Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi there

Here are some great articles to check out:
10 Questions to Ask When Hiring an SEO Consultant (Entrepreneur)
SEO Company Checklist: How to Hire the Right Vendor (Inc)
The Recommended List (Moz)

One thing I will say out of the gate - any company that says "first page of Google", ignore them. Any company that has strategies solely based on link building, ignore them. If something sounds TOO good to be true, it is. You'll get gut feelings talk to SEO companies - you can tell when someone has your best interest at heart and asks the right questions.

I would recommend as well that you take a look at the Learn section of Moz to educate yourself a bit as well. This way, you can hear red flags on basics and understand fundamentals in the industry.

Based on a very, very quick skim of the attached document, I would be questioning the Custom Backlink section. Here's a great article from Forbes on what not to do from a link building perspective. Also, Webmaster Tools shouldn't be "optional" - it's a must. Here's how to set those up from Google and Bing.

Hope this all helps a bit - good luck!

Hi Felicia

Try ScreamingFrog - they crawl the entire site (you can configure how you want it to crawl your site) and have ways of creating a XML Sitemap for you.

The tool goes above and beyond those two areas as well and can do so much. I suggest you check it out! Good luck!

Hi there

If everything you say is true - highly doubtful. But run through the technical checklist one more time in case there is a noindex tag or an issue with your robots.txt.

You have to be doing some pretty shady content and link building tactics in order to trip Google penalty signals. I would go through any links you have to see if there are spammy efforts there (resource below)

However, to be sure, login to your Webmaster Tools account and check your manual action notifications.

If nothing there, I would look at the following materials:
How To Do a Content Audit - Step-by-Step (Moz)
How to Conduct a Link Audit (SEW)
Link Audit Guide for Effective Link Removals & Risk Mitigation (Moz)
How to Perform the Ultimate Local SEO Audit (Moz)
The Illustrated SEO Competitive Analysis Workflow (Moz - I put this here for ideas, not copycat tactics)
Conducting Market Research Before Investing in Tactical Execution (Moz)

I would also look and see if there are any opportunities to amplify your content or if there are any advertising opportunities that can help get your name out there and help you relationship build with potential partners.

Lastly, while tedious, I highly recommend persona development - reason being, going through the exercise is necessary and you learn more than ever about who your audience is; there may be content or ideas that you are missing out on.

Like I said, if you are up to par with the checklist and you have value on your website, go through the above resources as they can help you build your brand and get more traction going. It's an uphill battle, but one worth fighting when all is said and done.

Hope this all helps! Good luck!

Hi there

To answer your first question, yes. Posting content to your website and on your blog will definitely help boost rankings and visibility for your main site, especially with relevant topics, distribution, and internal linking. Here are some ideas...

• Do some research

• What information is missing in your industry?

• What are users actively searching for?

• Where are they currently participating in conversation?

• What language do they use in search and those discussions?

• How do they digest their content?

• Here's a quick resource on content gap analysis from Edge Multimedia

• Take advantage of great tools like Open Site Explorer and SEMRush to get a handle on your competition and what's working / not working for them

• Build out content on the site based on your research

• Mind your obvious onsite SEO fundamentals (titles / meta descriptions / schema / content length and language / etc.) (resource)

• Lay your site architecture out in an easy to use / understand fashion (Information Architecture for SEO)

• Repurpose content through video / images / guides / e-books / how-tos / etc

• Take advantage of internal site search functionality

• What are users searching for on your site?

• Distribute that content through social platforms / industry blogs / email marketing

• You can try social paid advertising (based on target audience)

• Facebook

• Twitter

• Pinterest

• LinkedIn

• Also look into posting on Linked with a tagged URL giving credit to the original post on site

• Reddit

• Stumbleupon

• BuzzFeed

• You can also try sevices like Outbrain or Taboola. Lastly, check out this post from Curata - HUGE list of opportunities.

• Participate in the discussions that are happening in your industry

• Social

• You could take advantage of features like Twitter's Advanced Search and start fielding questions

• News sites

• Industry forums

• Q&As

Where you share content will heavily depend on your audience and where they are. If you're a medical business and sharing content through hair styling mediums, you're not going to have much luck. Know your audience, know what they want, write the content, and distribute/share properly. Get involved!

I'm also interested that your audience doesn't go on sites and read content - is that true? Do you have proof of it? Could it be that you're not distributing your content in the right area? I'd look at your referral traffic and social traffic and see where your pitfalls are in analytics. Are they taking the next logical step in your content? Are they taking actions you want them to take? Are they bouncing off your site? If you can answer those, you can start to see what you need to improve on!

