Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Ben-  Good question. Alot depends on how you are doing it. Couple of important points:

If your main site has already been indexed, you will create a duplicate content issue for the new platform site (test server or other url).  When we have moved a magento or drupal website to wordpress, we have found on a number of occasions that without no follow the test server site that we have temporarily parked on another url will show up in search results.  The BEST way to do it is no follow the pages and then when you upload them to the main URL, remove them. You get no value out of this extra work other than you avoid that issue.

For arguments sake, understand that the duplicate content issue is only an issue for the indexed url where your new platform resides now. If you are converting it back to the original URL then there is no long term value you have lost.  If it is a new URL and you are bringing down the original URL, then make sure you dont have ANY duplicate content issues.

Hope this helps..

Mark

Arpeggio-

No issue. Other than confidentiality and avoiding a conflict of interest with competition, there is no reason that they wouldn't  list the URL's and you will find that a small percentage do list the URL or talk with people about it in follow up private messaging.

Good luck. Hope this helps.

Mark

Steven-Depends on your competitors and if you are focused on local. If you don't have a lot of competition for your keywords, and you aren't focused on local, than it isn't because you an generate the same value doing a variety of things that are less expensive. If you are in competitive situation and need local search, then bite the bullet and spend the money because it will add value.

Out of 100 clients that are focused on local and are in competitive markets, we have tested it on over 70% and it has been worth the investment.

Hope this helps..

Mark

Google take sinto account the entire website. Your pages arent competing against each other for rank, but one page might have a higher quality and relevance score than another page.

If you are focused on crushing your competitor and taking away the number #1 rank then you need to build unique and relevant content around the misnomer keyword. Several product pages around the misnomer is an easy way to start to build your relevancy and quality score for the keyword,

When we try and maximize the value of an e-commerce site, we leverage the specific products and variations of the product. For example if there is widget number 1 in white and widget number 2 in blue, we will create two separate pages working through the description of the product. Because we do not want to be penalized for duplicate content, we make the second page have unique content, rather than copying and pasting the same description and changing the color. We have found that to be safe you need 80% original content. We have gotten it to work with as low as 60% original content in certain situations.

Hope this helps..

Mark

Great question.

A good portion of the SEO value will be created by the format and structure of what the site requires for input and data and the url / sitemap structure. If it is done correctly and the site generates a fair amount of activity and content, then it can be VERY POWERFUL. I have helped several people in the crowdsourcing area and have been amazed at the results. Remember, crowdsourcing by nature is viral, unlike traditional ecommerce, and is providing perceived value for the user so make sure you require participation and content the way you want it to happen.

Here is what you need to focus on:

• Once you target the specific keywords you want to focus on, then you can start to set up the data input/categories that the users have to follow. For example if you are focused on "start up capital" or "investment capital" then make sure you have a section that asks them "Explain what you need start up capital for?" and make sure that the URL structure of that entry (which should become its own page in the crowd sourcing listing uses that keyword when you create it.
• If you want to generate more SEO value, ask several keyword questions in the same entry which auto populate the listing when it is published. For example the first question might be "How much start up capital do you need?" then auto enter "The start up capital I need is....." Then the follow up leading statement would be "I will use the start up capital for the following items....."  And again, you will auto publish the leading statements as well as the users entry, which assures that the keywords are being published and indexed.
• Make sure that you require a minimum number of words for the answers so that you force them to generate content. Remember, you are getting the content for free, so make sure you maximize the opportunity.
• Require them to link the crowdsourcing site to their main URL or to post a link on their main site in their footer, in order to publish the crowdsourcing entry.
• Require them to tweet or pin or publish on their facebook page.
• Encourage comments and participation by the authors/users and the people downloading information that will be indexed by google.

Lots of opportunity. Hope this helps..

Mark

Sam-

Its the plug in. Check the automated settings for the format. You might want to add another sub-keyword that provides some value so it isnt a duplicate of what is already posted on the URL.

Hope this helps.

