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Hi Bob,

Sounds like a great little workflow you have going there

At what stage are you mentioning broken links etc? During the blog commenting, or via email?

I would suggest email is the best - saves making them 'lose face' in front of their audience by people reading about it in comments (although I am sure they moderate their blogs!).

You might get better success rates if you were to point out the links in one email, then when they reply, respond re: the guest post of resource link request - However that said, if quick results are vital at this stage, I can understand why you would prefer to do it in a single email too

All-in-all, sounds like a good strategy to me. As long as you are making 'in-roads' with people, and managing to get a bit of a rapport going, I think that you have a good workflow laid out there!

Others may be able to give further input, but I think you are doing well.

If you are not doing so already, perhaps open the email with a little reminder of who you are - log their memory re: a comment you made/discussed with them, etc - it can help avoid their 'spam blindness' - We are all so cynical these days due to the shear volume of spammy dribble that get's sent, reminding someone right away that you are a real person, and have already been talking with them, can help with read-rates of our outreach emails.

Hope that helps... well done Bob!

To a large extent it depends on the site in question.

Blogs are the easy one - guest posting.

Static sites without resource areas are harder, I would check to see if they have a news section, or perhaps they have a mailing list they could send info to, for example.

At worse case, even if you are targeting sites that don't have frequently updated areas (blog/press section/news section etc OR a mailing list), then perhaps they could at least mention/recommend the pdf to their social following? (Tweet/LinkedIn share/Facebook post).

Other than that, would be hard to say without seeing the sites being targeted.

Hope that helps though

Mike.

Hi Bob,

Well personally, I agree with you. I always like to try to find a hook, common ground, or something to talk about with a prospect.

For others though, it's a numbers game, and the pleasure and higher conversion rate you get by being more personal does have to be compared with the lower conversion rate but higher volume of a less personalised outreach.

I like to go after higher value relationships myself, and so am fine with taking the time to connect with people - comment on their bogs, .help out with any problems they have on their site (broken links/broken social badges, etc) and build a relationship up first, before even asking about a guest post.

Sometimes though, when an outreach campaign is urgent, it can be good to know how to quickly assess a site, add to buzzstream, making comments in the notes section as a mental reminder of the tone of voice to use with a blogger, what would work well for their blog, and also any issues they have with their site.

I have been know to send an email to a prospect cold, help them by explaining they have a broken link (a couple of times it was badges linking to /# instead of their social account!), and also ask if they would be interested in 'xyz' too - and I usually get a good response

I find that in most cases making notes etc on things about them and their blog, then emailing them with that in mind, but being YOURSELF, and being honest, has the best effect.

Like I said above though, I would test this for yourself, find what works for you, and how you are happy working - split test a couple of different styles at first, and use buzzstream in-built reporting on which email template converts best to see how to progress from there

Hi Bob,

Although not the answer you want, it depends!

What I would do, is split test your outreach.

In one email, make the offer right away, and in another be a little more cautious.

To some extent, it does depend on what you are asking the bloggers to do. For example, are you asking them to write a review of the PDF? or do you want to write & supply a guest post?

In either instance, I wouldn't offer them the link back from another related site - that's just me personally. To me, that would look too much like one of the '3 way link swap' emails that I delete each week.

Offering the adwords traffic is an interesting one, however I would use that one as a contest personally - one of the reviewers picked at random.

In terms of offering a FB like or Tweet - I would instead tell them that you would be happy to share their post across your company's social channels.

The actual email you write, including the subject line, will depend to some extent on the tone of voice of the blogger you are reaching out to.

Re: Buzzstream

I have used Buzzstream a fair bit myself - what I tend to do is NOT use their inbuilt scraper (I don't like most serp scrapers!).

Instead I use the bookmarklet they provide, which then allows me to make notes (on the final page of the bookmarklet, after confirming their contact data etc), on things like: Their tone of voice, links to their guest post guidelines, any notes on if they do giveaways, etc.

Also, when first adding the prospect to buzzstream, be SURE to use tags that will be useful in the future (may be useful for other campaigns/clients etc). Doing things like using non-industry specific tags like 'giveaway' or 'contest' can help with future efforts, as you can search buzzstream for such prospects.

One other advantage of using buzzstream, is that if you do create 2 different templates for the emails, Buzzstream will try to automatically record the response rate as a percentage...

For the above reason, consider just bookmarking a set number first, say 10 to 20% of the total number of blogs you intend to reach out to, **but **ensuring you have enough sample data to be reliable. - The more folks you intend to reach out to, the lower the % can be, basically!

Then, before you launch the campaign in full, check the response rate of each of the respective email templates, and go with the one that had the best response

This way, you are testing the water, and getting some stats (other than opinions) to base your campaign on. I like this method, as no 2 industries are the same really.

