Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi I am migrating an old wordpress site to a custom PHP site and the URL profiles will be different, so want to retain all link profiles and more importantly if a user visits the old urls via search then they are seamlessly transferred to the new equivalent page For example www.domain.com/about-us is going to need to redirect to www.domain.com/aboutus.php www.domain.com/furniture is going to need to redirect to www.domain.com/furniture-collections.php etc What is the best way of achieving this apart from .htaccess as not 100% confident of doing this.  Could it be done via PHP or using meta tags?

Hi We have around 10 supplementary sites that have links to our site which are now closing down but are out of our control.  We could have access to their domains so how could we maintain the link juice from these old sites which are going to our new site? However there will be no websites left on these old supplementary just domain names

What local strategies has anybody used in the past to boost the local likes of a Facebook page.  The business concerned is a home improvements company covering a geographical area of the UK. What I would like to do is try and increase the number of likes from our potential target audience in cities and towns that we cover. I don't think Facebook ads are the right choice as many users just ignore them, but would be interested in online and offline marketing strategies that could be used to boost numbers to our Facebook page. The reason this is so important especially in the home improvement space is that most projects are awarded on word of mouth recommendations, so Facebook is the perfect platform.

Hi For Twitter using Followerwonk you can gauge the influence on what a person/brand is using a tool like Follwerwonk helping you find the most influential twitter users based on a number of metrics.  But is there a similar tool for Facebook which shows which brands/companies Facebook sites have the most influence.  Or is the best way to gauge this is just on their number of likes? which is not really accurate

Hi We currently have 6 showrooms in a geographical area (Scotland,UK) and each showroom covers a specific region within the country encompassing towns and cities.  So for example showroom A based in Edinburgh covers a customer area of Edinburgh, Fife, St Andrews while showroom B located in Glasgow covers Glasgow, Livingston etc  In google places I have drawn the geographical area on the map that each showroom covers making sure that they do not overlap At present some of which are ranking well in local but one is stating that 'google does not support this location' and after following previous advice on the forum this is still the case. Would I be better setting up another google account for this showroom and submit it again into Google Places or would it be better going into Google+ business pages? or are they the same thing? Finally is it worth using the following in Google Places? KML File and Geo Sitemap generation (these files are needed for Google) Address output in Schema.org format

Hi I have a new website going live which has a different page names etc i.e. the old site had pages that are ranking called aboutus.html and the new site is called about.php What is the best approach to maintain the rank and also on orphaned pages Many Thanks

In the home improvement industry (windows, doors and conservatories) what is the best approach with regard to PR in order to build quality links. It's a lot easier if  you are selling a computer, mirror, widget etc as you have an actual product that you can send magazines,bloggers, journalists to review/feature for inclusion in their publications. It's a lot more difficult if you are a builder, double glazing installer etc to get this PR coverage as you have nothing to send them to review, feature etc. What approach do the experts on the forum think that would work best in the double glazing industry to secure coverage across publications both online and offline?

Hi We are currently spending approx £500 pcm on google ad words however if I increased this spend to £4000 pcm what kind of results would this achieve? For example would it just be more visits per day as the budget is larger? Also what is the best way to track the success of an adwords campaign - the ultimate goal of the campaign would be to generate a lead whether this be a phone call, email or using our book an appointment form. Our service covers a geographical area (Scotland) and for organic search we are doing well 1st pages listings for searches such as pvc doors edinburgh etc so I am unsure whether it's worth increasing my PPC spend or put more resource into SEO,  or even Facebook ads?

Hi My Google places listing has vanished from the local search results, and when clicking on the 'see your listing on Google' link from the Google Places dashboard I am getting the message We currently do not support the location What is causing this is it due to another listing with the same address?  I have now deleted this extra listing which is now showing as suspended until I enter the pin which will remove it. But what other steps do I need to take to get the listing back on google places search results?

Hi I am planning on setting up a lead generation website in a sector I know well and have a domain registered although its only a few weeks old. I am looking for some insight and advice please to see it its worth doing.  For example there are lots of payday loan (not my niche btw) lead gen sites in the UK at the moment but what do all of these sites do with all the leads they generate - who buys them and for what cost per lead? I have done affiliate marketing in the past, but how does the lead gen process work. Do you sign up with a lead gen affiliate style network that buys the leads generated off your website. Or do you have to sell these leads on yourself?  If so where do you sell them.  I plan tobe operating in the UK

Hi Is it possible within Twitter or Hootsuite to locate users who for example have announced they have recently become engaged or mention Valentines within a certain geographic area such as London that I could use to target them with tweets which would be of interest to them

Hi If you have a potential domain which is high quality and well searched for what is the best way to find out and monetise the CPC for that phrase?