But never give up on getting people to your site - it's your brand and your internet home - make it inviting and provide incentive for users to engage and act on content!

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

It really depends on the site linking to you, how relevant it is, and when your site/their site gets crawled.

Keep in mind, however, that there are so many more factors that go into ranking than simply getting links. I would start looking into opportunities to raise your Domain Authority and make sure your on-site SEO is on point.

I would also make sure that you take a look at Moz's numerous guides and Academy - there are a ton of great resources and tips that can help you go above and beyond just the world of link building.

Start taking a look at the guides / resources above and begin prioritizing the opportunities you feel can best move the needle on your website. The work is never done!

Hope you're well! Good luck!

Hi there

Thanks! Currently, this page is returning a 200 status code, meaning that it's OK.

You need to change this status code to a 404 status code in order for it to return a 404 to crawlers.

I see your site is running on Apache - here's a resource on how to return a 404.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

I took this from another Q+A thread that I answered. While it's about starting a blog, I do believe that it rings true for what you're attempting to do...

• Create the blog on your site

• Do some research

• What information is missing in your industry?

• What are users actively searching for?

• Where are they currently participating in conversation?

• What language do they use in search and those discussions?

• How do they digest their content?

• Here's a quick resource on content gap analysis from Edge Multimedia

• Take advantage of great tools like Open Site Explorer and SEMRush to get a handle on your competition and what's working / not working for them

• Build out content on the site based on your research

• Mind your obvious onsite SEO fundamentals (titles / meta descriptions / schema / content length and language / etc.) (resource)

• Lay your site architecture out in an easy to use / understand fashion (Information Architecture for SEO)

• Repurpose content through video / images / guides / e-books / how-tos / etc

• Take advantage of internal site search functionality

• What are users searching for on your site?

• Distribute that content through social platforms / industry blogs / email marketing

• Participate in the discussions that are happening in your industry

• Social

• You could take advantage of features like Twitter's Advanced Search and start fielding questions

• News sites

• Industry forums

• Q&As

• You can also read these resources about headlines and CTR

• 5 Tips to Improve Your Headline Click-through Rate

• A Scientific Guide to Writing Great Headlines on Twitter, Facebook, and Your Blog

Now, while I believe this is less science than it is just knowing more about your audience, there are some good points.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hey Charles

I would recommend reading the following resources:
On-Page Factors (Moz)
Meta Descriptions (Moz)
YouTube Ranking Factors (Moz)
SearchMetrics Ranking Factors Study 2014 (Moz & SearchMetrics)
Google My Business (Google)
Verify a local business on Google (Google)

Reason being, you're kind of asking broad and loaded questions (and that's totally fine!), and you're going to get so much more out of the above information than getting direction on one off questions. All of the above have great information and will help you moving forward. If you have any questions or comments, let me know! Good luck!

Hi there

I would start with:

• Running an audit
• Run a technical site audit
• Check traffic against Google's algorithms
• Running a backlink audit
• Running a content audit
• Check ranking history over time
• Run a competitor analysis

From there, you should be able to prioritize your work pretty easily and see where the easiest wins are. You'll also begin to see the landscape from the content standpoint and be able to help out in developing an editorial calendar as well.

You should also check out Moz's blog for some great categorized content that can help immensely. I would also make sure you get a routine going from a weekly, monthly, quarterly, 6 month, and yearly standpoint so you have a system in place.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

Short of changing the name of the business and domain, this is unfortunately the way it goes and may have to stay what it is. You can't change word associations or negative connotations of what people use words for.

I would echo Logan's comments of qualifying traffic through titles and meta descriptions. But what I would also do is make sure that your content marketing, site structure / URLs, business listings, etc., are all very explicit in the relevant and related topics that your client is trying to rank for. I would also take a look at competitors to see what keywords they are ranking for and where they are getting backlinks from so that search engines over time will see your client is specific to an industry or topic that is NOT adult natured.

Does this make sense? What I am getting at is making sure you are more and more explicit to search engines that your client's site is related to an industry / topic that is not adult natured.

Let me know if this makes sense or if you have any more questions! Good luck!
Patrick

Hi there

I wrote a pretty indepth answer for a similar question that you can read here.

TL;DR - Rand also has a great Whiteboard Friday post on this subject called Should I Rebrand and Redirect My Site? Should I Consolidate Multiple Sites/Brands?

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

Go for relevance - you can have a link from a high domain authority site that isn't remotely relevant and it won't do you any good. If the chamber of commerce sites are relevant to the area you serve, then go for it - you're an operating business in that area.