I would download an OSE report set to external links only, to entire root domain. Use an advanced report if you have the credits.

Then I would check the anchor text usage to each of the key pages.

Try to do quality link work - linkbait rather than link 'building' - Yer, I know, everyone says that - but really! Write some decent articles that people will WANT to read - if they want to read them, they will want to share/link to them.

If you do end up 'building' links though, do so by really high quality methods. Manually reach out for guest posts on decent blogs - tie this in with Google+ author profile links to the sites G+ account (the authors), and in terms of anchors, be natural! Go for what the blogger thinks should be used - usually this will be either www.domain.com/ or 'Brand Name'.

In short - don't try to manipulate your anchor text in order to gain organic Google rankings - this kind of practise is now more out of date than ever, won't likely work very well anymore, and could in fact be counter productive.

Hope that helps! Stick with it, do lots of research, start to identify and engage with a site's audience both on-page and off, and you will be fine

For me, it's:

• SEOmoz data - downloaded into Excel
• Webmaster tools data
• Screamingfrog data - into Excel
• Google Analytcis - downloaded into Excel

Then I use Excel with various filters to mold the data as I need.

For example I may well combine data from the above 2 sources, and use vlookup formula's to, say, find 404 pages (screaming frog) that have a high PA (SEOmoz) by pasting in all the data from a screaming frog 404 report, into a download from SEOmoz, and the using a vlookup command to find the PA of the 404 pages.

Of course in the above example I could just use a crawl report form SEOmoz, which I also do, however i like to use more than one tool to check for 404's

Plus using the above technique you can do all sorts of trickery-pokery, and uncover lots of actionable insights.

If you search either on Google, SEOmoz, or Distilled, for something like: excel for seo - SEO for excel - or something like that, you will find loads of info.

Other decent tools to consider are:

• ahref's
• cognativeSEO
• Majestic SEO

These are all places that pull similar data, but are slightly different from each other, and have different benefits.

ahref's, for example, can be handy for finding links that have dropped-off.

Just my thoughts

Mike.

As Rand said above, the web app is pretty cool. Whilst there are a few other options / companies offering SEO campaign tracking, for me what makes the Moz guys stand out is:

• Q&A forum - Great for asking questions, or even answering them to get Kudos!
• Youmoz - the ability to write posts (I keep meaning to do this!)
• One-off tools... for times when you just want to run a quick check on something, produce something in a rush for a meeting etc, these tools can be handy

But all in all, I guess its the 'package' of some of the industry leading tools, mixed with a wicked community , that makes seomoz an excellent 'one-stop shop' to monitor lots of metrics for your SEO campaign, produce reports, and also have a ub where you can read about the latest SEO happenings or techniques, and also actually ask questions when you need a hand.

The allowance of 1 private question per month is actually pretty handy too.

That's just my thoughts anyway!

I just wondered if Mozcon 2012 will be available as a video bundle at some point (for us that couldn't make it!)? If so, any ideas when

Sorry for the delay Carin! Been crazy busy with meetings

I appreciate your offer of help, and will sned you examples later today!

Kind Regards,

Mike.

Hi Carin,

Thanks for the reply!

I have a few meetings today, but I will dig out the example this evening, and fire over by tomorrow morning at the latest, via email.

Thanks again for your reply and your help - it is much appreciated!

Mike

Hi David.

Okay, unfortunately this is around the time of some major Google tweaks, making it possibly harder to figure our what went wrong, as we need to try to rule out Penguin/Panda issues (feel free to take a screengrab or csv download from GA with a chart, so I can cross-check against Google's updates, and see if any of the big drop-off dates tally with major algo changes for you, as this could help rule Pegnuin in/out).

I have had a quick look at your site, and done a couple of quick Google queries, and found the following (I am NOT saying this is the cause, but this is something that should definitely be looked into).

• LOTS (circa 1,900) of pages indexed in Google, with pretty much duplicates of your homepage title tag (I will private message you a link, rather than publishing here)

• Possible canonicalisation issues (need to check).

David, I have triggered a crawl test of your domain, and will cast me eye over the findings when it is finished, and let you know if I see anything that may be useful.

I am leaving the office soon (especially as it is sunny! VERY rare for Bristol!), but I will check to see if the results of the crawl test are ready tomorrow, and fire you a reply once I know.

Cheers David,

Mike.

Hmmmm, and, was this change made in isolation, or were other on-page changes also made?

When you say the rankings have been going down for around 4 months, do you know what sort of date the decline started? - I ask as it may be wise to broaded the net a little in looking at the cause of this.

