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My actual conclusion then would be to maybe do a guest post for your friend's site talking about how surf school could benefit from considering their marketing and get a valid in-context link rather than just a link in  a footer, which Lee above quite rightly points out could be seen as spammy.

That way you're contributing positively to the development of your friends site and the in-context link appears just on one page (not site-wide) and actually means the page is a relevant, but highly targeted/specialist page which validly links to your site.

Should get you a bit more targeted referrals, rather than you 100% bouncing ones too

Hi there,

Great question! The hardest thing I've had to learn with SEO...and therefore had to teach clients is the value of patience. Doing SEO right is a balance between showing short-term gains (say fixing website errors or correctly doing on page optimisation/content writing), but long-term sustainability (earning links the hard way). As an agency, SEO clients often want quick results - and most quick results in SEO either go against The Guidelines, or simply aren't sustainable.

Patience is also needed when you can see competitors using 'quick fix' methods but know they will get their comeuppance at some point. Just because a competitor is using a tactic that doesn't mean you or your client should. And that's hard for clients to swallow as they see their competitor benefitting from it, at least in the short-term.

This can mean great results taking months to show themselves. If you're doing all the right things and investing the right amount of time and effort, then good results will come to pass - but Google being Google, you can't always know when those results will surface.

Hope this helps!

Martin

In short, both are important. I focus firstly on the Page Domains because at the end of the day it is that Page that is ranking.

But you must also ensure that you are raising your overall domain authority so getting links and publishing content and social sharing (etc) for other pages of your site as well.

If you raise the overall domain authority, the pages tend to get a lift too, but start with the page metrics first.

Hope this helps.

I think you need to look beyond Page Rank. Make sure you set you FB page to show info rather than timeline/news feed by default for non-fans.

Look to other stats such as visitors from your FB page and then use your FB wall well to influence your SEO in a natural way

The only instances I've come across of Google ignoring a META DESCRIPTION is when it decides that something from the website's content is more relevant than what has been written in the META DESCRIPTION.

I don't know if this is others' experience though?

Review the meta tags and ensure they're not spammy, they are unique across all pages and are a valid summary of the page's content and then wait for re-crawling to see if it makes a difference.

For a start you shouldn't be doing any 'link wheels' as you risk damaging all 7 sites. If the brands are within the same company and are related you could probably 'cross-sell' but that can just look spammy from a customer's perspective.

You'd be better focussing on each brand individually and building up its authority and getting quality links than linking 7 sites on the same IP/C-Block.

Just. Don't. Do. The. Wheel.

The value of a link is a complex thing, to be honest. Your 2m 'no follow' links can have a variety of value depending on

• The number of domains those are placed on
• The position of those links on the linking site
• The value of the page the link is placed on
• The actual anchor text in that link.

Also try not to think of links purely in terms of ranking. At the end of the day, ranking is great, but what you really want is traffic. A 'natural' link profile will have some nofollow links in it (in most cases) and you may find some nofollows are great at driving traffic.

On the flip side you also want a good proportion of followed links as these represent a 'full value vote' for your site, rather than somewhat of a disassociation, which a nofollow can imply.

So get a variety of links from a variety of sources in  a variety of ways but don't ignore a potential linking opportunity just because it may be nofollow as there may be other advantages to be gained that purely ranking.

Heya,

Seems like on the whole you've at least thought through the redesign etc, so well done on that score. Here's my opinion on your questions though:

1. Leaving the XML file on-site for a short while won't do any harm - but make sure you have a new XML files containing the correct website structure going forward. Make sure your new structure has strong canonical tags so that the 301s are also recognised by their new URLs. As far as I know, the XML file doesn't help 'pass the juice', the 301's will.

The other consideration is to ensure you systematically look at external links to old pages and get them changed to point to new pages as the juice value of 301's diminishes over time.

2. You should only see a drop in your rankings if your new page content and titles become less relevant. So ensure your on-page optimisation is done well for your target keywords as soon after that page 'going live' as possible. If you drop in rankings, it may be temporary, or as you say with fresh content it may give it a boost. The issue is not your rankings, but ensuring relevance for your page. If you drop, compare your on-page optimisation to those of your competitors and see what they are doing differently.

If you do everything systematically/methodically and do it well then you should be fine.

This is looking okay to me - with the only issue being that the +44 and (0) are outside of your Telephone Itemprop. You want to include one or both inside this.

What you're trying to achieve is a good rich snippet and consistency with other places your details are shown - e.g. Google Maps, local directories etc. And the area code is part of your local identity, so in the very least, put the zero inside the telephone itemprop.