I have to say this though, don't build links strictly for the metrics of the site - build for links that you feel are going to benefit your business, bring you traffic, potentially convert your audience, and offer value to the user. The best way to link build is to ask the following questions:

• Does this link help my website?
• Is this link relevant to my website?
• Would I trust this site (that's linking to me) if I landed on it?
• Is the website or content in which I am being linked from topically relevant to my website?
• If you check metrics - does anything about the metrics (domain authority, page authority,Majestic, SEMRush traffic/ranking data, etc) make me feel uneasy?

Majestic has a great tool to help you understand the topical relevance of a site's backlink profile.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi Cornelius

This will take a bit of research on your end, as well as getting input from your client. Google offers a great feature called the Customer Journey to Online Purchase that helps break down what marketing channels help in different phases of the funnel for different sized businesses in different industries.

I love PPC because it has value not only for getting content in front of your audience quickly, but it has SEO benefits in showing if a page is correctly relating to a targeted query or keyword search, as well what keywords or queries are converting best. But again, it's going to come down to research and learning as much as you can for your client's business.

• Do some research

• What information is missing in your industry?

• What are users actively searching for?

• Where are they currently participating in conversation?

• What language do they use in search and those discussions?

• How do they digest their content?

• Here's a quick resource on content gap analysis from Edge Multimedia

• Take advantage of great tools like Open Site Explorer and SEMRush to get a handle on your competition and what's working / not working for them

• Build out content on the site based on your research

• Mind your obvious onsite SEO fundamentals (titles / meta descriptions / schema / content length and language / etc.) (resource)

• Lay your site architecture out in an easy to use / understand fashion (Information Architecture for SEO)

• Repurpose content through video / images / guides / e-books / how-tos / etc

• Take advantage of internal site search functionality

• What are users searching for on your site?

• Distribute that content through social platforms / industry blogs / email marketing

• You can try social paid advertising (based on target audience)

• Facebook

• Twitter

• Pinterest

• LinkedIn

• Also look into posting on Linked with a tagged URL giving credit to the original post on site

• Reddit

• Stumbleupon

• BuzzFeed

• You can also try sevices like Outbrain or Taboola. Lastly, check out this post from Curata - HUGE list of opportunities.

• Participate in the discussions that are happening in your industry

• Social

• You could take advantage of features like Twitter's Advanced Search and start fielding questions

• News sites

• Industry forums

• Q&As

Take the time now to learn about the business, the industry, and the audience as best you can. Take the time to optimize your website, and focus on the marketing channels that are going to best reach your audience. The above points and resources will help you. It will take effort and time, but it will greatly pay off in the long run.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

Rand had a great Whiteboard Friday on this a few months back called Subdomains vs. Subfolders, Rel Canonical vs. 301, and How to Structure Links for SEO. You should also check out Should I Rebrand and Redirect My Site? Should I Consolidate Multiple Sites/Brands?

My first question would be if all the stores fall under the same brand? Or, are they all able to live on their own separate sites with their own branding? Reason being, if you have everything under one domain as subdirectories, everyone can benefit from the domain's authority.

I would review the resources above and see if those can help - there is a ton of great information. Let me know if it doesn't! Good luck!

Hi again

In that case I would do this (just my opinion, again):

Webinar page: "Photoship Webinars | Company Name"
Individual webinar page: "Photoshop in the Cloud | Webinars | Company"

Your doing a few things here - you're telling search engines - this is a page about Photoshop in the Cloud that is a webinar from this company. Users can read that title and quickly understand as well. I have always been a fan of the "Page Content | Category | Brand" title layout myself. That's just me.

I would also check out Schema.org for opportunities to markup your content on those webinar and individual webinar pages to better assist crawlers. Here's a good discussion on ProWebmasters.

Does this make sense?

Hi Hector

This is something I wouldn't be too concerned about. Do the following and you will be fine:

• Ensure all pages are following the new https structure

• No http version

• Make sure your site is either www. or non www. consistently

• Make sure you have no chain redirects

• Update any old redirect files

• Make sure resources are secure as well (CSS files / javascript / widgets / images / etc)

• Make sure canonical tags reflect URL change

• Update your sitemap.xml

• Update sitemap.xml in Google Webmaster Tools / Bing Webmaster Tools

• Correct all of your internal links to reflect the new structure

• Consider using relative URLs

• If you want, find your high quality backlinks using Moz or Majestic

• Reach out and ask them to reflect the https structure

Again, this isn't a huge issue as Google will pass 90-99% of link equity and https is now a ranking factor. You should be all good, but make sure you run through this list I just put up for you and you can tie up any loose ends. Here's a great resource from Moz.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

There's a great Whiteboard Friday that touches on elements of this topic called Should I Rebrand and Redirect My Site? Should I Consolidate Multiple Sites/Brands? - check it out.