I am not saying the title tag changes didn't cause it, just that it would be wise to not restrict ones research... for example, did the decline start around the time of any major Google updates? (Panda/Penguin refreshes, etc).

Also, do you know how long the gap was between changing the title tags, and the drop-off becoming apparent?

So really, 3 questions:

1. Do you remember the date you made the changes

2. Do you remember how long until the drop-off was seen

3. What date did your traffic start to go down (checking Google Analytics data could show you this, switching to a 6 month view).

Sorry to answer with more questions, but I wouldn't want to put forward an opinion of what could have caused this without all the facts!

Thanks,

Mike.

Just a quick comment about the social buttons...

I doubt that just adding social buttons to the site will help in itself, however the fact that the sites has the social buttons on their site 'may' indicate it is more likely that they have social activity based around their domain (although this isn't always the case!).

My own opinion is that the buttons just being there won't help, but if the webmaster is also interacting on a social level, getting tweets/likes and opening their social discussion somewhat, then I would say that this can certainly help, and maybe those social buttons are making it just that much easier for folks to share the content on the webmasters site, and so helping their social metrics?

People are pretty lazy online, so you need to make it as easy as possible for your website visitors, whether that is making it easier to buy something, fill out a form, or indeed, Tweet/Like your content!

That's my take anyway!

[EDIT] - I note you say you pulled the social buttons because nobody was using them... in which case rather than pulling the buttons off the website, I would look into WHY nobody was using them

If you can figure that out, you will likely increase the usability of your website, make it more 'people friendly' and interesting, and decrease your bounce rates - all of which 'could' help your rankings (and revenue!).

Things to look out for:

• Overly heavy text (text is good, boring people to death isn't! Break the text up with images, YouTube embeds, etc)

• Too many above the fold ads? Folks won't want to share a site full of ads (not saying your site is like this!)

• Social buttons not obvious? - Are they placed where the reader needs them? Some form of CTA at the start, and at the end of content is a good idea 'usually'.

• Any signs of life? - Do you get decent comments, have you got a Twitter feed or Facebook box on the site? - People like to get involved in active sites, try to show signs of a community based in/around your website. If you haven't got one, try to leverage one!

Phew! That was a big edit, sorry!

Just to check the obvious, you didn't change any URL structure (of the pages) did you?

How much optimisation did you carry out on the pages, please show an example, as it is possible to 'over optimise', especially these days.

Thanks,

Mike.

Quick question regarding this issue (I also saw the corrupted anchors)...

Now when I view anchors to a URL in OSE, the data still looks corrupted, but even stranger, when I create a .csv download, the data is very different, with different anchors!

Is this a new issue, or just a variation of the existing one?

I have several reports that I need to create, and they require the OSE anchors data... Any ideas on when there will be a fix for this, as 'soon' isn't a good thing to tell our clients

To be honest, I love SEOMoz, but I really think that as this is a paid membership that is also targeted at professionals, then there should have been email updates etc about this issue, to keep us all in the loop... Come on Moz team, you can do better feedback than this, I know you can coz your great!

Have you seen the 'business case' template files that Econsultancy have? They have one for SEO specifically... Maybe a help? (Although it is from 2010 it seems! So maybe update any stats!)

http://econsultancy.com/uk/reports/sem-search-engine-optimisation-seo-business-case

It does cost though, unless you or anyone in your company has a membership there?

Personally, I find that working out some basic figures on traffic increases with existing, and forecast conversion rates can help.

In addition, do you track what the leading competing brand is doing?

I sometimes find that whilst some folks further up the food chain will be convinced by the figures and stats, others will be convinced by seeing that their leading competitor is spending on SEO (this can be proved by measuring various metrics, checking out their social profiles, etc). I guess nobody wants to be the last kid in the playground chosen for the team? <-- Even with this though, having some stats on projected ROI is a very good idea, and yup, as Promoteam said above... presentation matters!

It really depends on the data I believe.

Check this entry:  http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=146897

Also, this post over on searchengineland - http://searchengineland.com/schema-org-google-bing-yahoo-unite-79554 (and Google, MicroHoo and Schema.org)

As you should be able to see from those 2 posts, the 'general' answer to your question is: "Yes, and probably increasingly so". However it will also depend on what data you are trying to tag with microdata, to some extent...

I would recommend a multi-pronged approach.

First, though, I just want to check something.

"...has locations around the country" They are not simply adding a page per city, with lots of duplicate content, are they? (I am sure they are not, but I had to ask!).

Anyway, on to answer your question with my thoughts (for what they are worth!)...

I like Nakul's suggestions, below, about sponsorship. I would add to this, getting in touch with the local press to let them know about your sponsorships.

Next, consider joining your local chamber of commerce etc, and network with people. Get the news out about their services.