Hi I have just came across some URL's from the previous web designer and the site structure has now changed. There are some links on the web however that are still pointing at the old deep weblinks. Without having to contact each site it there a way to automatically sort the links from the old structure www.mydomain.com/show/english/index.aspx to just www.mydomain.com Many Thanks

Hi I had a Google Places listed fully completed 100% and was ranking well in the local search results.  However since it has been converted to a Google+ Local page it is not ranking like it used to and the main problem I can see is that the address is now incorrect on theGoogle+ local listing However it wont let me change the address? yet when I click on manage this page and view the listing under Google Places the address is correct? Any ideas on how to resolve this?

Hi Within Facebook business admin there is an option to email your contacts to invite them to like your page. Has anyone done this?  and would sending this invite request out to your mailing list of subscribers be allowed in Facebook or would it be seen as spamming?  even though they have opted in to recieve communications/news/offers from the company?

Hello I am trying to integrate the Facebook social plugin http://developers.facebook.com/docs/...gins/comments/ into my website. So far I have included the HTML 5 code in my site and it is visible, but how can I moderate the comments before they are being posted? I have included into the header of the root of my site but when viewing the comments area on a page within my site I cannot see any moderation options? Hope this makes sense and someone can help Many Thanks

Hi Have just read an inspiring post by Cyrus @ www.seomoz.org/blog/tips-to-use-google-for-seo But before I ask my existing social media contacts and email lists who have a Google account to +1 my site, what offers most benefit from a search visibility perspective? Should I ask my contacts to +1 my homepage (there is a +1 button on there) or Click on the +1 button on my businesses Google+ page and also ask them to join my circles? Hope this makes sense? Many Thanks

Hi What is the best way to see what backlinks one of my domains has pointing at it? It is an older domain and is no longer being used for marketing purposes and has a 301 redirect on it. However when looking at this older domain in opensiteexplorer it does not show what the links are because it redirects to the newer domain name

Hi What are the main differences between Bing and Google in terms of ranking sites? My site is ranking well in Google but in Bing it is very low down and does not deliver much traffic. In Bing webmaster tools there are no warning messages and I had sent in a sitemap back in 2011 and 77 pages are listed, but I had not submitted a URL could this be why my pages are not ranking highly? Or does anybody have a checklist on what a site should offer to get ranking on Bing?

Hi I have a new site which launched around 6 weeks ago, new domain name with a partial keyword match on it, so its going to be a long process but one which I want to tred along the right path for long term results What I am looking for is a checklist if possible on sites that the site (which is a UK based home improvments company) should be listed on? The difficulty is because it can seem a boring subject (windows and doors) it makes it difficult to find authentic quality links, especially with no big budgets or pools of article writers I have registered against the likes of Brownbook, Yelp, Yell.com, Qype, Google Places covering the local aspect but what about the general external links Is it advisable to stay away from directory listings, blog comments, forum posts etc which is what a lot of the competition are doing (weatherseal .co.uk  anglianhome .co.uk   etc

Hi On our new website which is just a few weeks old upon logging into Webmaster tools I am getting the following message Googlebot can't access your site - The overall error rate for DNS queries is 50% What do I need to do to resolve this, I have never had this problem before with any of the sites - where the domains are with Fasthosts (UK) and hosting is with Dreamhosts.  What is the recommended course of action Google mention contacting your host in my case Dreamhost - but what do you need to ask them in a support ticket.  When doing a fetch in WMT the fetch status is a success?

