Questions created by PatrickGriffith
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How Bad is it to Not Have a Home Page?
The site I'm currently developing is far different than any other project I've every worked on in that search traffic is likely to represent only a very small percentage of the total traffic. Because of this, I want to make sure I optimize the site for the people clicking from Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc more so than the BIG G. I can't for the life of me think of a reason to have a home page other than for SEO purposes. I'd much rather throw the user directly into the experience than have him be distracted by a home page. At the same time, I'd like to salvage any search engine traffic that I can. My plan is to 301 redirect chucklebot.com/ to /funny-memes/SOME_RANDOM_IMAGE and then put the content of the current home page at /about. Does that kill any possibility of the site ranking well? Or can the subpages (eg /meme-generator) still rank well if they are properly optimized? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PatrickGriffith0 -
Keyword Rich Domains on Same IP
In addition to my main website, I want to create two new sites for the upcoming football and basketball seasons. By starting now, I'm thinking I have enough time to get them ranked decently. I have purchased www.collegefootballpredictions.net for the upcoming football seasons. The intent here is two fold. First, I'd like to rank in the top 3 for "College Football Predictions." Second, and this is why I'm thinking that Google won't hate me for the approach, is that someone looking for that search term is much more likely to convert on a landing page geared for them then on my main website. If the goal of a separate website is truly to compliment the main website, then is it considered white hat? I'm thinking that, as long as my intentions are pure, they should go on the same IP. Placing them on separate IPs could be a good way of letting the big G know that I'm trying to cheat the system and get away with it.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | PatrickGriffith0 -
Optimal Structure for Forum Thread URL
For getting forum threads ranked, which is best and why? site.com**/topic/**thread-title-goes-here site.com**/t/**thread-title-goes-here site.com**/**thread-title-goes-here I'd take comfort in knowing that SEOmoz uses the middle version, except that "q" is more meaningful to a human than "t". The last option seems like the best bet overall, except that users could potentially steal urls that I may want to use in the future. My old structure was site.com/forum/topic/TOPIC_ID-thread-title-goes-here so obviously any of those would be a vast improvement, but I might as well make the best choice now so I only have to change once.
Technical SEO | | PatrickGriffith0 -
Pros and Cons of a Single Page Forum Thread
Let's say I have a thread located at mysite.com/how-to-do-xyz and that thread has 75 posts. Let's further assume that the average post is well written and about 3-4 sentences long. For SEO purposes, do you think it would make sense to display all posts on a single page, or spread them out over 3-4 pages? Assuming I set it up for a single page, does this have any negative impact on the rare thread that is 500+ posts long? I had always thought about doing it on a single page, but then designed my forum the multi page way because that's what everyone else does. Yet, I see that SEOmoz does it the single page way, so maybe there is some validity to that. Thanks much.
Technical SEO | | PatrickGriffith0 -
Why Would PageRank Drop From 4 to NA?
Yesterday my homepage had a PageRank of 4 according to the Google toolbar (which I know isn't accurate, but bare with me) and the majority of my other pages were PR2. Today every page on my site is PR N/A, or PR -1. I also used a couple of free page rank checkers to make sure it wasn't just my browser. The only link I have ever purchased is on botw.org. I submitted my site to 6 free directories about two weeks ago, but only to the highly recommended ones, and with different anchor text at each. I have no messages in my Google Webmaster Tools account, nor do I have any significant crawl errors. My SERPs and resulting traffic have not (yet) been affected. Any ideas what's going on? I did start a Google AdWords campaign about 10 days ago that ran for 3 days and then got suspended due to the nature of my website. Could that be it?
Technical SEO | | PatrickGriffith0 -
Can fun, slightly unprofessional text be good for conversion rates?
I operate on a freemium model. The three plans are currently called "Free", "Gold" and "Platinum". Besides being incredibly square and boring, these titles are also meaningless. I'm doing a slight redesign of my site, and the new (unreleased) site has a very fun, playful feel. I'm also trying to make everything more streamlined and obvious. I'm considering renaming the three plans "Boring Amateur", "Kick-Ass Amateur" and "Bona Fide Professional" on the registration page and simply "Boring", "Kick-Ass" and "Professional" elsewhere. There are lots of places on the site where I have to refer to "amateurs" vs "professionals" - these tags would make that easier to explain. Easier = more sales. What do you think about using unprofessional text like this? Is it too risky, possibly offending too many people and losing sales? Or is it a good eye-catcher? I know the best answer is "test it." But this is one of those changes that I don't want to have to put my users through too many times. Thanks for any thoughts!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | PatrickGriffith0 -
Handling Deleted Pages
The backstory: My site has a fantasy sportsbook where users can place "bets" on pretty much anything. Each game has a unique matchup page, where the odds are displayed and any conversation about the game takes place. Example here. About 95% of the games are automatically graded, but I have to manually grade the rest. Therefore, as soon as every game starts I check to see if any users have made a pick on it, and if not I delete it because it reduces my workload. The problem: About 15% of my search-driven traffic is queries for games that no longer exist, which makes sense because nobody bets on the super obscure games and these games are very easy to rank for. I am currently redirecting them to my 404 page but I'm worried that all of these hits are hurting my reputation with the big G. Would it be better to noindex all of these pages at first and take the noindex away as soon as I'm positive that the game will stay?
On-Page Optimization | | PatrickGriffith0 -
Home Page Optimization
I only discovered SEOmoz about a week ago and my knowledge in this area has grown 500% in that time, but I'm still a newbie. I'm looking for whether I have the right general idea or not with my home page in regards to SEO. The page is located at Line.com. The top section with the images is 100% for humans. The next section is where the SEO comes into play. I have 5 different services [sports monitor, free sports betting, sports betting forum, sports handicapper websites, gambling affiliate program] that I offer on 5 different inner pages. What I'm trying to do is have my home page rank decently for my desired terms and then pass link juice to the respective pages. My goal is to eventually have my inner pages rank higher than my home page for my desired search terms. Do I have the right general idea or am I way off? Is this too much for the search engines with all of the links and bold text? Design criticisms are also welcome, and anybody who wants to critique the inner pages would be forever thanked. Feel free to be as harsh as you want as long as it's constructive. Thanks!
Web Design | | PatrickGriffith0