Be sure to submit to local directories (not low quality international directories, but quality, local directories).

Be SURE to use consistent data for each local directory, post cade, phone no. etc... this can help aggregators like Google Local Business Centre to pick up on citations, and attribute them to your listing.

Make sure you have filled out your Google local business profile in full, with images etc, and do the same for Bing/Yahoo.

See if there are any schools or organisations locally that will allow you to give a talk or demonstration - quite often this will include a link on their website to let people know about you before the event - if you can get local schools to do this, you could get a decent link or two from .ac.uk or .edu links, etc.

It is hard without knowing your niche, but also you could try giving a talk to a local government department (if it fits... for example if you are in the data security business, offer a free workshop to a council department, but say you want them to publish the event on their site, to ensure you get a good turnout).

If your business runs self defense classes, offer a one day free workshop to a large organisations staff, teaching womens self defense tactics... but again, you want it published on the companies website/PR section. Follow this up with a Press Release about the day to the local press & online, and use that publicity to do a similar thing for other companies.

Some of the things I have mentioned are perhaps a little more time consuming that standard 'local seo' practises, but then, the links they can gain you could give you 'the edge' on your competitors.

I must admit though, if the company doesn't actually have staff in all these cities, it makes this a little harder!

Two possible places, depending on specifically what you need? (correct me if I am wrong Roger!)

1) Go to your campaigns page, View the campaign in question. In the top-nav, next to 'Overview' and 'Rankings' you should find 'Crawl Diagnostics'.

In this section, you should be able to view crawl related issues/errors warnings etc. Be sure to notice the dropdown near the top-left of the page - You should be able to export reports etc here also.

2) The tab in the top-nav NEXT to the 'Crawl Diagnostics; link is 'On-Page' - Here you should be able to view, and trigger, on-page SEO reports... Again, you should be able to download reports from here too (top right of the page).

Does this help?

Cheers,

Mike.

EDIT - Added an image for you, hope this helps!

seomoz-reports.png

UPDATE: - So far only Casey seems willing to share Nobody else willing to chip in?

Thanks for the response

I know what you mean about hiring writers & training them to do the outreach... the reason we are not doing that this time, is that we have quite a few writers already, and so the aim is to keep them doing their thang, whilst get a new outreach ninja on board to find the prospects, secure the deals, and liaise with the content team (using a kanban board styleee project management system, with notes on individual blog needs and angles, etc).

I also agree about relationships being important, ideally via multiple social channels, I feel.

Anyway, thanks so much for your answer! I am looking forward to seeing what others have to say too

Mike.

On the whole, I agree with what Will Quick says.

I do believe that even in niches that others are using comment spam, you CAN outrank them with quality work (I have done it, in fact)... and in the end, you will have a stronger backlink profile that should outlast the spam guys when G- updates roll out in the future (as they always do!).

That said, I strongly agree with Will, in that a sudden change in the style of backlink profile can in fact cause an issue and ranking drop - especially in the mid-long term.

Basically you have just suffered from 1 or 2 things, or both (in my opinion anyway!).

Number 1: You may well be suffering from an inbound link filter/penalty due to the spam. This can be due to spammy links, or over use of a given anchor text (what % of inbound links to the page that was ranking, and also to the domain, use the exact match anchor?).  This could be an issue EITHER becuase of the spam links, OR because of over-optimisation of a set keyword (has the ranking suffered for other pages/keyterms???

Number 2: The link velocity to the domain as a whole, and also to the page(s) in question, has probably just taken a MASSIVE drop (by the sounds of it). Such a drastic change in itself can cause issues and ranking drops (in my opinion!). At least in the short to mid term - That said, continued, high quality SEO work 'should' re-gain you those positions, and build a better foundation for the future (safer with future big G updates).

Now, to fix Number 1, above, may take time. I feel that you need to pull off reports of the current anchor text usage to the domain, and to specific pages, and try to ensure that nothing is too 'over the top'. Try to get some nice brand links to water down any high anchor text usages (to page/domain).

To fix Number 2 may be trickier. You could either:

A) Use spam for a while, and decrease it steadily, whilst increasing the quality work (I do NOT recommend this, but that is just because it is not how I like to work, I feel it pollutes the web).

B) Ride it out! - Gain steady, high quality links via press releases, blogger outreach, articles, web 2.0 work, social media baiting. Also consider an increase in PPC in the interim, to keep the $£ coming in! Done right, this should help to regain positions.

C) Do 'B)', above, but also try to be creative in 'simulating' the sort of link velocity that the spammers, perhps some decent infographics with brand links in the embed code, social media baiting, press release syndication, and at a push, mass article submission (with decent quality articles) is still less spammy than blog comments! (although not ideal for long term tactics, it may help to simulate the link velocity). Basically check the amount of extra unique linking domains that the spam work gained the site, and try to get at least somewhere near that level using non-spam tactics, and slowly reduce the amount to a more realistic monthly amount, but with higher quality work.