Mark

Tina-

Couple of things. Lets make sure you understand what "canonicalization" is......when the search engines determine the best version of a single page that can be pulled up using more than one URL. In the process different URL's would be able to display the same identical content.

This could be happening for a number of reasons and might not make a big difference in your SEO or it could be hurting your SERP values. Essentially you want to make sure that your rel=canonical issues are simple redirects that are necessary so that you aren't being penalized for duplicate content. To make sure this is correct work through the errors and make sure that your sitemap is set up correctly and you are effectively using your url descriptions to tell the search engines what the various pages contain. It does make sense to make sure that your URL is as descriptive as possible.

If you want to get the simplest and easiest explanation of rel=canonical issues, read Matt Cutts blog posting from a few years back. We use it in our SEO playbook.    http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/canonical-link-tag/

I would recommend 2 plugins for you with wordpress (I have done over 30 wordpress sites in the last 6 months and we havetested a bunch of them).

Wordpress SEO by Yoast. This is an all in one SEO plugin which will solve your "description tag" issue and will give you much more flexibility for basic and advanced SEO. Here is the link:  http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/#utm_source=wpadmin&utm_medium=plugin&utm_campaign=wpseoplugin

There is another plugin called redirection by John Godly.  It manages your 301 redirects and keeps track of your 404 errors (rel+canonicals) and helps you clean up your site. It is solid and easy to use.

Another issue you might be having with your duplicate content can be avoided by creating original content., if you have  one page with a widget and another with a blue widget and another with a pink widget and all the verbiage is the same, except for the color, then you have duplicate content. Use the rel=canonical to make sure you don't get penalized for duplicate content. Another solution is if on the widget pages you can provide several different descriptions of the widgets that go beyond colors, then you start to create unique content and you get SEO value for each separate widget page without having to do a rel=canonical. We have several ecommerce clients that have 10-15 variations of the same product and we have helped them develop unique content for each one, (hundreds of extra pages of content), which has dramatically increased their relevancy and quality score for their specific keywords....but it has to be unique.

Your last issue is related to Canada and search results. This really relates back to your internal sitemap structure. Remember, Google and other search engines send spiders to your site to crawl. They only know what they can see and what you tell them. if you dont do a good job of sitemap/url structure and definition, they are going to try and figure it out themselves. If I was you, I would create a separate url structure for your canadian group that would be something like....www.dropshippingsupplies.com/specifickeywords_canada_locations   Then all of the SEO value stays with your core site but you designate that those pages and keyword content are related to Canada.  You should also make sure that you have geotargeted keywords in the core content of the page....so that you mention canada or the cities and towns where you aretargeting, within that core content.

Hope this helps..

Mark

Ryan-

Within Adwords you can do a search for traffic on each of those terms. You can also do it within SEOMOZ's keyword research tool. This will give you an exact match figure for monthly search for global and local.

Then when you work through the writing the blog, you can use the item that is most searched as the title and heading and you can use some of the other terms within the article that are searched in 2nd and 3rd place, in the main content of the article, so that the articloe doesn't look like you are keyword stuffing.

Good luck. Hope this helps..

Mark

Ian-   Here is some info from Dr. Pete in SEOMOZ. Dr. Pete is my go to guy when it comes to digging "deep into the weeds" of a particular GOOGLE update. He dissects googles algorithm updates like I eat pop tarts for breakfast. Hopefully some of his findings will help you refine your search for clues.....here is his post on the subject. Make sure you follow him....

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-bigfoot-update-aka-dr-pete-goes-crazySeo

I would make one other suggestion. Remember, Panda is about content.   Instead of only taking a reactive stance to Pandas algorithm updates, start to work through your existing content and new content strategy and make sure that you are generating relevant content that isnt over optimized. With the drop in specific keywords you know where you can start to focus but make sure you stay ahead of the curve and proactively focus on other keywords not effected but where you might have similar content issues.

Good luck. Hope this helps..

