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Hmmmm kinda sucks......

I just performed a search for wedding photographers in London and lots of google places adverts came up (many of them residential addresses) now none of those photographers can shoot a wedding at their home (studio or not)

So that doesn't make ANY sense whatsoever....oh well I guess its a no no then.

Hi Guys.

I am working with a photographer they do not have a studio they shoot on location.

However I noticed many photographers within their industry have their home address listed in their google places, and they too shoot on location.

My client doesn't want their home address listed so I wondered what options there would be?

Do you think renting mail forwarding address would suffice?

Hi everyone!

Working on a site and the homepage hardly ever updates. Probably 3/4 times per year.

The only page on the site which does is the blog page which updates 4 times per week.

Is this a bad thing? Is there anything I should attempt to do?

Hi Jamie

Yes I was refering to google I'm only really concerned with rankings the other things (PR/DA/PA) all confuse things imo.

When you say I would notice the benefits in minutes what kind of benefit are you referring to? Referral Traffic?

Can I also clarify that the link Im talking about would be the company name and not a targeted keyword......so I assume it would be unlikely that you would rank better for specific keywords would it?

Thanks

What I mean is lets assume you were to get a link from BBC or CNN how long does it take for that link to have a positive impact on your rankings?

I ask because I am experiment with getting links from different sources and I want to try and nail down their real worth.....

Also if you do get a link is it normal that google would crawl your site and if so do you see this reflected in googles cache immediately?

Thanks

I agree with this really people are obsessed with Page Rank and Domain Authority.....SEOr's need to get their head around the fact that traffic is what REALLY matters.

What if you had a site with a DA of 100 but got no traffic?

So OP what you need to really think about since you have started your seo campaign have you been able to increase your rankings and therefore have you been able to increase your traffic?

Ignore D.A for now.......

Would you recommend Yext or Whitespark for UK customers I have never heard of them, personally.

Google places is completely different to organic results. Why dont you google the term if you are unsure of what it is.

In terms of where you are on the first page then you are 5th but that is 2nd in google places (which is below the 3 organic results) rather than 5th on the organic results - there IS a difference.  For example if google decided to remove google places for whatever reason you would no longer be appearing on the first page for this term.

Thank you guys I think that gives me enough info  to make an informed decision!

Its not in the serps it in google places and position 2 there.I didnt find it in the first 3 pages of organic results.

I used pagewash.com to check.

Thank you Jamie......looks good I will give this a go....

Kinda surprised SEOmoz dont have one I would prefer to keep all my seo tools with the same company.....ah well!

Hi Guys

I have been working on a site and I'm doing better but I just want to ensure I am covering all the bases.  I have a list of competitors and I want to see if I can find out what keywords they are ranking for so I can research and see if there is any merit in me trying to rank for those keywords also?

Is there any software or processes that any of you can recommend?

Thanks

Thank you Aran

I will try that......

Hi Guys.

I have been sorting out title tags for a photography site. I have given each page within the website a different title tag but now Im unsure as what I should do with the blog.

Blog title tag is currently "Portrait Photographer London | Company Name Blog"

This is fine however wordpress combines the homepage title tag with the title of each blog post and imo makes for a long & cumbersome title...such as :

"The Obamas Family Portrait | Portrait Photographer London | Company Name Blog"

I'm pretty sure I could do better and should do better but Im at a loss, what do you guys think?

If the blog has good DA I would suggest it does have good benefit especially if it is on topic for your website.

I think its a combination of several factors such as:

• New audience that you wouldn't normally have access to.

• Related website giving you a link.

*Author/Brand awarenes & trust.

Not to mention I have had guest blog articles become extremely popular on twitter and facebook far more popular than I would ever been able to generate on my clients site alone.

Thanks Conell

I instantly recognised that page when I clicked on the link....I obviously read this before and it was lurking in the back of my empty brain somewhere

Thank You!

As the title says really, I'm sure the answer is Yes, but I cannot remember why probably one of the many things I read somewhere along the line and can't recall the reasoning can anyone enlighten me please?