I think that you should be open with the client, and tell them that although they may suffer now, it is probably much better to do this now than to wait until they get penalised.

This way, they just need to come up with an intelligent strategy to recover, whereas if they kept up with the spam work, they may well end up in real hot water!

**That is just my opinion anyway, and it is without knowing the exact situation, so should be taken as general opinion, not a well researched tactic! **

brevityworks, best of luck!

Not sure why you wouldn't want the video embed to show, but either way, I would recommend having a read (for research) of this (old) thread: http://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!category-topic/webmasters/images--video-content/poyHScMu4sk

(although he says he still has the problem, it does look to me like he may have made a case-sensitivity error in his robots.txt file, although not 100% if that would stop

and also this: https://developers.google.com/webmasters/control-crawl-index/docs/crawlers

In theory, I think you should be able to do this.

See the page here: https://developers.google.com/webmasters/control-crawl-index/docs/robots_meta_tag

Specifically this tag:

So, I wonder if the following would work:

In theory, I wonder if you can perhaps block the video specific bot from crawling the pages via a robots.txt entry, like:

user-agent: Googlebot-Video
Disallow: /

But maybe the html version would give you more flexibility.

Personally, I would always test this (the meta name version, above) first on a new/dummy page.

Research this really well first though, as mistakes with robots Disallow rules can be costly!.

In my opinion...

It really depends on the context. Are you worried that the posts you remove the links on will drop rankings, or that the pages/posts they link TO will drop?

What I mean is, are the links from your posts going out to pages that you wish to get to rank? If so, are they ranking?

Or, are you cross-linking, post to post?

As an example, roughly how many links are on each post, and how many (average) words per post?

In general, I don't like to link out too much from posts, as the 'juice' passed by each link will be less, and it can look spammy.

If you pull several outbound internal links from a selection of posts, it may be wise to plan it so that not all the links point to the same pages(s), so that across the board, no single page gets a drastic drop in internal links.

Another possible tactic (taking into account, and agreeing with, what Alan said below), is that you could also pull any links that go out to pages you are not as bothered about, if you have any such outbound links on your posts. Perhaps checking your Analytics reports for the best converting pages will help you decide this (being sure to have first touch attribution installed, of course!).

Without an example though, it is kinda hard to give anything other than generic advice...

Personally I would prefer to link TO a page with the keyphrase I wish that page to rank for, ideally from in-content of a relevant page/paragraph (whilst trying to avoid 'keyword cannibalism'! (unless it is intentional, as can sometimes be done to gain multiple page 1 positions!).

There are other things that you can do similar to what you describe above, but in general, I feel it is more useful and effective to link with the phrase/anchor that you wish a page to rank for, pointing TO that page, not FROm that page.

It is sometimes a good idea to cross link with related anchors (to other pages) - have a google search for seo silo also, as that can shed some light on internal linking stratergies (not everyone agrees, or uses SEO silo's, but there is good info to gain from researching the topic, whether you use it, or not!).

Cheers!

Mike.

Ps. Although those are my opinions, I am looking forward to reading what other folks think too!

Our SEO agency is considering hiring a new SEO consultant, specifically for outreach, with a strong focus on (quality) blog outreach.

I know how many successful posting I expect to get per month doing the work myself, but I wanted to make sure that I expected realistic amounts from a new (already experienced) staff member (just to be fair to them!), Soooooo...

I thought I would throw a question at other folks, and try to come up with a rough average number, to make sure I don't expect too much (or too little) from the new guy!

Now, obviously this varies depending on niche etc, but I am just asking for an approx. average, using search queries like:  _"blog posting guidelines" "[niche here]" _

(Plus using feedburner searches, etc... usual blog outreach tactics!)

Also bear in mind that the outreacher will be based in the office, and content will be written for them by professional writers.

The question is...

• As an experienced blog outreacher, based on the above info, how many successful posts would you expect to get per month, assuming a 35hr to 40hr work week (Mon-Fri).

Cheers guys! I look forward to your opinions... I think it will be interesting to see how much the answers vary!

UPDATE: - So far only Casey seems willing to share Nobody else willing to chip in?

No worries!

I am pretty sure that plugin is the one which allows the WP admin to select JUST posts, and leave out pages... but I am not 100%.

The reason I recommended that particular plugin though, is that from experience, many of the other Google news sitemap plugins seem to cause some sort of XML error when submitting the sitemap to Google news, but this one doesn't, so using it should save a few headaches, and having to 'shop around', so to speak!