Hi From an SEO perspective what is the most beneficial getting +1 of your homepage or trying to get customers to click on your actual Google+ Page - or are they linked in some way?  As the importance that Google are/will place on this cannot be ignored My concerns regarding Google+  are that I believe in the UK at least, most active consumers are not on Google+ (not sure what its like in the USA) many may not even have a google account, especially of their email is with the likes of hotmail or aol. The people who are using Google+ are other companies, web pros,marketing pros etc and not your target audience in many cases

Hi Now forgive me as I know this question has been asked on this and other sites thousands of times over, but since the recent algorithm changes to Google what would you consider to be A good backlink profile for a regional window, doors and conservatories firm For example looking at a leading SEO firm in the UK and in detail at one of their clients – the backlink profile for a team of 40, is nothing better than an experienced freelancer could achieve. For example they are mainly directory listings, css design galleries or comments on blogs not relevant to the target site What should this contain, but please bear in mind there is no budget to develop games, widgets to gain viral back links Most peoples responses are just great quality content, which although the correct answer they do not go into any detail on what form this should take, where it should reside, how people will find it etc I was thinking of the following Web Directories - if yes - which ones should I target and which ones to avoid (UK) Competitions - Is this a good means of gaining backlinks from the likes of loquax, prizefinder etc - or is it just a short term boost Forums - Answer questions on the likes of DIYNOT with the web address in my signature response Suppliers - Get a link from suppliers and the likes of Fensa Local Search - Yelp, Qype etc Social Media posts - Facebook, Google+ and Twitter any thing else I have missed?

Hi Can anyone recommend a tool (which is up to date) which shows the latest backlinks (in date order) that has been added to a website? Mainly I am planning for checking for bad links etc Many Thanks

Hi Just a quick question for expert UK affiliates. Would it be worthwhile in setting up a affiliate marketing campaign to get leads for windows, doors and conservatories for my small regional home improvement business? If so what is the best way to approach this, contact the likes of affiliate window?  and would they deal with a small regional firm such as mine, or would they only be interested in national firms such as anglian home or everest home improvements? Many Thanks

Hi We are a regional UK installer of double glazing windows, doors and conservatories and I am looking to build the amount of quality links to the website to help improve our search position - 1st page for keywords such as conservatories, double glazing, pvc doors, pvc windows, composite doors What is the best approach to do this? Search for double glazing inurl:forum pvc doors inurl:forum and locate forums, but what is the best approach answer questions with the web address in the signature of the post? Looking at the major national players in opensite explorer such as anglianhome.co.uk
safestyle-windows.co.uk
greenwayupvc.com
everest.co.uk
valuedoorsuk.co.uk
yaledoor.co.uk/ Their backlink profiles look quite spammy? as they mostly point to web directories So is there a gap that I can take advantage of? We have little budget for sponsored articles on sites like what anglian have been doing looking at the backlinks but are there any other articles that I could write for our site that would help improve quality links to the site for keywords such as conservatories, double glazing, pvc doors, pvc windows, composite doors Same with their social profiles they seem quite poor, what would be the best approach on Facebook and Twitter to attract local followers - the majority of social followers I have seen have been fellow marketers or rival companies on the follower lists of twitter Many Thanks

Hi One of my sites is flagging a duplicate content problem which is affecting the search rankings. The duplicate problem is caused by http://www.mydomain.com/index.php which has a page rank of 26 How can I sort the duplicate content problem, as the main page should just be http://www.mydomain.com which has a page rank of 42 and is the stronger page with stronger links etc Many Thanks

How can you tell if a 301 has been set up correctly.  We had a .co.uk site that has moved over to a .com However the .co.uk we have hasd problems with the old webmaster giving control, but he has said he has implemented a 301 redirect to the new .com site, and if you click on .co.uk it does transfer you to the .com site How can we check that it is a 301 set up and not another sort of redirect?

Hi Since Google switched places to Google+ Local lots of the reviews that were on the listing are no longer showing? A customer of mine brought up the point when visiting the store today, when they are logged into Google they can see their review under Your Activity, however when they are logged out the only review is listed under 1 Review from everyone and the review is no longer being shown? Any ideas on what is going on? Also with local search / places optimisation has the best practice guidelines changed now that is transformed into Google+ Local? If so it would be great to share any links on getting the most out of this new + local service

Hi We have allocated resources to write some great content (how to's, best practice, videos) etc which will benefit customers as they will find it a useful resource. We are using this not as a sales channel but as a trust and information resource to build a community It is currently located about 2 levels deep in our website, what are the best ways of getting people to find these articles on the web? I have placed some social sharing icons at the bottom of the page to Facebook and Twitter but are there other channels because at present the only way they will find this information as if they visit our website. Do we also need to be practive and distribute this content around the web perhaps as a guest writer?  which raises duplicate content problems as it would also be on our website or is there a better approach?