Hi Martin,

Firstly, rather than keyword density, be more concerned about keyword frequency compared to your other content.

My view would be to do one of two things

• Add more content - maybe an intro paragraph to that section of e-commerce site or maybe include customer reviews - something helpful and relevant to give your page more meat.
• Vary your product descriptions

I know it's harder in e-commerce when you have similar products, we have a couple of large e-commerce clients and on-page optimisation, potential for accidental 'keyword stuffing' and cannibalization exists because products are so similar, all the best with it and hope this helped.

Hi Doug,

And I did not presume you could or couldn't do those things, but I didn't word my post in a way that was condescending...explaining things step by step is not always appropriate because I would rather presume knowledge on a forum like SEOmoz than presume ignorance.

So, I hope you were not too offended by my presumption of knowledge.

That being said would you like me to explain what to do to achieve the above points? I am more than happy to do so, by the way.

• On the volume of links - if it is a large-scale issue then another solution would be to have a non-SSL version home page, but on login they are taken to a different SSL 'member welcome' or 'dashboard' sort of page. That way you can retain the link value to the non-SSL version while providing the necessary security over the logged-in functionality.
• On the question of non-SSL links to SSL page ... any extra 'diversion' required between a link and its target has, in my experience, the propensity to reduce that link's effectiveness. even the effects of 301's diminish over time because the presumption is that the page you are 301-ing to is the correct 'new' one and is therefore more relevant, which is why I initially suggested getting links 'fixed'. As your initial post did not suggest the scale of links I could not have replied in a more precise way.

So I do suggest you consider implementing the first bullet point above as a good compromise and will retain the value of your links but permits the SSL implementation as well.

Let me know if I can help further or if you need more things explaining so that you know how to go about doing some of the things suggested. Thanks.

I have yet to come across an Analytics campaign where the traffic report doesn't show some traffic from the site we're analysing. The reason is that people visit the home page from the other pages so it's basically an 'internal referral'. What you want to use is the landing page analysis instead, or just use the filters to exclude example.com referrals.

If you're redirecting all variants of the home page to root and your canonical is going to root, then you should be fine.

Check using a site:example.com search in Google and if you only have root and no /default.asp /index.asp etc then it's fine and you don't have an actual canonical problem - which is what I suspect.

I think it's just ensuring you look at the right analytics reports now and don't get confused in the myriad reports it lets you have.

Hi Stephane,

All the below assumes you feel there is some value in keeping the original website live at all.

My first reaction would be to do a full review of all your old content and carefully consider which ones may have been hit by Panda - is there keyword stuffing, content duplicated from other sites, thin content...etc? Then either fix or completely rewrite those.

After that you should avoid publishing duplicated content so my view would be
1. Remove the rewritten/fixed articles completely from the old site
2. Don't implement the 301 so you don't get any redirected bad Penguin vibe
3. Put a block on those URLs using robots.txt
4. Remove the URLs from Google's index in Webmaster Tools

Then you are free to publish your new, Panda-friendly content to your new website.

Not sure what other mozzers would say, but that's my view. This is not about 'spinning content' but removing poor content and republishing great content. Hope it makes sense.

It sounds to me as though most of the content from old site is staying but that 3 enigmatic 'tools' are being moved to a new domain.

In which case I would want to be sure that the functionality being moved wasn't the cause of the previously lifted penalty, especially from a Panda perspective (given that the tools on the new domain presumably won't have any links pointing to it, Penguin shouldn't be an issue) - as a penalty would be re-applied if the tools are not Panda-friendly.

So:

• if you want to have the tools on both sites, I'm with Pete - noindex the tools on the old site.
• if you are permanently moving the tools, review them for Panda-friendliness and then noindex the old site's URLs, probably worth blocking the old URL in robots.txt as well.
• If your previous penalty was nothing to do with the tools at all, and the link profile of those pages is good (or if there aren't any links) then 301 the old URLs to the new.

That's if between Pete and myself we've understood correctly what you're trying to achieve.

Good Luck!

Your problem started with 50-60 domains with duplicate content - why do this? If you are working in different geographical regions then honour those places by giving them some unique content to justify your presence in the local search results.

I'd either nofollow or remove the link to your main websites as you have essentially 50-60 identical websites linking to your website - so, from Google's perspective, why should they improve your rankings?