Hi Guys

My client has been offered a link from someone within their industry on their blog. The blog has 20 categories and multiple (hundreds if not more pages within each category). The owner of the website has said that would be happy to give my client a link on each of their pages (including their homepage).

They have done this for another couple of people who they like before, so I typed these domains into OSE and noticed that for each page it shows a link and also the page authority.

Domain Authority of this blog giving the link is 71

Home Page PA - 76

About us PA - 60

it goes on.........the least PA being shown is 52 so lets for arguements sake say the other 18 or say categories are PA of 52 too.

My question is surely the OSE is not accurate to imply that my client could be passed page authority from 18 categories at 52 each + home page of 76 + about me page of 60?

Hopefully you understand the point I'm trying to make

I would personally use the one with ALL the hyphens.= slot-machines-gratis.it

I think that sends the clearest picture to google and users what your site is about.

Even is you bought slotmachinesgratis.it I'm sure google is now sophisticated to know (after a short time crawling your site) that these are 3 seperate words and what you are attempting to rank for.

OP sorry to jump in on your thread but can I ask Jeremy can you clarify what you have said for me, if you move keywords around in the title tag you say you see a dip at first?

Im about to do the same thing but I thought I would only see a dip (even temporarily) if I was moving a keyword further away from the front?

Also if you see a dip can you tell me roughly how long this lasts for?

What happens if I do duplicate the title tags, Matt?

Ok Matt.....that sounds perfect.

One more question (i'm sure I typed this but it somehow disappeared)

The about us page is ranking for London Portrait Photographer yet the home page is ranking for Portrait Photographer London would it be sensible to change the title tag of the about us page to London Portrait Photographer so it is an EXACT match?

Hi Matt

Thank you for your response.

Ok so firstly I will change my homepage title tag to Portrait Photographer London.

The homepage is much more powerful in terms of PA than the about us page....infact I would say 97% of the clients links point to the homepage and the other 3% to their blog.

The about us page is highly optimised for the keyword [London Portrait Photographer] too do you think if I make the change to the title of the homepage it would be possible for the homepage to replace the about us page in serps?  The reason I ask is I think it is more natural for the landing page to be the home page for a search query like [London Portrait Photographer] rather than the about us page and I fear I could lose click thru.

As for [Portrait Photographer] keyword I am not worried at this stage as by default most photography sites have very little if any content whatsoever....most appear to have the rankings they have for two reasons A) there domain age and B) number/strength of links.

I am working with the owner to produce good quality content and hopefully that works.....also her work gets featured on blogs which are dedicated to showcasing photographers work, on the how to we haven't really done any of that...I guess you mean "how to use flash?" or "how to shoot in the sun"? Those kind of how tos? The only concern I would have about doing that is the audience those would be catering to would be different to who she is trying to sell her services too.

But I do know one particular photography although in a different niche who has done that and it has brought them quite a lot of followers and links from other people in the industry trying to build their photography business.

.

Hi

I have a dilema that I could do with some help with please.

I am working on a site and its home page is ranking on the second page of google position 2 (12) for a term such as [Portrait Photographer London]

The title tag I am using for this homepage is "Portrait Photographer | Clients Brand Name" ( which does NOT include the word "photography / photographer")

The reason why I used this term for the home page is eventually I would like to rank in the top 3 (I'm ambitious) for [Portrait Photographer] so I left out the location on the home page as I have an about us page where I have the title tag "Portrait Photographer London | Clients Brand Name"  this is currently ranking on page 3 position 3 (33) for a term such as [London Portrait Photographer]

I'm wondering if including the location would help move my client up any? So it would be: "Portrait Photographer London | Clients Brand Name" and the keyword I want move up for is [Portrait Photographer London]

Hope this makes sense

These pages are indexed by google right?

How about I PM you instead I wouldn't want the owner of the site to google themselves and find out I have been interrogating their site.