Hi I have written 2 articles for 2 seperate businesses and markets. One article  is a Top 10 tips on choosing a conservatory How would I go about promoting and seeding this around related home improvement websites around the UK, use stumbleupon? 2. I also have recipes for a restaurant which I need to seed and promote online in order to gain links and promote the restaurant.  Again which methods are best in finding sources to list these recipes and to related blogs etc Many Thanks

Hi I am looking for some advice / lists of recommended local search directories / citations that I can add our double glazing window site - as part of our strategy to improve local search rankings and increase our visibility on the web through SEO for phrases such as 'pvc windows'  'pvc doors' 'double glazing' and 'conservatories' For example I have added the business to the likes of Yelp
Qype
Tipped
Ufindus
Hotfrog
Freeindex
Brownbook But are there any specific home improvement sites that I should add the business to also. I would also be interested in sharing recommended strategy for this market in relation to link building, for example I have thought about offering staff in local goverment / universities / hospitals a genuine discount on our products as part of their staff discount schemes Many Thanks

Hi I have started offering customers a mobile app view of their existing websites using sencha touch which works well. On visiting the website if a user visits via a mobile device they access the mobile app view of the site. I am looking for some best practice please - as many of the customers already have hosting with their existing website so would it be possible to use a subdomain of m.theirdomain.com which will point to the mobile website which will be hosted on our servers in the cloud. Or is the only alternative to use a subdomain for their mobile sites because they are hosted with us in the cloud of businessname.ourdomain.com  ? Many Thanks

On one of my wordpress sites, I have just checked it out in Google Webmaster tools and under duplicate titles it is showing spam titles which I did not add? Lamisil Buy - Buy Online on two pages of the site However these two pages are no longer online?  So I have 2 quick questions please 1.) How did they add a title to these 2 pages 2.) Why is it still showing in WMT when these pages are no longer live? Also under duplicate titles it is showing pages that dont exist? i.e. ?yonidza=orde and some of which such as weddings.html are pages from the old site structure that no longer exist - how can I reduce these errors down?

Hi I am looking for some advice / lists of recommended local search directories / citations that I can add my hotel/restaurant to - as part of our strategy to improve local search rankings and increase our visibility on the web. For example I have added the business to the likes of Yelp
Qype
Urbanspoon
Tipped
Ufindus
Hotfrog
Freeindex
Brownbook
Trip Advisor But are there any specific hotel, wedding, conference and restaurant specific sites that I should add the business to also. Many Thanks

Hi I have two websites one legacy site done in wordpress the other in php.  However I would like to merge the two together and remove the wordpress site. However it has a good link profile and the pages rank well. What is the best approach to do a 301 redirect from the old site with all its pages pointing to the homepage of the new site? If so what's the best way to do this in wordpress? Many thanks

Hi I am having problems with my URL rewriting to create seo friendly / user friendly URL's.  I hope you follow me as I try to explain what is happening... Since the creation of my rewrite rule I am getting lots of errors in my SEOMOZ report and Google WMT reports due to duplicate content, titles, description etc For example for a product detail, it takes the page and instead of a URL parameter it creates a user friendly url of mydomain.com/games-playstation-vita-psp/B0054QAS However in the google index there is also the following friendly URL which is the same page - which I would like to remove domain.com/games-playstation-vita/B0054QAS The key to the rewrite on the above URLs is the /B0054QAS appended at the end - this tells the script which product to load, the details preceeding this could be in effect rubbish i.e. domain.com/a-load-of-rubbish/B0054QAS and it would still bring back the same page as above. What is the best way of resolving the duplicate URLs that are currently in the google index which is causing problems The same issue is causing a quite serious a 5XX error on one of the generated URLs http://www.mydomain.com/retailersname/1   - , if I click on the link the link does work - it takes you to the retailers site, but again it is the number appended at the end that is the key - the retailersname is just there for user friendly search reasons How can I block this or remove it from the results? Hope you are still with me and can shed some light on these issues please. Many Thanks

Hi No not used adwords before as our onsite SEO was going well - with long tail terms ranking well to product detail pages. On Sunday we tried to set up an adwords ad as it wasgoing to be used for the forthcoming launch of a new product. - - PS Vita I think it is being classified as a bridge page although other price comparison sites such as kelkoo and pricerunner gocompare, travelsupermarket etc all seem to get through and have ads on Google? More interesting though is since the ad was disapproved my organic search results have disappeared? (which have all been white hat) Coincidence perhaps or something more sinister from Google??  One for you Randfish perhaps?