Do a search across the Q&A's as there are loads of threads on Penguin recovery but in short it's about doing positive things

• Un-spammify any of your pages - so any on-page/site issues must be resolved (In your case, this means changing your unique content problem)
• Do positive link building
• Ensure a natural anchor text profile
• Don't seek any quick fixes.

Unfortunately for you that may mean changing 60 sites, but as that's where your problem started, that's where your clean-up starts.

If you can use alternative languages such as PHP or ASP then you can still achieve a 301 redirect. Here's a useful page of different 301 options.

http://www.webconfs.com/how-to-redirect-a-webpage.php

Right, you seem to be asking two questions here - responsive or not? And if you head for responsive then could it impact your SEO.

Responsive or Not As with any website question the issue is going to come down to what's best for your users or your target users. The same question could be 'app or mobile website' for example.

The more I've worked in web design the more I am seeing that when a user is searching on their phone they want the same answers as if they were searching on their laptop or desktop. The relevancy of what they are delivered should not be changed however the format must be changed to suit their device.

The above point being said about 'best for your users', I fall very much into the line of thought that you should be providing exactly the same content to mobile and non-mobile users, it will simply be the design or layout which changes.

A responsive site takes time to code and test - but once the wireframe is sorted and responds well to different devices, then you're sorted as each page should flow across the devices without an issue.

If you have a separate mobile website then you are suddenly coding and managing two websites and, to be honest, a mobile website will need testing across devices and tweaking accordingly so you're almost duplicating your work (you're doing responsive web design but on a second site), something I just don't see the point of, if your whole website fits the majority of devices accessing it.

So for me: responsive

Can Responsive Affect SEO? You need to make sure that it is done well and that you're not deluding the search engines or users in any way. Personally, I don't see the point in 'hiding a sidebar' when responsive web design and CSS permits you to reformat it and display it in a mobile-friendly way. Why reduce the mobile user's experience if you, with a bit more work, can give them an appropriate and rich experience?

So if you do it properly, you're providing the same content to mobile users but just showing it differently. If you keep that in mind then there should be no negative SEO implications and you never know, your conversions from mobile users and referrals/shares from mobile users may increase above your competitors because you've taken time to give them a great experience.

Hope this helps - you're not dealing with small issues - we're in the middle of recoding our website for responsive web design, so all the best as you make these decisions.

The more I've worked with search engines, the more you get used to the occasional 'blip' in your rankings. The Bing/Yahoo algorithm seems to yield particular inconsistent rankings as well.

I would suggest that if you were out the top 50 before and now, ignore the sudden great rankings and work on your on-page and off-page optimisation.

Bear in mind Yahoo & Bing share data and Bing (as with Google) uses social signals, so up your social media game and interaction (in a non-spammy way).

No easy route to the top I'm afraid, just hard work, but work done in the right direction

Oh in that case if there is no actual page, neither for humans nor for search engines, then I don't see how it would affect your SEO efforts, positively or negatively.

If an entire structure is changing then it depends to what depth. Basically, are there rules you can apply?

i.e. domain.com/products/[product-group]/product-name/

to

domain.com/[category]/product-name/

If there are rules like that then it reduces you work to pattern matching URLs and redirecting them accordingly, and I can post you .htaccess entries.

If the product names/URL and categories etc are changing then it may boil down to redirecting each URL individually, which for an e-commerce site will be a huge manual job. On the upside, you know for certain URL A --> URL B.

Let me know what applies and I'll let you know what to do Have had to handle domain moves (we are just about to do it again for our own site) so I know it's a headache you want to get right first time.

Oh and make sure you've got BOTH the old and new domains authorised in Google Webmaster Tools before you do the move

Yes, see the link I posted above and you place it in your PHP file before any HTML or headers are outputted.

Seriously, people over-estimate the importance of having a keyword in the domain. Google have said they are weakening the importance of this and have said many a time that a good brand is much more important.

As Kevin rightly says, that is still 1 factor in a list of over 200. There is still opportunity to get the keyword into file names (therefore still in the URL) if you really want to.

But don't over-emphasis something that Google is de-emphasising. You should build a strong brand first rather than making longer and longer domains just to get keywords in. Save your money and keep & use your main branded domain.

From a programmer's perspective I would assume a basic algorithm exists where your search is partially matched, then shown in reverse order (most recent first).

If they're clever they might match other factors from your profile against the job requirements - e.g. if you have a required qualification, or previous experience.

As it's been a while since I applied for a job and the last job site we built was over a year ago, I can't speak for 'most job boards'. If I were you I'd give a few a spin and see if you can work out what's going on when you search. Try some non-logged in searches, then set up a profile and try again, see if the results are different.