Thats quite interesting that you say this....I haven't done any research into this competitors rankings per say yet.....however purely from a DA & PA perspective this seems to be doing their site the world of good.

Furthermore the industry is dominated by women (I know I'm one but still) and they tend to comment & talk ALOT and it would seem to me that comments make up 80% of this persons link profile.  However from reading the comments I think they are completely genuine and its just a case of someone connecting with others within her industry on a regular basis too regular for my liking but I'm a old school (I don't have a personal facebook or twitter I like good old fashioned face to face chats)

Weird.

I think you are correct, I am working on a site at the moment it has a DA of 28 and PA of 40 but there is one their competitors who has been trading for a shorter period of time with a DA of 45 and PA 53 and most of their back links appear to be comments (mixture of no follow and follow)

So I was confused by this!

Hi

I think we all agree that social network sites such as pintrest/instagram/twitter are all now no follow however I believe there is benefit in having them....

So I wondered if anyone had been experimenting with commenting on blogs which had no follow attributes and if there was any benefit in terms of improving your rankings?

Hmmmmm then I dont know what it could be....I spent a good few hours watching on my site to see if what I saw matched what I was seeing in GA.

If you are not seeing the same behaviour then I would suggest something may be wrong.....I'm sure someone with better knowledge than me will be on shortly to give you some solid ideas....

Sorry I couldnt be more help.

I once had a similar problem and I used a program to actually watch what and where visitors on my site did & went.  I cant remember for the life of me what it is called but it was really cheap and gave me a good insight.  I spent hours at an end watching what they were doing and then the program gave me an option to talk to the person visiting.....in a live chat type scenario.

In the end GA turned out to be correct and it was due to the fact that the customers coming to my site didnt want what I was offering.

I have used almost all of these directories that you have mentioned.....they do have some positive effect imo but not that much and probably no where near enough to move you up above the bigger guys.

You need to get more authorative links if you want to beat out national sites.

Other than that you need to write better content than them and more frequently so more people link to you.

Use site explorer and see if you can see any sites linking to them that you could get to link to you too at the very least that is a start....then look for other sites that are in your industry that can link to you.

Try and get in to a local newspaper, local radio etc.  You need as many links as possible.

Thanks John.

Can I ask what do you mean by "questionable" links...I can't imagine anyone doing white hat seo would have anything that would be questionable? Can you describe these links please in terms of the type of site that they were on and any significance in anchor text and also how long did it take you to remove them?

Now that you have explained it in more detail I would say I agree with you.  I'm currently working on a site and I am getting some links with specific anchor text such as [portrait photographer] or even [London Portrait Photographer] as I don't think that is unreasonable or out of the ordinary from what a "normal" person would do, I'm also getting some links with solely their brand name: probably 50:50

But most of the links my client already has are of their brand name (which makes my job a little more complicated as the brand name doesn't say what they do as a business, neither does their domain name) so if I couldn't use ANY anchor text I would be nervous.

But your explanation and reasoning seems sound to me! thumbs up

John

Why have you suggested to only use "brand name as the anchor text"?

I don't understand that?

Time is what you need.  The more you write and get indexed in google the more traffic google will send to those pages and future pages you write.  Keep writing and then use social media to try and drive traffic to your site and help these pages rank better.

Tweet everytime your write something, put it on facebook and make sure you interact with people who are following/like your page that way they will be more inclined to help promote and share these pages.

I personally wouldn't put this content on another site as if their site is more powerful than yours and theirs get crawled first then you could well be in for duplicate content.

I dont think its quite that simple.....

For instance even if I have got one link from a blog that doesn't mean I won't revisit that blog again and get another link from the same blog however to a different place on my site.

I do however try to get as many different links from as many different domains as possible.

The key I think is variety, variety of domains linking to you and variety of places you are linking to on your site.

LOL at the dark alley remark.

OK. I think you make a good case.

Hi Kevin

Thanks for the reply this seems like a good answer but I need to understand why you would avoid them.

