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If they have good content, unique and not spammy looking content, I will take the link. I would also look at the kind of sites they are linking to and as long as it's all good, closely related and there's no junk in there, it's a good link in my eyes.

I would also make sure that majority of my links are not coming from guest blog posts, that's what I would worry about more. Just making sure the link profile is as natural as possible. And don't always do anchor text links only.

I hope that helps.

All the 3 options are okay. You have to keep in mind, that with the nature of the Internet, you are not really going to be able to control which one of the 3 technique people/other website owners you, so essentially you can't know what people decide to do.

Another oppurtunity would be to implement something like www.repost.us (I saw that discussed here a couple days ago) and when I took a look at it, it looked interesting. Check it out.

I hope that helps. And yes, the most important aspect would be to make sure the content you are adding should be seen by Google on your website/blog 1st. If you are using WordPress or something like that, I would suggest using a plugin to publish and ping to Google an updated XML sitemap as soon as a new article is added. That should so it for you.

Yes, you could do multiple XML Sitemaps and then do a sitemap-index.xml referring to each of the individual sitemaps. I would also then add the URL to the XML Sitemap Index file in the robots.txt Something like: Sitemap: http://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap-index.xml

I would work with your developer/coder/cms/IT guys to make your homepage the real-homepage URL. That refresh is definitely not helping you.

I implemented the canonical tag last year in a similar situation and yes, it's on the original page as well. No issues. Look at eBay.com, they also have canonical tags on all pages including the original page.

I have not seen/encountered any issues. Now when I go check the cache for http://www.example.com/duplicate-url-3.html which has a canonical tag referring to the original-url, Google shows me the canonical URL. The duplicate pages literally disappear from the SERPS, because essentially its like a 301 redirect.

What's the best way to track 1000 keywords for a website along with monitoring how the competition ranks for the same set of keywords. We love the SEOMoz Tools but would love to see what else is out there using which I can pull weekly reports maybe of our rankings along with those of the competition.

Well, it really depends if you have any indexing issues. There's no downside in submitting one, so if it's not too much of an effort, it might be well worth it to submit one. Other issues I would suggest you look at: 1. Duplicate content issues between your main website and your mobile website 2. Are both m.yoursite.com and yoursite.com indexed in Google.com ? 3. I would recommend to disallow Googlebot-Mobile from crawling your mainwebsite and allowing only the Googlebot-Mobile on the Mobile site. I hope that helps.

I just had a link at one of their embed codes. Except a 300 characters snippet/excerpt, everything else is being served via a javascript. Links are shortened using their own URL shortening service and the images also look like hosted by their API.

I don't see any duplicate content issues.

From an advertiser/content provider perspective: Big brands have a decent possibly of getting brand exposure for their content without worrying too much about duplicate content issues.

From a publisher perspective, if you have the audience for a specific kind of content, you sure can pull some content, but it would neither hurt nor help you towards your SEO/content.

Keri, the images you uploaded are not showing up right. Can you please check. I am kinda curious to look

You can use a text editor like Notepad++ for it.

Download the website and do a search and replace for nameofdirectory to new****nameofdirectory. That should take care of it. Along with that put a 301 in place for any external links going to nameofdirectory. You should be good.

You might want to think about it a a little bit  more and see how it all fits in your marketing strategy. The recommendation is definitely to just link to the articles. The question is, where to link it from ?

Also, the question is whether you would want to pass link juice from your website to those pages?

As far as reproducing the content, that's definitely a no-no in my opinion, since you are then signing up to duplicate content issues.

What I mean to say is that within a few days after the 301 is set, Google will either update the URL or if they find a better page that should be the site-link instead of the new 301'd URL, it will update. It's just sort of seemless. Did that a couple months ago and worked like a charm.

Depending upon your link profile and how you currently rank in the SERPS, your best best is to do both. YOu are right thinking about it...both internal links as well as external links are important and some strong guest posts from niche blogs would certainly help. I would also not overdo just the guest posts kinds of links. Do other kinds of link building as well. For example, provide a link to this article code on your blog, which might invoke readers and other webmasters possibly linking to you from their blogs or discussing your article on a niche forum.

