This offer is currently not available" or something along those lines.

Another option might be to have an archive category of products, where all your expired offers can be placed, not available for order. This could allow you to keep your indexed pages, avoid 404s as well as use the product pages to direct new visitors to related/newer products should they see the products in the archive.

Just thinking out loud.

I'd be interested to see the website and the solution that you do eventually implement.

Regards
Mark

I think it's great. Like Deb said, they're trying to avoid people looking at SEO as a game in which you try to beat the system in order to get your site ranked. In my opinion, what Google wants is to produce relevant results that are natural and unforced. I feel that link building should now be termed "increasing brand awareness" and that previously important SEO buzzwords such as "keyword density" and "keyword proximity" should be shunned. SEO should be part of a marketing plan, not some sort of web "formula". Those that have interesting things to say and cool things to sell, and particularly those that do it in new and exciting ways, should be featured in the SERPs regardless of whether they are writing copy to please the search engines or not. Sometimes your best sales copy simply isn't something that an SEO "expert" would consider the best copy from an SEO perspective. I think the further into the future we go, the more alignment we will see between copy written for the visitors and copy written with search engines in mind. Heck this is already something that's taking effect now. For example: I write guest posts to showcase myself as a web authority, somebody who could be considered an expert in my fields of work. I get a tonne of people contacting me, following me and sharing my stuff after reading my guest posts because they see me as an authority. I get backlinks because of it. But I don't write guest posts because I want to build links specifically. I write guest posts to build my BRAND. That, I feel, is where SEO is headed.

One thing to bear in mind is that you are never going to retain all of the link juice that you've got with the old site when redirecting to the new site.

If I were you, I would really try to clean up the backlink profile of the site as much as possible before doing any sort of redirection. I would argue that you might even be able to salvage the existing site's rankings by doing some rescue work in terms of your link profile.

One very important consideration is that your domain is 10+ years old already, which is in itself a pretty good authority indicator.

My suggestions to you:

• Clean up really spammy links by using a tool such as Open Site Explorer to find and weed out the bad links. Follow whatever process is required to remove some of these links. (Contact the administrator of the site, remove your URL from the directory etc.)

• Help dilute the effect of the spammy links by building new, higher quality backlinks to your site. Diversification is very important. If you have 100 spammy links, but 200 really good links, I don't feel like the Big G will worry too much.

• Check your on-page factors. What sort of content do you have on your site? Are you stuffing keywords everywhere? Are you using unique content, or spun nonsense? Do you have title tags and headings that are both relevant and unique? Are you duplicating any content throughout your site?

The problem, however, with salvaging the site is that, like you say, you're running on a static platform.

If your rankings are really that bad now, perhaps it would be a good idea to start fresh. Just bear in mind that this won't be a quick fix, particularly if you're using a new domain.

If you insist on creating a new site (CMS based) and using the same content, then you'll have to do the redirect to avoid duplicate content issues. I would just take a long, hard look at your content to ensure that it's really worth copying across rather than starting fresh.

Put it this way, I would use the 301 redirect to inform the search engines that the site has been transferred and is under a new domain now. I wouldn't use the 301 redirect to try and salvage much link juice.

Do your model blogs have any traction of their own? What's the traffic and domain authority like? If they don't have any traction of their own, they're probably not worth much at all.

I'd argue that a single, well thought out guest post on a high authority website (e.g. SEOMoz, Sitepoint.com, etc. but something relevant to your niche) will be worth more than 10 posts on your "blog network".

Are your mini-blogs all hosted on the same C-block as the main site?

P.S. When you say "unique" I really hope you mean unique, and not spun!

Hey Mango Man,

First off, great job. It seems like you're committed to growing your site and the fact that you are here asking even when you have a moderately successful site speaks volumes for your character.

One thing that it doesn't seem like you've mentioned is Guest posting/press releases.

Are there high authority sites in your niche that you could possibly land a guest posting gig at? The fact that you have an already established site with loads of great content can only be a plus. This means that, if you manage to get a high quality article/infographic published somewhere else, you're likely to have a bunch of people following through to your site, some of whom may likely end up as subscribers/followers of yours.