Is it a gut feeling or do you have any real evidence or even a reasoning you can share...the issue I have is because SEO is so secretive often people make assumptions without no real basis.

The issue I have with Yahoo (other than the price with no guarantee of inclusion) or even Dmoz is that they are not neiche they are not really in my industry so wouldnt it be better for me to get a listing in a directory that is about what my site sells rather than a big one for all directory?

Hi John

Thanks for the answer I think you are correct.

My competitors have been advertising on these sites and I was absolutely sure they were getting some benefit from doing so (more than just brand awareness) and now I think this thread had confirmed it for me.

Alot of people have websites and many of them are not interested in seo and therefore dont read up on google guidelines so it is easy to understand how these things can be missed by some web owners.

Hi Guys

Im doing a little link building and in the industry Im working in there are quite a few directories....most offer free inclusion as long as you link back to them. This process can be slow due to the number of people trying to get listed.

Also most offer a "express service" whereby you can get your site reviewed and uploaded faster if you pay a nominal fee circa £15.

I'm not refering to any old directories these are directories which are industry specific and related to my site, however they are not confined to the country I am in (UK) but extend world wide

So that got me thinking has anyone actually done any conclusive research which suggests that either A) you will not get any benefit from being included in such a directory or B) that you get penalised if you do so or C) none of the above and there is some benefit.

I have been using open site explore and I can see these sites are giving link juice to my competition (as far as I can tell ofcourse) I found a site with almost all of its back links from these types of directories ranking on the first page for a very competitive term (67% using Keyword Difficulty tool)

Would be interested to hear your thoughts / experiences

Can I ask what things have you tried?

How many visitors were you getting when you were ranked 25 and how many are you getting now?

You want to be aiming to be on the first page (spots 1 - 3 ideally) going from 25 - 70 will make hardly any difference in actual visitors imo.

Do you know when this drop occured?

If the product is becoming increasingly popular it could be a fact that other sites are moving up due to relevance and you down and you need to adjust your approach a little.

Another thing is alot of your competitors have the words "bike" or "electric" in their domain name and this helps too, you don't.

Anchor Text for you is REALLY important so every link you get from now on make sure it says Electric Bikes or Buy Electric Bikes (as that what you want people to do buy your bikes)  You will rank for your brand name with any issue so try to avoid any further links with your brand name.

I would even go as far as changing the tab that says "bike" to "Electric Bikes" also.

++++++++++

As a side note:

When you get visitors to your site I feel you will have a issue with converting as many as you "could" because your site isn't very friendly it shouldn't be on black it makes it very hard to read but you may not deal with that nor want to talk about that yet....

To be frank I have heard alot of different ideas about this subject few with any conclusive evidence to support their theories.  I would suggest if you are link building then you dont want to link back.

However if you are writing an article and mention an authority about what you are talking about, i.e you are writing a review on a phone don't be afraid to mention and link back to the manufacturer. Linking back shouldn't be viewed as a bad thing in the correct context.

The way I view link building is my site is an empty glass and every link I get pours some juice into my glass to fill it up, the more juice in the glass the more powerful (authoritive) my site is and therefore the easier it is for me to rank.

Thank you Malcolm that answers what I wanted to know.

Hi Moosa

I do not have the option to put no follow, I do not own the site I would just be advertising on the site???

Hi Moosa

But what I am asking is it good for my site (I would be advisting on the site)

From what I have seen in my industry no one is using no follow for their banners.

Presumably if google found out they would punish the site selling the banners.

(btw I dont think they have done this on purpose, as with everything alot of people dont follow google guidelines and for these guys I doubt very much serps are that important)

Hi Guys

I have been checking out a couple of my competitors and noticed that in site explorer there were sites that were passing what I would consider strong amounts of link juice for their banner adverts.

I checked the anchor text which was always (Img ALT)

Also the links are follow and placed on the home page too.

So I wondered how google view this Im sure adverts were supposed to be no follow and if so then do you think there is a benefit from me taking one of these banner adverts to increase the level of link juice passing to my site.