I hope that helps.

Is your website static or uses some sort of a CMS ? It might be possible to do a search and replace for nameofdirectory or newnameofdirectory and that should work. I would also recommend doing a directory level 301 redirect via .htaccess that will redirect  http://www.website.com/nameofdirectory/* to http://www.website.com/new****nameofdirectory/*

//301 Redirect Entire Directory RedirectMatch 301 /nameofdirectory(.*) /newnameofdirectory/$1

The best best in my opinion would be to do a 301 redirect for the 404 URL to the correct/updated page if you have one.

The meta robots block sounds like it's a block from your CMS or something in your header include file or something. I would check on the pages that show as blocked to see if there's any noindex sort of code in those pages. Other then that, shift in rankings could be based on your competition optimizing for the same set of keywords. I would recommend to spend some time analyzing the backlinks of the competition and see if you can gain some of those kinds of links.

On a side note: It also looks like you own both the .com and the .com.au site. The .com is hosted in AU and the .com.au is hosted in USA. Did you intend to do it the other way around ? I would imagine your rankings for the .com.au get better if it was hosted in Australia instead of USA.

I would suggest you try the likes of TextBroker.com unless you directly find a content writer focused in that niche right here within SEOMoz community.

I think I agree here. It's difficult to have a standard "SEO" page count. It also differs/varies by industry. Whenever I am getting any articles, I give the authors/content writers a general idea of above 500 words or less then 500 words (Short article vs long article) and let them decide what's needed based on what they are writing about. If they have more to write about the subject matter, I don't like the length of the article as long as the scope of the article is focused. They might be done with 400 words and if I tell them 700 words, they might not have something to write about and then I don't want fluff copy in there as well.

I know that does not really answer the question, but we usually try to target small/big articles and the actual length varies by the subject matter.

It's only a matter of time. I know it's frustrating. Read this great article from  Wil Reynolds - How Google Makes Liars Out of the Good Guys in SEO

Wow, every since BMR (BuildMyRank.com) got booted down, lots of Private Network questions are out there. In simple words, private networks specially when owned by the same person and / or link to the same network of sites are identifiable by automatic algorithms (Think what those Phd's are doing at Google).

Also, you might want to read these similar questions 1, 2.

Keep in mind, you are still prone to risk and whois protection or not, if a human can find it, patterns in linking can also help them identify themselves as networks. Moreover, if these sites are not strong themselves, how are they going to provide value ? so now, you will have to worry about getting links for those 30 sites as well to strengthen them. Otherwise, if there's no inbound links to those 30 sites, there's not much link juice they have to pass.

Makes sense ? I hope that helps.

Rand, that's a very interesting point about Google trying to find the details about the sneaky techniques a webmaster might have used. I see how that makes complete sense for them to find the source and get it off the roots like they did with BuildMyRank.com network.

It could be that. Just sort them by domain and check unique linking domains. Whatever link building strategy you are using, I would suggest you put other kinds of links in the basket and if possible non-anchor text, brand etc. Make your link profile natural.

That is neat EGOL. Do you use some custom programs/plugins to "rewrite" the feed ?

Yes, you are essentially talking about Brand Building. The kind of efforts and initiatives you are talking about will bring different kinds of links, mentions, citations from all over the web including but not limited to Press Releases, Links to Press Releases, Blog Mentions, Blog Comments, "maybe" a Wikipedia page etc etc. It's very difficult to put a dollar value next to all this work, but if that's not the concerns, by all means go and do it. It does help in Brand Awareness/SEO which are technically directly related in my eyes. Don't try to target too much of "Anchor Text", that's the only caution I would like to recommend.

All in all, you are on the right track. Do stuff that makes people/websites talk about you and link to you.

I definitely think there's potential as long as it's not over used and instead of being semi-related, it's tighly related. See my response to a similar question here. You have to weight the risk and the reward and it's best done with bringing value to the user rather then just links (even though we all know the reason is links).