Another thing to bear in mind, is that if you have 1 section of your site (say, domain.com/news) and you have an RSS feed on there, showing a feed of a different section of your website (say, domain.com/self-promotional-company-blog), and the second blog for any reason ends up with 3 unique digital in the URL of a post, then Google news can find the link in the RSS feed of your news section, and index the page on the (self promotional blog) in error -

Sounds harmless, but if the news team then decided that you were actually TRYING to get self promotional stuff (even company news) into Google news, you could loose your news approved status... short solution is just to be careful when putting any RSS feeds (of other parts of your site/domain) on your news section!!! (Hope that makes sense?!) - I learned this the hard way (didn't get dropped or anything, as I acted swiftly to sort the issue!).

Hope that helps!

Mike.

Ahhh! Okay thanks

Looking forward to the updated page Personally I think that as SEOMoz is all about best practice, it would be super-cool just to pull that line out... it's confusing & misleading! 2 things I don't normally associate with the Moz team!

I am currently using the free API, but am considering the paid version... just trying to crunch some numbers and make sure we would get the ROI needed first in terms of saving time with manual checks

Cheers Casey

Mike.

In addition to the excellent response by Robert Fisher, below, you do not actually NEED to do this, but you CAN do it automatically if you choose to.

Google News needs...

EITHER a unique 3 digit code in the URL...

OR

A Google news specific sitemap.

So, your options are to either change your WP (I checked, your site is Wordpress based, yes?) Permalinks settings, to include post id, OR use a google news sitemap plugin.

You can always put a number in front of the post id, so use something like:

/%postname%/1%post_id%

So, adding a numerical '1' befor %post_id% in your permalinks.

If you are worried about lots of 404 errors due to changing your URL structure, then how about using deans permalinks migration (install it BEFORE changing your permalink settings!) - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/permalinks-migration-plugin-for-wordpress/

As for a Google News sitemap... For wordpress, I recommend this one: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/gn-xml-sitemap/

If you go down the sitemap route, do be sure that ONLY news posts are included... E.G. NOT your static, non-news content pages!

IN TERMS OF SEO -

I don't feel it will effect things too much, so long as everything else is good as regards your on-page SEO etc.

Hope that helps!

Hi, I found this question after being confused by the same page! I think this is important...

In that case the page in question should be altered, as at present it indicates that there is limited access to the site intelligence API... NOT the free one. Check it out: http://www.seomoz.org/api  ->>> Quite clearly states, in the 'site intelligence API' box (e.g. NOT in the free API box, to the left of the page, but in the clearly labelled 'Site Intelligence API' box, that:

"Limited access is included with a Premier level PRO membership. You can also purchase unlimited access to this service separately."

So, if it is the FREE API that the premier level PRO membership gives a limited access to, then why is it detailed as being the Site Intelligence API? Surely that is actually false advertising? (Obviously unintentional! I really like SEOMoz! but I do think this page needs updating, so it is not advertising a benefit that isn't actually there!).

(See the image below).

ibdJ23eWbQtzfr.png

Just as Ressler Motors said, there are many MANY factors to take into consideration when you are looking at a websites ranking.

I must admit, SEOMoz does a great job with their different metrics, and they can be very helpful... But even so, big G uses literally hundreds of triggers to determine any individual ranking.

So, really you should study lots of metrics for both websites - anchor text usage to target page, brand links to each homepage, title tag usage, page load times... and lots more!

Hope that helps!

If you absolutely have to do it this way, then I would ensure you have a sufficient amount of content on each page, that is unique - and NOT a simple re-write.

For example, rather than lots of content about "Alex Miley" on each page, focus on the product (Cameras/Cell Phones etc).

I would also look to ensure that you have different wording in each of the two title tags, h1 tags, and ideally some product related h2 tags too!

For example, title tag suggestion (not well thought out, but gets my point across I hope!)

<title>Alex Miley Cameras | Buy Alex Miley Cameras Online</title>  <--- Avoid!

<title>Alex Miley Cameras | Buy A.M Digital Cameras Cameras Online</title> <--- Better, as only mentioned the brand name once.

Then, ensure there is sufficient unique content on each product, on each page - unique and well written!

When you say 'submit all of your product pages' - Do you mean submit them to Google's organic search engine, or Google Shopping?

For the organic search engine, depending on how many pages you really have, I would say you should submit xml sitemaps, and you may need to submit a sitemap index too (check the current max. limit on a single sitemap submission, I am not sure what it is these days!).

Personally though, with a good navigation system and a few backlinks, you shouldn't need to worry 'too much' about submitting xml sitemaps.

As you say the product pages are updated daily though, I can see why you feel the need to do this.