Martin

I don't know what my other Mozzers here would say, but I don't see how your site could be viewed as a doorway just because you're hosting images off-site.

If the e-commerce site itself functions properly and you have the right content on it and is, unique in what it provides (i.e. no duplicate content) then I don't see it can be a doorway.

I also assume that the full-size images won't be accessible by a normal 'link', i.e. you only get the right to that image once you've paid for it?

If that's the case then I genuinely can't see any risk to your e-commerce site. Provide great content, a good shopping environment and build your reputation online, as with any business.

Personally, I think you can relax - and from a web design perspective, I don't blame you for looking to host large images off-site

Start with the page itself - is it adding value to your website? If not then even before you think about links you should consider re-writing or removing it.

If it's a quality page with useful or interesting information on it then so long as the page isn't spammy then you should be okay to keep it.

In a recent WBF, Rand suggested that ways to deal with negative SEO (whether caused by yourself or someone else) include:

1. Trying to remove the 'bad links', assuming you've worked out which ones are bad
2. Building more good links to outweigh the bad ones.

Like you said, if you have good links, you may not want to lose them. If you're talking about a page that has been penalised (potentially during Penguin) then fix any issues with the site's content itself and then file a reconsideration request.

And then get on with some great link building and promoting of your page.

Hi there,

You don't have to do much differently for 'niche' sites in terms of SEO than any non-niche site, to be honest. You will still need to choose your keywords, put together some great content, manage your site structure and on-page optimisation well and ensure a great user experience.

After that your link building efforts are fairly simliar in that you'll need to look for good linking opportunities. Look at your competitors for the keywords you're targeting and then maybe look at some advanced search queries:-

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/9-actionable-tips-for-link-prospecting

Niche Communities The thing I would suggest is getting involved in communities based around your niche - maybe hook into some blogs or forums, or other community types and be of use to the people there - get to know people well (don't just see it as 'link building'). If you're in a niche then you want to get known in that niche.

Social Media Look up some communities through social media or do keyword searches in those site to identify people you could get involved with or get to know.

Backlinks How many links it takes to get you noticed? How long is a piece of string? It depends on the quality of the sites linking to you and what your competitors are up to - that will change niche-to-niche.

Web Designer You should be able to get any web designer to create your niche site but I would suggest you go with a designer who understands SEO in order to get the site structure and content right before the site goes live. Ensure you get an Italian Copywriter to look over the content so that keywords are inserted in a natural, linguistically acceptable way - i.e. it reads well.

Hope this is of use to you

My understanding of the changeover Google is enforcing of Google Places -> Google+ pages is that they are automatically switching them over, but over a period of time.

You're right to not create a business 'person' account in Google+ because that goes against their guidelines. So for now, work with the two solutions and if it hasn't changed over in a week or two, maybe contact the Places Team directly.

Oh and Google historically have not made anything straightforward on the Google Places side of things, so I would just say have a bit of patience marrying up your Google services

You can add multiple sitemaps in Google Webmaster Tools, that's not a problem. So you could, I suppose, add a sitemap of just your new pages.

In my opinion though, I think you should just generate a new one at http://www.xml-sitemaps.com and upload and resubmit it. That would work just as well as a part sitemap.

If your site is really large though, maybe the part sitemap is the right answer, but going forward you'll have to remember which bits appear in which sitemap so you don't have overlap or accidental omissions.

Hope this helps.

I suggest then you use pattern matching in order to restrict which parameters you don't want to be crawled.

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=156449

A couple of questions for you:

• Do you link to your FB/Twitter pages anywhere?
• Have you got your FB page set to display the 'Info tab' first before people become a fan?
• Have you shared your FB/Twitter pages on the other platforms.

It takes time for both GWT and OSE to track all links. The important thing is whether you're getting human visitors to your site from FB/Twitter, not whether they appear in a database

I think things like LinkedIn Endorsements have an effect that is outside the sphere of SEO in one sense. What you are achieving is social proof - other people saying you are good at something in particular.

That being said, your LinkedIn page has a static URL and can be optimised for keywords and if your endorsements include the things you want to be found for then that can help you rank personally.

E.g. if you put in 'Martin Oxby SEO' then you get my blog first and second is my LinkedIn page. Not that high volumes of people put that in, it's just for illustration!

So it's more about your personal branding and identity on the internet. So go get those endorsements, but see it as having other types of value - and optimise your Linked In page so that it definitely includes the things you want to personally be associated with.

