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I just saw a great video talking about Rankbrain. Listing it as the third largest ranking factor? After reading more about it, it appears to me that it is more of an algorithm than a ranking factor? Ranking factors are usually taking into account content, links, speed, social interaction, etc. Rank brain seems to be doing a calculation to making sense out of weird or unusual long tail words or realizing the similar queries of the same meaning. Please help me to understand how a website owner can use this to his/her advantage. Should we be putting strange long tail queries into our site next to common ones? Again I don't see this as being a ranking factor as opposed to an updated algorithm to help the end user get results for an unusual long tail search query...

I am looking for a reputable SEO company to assist in link building. I have done many searches and find that there are many sites that have a "top 10." However I am finding they are listed there due to paying large amounts of money. Any recommendations on companies that can show real results and are not charging extreme amounts of money while using minimum wage interns to do all the work with crappy results. I had a few people suggest "internet marketing ninjas" if anyone has used, chime in.

Thanks

The links ARE setup like this Link to your product

I am confused on how it knows to briefly direct to Shareasale. In this source code there is nothing that looks out of place. It looks like a completely normal link except it does contain the verbiage class="external-link" other than that it looks regular. These links are ALSO showing up in webmaster tools as DO FOLLOW.

I am not sure if this is completely true, however I contacted Shareasale about these links. I asked them if I were to close my Shareasale account, they said the link would then just directly go to me. The anchor link is indeed directly pointing to my site. I am not sure how google can read that it is affiliate looking at source code alone?

There are websites that have linked to my site. Whenever I hover over link I see my direct website URL and I am not seeing "no follow" when viewing source code so I assume these are passing link juice. However when I click on link it directs briefly to shareasale (affiliate account) in web address bar, but then quickly directs back to my website URL as directed. I was curious if these good links I am acquiring truly pass juice or since they briefly pass through an affiliate site if that cancels or dilutes the link juice. Also I am noticing when inspecting element that after the HREF it says class="external-link"

I am just not sure if my link building efforts are being ruined by having an affiliate account running.I did not tell them I had one. I guess they are searching to see that I have one and trying to make a few extra commission dollars.

I run an e-commerce site which is why I have so many pages. Each product acts as its own page. Each product has a title (product name) and each has its own URL as well as short description, long description and meta description. Maybe I need to go further into the description and add more content and double check that they are in fact being crawled by google as you mention.

I am using Magento. I have done a decent job adding proper descriptions and meta data. I was just outreached by a company called Grouphigh who says I am missing the boat somewhere. The rep mentioned my SERP is growing but has so much more potential. He said he used a tool to track the amount of keywords that I am currently showing up in organic searches and that it was very low in comparison to the amount of pages I have. Does this statement hold water? Is there something that I should be doing differently to increase this?

I was recently contacted by an SEO firm that did a search on my site and said it had a low index. Out of 5,000+ pages only 800 keywords was ranking. They said there is much improvement for adjusting my meta data for indexing. They said there is a software that does this for you. Does anyone have any experience with this? Does this sound true what they are explaining? What is this software and how much does it cost? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I have an e-commerce website and am trying to create product category pages. I am under the impression that Description is the text that would appear under the title on a google search and I believe the meta description is just what google reads? Is having BOTH important or just description? Is it ok to duplicate the description for the meta description? I know its not good to duplicate descriptions on other products and pages.

I am currently using magento and have all titles labeled correctly. I have made a H1 tag for the main page which works fine. Each product title becomes and H1 tag, which again is fine. However my category pages are missing H1 tags. If I manually code an H1 tag, then there becomes 2 H1 tags. It is using my category name then my manual H1 tag. I don't want it to use my category name because it is shortened to fit on my navigation bar.
Ex. www.mydomain.com/tshirts/short-sleeve 
In this example the subcategory title is short sleeve. When using MOZ tool on frontend it shows NO H1 tag or the title becomes H1 tag "short sleeve" however I want the H1 to actually be "short sleeve tshirts"
If I manually add an H1 tag to description on category page it adds both the title AND the H1 tag I enter.