Alot of this is going to require research, conversations, and gut instincts - remember, whatever you plan on doing, you need to have a plan that can be explained clearly and concisely to your clients. We always hear from clients that SEO companies told them to blow their sites up when in reality they just needed a little TLC.

Check the following:

• All KPIs that matter most to your visibility / performance
• Your site's goals over time
• Google Search Console performance over time (impressions / rankings)
• Take a look at your competitors
• Check your on-site SEO
• Check your backlinks
• Check your content
• Check your information architecture
• Learn more about your audience
• Are you capturing your audience at the right points? Do you have content to do so?
• Are you doing everything you can do develop your brand(s) right now?

Running through these questions (and others like them) will help you gauge whether you have done everything you possible can or if it's time to build a new website. Really stress test current sites before jumping ship, you may have equity you don't even know about or have opportunities you didn't even know existed.

IF you do decide to move current sites and build new ones, do it the right way!

Hope this helps a bit! Looking forward to more input from the community. Good luck!

Hi there

I recommend reading Google's resource on this:

"If we’ve detected that a particular result has one of the above issues with its title, we may try to generate an improved title from anchors, on-page text, or other sources. However, sometimes even pages with well-formulated, concise, descriptive titles will end up with different titles in our search results to better indicate their relevance to the query. There’s a simple reason for this: the title tag as specified by a webmaster is limited to being static, fixed regardless of the query. Once we know the user’s query, we can often find alternative text from a page that better explains why that result is relevant. Using this alternative text as a title helps the user, and it also can help your site. Users are scanning for their query terms or other signs of relevance in the results, and a title that is tailored for the query can increase the chances that they will click through." Here are a couple more resources:
Why Google won’t display the right page title (Yoast)
Why Google Changes Your Titles in Search Results (SEW)

Read through all of the above as they have tips and resources to reference to help you.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

I would make sure that your Webmaster Tools and Analytics is correctly configured and that you are the owner of the Webmaster Tools account to pass the data. I would also take a look at the Access Webmasters Tools data in Google Analytics Guide from Google.

Depending on when you connected the accounts, it could simply be a lag in data transferring. Give it some time. If it doesn't populate, I would check the resources above and make sure all of your bases are covered.

Let me know if this answers your questions - I would love to help! Good luck!

Hi there

You should be fine, but I would research to see if the page has truly been deindexed and the article has been removed. How long you should wait depends on how popular the site was, how often they updated their content, and so on.

Do a quick url search and see if anything pops up.

Another thing I would do - check the backlinks to the original blog post and see if there are any worth updating to your post. If there are, reach out to the webmasters and let them know the blog post has moved to a new URL. This could be a great relationship building tactic for your site as well.

I would be sure to give the writer full credit and maybe even mention that the post was originally posted on ____.com with a nofollow link - that way you are giving credit. But that's upto you!

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

I really like ScreamingFrog but I also really like Search Console and Moz Pro. The reason being, I like having different sets of data because they are all different. I also like seeing if pages are being linked to randomly from other sources other than my own website which Search Console does a great job (and so does Majestic or Ahrefs). Different sources find different things so it's nice to get other opinions on what you might have out there floating around.

Just my two cents! Hope this helps!
Patrick

Hi there

You do have the opportunity to take advantage of Google Service-area businesses through Google My Business, so keep that in mind. I would also make sure that your website mentions the areas you provide travel for.

A few questions:

• Do you have any local/regional businesses you have partnered with to provide travel options?
• Any international businesses or agencies you work with?
• What about hotels? Are there any hotels that you work with or provide packages through?
• Are you a certified agency of any kind? Can you be listed on those sites?
• Are you able to create testimonials for clients/hotels that have you used your service?
• Are you able to mention (in your About Us or Services pages) different locations/countries you provide travel opportunities to? Even beyond that, are you able to mention specific businesses/touristy packages you provide mentioning landmarks or tours?

Keep in mind, while you are a national business, you do have opportunities at the local level to mention or be mentioned by specific hotels or businesses in certain areas that can loosely associate you with different locales or regions. It's just something to keep in mind.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

I would go with Option B, but even then, all of these fall under the topic of "construction fence", so I can't see the information being that much different than another page.