Or, did you mean submitting them to...

Google Shopping

If you have lots of products, I would strongly recommend submitting them to Google Shopping - it's free, after all!

This should help you to get some 'quick wins' whilst you work at getting your products and category pages ranking well in the organic results.

**Canonicalisation **

As you are running an ecom. store, with lots of products - be very careful with canonical and duplication issues, especially since Google Panda! Ensure that query strings in your URLs don't result in multiple URLs for the same products, likewise make sure if you have products in multiple categories, that you are not creating duplicate content/URLs that way either! - I guess you have this covered already?

Hi Hugh,

Glad the advice helped

I have run into issues with Wordpress plugins in the past (ones that do various things!) and for important stuff like 301's, I tend to prefer working in .htaccess manually, as I can see what it is happening, and see how to fix any issues easier.

If you run into the issue whereby you are doing massive amounts of 301's, it is sometimes possible to do re-write rules on the URL structure to effect large amounts of 301's, however this can be a bit more involved

Anyway, glad you got it sorted - did you check them with the http header check tool? (there are a few like that tool I linked to in case you prefer others, simply google: http header status tool

And that should give you a few (just letting you know in case you either prefer others, or if that one goes down when you need it ever).

Cheers!

Mike.

Hi, I am not Gianluca, but hope you don't mind my input here!

From our own experience, this is what happens:

1) Implement a 301

2. TEST to ensure you get the correct header status (301 permanently moved)

3. Google eventually crawls the old page, and finds the 301 redirect

4. After some time, Google replaces the old URL with the new URL.

Now, as for speeding things up, in my opinion (born out by testing), counter to your idea of adding the new URL to webmaster tools, it is better to get Google to find the actual 301 redirect, before the new url (this way, Google won't see the new URL as a duplicate, before it finds the old, now 301 redirected, URL, which in theory 'could' happen if both pages had the same content/title tag, etc - Although with just 1 or 2 redirects, it is quite unlikely, and should resolve itself pretty quick).

So what I like to do, is try to get Googlebot to the old (301'd) page as soon as possible once it has been implemented (and tested!).

To do this, consider pinging the URL, or pinging your RSS feed (if your site has them)  - Tweet about the fact you did a redirect, and link from twitter to the old URL, or even, if you have done some website redesign, write a press release about it, and within the PR, link to the old page... Basically, anything to get google old Googlebot to crawl the old URL< and find the 301 redirect

Others may disagree, but this does appear to work well for us!

Hope that helps,

Mike.

I like to add the 301's myself in the .htaccess file, with the following format:

Redirect 301 /url-goes-here.html http://www.yoursite.com/url-goes-here.html

Be sure to use that structure (eg. NO http://www. on the old page, but have it on the new page)

Maybe try that for 1 URL, and see if it works for you? - I have to say, be sure to not delete any o fthe other stuff in your .htaccess file! - Best to create a backup BEFORE editing

Remember, when doing web design, coding, or on-page SEO, if anything goes wrong, the worse thing that should happen is that you have to revert back to the bacup that you made before you started

Although if you have lots to do, then you can automate it... various ways to do that!

Really it depends on the context of what you want to do.

Can I ask, how many pages do you want to 301 redirect?

It can take a while for Google to update - how long ago did you do this?

I would look here: http://www.webconfs.com/http-header-check.php

Enter an old URL, and hit 'Submit' - You should then be taken to a results page, and hopefully will see this:

"HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently => "

If you don't, something is wrong

Try that tool, and copy/paste the result here for everyone to take a peek at - we will then help if we can, as we will have more to go on

Hope that helps!

Oh, and also, consider this plugin for firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/live-http-headers/

No probs, glad to help!

Hope you Friday doesn't drag too long due to all this!!!

Daniel, I gave you a thumbs up, as I think that is a good point

It could help if you submit an image sitemap once the renaming has been done, or even impliment 301 redirects from the old image URL to the new ones, but unless you have an automated way of doing the redirects, it could be quite a long process to do them  manually!!!

Benjamin pretty much covered it I feel!

Remember, Googlebot is, well, a bot! To help Googlebot, and it's associated algorithms figure out what your images are about, you should ensure certain 'triggers' are well taken care of.

Filename is one such trigger, as is alt text (both mentioned by Benjamin already).

Additionally I would consider adding title tags to the images, and at times that you link to any of the images, use relevant anchor text too, as this can help.

Also consider using tags, for example, Paella Recipe as this can give an extra bit of help in regards to Google & other engines understanding what the image is all about.

Then if you are really wanting to go the extra mile;

Image sitemap submission to Google, to try to make sure big G finds all of your images! (see here: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=178636 ) Note the tags that you can use, specifically the caption and title should be quite useful for image SEO etc

Hope that helps!