Hi I am trying to run a google adwords campaign for our price comparison site, and have developed a landing page with content and a table of the best prices on where to buy the product.  The ad is PS3
Compare the lowest prices
Buy Today However I keep getting the message disapproved "Landing page and site policy guidelines" Any ideas on how to get it to be approved as google are running ads for price comparison sites such as this one for the phrase 'dvd price comparison' http://www.kelkoo.co.uk/slp/ss-dvd-compare-price.html And I'm not sure what I am doing wrong?

Hi Could anyone explain what these visits are in Google Analytics?  Under traffic sources and organic I am seeing lots of entries with data like below.  Any ideas what kind of traffic this is?  Is it a bot and if so what is their purpose of it and is it recommended that you block it? Pages/Visit 1.00 Avg. Time on Site 00:00:00 % New Visits : 100% Bounce Rate: 100.00% Many Thanks

I have restricted around 1,500 links which are links to retailers website and links that affiliate links accorsing to webmaster tools Is this the right approach as I thought it would affect the link juice? or should I take the no follow out of the restricted by robots.txt file

Hi I have just been informed that I should be using the rel=next / rel=prev markup on my category pages and search results pages that use pagination. How do i add these in?  Is it just the simple case of adding rel=next in the<a href="" for="" item="" in="" the="" pagination?<="" p=""></a> <a href="" for="" item="" in="" the="" pagination?<="" p="">Also does this work if your are using AJAX - on page load it displays the search / category pages then uses AJAX for additional pages so there is no page refresh</a> <a href="" for="" item="" in="" the="" pagination?<="" p="">Many Thanks</a>

Hi Folks Noticed something strange just now pages that were ranking on position 10 on Google for searches such as 'ufc trainer kinect best price' at the start of this week are no longer ranking? Is what has happened to the site the famous google dance or sandbox effect as the site only officially went live on Monday If this is the case what is the recommended course of action to get back ranking competitively again?  as I have no idea on what has gone wrong as I has always tried to follow best practice from these forums and the SEOMOZ and YOUMOZ articles My site is www.cheapfindergames.com Many Thanks Ian

What is best practice for the Facebook like button, when a user clicks on like on your webpage should this go to your facebook page our should it contain your website url? The reason being is that on my homepage it shows as 5 likes but when going to my facebook page it is only showing 1 like?  So where are the other 4 likes going? Any ideas on what is going wrong or what I have set up wrong? The like box is on http://www.cheapfindergames.com/xbox360 My Facebook page is http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cheapfinder/129888913795351

Hi I am looking for the best way to generate an XML sitemap for webmaster tools for my website http://www.cheapfindergames.com.  I have come across http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ but it only allows up to 500 links. Is there a PHP script that any experts could share that would create the XML map that I could upload please? Many Thanks

Hi I am a huge fan of the SEOMOZ site and this great community which has helped me learn the current SEO skills I have now which are still very basic compared to the pros on the forum. I have tried to follow best practice regarding onsite and technical seo when developing my new site www.cheapfindergames.com and I would really appreciate it if experts on the forum could spare a minute to critique the site from a search perspective please This will give any elements of what onsite and technical SEO I done well and what aspects still need work. I am currently trying to build quality links and social mentions into the site which will take time, and the site has been designed around usability and conversions. Many Thanks Ian

Hi I have been reading into canonicalisation and I am looking for professional advice and guidance on the best approach as there are many conflicting views on how to implement a solution. I have added to the homepage http://www.cheapfindergames.com/" /> so that http://cheapfindergames.com and index.php redirects to the www version. Or would it be better using .htaccess if this is the case what code would be needed to achieve the above? Many Thanks

Hi Our new site is still in beta mode, and I just wanted to check from an SEO perspective that on search results and on the pagination at the bottom of the page, is there anything we need to do so its compatible with the search engines and not have duplicate content issues etc I have implemented search friendly URL's, but I would welcome any other issues or suggestions you have that will help improve the sites SEO performance The URL of a search results page is http://www.cheapfindergames.com/category-arcade-and-platform