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Hi Mozzers,

I'm looking for recommendations for well known, reputable agencies, who have a strong background in Local SEO. I have a US based client I want to refer.

Awesome, thanks Jennifer.

Got asked this today, and I don't know the answer, so throwing it out there to all your mozzers!

If I 301 redirect a page that has built up a lot of tweets, likes, shares, even +1's, does that social data get transferred over to the new page in as far as social strength/ authority is concerned?

Would Google still be able to see the previous version of this page had x amount of tweets etc, and take this into consideration when ranking the new page?

There's actually about 20 categories that would ideally have a new slug and the number of posts in each category varies between about 10 in each to around 50.

Is there a limit on the number of posts in a category before we start running into issues?

Hi Greg

Cool, thanks. I probably didn't ask the question as clearly as I should. I realise there are plugins out there than can do this, but I really wanted to know whether this had any SEO implications. I've never considered redirecting by category, only by page, so wanted to know what other SEO's thought on this.

Hi Greg

The content will remain the same and remain in the same category, the only thing that'll change is the name and slug of the category itself.

Hi Guys

It is possible (and best practice) to 301 a category as a whole rather than every page within the category.

I was asked this by a developer the other day, and it was something I'd not considered before as I've always done it by page.

It seems there's some wordpress plugins out there that do it.

Thanks in advance.

Thanks Ryan, that's the kind of info I'm looking for. I have a lot of faith in the developers in this project and they are suggesting Joomla is a better option for them to achieve what they want, but very aware of the SEO aspects and want to ensure I'm happy. Appreciate your thoughts.

Great feedback so far guys. As I said, I have little experience with Joomla. The content I've found online seems to focus on issues such as duplicate content issues being a bit of an issue. I've found a few plugins that seems to be able to fix such issues. Is there any major drawbacks on Joomla that I should be aware of though? Any limitations?

Hi All

I'm about to start on a new project where I've been having lots of discussions with the developers involved on the merits of both wordpress and joomla. I'm experienced with wordpress but haven't really done too much with Joomla. I've found some general info on Joomla online, most issues seems to be around duplicate content, but can't seem to find too much else.

Therefore I thought I'd throw it out there for discussion as I'd love to hear from those of you who have used both CMS's and the drawbacks/ pitfalls or plus points in both.

The project is based around a non transactional site, offering a service, but no product. There's lots of thought leadership type content planned, either through interviews, surveys, articles, video etc, and some linkbait etc. Lot of content will also be newsworthy so keep Google news etc in the back of your mind too. Lots of social integration too...

Looking forward to hearing what you might have to say Mozzers.

Hi Miriam

Thanks for your thoughts,  its much appreciated.

Unfortunately Places does limit me in this instance, so you're right that other avenues of traffic generation would be a good route to head down.

All the best

thanks for the feedback guys. Any suggestions about how I may be able to overcome the issue though?

Hi Guys

I'm looking for some clarity of what I can and can't add to the custom attribute fields in a Google Places listing. From my understanding, you can add additional information about your services, but not what those services are.

The issue I'm trying to resolve is that a client of mine offers far more than the 5 services/ category options Places allow. They are a home services company, covering all sorts from plumbing, painting and decorating, through to extensions etc. They have about 25 different services.

At the moment I'm restricted to just getting rankings for 5 services (correlated to the categories in Places), when I'd like to rank locally for them all.

As Google is showing local results for most search queries related to their services whether those searches are geographically modified or not, I'm in a position where even if I am ranking top 5 organically for the terms, I'm still on bottom of page 1, or top of page 2.

Would it be wise to add these additional services to the custom attributes section of the Places listing, or would this set off the potential for a listing suspension?

Any ideas how to combat this problem would be very welcome.

Thanks Richard. I figured, but wanted to double check. thanks again

Hi All.

Just wanted to double check something with you folks. I've always been under the impression that you should complete the first category option in Places with a default category from Google's list of options, followed by 4 categories of your choice.

However, does the 1st category need to be a default option or can it be any one of the 5? Also, do you think anything is gained in the rankings by adding a category of your own choice as the 1st category?

There's nothing in the Quality guidelines that suggests the 1st category needs to be a default option, so I thought I'd throw this out there...

http://www.google.com/support/places/bin/answer.py?answer=107528

have you tried buzzstream? It's a fantastic tool. http://www.buzzstream.com/

Great feedback all. Thank you.

Cool, nice idea about the H1.

Hi Thomas, Great point about checking for similar exact match domains already in the SERPS. I've always thought the search engines considered the hyphenated option spammy rather than the searcher, or is it both?

Hi All Which strategy from below would be best for the purchase of an exact match domain... 1) www.shiny-blue-widgets.com 2) wwwshinybluewidgetsshop.com Wondered if there was much difference in either as I know both have plus and minus points.

Hi Eric, this tool has been dodgy for me for a while. Never seems to pick up rankings and when it does, it seems to be incorrect. I think I remember someone saying it needed a makeover, or was having one.

Generally I'd say social promotion, but you could be more specific and target writers who have blogged or written on a similar subject in the past.

I'm curious to see what answers you get as I'm somewhat in the same boat. I do have multiple clients hosted with the same hosts, but there's not much cross over in industries. I do, however always set up completely individual GWT, analytics etc just because of a hunch that Google may consider two sides sharing an account somewhat connected. Whether anyone has any proof is another thing..