What you could do is add 1 domain, then add your common keywords only and add 3 of the other sites as Competitors. Unfortunately, you can only setup up-to 3 Competitors per campaign. I hope that helps

In my opinion you are fine when you are targeting individual the 3 keyword examples you laid. It's very similar to if I had a website about Toyota Camri. The homepage is where I might target that keyword, but then I might have a separate page for each year/model, so 2000 Toyota Camri, 2001 Toyota Camri and so on. No issues here.

The issue would be if from the 2011 Graduating Class page, you are linking to another page with 2011 Graduating Class as the anchor text. That would be more of an issue.

Does that make sense ? I hope that helps.

Having a quick look on your website, the use of canonical tag looks fine. What exactly is the problem you are having ?

As I said I completely agree with you. There's is certainly "some" level of trust passed on and WebSEO's comment sounds right, because if that would not be the case that blogs on xxxx.blogspot.com and xxxx.wordpress.com would rank like crazy. So yes, number of sub-domains on a domain as well as the interlinking between the domain and the sub-domain would certainly influence the strength of the sub-domain, a little bit more.

The most important factor here that should help you make the decision easily is the usability and brand awareness of the sub-domain when it's attached onto your main authority/brand site.

As I said above in my 1st post and EGOL agreed, it would have been much stronger if you were able to do it as a sub-folder but I understand the technology issues. You might also want to look into Reverse Proxy if sub-folder is an option.

If you think about it, what you are suggesting has some sort of "usability" built into it - (lawyer give the accountant a plug when discussing minimizing taxes on his blog).

The problem with a network is that it eventually creates patterns. So if you think about BuildMyRank network of sites. Let's say they had 1000 Blogs B1-B1000. Now let's say they have 100 clients buying 10 links each C1-C100. If you graph it out, you'll notice the links will develop a pattern, which is fine (to some extent).

The problem lies when the content is completely unrelated to 1 another within 1 blog. Also, every blog post is linking to atleast 1 external site. Further, a network that size would certainly have some level of overlaps in terms of Web Hosting, IPs, Class C's, Domain Registrars and so on.

When you do it only to tweak search results (and we all know we need links to rank), it always contains some element of risk. However, I would suggest you do it more with Brand Keywords rather then exact match with your keywords. So if it's ABC Law Firm you are linking to, let it be ABC Law Firm as the anchor text vs Los Angeles Personal Injury Lawyer. Mix and match, maybe even nofollow them. And as I have said several times in my posts, don't overdo any 1 kind of link building. A natural link profile consists of 100'd of different kinds of links, varying anchor texts and so on.

I hope that helps.

Have you tried using SEMRush.com ? Dig into that and you might be able to dig in your keyword data. Feel free to buzz me in a PM and I might be able to dig into it for you a little bit at no cost.

If you are looking for a full scale keyword analysis, I am sure there would be somebody here willing to take on freelance work :).

You are not, you are absolutely right on the way you are thinking. Except that I have not seen any of that "root domain" advantage get passed onto the sub-domain level.

If your main-domain is a brand domain, maybe you could do the sub-domain and I understand your reasoning behind it, however I would not expect the sub-domain to trickle through the SERPS and get the domain authority and trust like your root level domain does.

The sub-domain won't essentially help you. Think of your sub-domain as a separate domain, almost. If it's possible from branding and other reasons, do a sub-folder and if that does not make sense or is not doable, your best best is go got Option 2. That according to me sounds better from Search perspective both short term as well as long run.

I agree. Think of those forums as part of the overall strategy and not look at them as just providing link value. Provide value to the user's of that forum/community and then you get both the visibility/brand awareness/citations as well as the SEO value.

Youtube videos do not contribute towards your page-load speed. Also, site-speed is one of the hundreds of SE factors and I would worry about the rest of the stuff before I get too concerned about site-speed. I would also be concerned if my site is in the lower side or even close to the average site speed.

How old/established is this site ? Is this an authority site ?