Remember, Google and search engines like topics now, and associate variations (like those you listed above) to topics. Don't be afraid to build out pages that focus on a topic. There's a great resource from Moz that can help get you started. Don't overthink!

I like having static pages that focus on topics and then have varying resources/blogs that can focus on topics variations and fresh content. So for instance, you can have a Construction Fencing page, and then have resource content around varying construction fencing ideas that include best practices, different types of construct fencing types and what they are best used for, how much construction fencing you may need depending on job size, etc. That way, you have you a static page focused on a topic, you have resource pages that focus on long tail variations, you can link back and forth between those pages, and you also help associate your website with a topic to Google by having a static page and fresh content being built that revolves around a grander topic.

I would just not overdo the use of the word "Construction Fencing" all over the site and in your titles, headers, content, etc. That can lead to spammy overoptimization. Just make sure it's natural, relevant, and useful for your audience.

Let me know if this helps

Hi there

I personally wouldn't be worried, just because this is relevant content to your business and the work you do for the community. We do this and have never seen issues. Plus, I would imagine you're not writing about an event every week - if you are, I would stick to the bigger events or the ones you are more involved and hands on with, not just events you sponsored. I would just make sure your content for these pages answers the following types of questions:

• Who did you help?
• What do they as an organization do?
• What was the event?
• Why is your business passionate about this organization?
• Where was the event held?
• How many people attended?
• What kind of events happened at this event? (auctions, music, sports, etc.)
• Any useful future event information.

It's relatively easy to fatten this type of content up. Just make sure you're not repeating the same things over and over on different page. Organizations, events, and your reasons for partnering are all different, make sure you showcase that and you should be good!

Hope this helps, good luck!
Patrick

Hi there

There really is no set number of links you should acquire or how many mentions you should have.

A good rule of thumb is to not try and spam or build links unnaturally. So, if you have listings or citations for your business, that's a good link because it's natural.

If your website suddenly shoots up in backlinks from irrelevant or off topic sites, search engines will take notice and act accordingly. Usually with a manual action.

The best piece of advice I can give - concentrate on writing content that is relevant and informative to your users, don't buy links, make sure your on-site SEO is on point, make sure you are listed on topically relevant industry citations, that your site is structured appropriately, and build relationships through hard work and providing real value.

Backlinks will find you if you engage your audience and you are providing a great experience on your website.

Hope this all helps! Good luck!

Hi there

I would redirect the old mobile URLs to their main URL counterparts. The site is now responsive, so redirecting to the main site relevant pages will format to the screen of the device the user is using. I would also make sure you update your sitemap.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

No, I would not add these. To Thomas' point, search engines don't bother with this as a ranking factor, and putting in meta keywords could also give your competition an idea of what keywords you are going after, essentially showing your cards in a poker game.

If you're looking for a great beginner resource, check out Moz's Beginner's Guide to SEO. It's loaded with tips and articles to help you get off to a great start and focus on items substantially more important than meta keywords! There are also other great guides and resources as well!

Hope this helps! Good luck to you!
P

Hi there

Judging by your organic traffic performance (attached), it seems your dip corresponds (potentially) with Penguin 3.0 in October 2014.

Running your site through Majestic and OSE, it does seem like a good chunk of your links appear to be obtained through SEO link building tactics.

I would go through a backlink audit - what needs to be removed / disavowed?

The best way to define a bad link is to use your own intuition and common sense:

• Does this link help my website?
• Is this link relevant to my website?
• Would I trust this site (that's linking to me) if I landed on it?
• Is the website or content in which I am being linked from topically relevant to my website?
• If you check metrics - does anything about the metrics (domain authority, page authority,Majestic, SEMRush traffic/ranking data, etc) make me feel uneasy?

Hope this perspective helps a bit - good luck!

6tyfJ0p

Hi there

Yes, you can try ScreamingFrog and also Moz Analytics will help with this as well.

Start there - hope it helps! Good luck!

Hi there

Check your internal links and sitemap - you may still have old URLs lingering there.

I would also make sure that you are redirecting those old URLs properly to their new URL destination. You should do a backlink audit as well and see if there any valuable links to update so the URL reflects this new structure and you get all the equity you can.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

I am not exactly sure what you're asking here. According to my search, your site is being indexed, including the pages that you mentioned above. 164 pages out of the 168 I was able to crawl, in fact.