Hi Darryl

There's no SEO advantage to having a trailing slash or not. Both are viewed the same. The important thing is to choose one and make sure it's consistent throughout the site. I prefer no slashes, cos it looks nicer, but that's just me and has absolutely no SEO relevance.

Hi Wissam

Yes, I read through it and a few others, but wanted to get clarification on some specifics not covered all that in depth in the guide.

Calling all Magento Kings out there!

I'm working on a client' site - powered by magento. I'm looking to rewrite a lot of the URLs. I know there is the URL rewrite tool, but I think what I need to do may go beyond this.

Typical example would be:

Old URL - http://www.xxxxxxxx.co.uk/fabric/product/product-black-screen-print-and-silver-fabric.html

New URL - http://www.xxxxxx.co.uk/fabric/product/silver

I know that magento's URLs seem to be created through categories so wanted to double check with someone the best way to do this.

Also, I've heard that 301 redirects of non www to www in the .htaccess has a knock on effect on discounts?

All comments greatly appreciated.

Will do.

That's really interesting to hear that the PA and rankings are pretty much in line (off I go to review my sites...)

There has been a drop off on Google showing citations, but they still seem to be showing images placed on local directories, in some instances taking the same image from a local directory over one added to a places listing in the live places listing.

Its a valid question, and something I've noticed myself. There's a couple of things I'd suggest considering.

Firstly, how long ago were the listings in the local directories submitted and accepted? If it's been less than a month it may well be that Google hasn't associated the citation/ link yet to your places listing.

Secondly, have you carried out a search in Google to see if they have indeed indexed the page the link is on, or run a
"link: " type search to see if Google acknowledges the link.

Ah just noticed I have all code on 1 line so

on_sent_ok: "pageTracker._trackPageview('/company.com/contact-us/thank-you');"

should it actually be...

on_sent_ok:

_"pageTracker.trackPageview('/company.com/contact-us/thank-you');"

Hi SSC Davies

Yep, I have it set up just like that (I think I probably referenced the same page of content you've pasted in here when looking for the correct hook )

I'm not massively knowledgeable on javascript, but would other javascript on the page affect the function of the hook?

Hi Dejan

Thanks, all good points so much appreciated.

I have a site that uses the contact 7 plugin for its contact form sitewide in a sidebar and on a contact us page.

I've set up a goal in analytics and tracked using the "on_sent_ok" hook but the number of goals GA is creating is far outweighing the number of times the form is actually completed.

I figured my initial mistake was to use the contact-us page as the page tracker variable for the goal but wondered if it was counting all form completions AND anyone who went to the contact page.

So I amended it to a contact-us/thank-you page that no site visitor could navigate to, and since I have no goals completed, even though we're getting enquiries through the form.

Am I being dumb here and missing something quite simple?

Hi All

I'm looking for some feedback regarding a site architecture issue I'm having with a client. They are about to enter a re-design and as such we're restructuring the site URLs and amending/ adding pages.

At the moment they have ranked well off the back of original PPC landing pages that were added onto the site, such as www.company.com/service1, www.company.com/service2, etc

The developer, from a developer point of view wished to create a logical site architecture with multiple levels of directories etc. I've suggested this probably isn't the best way to go, especially as the site isn't that large (200-300 pages) and that the key pages we're looking to rank should be as high up the architecture as we can make them, and that this amendment could hurt their current high rankings.

It looks like the trade off may be that the client is willing to let some pages be restructured so for example, www.company.com/category/sub-category/service would be www.company.com/service.

However, although from a page basis this might be a solution, is there a drawback to having this in place for only a few pages rather than sitewide? I'm just wondering if these pages might stick out like a sore thumb to Google.

Thanks Wissam. Always good to hear it from someone else rather than Google.

Thanks Mark, Good thread you found there. Gonna play around and see what happens. Thanks

Hi All.

I've noticed some issues between the thesis themes and Yoast's plugin, namely, thesis doesn't recognise Yoast's plugin in for title tag and meta description. Is there a way to overide this?

I've noticed that Google News has withdrawn the necessity for there to be a minimum of 3 numerical digits in the URL if you submit the content via a new sitemap. Is this 100% correct? I'm working on a site rebuild for a client that is where submission to Google News will be instrumental in their strategy. Are there are difference between UK and US submission as this is UK based?

I would suggest that it would be beneficial to have the blog on your own domain unless there is a very valid reason not to. By bringing the blog under your own roof, you're adding fresh content regularly and should the content be linked to or tweeted/ shared, you're domain will get the love.

No problem!

I don't believe it is considered duplicate content. I think Rand might have mentioned this during a recent webinar.

Hi Jeanie, I just had a quick look at your site and noticed you have noindex, nofollow on all of the pages I checked. You may want to adjust this as you're telling the search engines not to index these pages. Take a look at your source code and you'll spot it quite easily.

Hi Adam and Alan.

Thanks for the info. I figured as much but for some reason the fact it was a blog threw me as I rarely see blogs on a subdomain. Many thanks guys.

Just double checking this one. Is it less than ideal to have a blog on a subdomain rather than as a sub folder on a domain?

I have a client who runs a yacht delivery company. He gets business from the US and the UK but due to the nature of his business, he isn't really based anywhere except in the middle of the ocean somewhere!

His site is hosted in the US, and it's a .com. I haven't set any geographical targeting in webmaster tools either. We're starting to get some rankings in google US, but very little in google UK. It's a small site anyway, and he'd prefer not to have too much content on the site saying he's UK based as he's not really based anywhere.

Any ideas on how best to approach this?