Welcome to the Q&A Forum

In recent months google has taken a dim view of paid links in blogs etc. They prefer them to be nofollowed and show that its an advertorial. That being said lets assume your keeping this under the radar and are not going to have any issues with negative SEO.

In my opinion it's hard to put a price on it there's diminishing returns as the volume increases however the exact numbers etc i'm not aware of. I would think if you have a link from them every few months it would show they like you but if you have too many to quick and the content is not relevant I would think the benefits would be less. From a PR and Traffic point of view its good publicity so i would price it based on the potential customer impact and slightly ignore the SEO side of things after the first half dozen or so.

I would not look at PA much when thinking of directories. The fact that its a directory will make it worth much less that a regular site with the same stats.

Look at dmoz for example it has a PA of 95 and over 9 million links from 77k domains and i wouldn't even count it as a world beating link now. In my opinion a directory like that is worth getting but only if its not to much work. Anything much lower i would simply avoid.

I am however not an expert on the subject so i would be interested in seeing what others think!

I would count any directory as little to no worth at the moment. I would link to my site from one only if it was very very high ranking (i.e. dmoz) or very relevant to you and it may generate actual traffic. Other than that i would say its a waste of time and cash if they ask for it.

from what i hear google reduced the number of author pics shown to improve results. they only show some of the available pics. think it was a 15% decrease if i remember correctly.

Your flagship site seems to have pretty good stats. Depending on the quality and traffic going to your other sites i'm not sure i would do anything with them.

If the hundreds of site you have are not ranking and are say PR0 with little to no incoming links I would just leave them as dead and move on without linking or 301ing to your main site as it may look like link spamming or other black hat tactics.

On the other hand if they are more worthwhile useful sites with traffic and ranks etc I would either pick the best few and work on them and make them better or 301 them into your main site if the admin is too much. if they are worth 301ing but not worth anything else i would put them in at top level for simplicitys sake if there is a good number to do.

we are in retail and we have found offering prizes etc that can only be won if you +1 or like a page has worked well for us. Rafflecopter has been a useful tool to help entice people to follow other aspects of our social campaigns.

I’m trying to get my blog posts to show with rich snippets but they are a collaborative effort from our staff and as such are posted under our business name. We do have some guest bloggers who write under their own name and we use the author tags to show this. Is there a similar way to do this with a business?

Has anyone else noticed that you can't move the courser or copy and paste in the comments on an ipad without continually having to click out of the box and back in again.

I have found pages with 1000 plus words and various pics references and a video or animation rank very well. I'm sure if you hit 5000 words it may get a bit out of hand but in my experience more is better within reason. It's the video or animation that I find really makes the difference. I still count 300-400 as a bare minimum.

nick I have had similar problems with "experts" in this field. Everything's expensive and is most probably not going to work out the way the expected. So far I have had more help in moz than any seo company has provided.  I just keep reading and it's starting to get better. It's no fun being screwed over repeatedly but it seems to be a right passage as a webmaster.

Davinia is correct In my opinion. There is no reason to not want the image indexed.

I would agree with Dave, it sounds like your just doing things the right way.

im in the equestrian industry and there is a number of thriving fourums out there however like all forums the quality of info is dubious and as yet the Q&A style of community has not yet been made. I feel this is an opertunity I could work with.

I realise that its a long game and will take lots of work. My main worry is that we are a retailer and that people may not trust our Q&A as we are retailers and no matter how much we separate our sales hat from our community element I feel it may not work. The fact that it has not been done make me think it is worth a try.

Any examples of an ecommerce site with a thriving community attached that would be a good model to emulate?

I think its important to have multiple pages about the selected keywords. Not pages that are the same but to use the kiln dried logs example I would make pages like below.

Why hey our kiln dried logs work so well in wood burning stoves.

Hardwood kiln dried logs

softwood kiln dried logs

how we make our kiln dried logs

sustainabley sourced logs

why are kiln dried logs better

I would link all these to your page that actually sells the logs and if you make sure that each article is specific to its title and they are all different yet relevant then they should help you keep on topic without dilution.

If I create a good community in my particular field on my SEO site and have a quality Q&A section like this etc (ripping of MOZ's idea here sorry, I hope it's ok) will the long term returns be worth the effort of creating and man ageing this. Is the user created content of as much use as I think it will be?

Thanks everyone. Im looking into working more on G+ as well as all the others.

I'm glad its not just me being stupid. I really want to make Google plus work for my business but Google seems set on making it hard for us.

Ill ask on the google forums. i already had a look but found nothing useful.

It just seems crazy that you can't combine every to have a neat and tidy setup.

Ok I have a youtube channel, a page connected to that and I have a business listing but I cannot get all three to work together. Any ideas?

https://plus.google.com/+CentralsaddleryCoUk is the page (I want to ad the location to this one)

http://www.youtube.com/user/centralsaddleryvideo our youtube

The two above seem to work fine but the local listing below will not connect to the page or youtube.

https://plus.google.com/b/107598085314018001171/107598085314018001171/about?hl=en-GB

This has been driving me nuts for ages.