Hope this helps.

That's not a great mechanism for a CMS even before you consider SEO!

Do you understand ASP sufficiently to move the default.asp to the root directory and then apply the rel=canonical?

If the actual homepage is /content/default.asp then there are two things you should probably consider

1. Make the redirect from root to /content/default.asp a 301 as it is permanently at that address, not temporarily
2. Any links you get in need to point to /content/default.asp for max effect.

(2) is really tough as it's messy for webmasters  and doesn't do your website branding any good. So, to be honest I would be looking at moving that default page to root, if the choice were mine.

Open to other opinions.

Right, one of our clients fits this bill exactly. So here goes:-

• Do a 301 redirect of all impacted URLs in the .htaccess or web.config file (depending on the type of server)
• Ensure the sitemap.xml contains the HTTPS versions only.
• Find out who's linking to your pages and using the HTTP and ask them to update the link to https
• Do a double check of all internal links (which should have relative paths anyway) and make sure none refer to HTTP

If you do it well it shouldn't negatively impact it at all. Positive? Well, depends on the competition I suppose, having a HTTPS shows care for your community and providing a secure service is a good thing, but I wouldn't expect much of a nudge based on this alone.

When you're creating a post, click the +Add Image or Video URLs link. You'll have to have uploaded it somewhere else first, so you have the absolute URL to paste in.

The main problem with outsourcing your link building is lack of control and oversight. Unless you go to a  reputable SEO Company who you trust (and preferably have met) be very careful about who you get to do your link building.

As it's a new site you want to get it off on the right footing so with any company you take on you want to be asking about their link building processes and even, maybe, for a while ask them for a sample of places they have requested links from.

Heya there,

Thanks for asking your question here

My first point would be that human visitors don't like to be given forms when they first visit a site, so would suggest you don't do this.

My alternative strategy would be to provide a home page of good content talking about the data etc that is available on your site and then provide a button for people to register if they want to.

Don't detect the user agent and provide alternative content as, however good your intentions are, that could be considered cloaking. Google is against you providing Google different content to humans, so don't do it.

Do things differently

Hey Russ,

Thanks for your reply. I will do my best to answer your questions 'back at me'!

1. I was aware that the reconsideration request may have no impact and as the client doesn't recall receiving a penalty notice, I just got it done to ensure we were covering all basis. And for a couple of minutes used, I thought it would be worth checking.

2. I agree we need to do some link removal. One question on the back of that, and ensuring we do what is needed within the client's limited budget is, if the links/websites are no longer listed in Google (which from the partial data we have from the old company, many are not), does removing them hold any value as the links won't be passing signals of any kind if the site's not in the SERPs any more, right?

3. My only concern with this one is the risk of duplicated content. The client has already re-written the home page and is in the process of re-writing the others because of the previous company's spammy SEO approach. To get them to write another version is going to be too much for them. I'm definitely considering getting them on a fresh domain but don't want to inadvertently cause them more problems!

Thanks for the article, that came out during a time of illness so I completely missed it. Thanks!

Not yet. I think there's a feature request to add more, but that's not currently the case. In the interim I suggest you diarise when you want to update your competitors and do a manual spreadsheet and load in data from http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/ as you can get a 'snapshot' of competitor data at any time that way instead. Then make regular updates to your spreadsheets.

Hope this workaround helps.

My first major comment will be to choose wisely, shop around and make sure any SEO company you take on explains how they go about the link building strategy. Source someone local, or at least in your own country who understands you, your needs and your business environment.

Secondly, you should consider what you are already doing - or think about what you should do. i.e.

• Are you becoming part of communities online?
• Are you contributing to blogs or writing some great content that relates to your website
• What are you doing to engage people on social media
• Do you know what your competitors are doing - so you can learn the good stuff and avoid the junk?

Your question sounds simple, but you need to balance knowing what you can (and maybe should) be doing yourself, while taking on a business you can work closely with who will help you on this front.

Maybe temporarily stop the 301 on the old site. Re-run your crawl reports and see if there were any 404s in existence on the old site that you hadn't previously thought. Plug the links and then reinstate the 301?

Either that or, if you're sure there's no problem, download the phantom 404s to CSV and then only take note of additions to that list in future?

I'm not sure what others think, but I think you're actually going to be better off doing the redirect. If there's one thing a site shouldn't be is a doorway page to another site.

So, what I suggest is to do the 301 redirect to capture any people who visit it and bring them into your 'real site'.