Mark

William-

No guarantees in life.  I have helped a bunch of companies with reconsideration. I would recommend the following service to help you identify the most likely unnatural links:  www.linkdelete.com.  Once they generate a report for you, it will rank each link as most likely to be creating problems.  You will then work through the list and figure out which links are more likely to be creating problems. Once you identify the links, they will submit the requests for you and will follow up to notify you which links have been removed and which haven't.

One helpful hint as you go through the process is identifying which keywords have been affected the most in SERP's. Then cross referencing them with the links that have been built and then cross referencing those results with the ranking from linkdelete.

One last hint....when you file for reconsideration after you have removed the links make sure you understand that Google will be manually reviewing the request. So make sure you do a couple of things before the reconsideration request and in the reconsideration request:

• Make sure your site is on and offpage optimized to the best of its ability. No keyword stuffing.
• Dont be doing alot of SEO right before the reconsideration request.
• In the request, make sure you are as transaprent as possible. if you hired someone to do linkbuilding...tell them.
• Provide them with the data of the links you identified as bad and that they have been removed.
• Make sure you arent writing a novel. be clear and concise and make it easy to read.

Good luck. Hope this helps.. If you need more help let me know.

Mark

Whoa!!!! Take a step back.....not a black and white conversation.

• Landing pages could be providing you a lot of value if you are getting conversions and converting traffic.
• If the landing pages have unique content they can add additional seo value.
• If the landing pages are all the same and you have only changed the car make....more of an issue.
• What we have done for a number of clients in the auto dealer area is created whats called long page landing pages. So what is seen on the screen win they first land is all the pertinent information for a call to action. If they decide to scroll down to the bottom they start to see much more detailed information about the cars....(less than 12% of our auto dealer landing page traffic reads down below the first screen) This would allow you to put more automobile specific content on the same page (color, model, engine horsepower, accessories, etc.) or (car reviews and other information).....this would create unique content and then actually do the opposite of what you are worried about, those 20 pages would be providing additional SEO value.
• If the landing pages are just there because someone thought they made sense and they aren't converting traffic, then it make sense to remove them.

Before you do anything why don't you do some AB or multivariate testing on the landing pages. If this is a new concept for you, use your google adwords website optimizer o create a small test and compare what the landing pages are converting at. Send some to your home page....send some to other landing pages and see what happens. This data will help you make the right choice.....

Hope this helps.

Vinnie-

Great questions and good topic......"There is no such thing as a free lunch."

Not all linkbuilders use "link networks".

I get calls all the time from companies claiming to have a link network that cant be detected by Google. And we try to get creative for our clients and are always willing to test the waters with interesting stuff to see what works and what doesn't work....most of them say the same thing....they tell you they will or have purchased domains with existing pagerank and history and strong link building foundations; that they are hosting their various domains on different class c IP addresses and of course that they continue to invest oin their networks by creating unique content with links.

We have tried a bunch of them, on a small scale and have generated some solid results. We used some companies that didnt advertise and were referred to us. They have been effective but they have been dramatically "hammered" by google over the last month.

We used Buildmyrank which was one of the more transparent solutions.  They have been blown up by Google. read this release from their site.....

http://www.buildmyrank.com/news/its-been-a-great-run

We have been testing hoth.com. Has provided some value for one of our clients. Been an issue for another....

The list goes on and on.......we have had to eliminate all of these links and in some instances have been forced to ask forgiveness from Google. Bottom line is its like driving drunk.....you might get away with it a few times but when you get caught, it isnt going to be FUN. Long term it isn't a SOLID strategy.

As is the case with any organization that has to scale as their business gets bigger (whether you sell lingerie or SEO services), there are times where it makes sense to outsource or work with vendors that can help you. In the process you get to benchmark how well your link building efforts are performing/versus the cost to generate them.  We have found several people off shore that have done a decent job in link building that help us fill in the holes. We have been using a guest blogging service that has been effective www.guestbloggenius.com. We have even found some small "one man shop" SEO firms that need the work.....would be happy to help you make the connections.