Now, I ran a ScreamingFrog, and a couple of things concerned me. You have a LOT of heavy optimization going on. Particularly around these pages:

http://www.lawyerconnection.ca/slip-and-fall-lawyers-ottawa/
http://www.lawyerconnection.ca/slip-and-fall-injury-lawyers-cambridge/
http://www.lawyerconnection.ca/slip-and-fall-lawyers-barrie/
http://www.lawyerconnection.ca/slip-and-fall-injury-lawyers-mississauga/
http://www.lawyerconnection.ca/slip-and-fall-lawyers-in-burlington/
http://www.lawyerconnection.ca/slip-and-fall-lawyers-in-toronto/
http://www.lawyerconnection.ca/slip-and-fall-lawyers-in-hamilton/
http://www.lawyerconnection.ca/slip-and-fall-injury-lawyers-in-sudbury/
http://www.lawyerconnection.ca/slip-and-fall-lawyers-kingston/
http://www.lawyerconnection.ca/slip-and-fall-lawyers-in-st-catharines/
http://www.lawyerconnection.ca/slip-and-fall-lawyers-in-guelph/
http://www.lawyerconnection.ca/slip-and-fall-lawyers-oshawa/
http://www.lawyerconnection.ca/slip-and-fall-lawyers-waterloo/

And also...

http://www.lawyerconnection.ca/find-a-lawyer-brantford/
http://www.lawyerconnection.ca/find-a-lawyer-clarence-rockland/
http://www.lawyerconnection.ca/find-a-lawyer-cornwall/
http://www.lawyerconnection.ca/find-a-lawyer-guelph/
http://www.lawyerconnection.ca/find-a-lawyer-hamilton/
http://www.lawyerconnection.ca/find-a-lawyer-in-burlington/
http://www.lawyerconnection.ca/find-a-lawyer-in-kingston/
http://www.lawyerconnection.ca/find-a-lawyer-in-kitchener/
http://www.lawyerconnection.ca/find-a-lawyer-in-orillia/
http://www.lawyerconnection.ca/find-a-lawyer-in-ottawa/
http://www.lawyerconnection.ca/find-a-lawyer-norfolk-county/
http://www.lawyerconnection.ca/find-a-lawyer-ontario/
http://www.lawyerconnection.ca/find-a-lawyer-oshawa/
http://www.lawyerconnection.ca/find-a-lawyer-pickering/

While I understand that you do do work in different communities, are other ways of capturing this type of local traffic, particularly through a strategic local SEO campaign. I would take advantage of listing opportunities through Moz Local, Whitespark, and Google My Business if you have multiple practices. There are also service area opportunities available through Google.

Have you checked to see if you have a manual action of any kind? Have you seen your organic traffic at all?

I would take a look at geo-targeting your site as well in Google Search Console.

If you are new to SEO, I highly recommend checking out the following:
Moz's Beginner Guides
Moz Academy There are a ton of learning resources above that will help you get off on the right foot with SEO. Right now - I would focus on your on-site SEO, information architecture, and also your content. You have a lot of room for improvement on your website, but with proper research of your audience and keywords, you will be off in no time.

Again, I don't see any reason why you may feel you've been removed from the index, but I am definitely not seeing a whole lot of reasons for your site to rank either. Not that's not a knock against you at all, there is just a lot of work to be done!

Hope this all helps! Good luck!

Hi there

If I am understanding correctly, you're saying you want to take content from Site A and translate it to be placed on Site B?

I would look into the following:
Hreflang attributes (Google)
Language tags (Bing)
Country Targeting (Google)
Geo-Targeting (Bing)
International SEO & Checklist Out of curiosity, how do you plan on keeping these sites unrelated when the content will be a translation? If you take the steps above you should be able to avoid a duplicate content issue, but you're going to want to consider the user experience and creating content that speaks to the users of that region or country.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

You can use SEMRush data. They give you the queries, rankings, search volume, as well as the estimated percentage of traffic a site receives because of that keyword/query.

I highly suggest you try it out and learn more about it - it's been immensely helpful for me and my competitor research.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

Is your business local to Brazil and a city in Brazil? Or are you an international business that provides a service / solution outside of Brazil and internationally? The reason I say this is because you may be sending signals to search engines that you are only local to Brazil and have no need to rank abroad.

Here are a couple of great resources from Moz that can help get your brain jogging:

• The International SEO Checklist
• Learn International SEO

Also, if you have a Search Console profile setup for your website, make sure that (if you want to rank outside of just Brazil) that you are not just internationally targeting Brazil.

Double check your robots.txt as well to make sure you're not inadvertently blocking search engines as well.

Lastly, it may be a good idea to post your website to the forum so we could take a look at a more detailed level. But if you can't, I would look into the above resources as a starting point. I'm sure there are most indepth answers to come!