Before you do this do a download of all your existing links into ese.co.uk and then methodically go through them and ensure they point directly to esedirect.co.uk.

That way you get the link juice in the short term, but after the 301 'value' has diminished, the updated links will have the full value for esedirect.co.uk.

If there is any content of value on the old site, maybe bring it up to date and relaunch it on the new site after the 301 redirect as well.

Hope this helps!

Martin

Personally I would say be very careful with creating pages with minor keyword differences. While it is possible to rank more than one page for a keyword, be careful about site-wide stuffing.

In short your home page for 'Dubai City Apartments' is still likely to rank for 'Dubai Apartments' due to the only variation in the keywords being the word 'city'. The homepage is relevant for both keywords.

Only if you think another page will add value for your visitors should you add that page at all.

Hope this helps.

I suppose it all depends on what you mean by 'directory'. If you just mean paid inclusion - i.e. there's no value in being on that site, or even no listing on that site if you don't pay, then No, because essentially it's a paid link (which is generally bad).

If that directory is offering you some other paid service on top of a good free listing on a quality directory, then you have to assess that website in terms of its return for you. Do a few minutes research to determine if being listed on that site is likely to be good for your business, except for another 'keyword rich anchor text'...

You need to assess each site on its own merits, but we don't use paid directories - in our eyes you'd be better investing that time and money in producing some great content and then getting that out over social media. There are usually much better investments for your business finances than a paid directory - especially if there's the risk that a website you've paid to be listed on falls out of the Google index and therefore is giving you precisely nil value.

Remember link building should be a natural thing, so get a variety of websites, a variety of link texts and as is preached here at SEOmoz, get good quality editorial links where you can too.

Hope this helps a little.

Try this - http://www.internetofficer.com/seo-tool/redirect-check/

Another great free tool is the Screaming Frog SEO Spider.

Hope this helps!

This is a tough one, particularly as Google Places is one of big G's most inconsistent products. The additions I would have would be

• Are other websites listing the business in precisely the same location/address?
• Have you used microformats on the address on-site?
• Have you submitted a geositemap.xml file?
• Has the business got ratings and reviews from their customers/clients?

If I think of anything else I'll edit this post

Google+ Pages can be 'publishers' but not 'authors' as far as I can see. This makes sense because people, not organisations actually write content.

I suggest you look at

http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/how-to-implement-rel-author and

http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/google-plus-seo

for more details in effectively implementing rel="author" and rel="publisher"

I think for a start you need to not worry about percentages or nit-picking over calculations. Here are some basic principles

• Firstly make sure your website itself is great and that your content reads well for human beings, then perform your on-site optimisation to make sure the site is primed for your choice of keywords. In my view, if you've selected your keywords, your on-page optimisation has to be the next step - because any visitors you are bringing into your site from search must be engaged and interested. Get some colleagues/friends to read it through.
• Then begin your link-building. Make sure you have a range of type of link - editorial posts, reviews or relevant articles you've written, some directories maybe, get engaged into some relevant communities to what you do - have you exhibited at a wedding fair? Then see if the venue organisers list their exhibiters and get listed.
• You will need to have a good proportion of links with your target anchor text - but they must be in-context, so worry about that aspect on the sites you have the most control over - i.e. doing an article on a wedding blog about selecting the right music for your wedding. If link building is done 'naturally' then the range of anchor texts will come as different sites will link to you in different ways.
  • Some may allow keyword-rich anchors
  • Some will be business name
  • Some will be 'Website'
  • Some will be your website URL etc etc
• Google in particular likes brand value - so ensure you are building awareness of your brand through all your marketing activities, through online and offline means.

So build a strategy for your link building but make sure the keyword range is broad and steer clear of 'best wedding singer' unless you've got sufficient awards or something that merits the title.

Oh and one final thing might be to grow your own website with relevant information or helpful articles, or even different styles of singing you do. Some couples may want a romantic wedding singer or a 'fun, jazzy' one. You could easily broaden your keyword appeal by not limiting all your keywords to 'wedding singer'-oriented ones.

Hope this helps.

Okay... two main points I think here

1. Yes, which domain/sub-domain the links are pointing to makes a difference - so if you have a www version and your links point to the non-www version then it's not quite as great. (Still has value for your site, though, it's important to remember). So you need to decide which is the most important and keep the canonicalisation (is that a word?) consistent throughout.
2. In Wordpress you should be able to change the direction of the redirect, have a shuffle around the 'settings' section and you should be able to find it.

Hope this is helpful.