Which social network is most important in the eyes of Google etc.

They do but as with all retail.

But if you are for instance an Apple reseller and you buy and iPhone for say £100 and they sell them for £500, you will get away with say 10% variation on MSRP but if you think im happy making £50 profit ill sell them for £150 and make a killing it will not take long for Apple to get shot of you as you are devaluing the brand it for everyone else.

Thats why its good practice to compete on price but not go nuts as if you do its just a race to see who is out of business first. A sale in my opinion should only be when the new version comes out or you need to cash the dead stock up. The problem these days is in the tough times that we are in, people are desperate and will sell things with very low margin just to survive. Its more like a game of last man standing, if you can pay your staff less and run a mega lean business you can win.

Its not a thing I spend many work hours on, its more just a thing that interests me.

Interesting answer.

As myself and the other top 3 sell quality big name brands (big in the UK horse world anyway) we can't really do the SALE SALE SALE selling style as you will get dropped as a stockist if you do. But then again just because you sell the good stuff doesn't mean you are making more money.

Other than the constant sale and the title tag we have most of the same components just in a different style. Sale info, Free Delivery are all on our site. I think the sale could be more in your face. Is it just the more subdued style on my site that you think is letting it down?

On another note this is the top 3 for the term Horse Rugs, who would you say is the best and why? Other than the fact that the top rank is always the best.

1st - http://www.derbyhouse.co.uk/Equestrian/Horse/Horse+Rugs/

2nd - http://www.rideaway.co.uk/horses-rugs/

3rd - http://www.robinsonsequestrian.com/horse-clothing/rugs.html

I find it very interesting trying to work out why each site wins for a specific term. I don't know enough yet to be able to pin point what I think its causing what. Really enjoying learning though.

Unlimited budget would be very helpful.

I know this is not helpful for you but free adwords would make life much better and a high end marketing team combined with full stats of all my competitors.

I see where you're coming from but no I avoid site like that at every turn. It may just be me but i find the style crass and the site ugly. but then again my taste is not what im selling so im happy to take your comments on board.

On that note what would you change on my own site?

i like the email and phone number at the top however our site is responsive and putting them in the header causes spacing issues on smaller screens. I could just drop them on mobile etc.

I found similar results on MOZ pro and in almost all metrics we win yet google does not agree.

Page speed could be the issue. i have been aware for about a year that our site is slow. We are working on this however our current CMs is working way beyond what it was designed for and is struggling. we have a new system under construction which should solve the issue however its still 6 months away.

How much of an issue is page speed? Could it be keeping my site down in a big way?

thanks ill look into that.

I feel my site is not to bad. Needs more work and could be better but what site could not, However i'm bamboozled by some of the sites that are out ranking me on key terms.

e.g. Horse Rugs

http://www.fasttackdirect.co.uk/products-1-122/Horse_Clothing/HORSE_RUG_SALE.html ranking 8th

http://www.centralsaddlery.co.uk/horse/horse-rugs/ not ranking in first 10 pages

I dont expect my site (the later) to rank well as its not up there with the bigger players in our industry yet however I can't see why a page like the one i mentioned is ranking so well when as far as i can see its not as well optimized and has very little content.

This is not me ranting about it or whining about why i'm not top etc. I just can't work it out and would love sombody to explain the reasons for this? The only thing i can think of is that they have more category with the words "Horse Rugs" in them. Other than that i'm stumped!

Ideas on a postcard please!

In my experience no.

You just have to take the time and go to each site and asses it for yourself. Its no fun but worth doing.

I should have worded the question differently. More the future of search rather than a specific update.

Moz shows that to our root domain we have 34 domains and 4595 total links. We have been working on content for 6 months and i'm pretty happy with the results. We have a content creation system and the quality just keeps getting better so its all ticking along nicely. I could put more time/money but I feel we are ahead of the pack by a mile in our market. I think Point 2) of your solutions is the way to go as I feel we are just lagging way way behind links wise. So much so that our content just is not bubbling up.

Many of our competitors have 1000's of domains (lots of crap ones I may add) and i think we are just too far behind to ignore it and do the "build it they will come" method.

i'm a massive fan of content driven SEO, however i do wonder where the line should be drawn and where an amount of link building and network making needs to be done to get the content out.

As things move on will links be worth less as recent updates including the hummingbird update are moving further and further in the direction of content and social signals being the important.

On the other hand good links are becoming so hard to find, that may make them become more important than ever.

I'm trying to split my time up between content creation and link building/PR. which area should be focused on most. we have more quality content than we do quality links. our link profile is good but far to small. any suggestions what to focus on?

I agree with chris.