Hey Damon,

I sent you an email with a couple of suggestions for your site, things I think may have possible slipped through the net during your redesign, I hope that helped!

Also, re: press releases, as someone that owns a Google news approved PR site, I can give you another angle on this if you like?

I agree with what everyone here has said about quality for a start! One of the more traditional uses of a press releases is obviosuly to get the word out... these days some folks try to submit crappy spun articles as press releases. A visit for somewhere like the warrior forums will show you people using, and selling, that tactic.

As a PR site owner that just means more work on our part, declining trash releases, and banning IP's from our system! Not everyone does this though, obviously the big sites do (prweb etc) but some of the smaller, free PR sites don't have much of an approval process.

What that can mean for you, is that you may end up with your news release on a site promoting questionable products and linking to questionable sites. Whilst I doubt this would be bad enough to cause you much harm, it may not be the panacea that you could be hoping for!

If you go down the PR site route on a regular basis, try to opt for sites that have some level of quality control, look for ones that are Google news approved, and also ones that will show your full contact details, ideally including a link back to your site.

Write decent releases, and when you write an especially good one, take it offline too! Send it to your local papers and press.

Regarding the local papers and press, if you want a higher success rate, pick up the phone, call the papers, and ask them who deals with small business news. Explain you have an interesting press release you would like to send them, and ask who the best person to send it to is.

Doing the above can help your success rate pretty massively, as instead of going to a generic, contact@blah type email, then having to be sent around the block, you should go straight to the eyes of someone that is most likely to be interested.

This is only worth doing if you have something to shout about. A relaunch MAY do it, winning some local award, or sponsoring a local charity or something almost certainly should! Look for local charity events to throw a few $ towards for sponsorship, offer a training day to local school kids, anything like that should be good enough to get the attention of the local press. If a reporter does interview you, explain that you would love a nice, clean SEO friendly link from the body of anything they publish online Give them lots of coffee, to keep em happy!

The effect on your local rankings, if you manage to get a clean link from a quality local paper and some follow up news coverage, may well help you to get above the spammy sounding guys above you.

Follow that up with some LOCAL (real local, not spammy ones) directory submissions, some 'social love' and some online press releases, and you may well secure a decent position in time.

Anyway that was a bit of a long un, but I wanted to give you an idea of how you  could, pretty ethically, out do the guys above you, and also use online and offline PR the right way

Obviously online PR gets used in all sorts of ways, and at the end of the day so long as what you submit is unqiue, well written and interesting, it should probably get approved, what I describe above is something that can give a nice bonus in addition, to help with your results (especially local ones), when you have a news worthy event to shout about.

No probs Steve, glad I could help

It's a micro format of HTML.

You can use it to, for want of a better word, 'tag' your address, so basically it is a way of saying to bots that hey, you know this string of characters that follows, it is an address... there is some conjecture as to its usefulness, but I believe it is best practice to use it, especially with local search focused projects.

More info here: http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard

And a nice tool here: http://microformats.org/code/hcard/creator

I hope that helps

Same opinion as everyone else here, it is not just about webmaster tools, you should use a 301 redirect from one versionm to the other too

As for whcih version to use, in my opionion it doesn't matter from an SEO standpoint which you use really, so it's down to a business decision based on what you feel is aesthetically more pleasing, or more useful to you. WITH ONE POSSIBLE EXCEPTION.

If you are in the situation that you have lots and lots of quality links to either version (www or non-www) then I would tend to lean towards that version. Obviously so long as you are putting a 301 redirect (are you on a linux server by the way?) then in time the weight of the links from one version (www or non-www) should be passed to the other version, via the permanently moved header status that Google will find. Even so, to keep things running smoothly, personally, I would go for a balance between what I think looks best, and which version has the most backlinks at present.

Whichever you choose, setup the 301 from the other version, to the version you go with.

I agree fully with what Ryan suggested above, if local is your target. Also consider using the hcard microformat on your address, as that can't hurt either.

Okay Damon, email sent.

I would maybe edit your message above, to remove your email. I know seomoz is more secured against spam bots than most forums due to being a subscription based membership, but even so it may be safer for you anti-spam wise, to not leave it in plain text, but obviously your choice there

"Freebies are good . . ." - Well, when you spend so promoting websites for money, it is nice to sometimes help just for the sake of helping, and publishing your release won't cost me any money, or much time - so glad to help out. I like seomoz Q & A forums, it has a much stronger atmosphere of collaboration than most other webmaster or seo forums I have been on over the years, so I am happy to try to 'do my bit' as I know in the future, I will undoubtedlybe asking, and receivingadvice from others! - what goes around, comes around...

Cheers Damon!