Hope this helps - let me know if you have any questions about what I've answered here!
Patrick

Hi there

There's no right answer for this. You'll see homepages and sites ranking with little to no content, and some with novels. If you have images on your homepage, talk to your web development team about bring the text out of the images to live on top of it so it can be crawled. Also, mind your image optimization.

I would focus more on your bounce rate - if it's high, maybe you need some persuasion. Your analytics are your best friend here. You can also test different content or layouts.

Quicksprout has some great tips as well that don't discuss the length, but how much it takes you to persuade the user - there's no "best practice" length, it's just what you need to get your point across and what you need to get the user to continue to move through the site - check it out here.

I also highly suggest this resource from SEOBlog.

You should read through this ranking factors study from SearchMetrics where they break down the average amount of text/content on pages for the first ten results, just remember that this isn't universal or gospel, your audience and what they are searching for is a unique ballgame.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

No content creation or link building at all? Do they want to do any brand building or community nurturing? What's their social like?

I would be interested to hear some ideas from the group here. If you are SEO and limited in what you are able to do, at that point I would say, check the following:

• Crawl issues
• PageSpeed
• Metas & tagging
• Backlink audit
• Internal & external link checks
• Search Console issues
• Mobility issues
• Authority metrics

I would just keep tabs and make sure that nothing falls apart - if you're limited to that, you're limited to that. But I would also make sure, to get buy in, that you provide them benchmarks and information about how if they DID create content and did natural link building, that their SEO efforts would be so much more fruitful. Like a chat to show "If we did do content creation and proper distribution for ________ keywords/queries" and "If we did not do content creation and proper distribution for ________ keywords/queries".

Usually showing competitive analysis in that case and their performance will help sell the idea quicker.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

There's a great resource from Inflow that can help you go through your site's potential eCommerce duplicate content issues. I would recommend you checking it out here.

You should also read and understand Google's duplicate content resources.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

I definitely recommend Schema on every product, as well as breadcrumbs, reviews, and also site search which helps for Sitelinks search boxes. It also helps inform your Google Analytics.

Here are a couple of great resources:
The Ultimate Guide to SEO for E-commerce Websites (Kissmetrics)
Thin & Duplicate Content: eCommerce SEO (Inflow)
The Definitive Guide To Ecommerce Search Engine Optimization (Neil Patel)

Take advantage of internal linking between relevant products and categories, and make sure you have a proper information architecture set up for usability!

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

Google will change your titles based on what they feel is the most suitable for search. Same with meta descriptions and so on.

Here is a great write up from SocialMediaToday on the subject. Optimize titles the best you can and abide by best practices / your important keywords / queries, but know that Google will sometimes take the reigns and change your titles based on what they feel is best. Google loves branding and this is further proof!

Let me know if this helps! Good luck!
P

Hi there

First, your title is pretty spammy. You don't need all of that. You could easily make a clean and useful title for your users. Remember, make a title that speaks to the content, grabs the user's attention, and can be summed up quickly with the important keywords up front.

When it comes to location, take a look at your local SEO. There are numerous items like Schema, contact information, citiations, and industry listing opportunities that help connect your website to a location and also helps when it comes to rich snippets. Take advantage of Google My Business as well.

While all of these things in your title maaaaay all be relevant to the content, it doesn't tell me anything, therefore, it's not useful to me as a user, which won't be useful to search engines. Remember, optimize for users, not search engines. Here's a great resource.

Keep the MAIN portion of the title relevance to 55-60. Branding can go over, but leave the important information within that frame.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi Darcy

Do not "nofollow" internal links to these pages - you want link equity to continue to move through your site. If you must noindex profile pages, leave the pages at least "noindex,follow" so that link equity can pass through those profile pages and continue to move through the site. Also, some members may have links from their site pointed at their profiles, I would check backlinks pointing to those pages if you get the opportunity.

You can do so through:
Majestic
OSE

Out of curiosity, why did you noindex member profile pages if I may ask? Did you check and see if any of those pages get search traffic before noindexing? You might be missing an opportunity there. Hope this helps, good luck!

Hi David

Keep in mind, while the date is April 21st, Google will be rolling out these changes. Consider this a chance to use the Mobile Friendly Test from Google and see where your pain points are. After that, read Google's Mobile-Friendly Websites and Mobile SEO guides and get to work!

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

While it's not predictive analytics per se - take a look at Nielsen PRIZM. There's some great information in there.

For content marketing, you can look into InboundWriter.