It's called a title tag for a reason. the best seo in my book is to use things for the purpose they were designed. By all means optimise but adding content to a title will only dilute your seo and waste your time.

This is a thing I have been thinking of myself. More for a bit of fun and to see how it is done.

What's the most accurate free pr checker?

I would keep them on my main domain but make them content based landing pages that are helpfull to users in their own right. No need to hide them then. This may not work in all cases but in my site it works well.

not 100% sure what you are after with your hidden button but I would stay away from all forms of hiding stuff. Tends to be a bit grey hat.  If you could clarify it may help me understand what you mean.

I was hoping for a yes it's X and if you do Y etc answer.

However I expected the answer you gave.

My competetors are pretty crap when it comes to seo and sem however they have massive brand awareness in inch sector. They get high direct traffic making it hard to beat them. However I hope to have everyone's share not just my fair share! however its easy to plan, not so easy to do.

Theire really is no exact answers in this industry.

What i mean by this is:

If i have a 1000 page ecommerce site that has say 10 pages of good quality content (1% good content) and a competitive site that has 100 pages of good content (10% good content) and another that has 500 (50%). if they are all almost the same in every other way the 50% content site would win hands down. however this is not always possible to have so much good content on some types of site.

The question is:

• Is there a min percentage to aim for?
• Also is there a similar min rate of content production to aim for.
• Is their a kind of tipping point to get past that google will think they are doing things right i should keep an eye on them!

We have seen a massive drop in traffic this year and i am contemplation using banner ads to try to increase sales and also to help with marketing. the problem is i know nothing about doing this. I have used it in the past but to limited success and i was just stabbing in the dark.

I have a few questions.

• Am i better to target keywords related to the product or to the people who may buy my products?
• Is it better for direct sales or brand awareness?
• What kind of ROI can i expect if i get it working well?
• Is it better to pay for the big keywords or pic all the low hanging fruit?
• Does it work?
• Should i employ an expert, are they worth it?

Any insights into the world of PPc would be a massive help.

It's the lack of content on your main site that is causing your issues. Your satalite site has much better titles and content for tour keyword.

assuming you want to move the traffic to your main site I would move the content to my main site and 301 everyting from the satalite site to the corespondent page of your main site.

It seems to me that for most ecommerce sites (myself included) that canonical is not the answer. If you have to many near identical products on your site it may be better to re evaluate what you have stocking and if you must stock them then the way forward is to make one page that properly explains them and allows purchase rather than many.

The only uses I can see for canonical is to consolidate old blogs and articles on similar topics. Using it to tidy an ecommerce site seems to be a misuse of the tool.

Thanks

Have you used this approach? If so how effective is it?

There is no hard and fast rule but 100 is a good rule of thumb.

I have all the usual colour size attributes on my products. I just used that as a simple example. Its more to do with similar non branded products that are different enough to be "products" but not when I have 15 similar it's impossible to write fully different descriptions. Screwdrivers, screws or paint would have been a better example. There are hundreds of ranges like that. If you had five unimportant brands of screwdriver and you had flat head and philips head. Each one is marginally different (handle style etc) but there is no keyword benefit to having each optimised for say "flat head screwdriver". Having a good range is beneficial to the customer but seems to be detrimental to SEO. Is it better to employ writers to make every description different no matter how complex or should I canonical it?

In my ecommerce site I work by top level category and make a list of what has the best margin, cross reference that with what is high value and is easily posted and that usually narrows it down. Then I work down through the cats and use the same principle all the way down. I try to hog for brand names in top level and work down to specific products as I get deeper into the Patricia assuming you already use the keyword tool and trends etc.

I would agree that it has to have a benefit even if its only the traffic from the blog. I have nothing to back this up, just my opinion.

I'm thinking of using rel=canonical for similar products on my site.

Say I'm selling pens and they are al very similar. I.e. a big pen in blue, a pack of 5 blue bic pens, a pack of 10, 50, 100 etc. should I rel=canonical them all to the best seller as its almost impossible to make the pages unique. (I realise the best I realise these should be attributes and not products but I'm sure you get my point)

It seems sensible to have one master canonical page for bic pens on a site that has a great description video content and good images plus linked articles etc rather than loads of duplicate looking pages.

love to hear thoughts from the Moz community.

its been about a month but ill give it a bit longer. ta

I'm in a similar positiand if not worse link wise. I have been trying the "link bait article" method. Been creating rich content with videos, images and long form quality content and it seems to be working. It's early days yet but traffic is rising. As yet conversions are not up and no links but it has only been 2-3 weeks since our first good articles went live and they are ranking well and driving traffic. The thing I noticed is that if I add a video to the content and submit video site map to google I get it on page 2-3 in about 20 mins! Epic speed at climbinthump the SERP's.

moz will crawl again in a week. If you just work on fixing things and see if it works next Week.

If its not the SEOmoz crawl your talking about I'm not sure.