EGOL is right on. I would also think about what %age of your blog posts have search engine traffic ? Look at last 30/60/90 days maybe ? Is there any seasonal content ? Factor all those things and then decide. In a lot of cases, it makes sense to update them. Sometimes delete them and redirect them to an updated/newer article. It might also sometimes make sense to merge multiple similar topic articles.

Think from a user's perspective and not SE perspective and you'll be good as long as you are thinking about SEO best-practices, which it sounds like you are.

Sure and FYI here's my question about the same topic I asked day before.

http://www.seomoz.org/q/seo-conferences-which-one-s-do-you-attend

Jocelyn, I have not been to a MozCon per se, but I have been to another SEO Conference for several years now. There's a considerable amount of value in terms of staying on top of what's going on in the industry, what other folks/companies are doing, helping forward thinking and above all the opportunity of meeting/networking with tons of other people like yourself. That alone justifies going to MozCon and I am considering to go myself as well. I'd love to say hello in case we both make it ;).

I would essentially recommend you to take your keywords, and see who is ranking better then you for your keywords. Look at their backlinks and try to get links from those kinds of sites. It has to be a little bit of everything:

Press Releases
Some sort of an Infographic?
Content that people would like to link to...some sort of How To Guides...
The same sort of Guides if you can do different ones for your own site and others that can be used for Guest Posting on other sites/blogs.
Actively participate in some niche forums/local forums where people might be looking for this kind of help.

I would recommend not using any kind of link networks. If you can contact relevant blogs directly, maybe do some of those kinds of guest posts etc. Also, diversify your link profile. Do a little bit of everything or in other words, don't overdo any 1 technique. A natural link profile consists of all kinds of links and too much of any-kind is where it becomes un-natural.

I think it's high time for every one to realize this. Unfortunately, there's no shortcut to success. The quick/manipulative link building works. Yes, you can buy links and essentially trickle through the SERPS and get into top positions. But then you are risking your website/domain/trust for long term. Think about times to come and weigh in the reward vs risk. From what I have seen, heard, a majority of this is coming from people using BuildMyRank.com Link Network. There might be others, because Google said these 700,000 messages include the manual and automatic warnings/penalties.

Saw this earlier today from a Newsletter. Kudos to Buildmyrank for openly accepting what happened and stuff. Anybody who was using their network for links, would they care to provide some examples of the kind of links were generated through their network ? I am kinda curious to look at them and see what patterns if any existed in there.

Presuming both the sites hosted in UK share the same or similar interests/categories/niche, it's definitely the UK hosted site to the UK hosted site. Sounds like you already knew it, just wanted to make sure

I second you on the Excel for Mac is brilliant.

Yes, I agree. Some great responses here from EGOL, Click2Rank and Alan. You could essentially use your brand as the safest approach.

Ultraedit or any similar Text Editor will do. Here's a link to Ultraedit for Mac Download http://www.ultraedit.com/files/uex/OSX/UltraEdit_3.0.0.16.dmg

I have been in SEO since over 10 years now. And have been attending Pubcon since 2004 in Las Vegas. I think I have only missed 1.

This year, I have been thinking of which conferences to attend and here are the options. I am looking for 1st hand experiences from people who have attended multiple conferences to kinda do a comparison.

Here are the upcoming conferences by date. I am only listing the US Conferences.

• SES New York March 19-23* BlueGlass Los Angeles April 23-24* SMX Advanced Seattle Jun. 5-6* MozCon July 25 - July 27* SES San Francisco August 13-17* SMX New York | Oct. 2-4, 2012* Pubcon Las Vegas October 16 - 19* SES Chicago November 12-16* SMX Social Media Marketing Las Vegas | Dec. 5-6

  Please let me know what conferences you have attended in the past and which ones of these people here are planning to attend ?

It's not wrong. Google generates and displays page titles and descriptions based on the user's query. They use a variety of information including: Page Title, Meta Description, Snippets of text on the page related to the user's query etc to generate the page title. Your real page title shows up when you do this search: http://www.google.com/search?q=Best+Mothers+Day+Gifts+uncommon (Search for Best Mothers Day Gifts uncommon)