But as far as demographics specific, I am not sure off the top of my head. I have been reading about a product called Bombora, but I haven't looked into it. Here's an article in Forbes.

I would connect your Webmaster Tools to analytics, deep dive your demographics and interests, learn about attribution, and also take a look at the multi-channel funnels. Your audience is going to be unique, learn as much as you can!

Hope this helps a bit! Good luck!

Hi Jose

Moz offers a TON of great resources. Here are a couple:
Learn SEO and Search Marketing
Moz Academy

I would also look into Google's resources:
Analytics Academy
Training Resources Analytics Help Training & Certification

KISSmetrics also has a great resource to help get you started.

I would also look through the Q+A, Whiteboard Fridays, and the blog on Moz as there are constantly great discussions happening.

Also look into:
Search Engine Journal
SEO Theory
SEO by the Sea
Search Engine Roundtable

Hope this helps! Good luck and welcome!

Hi there

Do not "nofollow" your internal links, especially your top nav off your homepage. As this page gets a lot of your search equity, you want to make sure that that equity gets passed, especially through your top category pages. I would also optimize top navigation pages and deeper pages for the searches that are relevant to your users.

Read the following: On-Page Ranking Factors (Moz)
Internal Links (Moz)
Content Marketing Institute (tons of great resources to help you plan and effectively implement a content strategy)

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

Google will notice that the picture has the same file name and different alt text. But if you are doing it in the one instance, you shouldn't have much of an issue. Just make sure not to make this a repeated practice. Ideally, you would have two different pictures with different alt texts. Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any other questions or comments. Good luck!

Hi there

I personally like hierarchy and categorization. If I were you, I would check out these resources:
How to Create a Site Structure That Will Enhance SEO (KISSmetrics)
Information Architecture for SEO - Whiteboard Friday (Moz)
Site Architecture & Search Engine Success Factors (SEL)
User Redirection Based On Location Is Not Spam (SEL)
Sitelinks (Google)
Set up Site Search (Google)
Categorize parameters with the URL Parameters page (Google)

There are a TON of great resources above with lots of great information. I would suggest checking these out and passing along to your team and having a discussion.

Hope that helps! Good luck!

Hi Bob

These are just suggestions, but I would focus on the following (more than 5, but they all help):

• Site structure - Make sure that your site is laid out and categorized in a logical format, with products/services being a short amount of clicks away. Don't make users work and make sure search engine crawlers can easily crawl and find important pages on your site. Here's a great resource from Search Engine Land.
• Product page title tags - Make sure your title tags on your site are using keywords or phrases that users are searching for. Do NOT overdo keywords and stuff them in. Make sure the titles are descriptive of the content with keywords or phrases at the front of the title. Also take advantage of branding in every title tag.Take a look at Moz's Title Tag best practices page.
• Schema markup - WebMeUp has a great article on Schema for eCommerce. This takes time and effort but pays off in dividends in the long run. You will need a web developer if you are not code savvy. Read more about Schema here if you are interested.
• Use meta descriptions - You'll hear repeatedly that meta descriptions are no longer ranking factors, and that's true. BUT, they still hold a ton of weight when it comes to users clicking through to your site from search. Think of your meta description as your sales pitch when a user sees you in search. HubSpot offers a great article on meta descriptions and Moz has a great best practices page.
• Social media - Make sure you take advantage of all relevant social media platforms for your business; meaning use the ones where your target audience is and engage in that community. Make sure you use a brand name, link to your URL in your bio, and also make sure that all relevant contact information is correct and up to date.  Here's a great Inc article to help get you started, as well as Moz's Social Media for Beginners guide.
• Business listings / Local citations - this is more if you have a physical store but it's also good for listings in business and niche driven areas. Use Moz Local or Whitespark. I have used both and they do great work.
• Partnerships / certifications - Make sure you take full advantage of partnerships that you may have and also find certifications that are relevant to your business. Both of these items signal trust to users and search engines, and can greatly influence both. This includes items Better Business Bureau, shopping cart or checkout safety certifications, and any industry certifications that separate you from your competitors.
• Secure site - This is especially important if you are collecting user information or transactions on your website. Google recently announced that they do use https as a ranking signal and give a little more weight to websites using https as opposed to http. Again, this is important because you are an eCommerce website. Make sure your site is either one or the other, not both.

Again, these are just suggestions to get you going. I listed relevant resources, so discuss with your team and web development team as these items take time and need to be prioritized based on your website and capabilities.

Hopefully these help - let me know if you need anything else, Bob. Good luck to you and yours!