Hope this helps. Make sure if it has, that you give me the thumbs up. Feel free to PM me and I will send you some link builders we have used.

Time and effort to improve the numbers. That is why we do what we do.

Asking whether your rank and trust scores are good or average depends on what your competitors are doing and where you want to be. If the numbers are better than all of your competitors, then it is a great score. If it is lower than all your competitors than it isn't a good score. Ultimately, you will have a higher likelihood of ranking well with search engines the higher your scores are.

In a nutshell, MozRank means your link popularity score which is measured by the number of quality of links. MozTrust doesn't measure the number of links but the "trust" of the links-which means the higher quality sites that are linking , the higher your trust score is.

Here are more technical details regarding what the specific terms mean and how they are measured if you want more detailed information. I have given you the link for more information and some excerpts that should be helpful:

**http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/moztrustMozRank **

"How is MozRank Scored?We calculate this score on a logarithmic scale between 1 and 10. Thus, it's much easier to improve from a MozRank of 3 to 4 than it is to improve from 8 to 9. An "average" MozRank of what most people think of a normal page on the Internet is around 3."

"How can MozRank be improved?A web page's mozRank can be improved by getting lots of links from semi-popular pages or a few links from very popular pages."

http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/moztrust

"MozTrust is SEOmoz's global link trust score. It is similar to MozRank but rather than measuring link popularity, it measures link trust. Receiving links from sources which have inherent trust, such as the homepages of major university websites or certain governmental web pages, is a strong trust endorsement."

Bottom line is don't focus on the numbers so much as the activity to help you increase the numbers. With activity and focus comes results. Good luck...

Luka-

You need google places citations and reviews.

You need to make sure that your google places listing is SEO optimized; pictures; seo keywords; description; etc.

You need to do some offpage seo to counteract the old link building issues. Focus on geotargeted keywords in your specific area.

If you have multiple locations, make sure every location is listed correctly in google places.

Make sure your wordpress site is seo optimized.....are you using an seo plugin?

If you don't have the time and need some quick results I can refer you to a small firm we use that has fixed pricing and doesn't get paid until they get you ranked in google places....no brainer....

Hope this helps.

Mark

Google is not king...they are taking over the world....  

Obviously, Bing's algorithm is different from Google's because when the search term is the same but the set of results is different, a difference in the algorithm is the obvious answer. Because google is dominating, the real question is what is difference between the two algorithms and is the difference large enough that it makes it mandatory to reoptimize a site for Bing. THE ANSWER IS NO....unless you have ten things to do and three of them optimize for bing and google, then prioritize those.

Regardless, tests by SEO engineers all around the world have come to a few conclusions about what causes these differences in search engine results....here they are.....

Get Cozy with Microsoft Ad center. They wont admit it but all of our urls, over 50,  got enhanced results on Bing when we started doing more in adcenter........believe it.

Backlinks Are Less Important in Bing Comparisons between backlinks (how many links point to a web page) have shown that, all being equal, the top ten search engine results in Bing have fewer backlinks than in Google.

PageRank Matters Less in BingMicrosoft hates google....lets face it.. Page Rank is Google’s algorithm that places a number relative to a web page’s search engine results strength, have shown that PageRank2 (or even PR1) sites regularly appear in the top ten results on Bing, whilst this almost never happens on competitive phrases in Google. (But then it does make sense that a Google-patented page-ranking method would carry less weight with Microsoft’s Bing.)

Inbound Anchor Text Matters More in BingA factor common to both major search engines, anchor text (the text inside the <a></a><a>tags; i.e., </a><a>This is the anchor text</a>) from quality sources seems to be a large factor with Bing; more so than with Google. A strange phenomenon here seems to be that Bing puts more emphasis on anchor text links that have the linking phrase in the title of the page.

Microsoft SEO ToolkitThe Internet information Services SEO tool kit, say that five times fast, is  a solid tool kit released by Microsoft that helps you improve your site from an SEO point of view, and therefore, by logic improves its Bing ranking. It includes all the normal stuff:  site analysis, robots.txt exclusion, sitemaps, etc.