On that note, do you have a funnel in place, whereby you do encourage people to subscribe to your email list? Getting those people to your site is one thing, keeping them coming back is another. Make sure you're building your email list and using it to your advantage.

Does your niche lend itself to work with non-profits/community organisations at all? Perhaps you could try doing some "charity" work, all in conjunction with a carefully crafted PR plan. People love talking about good things others are doing in the community. Your business/site may or may not lend itself to something like this.

Make sure to establish yourself as an expert in other places because that will likely result in many more fans and visitors.

Keep up the good work and you will see the results!

Like David says,

What you're creating is a link network, which is a rather dated method of going about your link building. After the recent algorithm updates that sort of tactic really got hit hard.

High quality guest posting, press releases and other brand building exercises are going to put you in far better stead as far as your link building and SEO goes.

I've tried to change my focus with SEO this year. I now concentrate almost exclusively on establishing myself as an authority/expert and almost ignore "mechanical" link building methods. I believe that while I'm providing good quality stuff to a wide range of people, the links will come.

I also think that if you're still concentrating on keyword density then you're doing something wrong.

Write naturally. Show people why they should like you. Profit.

Hi LW,

What system is backing the online store? Are you using a CMS-driven e-commerce solution?

My suggestion would be to create an automated sitemap for the products. Pay careful attention to the priorities you assign and the update frequencies. (Hourly/daily is fine) I definitely think that you'd be spending far too much time on updating a sitemap if you had to do it manually.

This method will result in you having a more accurate sitemap on crawling.

Also, if you are planning on offering the same project in future, it might be an idea not to remove the product altogether, but rather have a page saying "This offer is currently not available" or something along those lines.

Another option might be to have an archive category of products, where all your expired offers can be placed, not available for order. This could allow you to keep your indexed pages, avoid 404s as well as use the product pages to direct new visitors to related/newer products should they see the products in the archive.

Just thinking out loud.

I'd be interested to see the website and the solution that you do eventually implement.

Regards
Mark

One thing to bear in mind is that you are never going to retain all of the link juice that you've got with the old site when redirecting to the new site.

If I were you, I would really try to clean up the backlink profile of the site as much as possible before doing any sort of redirection. I would argue that you might even be able to salvage the existing site's rankings by doing some rescue work in terms of your link profile.

One very important consideration is that your domain is 10+ years old already, which is in itself a pretty good authority indicator.

My suggestions to you:

• Clean up really spammy links by using a tool such as Open Site Explorer to find and weed out the bad links. Follow whatever process is required to remove some of these links. (Contact the administrator of the site, remove your URL from the directory etc.)

• Help dilute the effect of the spammy links by building new, higher quality backlinks to your site. Diversification is very important. If you have 100 spammy links, but 200 really good links, I don't feel like the Big G will worry too much.

• Check your on-page factors. What sort of content do you have on your site? Are you stuffing keywords everywhere? Are you using unique content, or spun nonsense? Do you have title tags and headings that are both relevant and unique? Are you duplicating any content throughout your site?

The problem, however, with salvaging the site is that, like you say, you're running on a static platform.

If your rankings are really that bad now, perhaps it would be a good idea to start fresh. Just bear in mind that this won't be a quick fix, particularly if you're using a new domain.

If you insist on creating a new site (CMS based) and using the same content, then you'll have to do the redirect to avoid duplicate content issues. I would just take a long, hard look at your content to ensure that it's really worth copying across rather than starting fresh.

Put it this way, I would use the 301 redirect to inform the search engines that the site has been transferred and is under a new domain now. I wouldn't use the 301 redirect to try and salvage much link juice.

Do your model blogs have any traction of their own? What's the traffic and domain authority like? If they don't have any traction of their own, they're probably not worth much at all.

I'd argue that a single, well thought out guest post on a high authority website (e.g. SEOMoz, Sitepoint.com, etc. but something relevant to your niche) will be worth more than 10 posts on your "blog network".

Are your mini-blogs all hosted on the same C-block as the main site?

P.S. When you say "unique" I really hope you mean unique, and not spun!