Pretty good recent article on it can be found here:   http://www.brafton.com/blog/seo-tips-to-boost-bing-rankings-as-microsoft-fearlessly-battles-google-800459707

Hope this helps......Ciao!

Not worth tracking it down and enforcing because google knows its duplicate content and if it is your oriiginal content then they know you created it first. KUDOS to you.

This is like selling life insurance and they are trying to scare you that you are going to die.......Here is a company that is promoting a service to track down the copy....notice how they never talk about how it will hurt your seo....they just make the blanket statement that you should enforce it and the steps you should take......if it isn't effecting your SEO value then stay away....

http://www.yourseotoday.com/blog/bid/84012/Don-t-Let-Your-Copy-Get-Copied

Don't waste your time if it isn't effecting your seo. If you are getting back links then ride the wave....more link juice for you.

Hope this helps create some clarity.

James- Great question.....let me provide a little guidance.....we have a bunch of ecommerce sites we help manage for SEO.I am going to lump together several of googles "focus areas" into one. They are duplicate content, shallow content and copied duplicate content. Because with an ecommerce site, all 3 of these items can be the same or interchangeable thing.   Here are the major issues/things to focus on:Alot of ecommerce sites, in the past, have been able to generate substantial SEO value by listing products in variations of sizes and colors and with brief descriptions , and then create 1,000's of pages of what used to be considered unique content; (Shallow content). THOSE DAYS ARE GONE.  Assuming you still have the standard information copied and pasted on every page, that you mention above, ideally you want 250 unique words of description of a product.  Bare minimum you should have 100 words.....and in addition to the on-page content, you should make sure your meta descriptions are unique. Remember, Unique means relevant content that is different.  With duplicate content issues, google isn't penalizing you to hurt your ranking but they will only give you SEO value for the page they think is unique...for example if you have 40 pages of the same product but small variations in color or size or sku, and little to differentiate the pages, then they will count those 40 pages as 1 page....you lose the opportunity to build 39 pages of unique content value. The last thing to be careful of is if you have product that other companies have.....(you are a distributor or supplier or wholesaler and not the manufacturer). Then the manufacturer posts standard info and a bunch of people copy it and use it. YOU WILL BE PENALIZED BY GOOGLE FOR THIS BECAUSE IT IS COPIED DUPLICATE CONTENT. Most important point to remphasis----you know you are going to have some duplicate content on a website......you know that it it likely that if you are selling different variations of the same product, that you will have alot of the same stuff.....again, make sure you have unique and different content focused on your keywords. Target at least 50% different or unique content on each page as a MINIMUM.....Hope this helps.Mark

Insite-

Sucks but that is the limitation. You can post your request to increase this to more words at this link....

https://seomoz.zendesk.com/forums/293194-seomoz-pro-feature-requests

Not sure if you knwo this, but seomoz just raised some vc money. Now that rand raised some big dough I have to believe that they are working on a bunch of revisions to the tools.  SEOMOZ is already worth every penny, so anything they add will be gravy.....good luck....

Mark

How important is oxygen to you?

Very important. Links still have value....Panda just created a way to discount and penalize certain types of links. Good for you that you weren't affected. Keep building strong solid manual links and you will continue to see value.

Hope this helps.

Couple of different ways to show local rankings:

1.) You need to use geotargeted local keywords like pittsburgh and columbus to see localized results for keywords.

2.) For competitive domain analysis you can rank against other local sites if you enter that information in. SEOMoz does a nice job of tracking the history related to it if it is one of your campaigns.....

3.) Google places you can see where you rank when you pull up the localized keywords.

There isnt some drop down option to create a geo-targeted local area in SEOmoz. its important to make sure that you understand that all of the search engines will determine the keyword(based on the IP) and will give you local results. The new local SERP for Google generates a "blended" seacrh result which is a combination of national listings along with local directories and places and other media.

Hope this helps you. If I answered your question please give me the thumbs up.