Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Thanks, Josh. I'm certainly focusing on content creation and site optimization, though this looks like a manipulation on their part. If the 301's are not being counted, would they still redirect to the site they want to value?

Thanks,

Scott

A large competitor has recently purchased a large marketing company that specializes in their industry. As a part of this acquisition they obtained ownership of www.digitalsherpa.com, which is now 301 redirecting some 50K links to www.costar.com/. When I did a site:www.digitalsherpa.com search all of the origin URLs had title tags from the costar site in place of their own.

My question is: Does this violate Google spam guidelines?

search?sourceid=chrome-psyapi2&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8&q=site%3Adigitalsherpa.com&oq=site&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i57j69i65j69i60j0l2.1919j0j7

Hi Sheena,

Thanks for answering.  We are a commercial real estate data and economic analysis firm, that has an existing site which is used by subscribing clients.  We are creating a new corporate site for the purposes of having a marketing friendly site.  We are now going to gate our product site (existing) behind the new site.

Best,

Scott

We are creating a new corporate "marketing site" on Hubspot and connecting our existing product site to that as a sub-domain.  Our existing site ranks very well for all of our targeted keywords. The existing product site will now be behind a login, so how do we transfer juice to the new site in Hubspot?  Or can we?

I have looked into DKI (Dynamic Keyword Insertion), but have not found a solution and thought that some excellent Mozzer might be able to help.  Here is the idea:

We have landing pages for hundreds of cities.  The local content on each of these cities changes page to page, however the keywords that we are going after are the same.  So, I am trying to create a dynamic ad group that looks something like this:

Headline: {City Name} {Keyword}

Description: We cover {City Name} {Keyword}, get more info now!

URL: http://www.website.com/{City Name}

Please let me know if you can assist with this,

B

Hi Becky,

Nice, clean site!  Here is my feedback for the BeLa Rouge Agency site (please note that I am assuming you know what keywords you are going after RE: the post above):

• Global Changes
  • Update you title tags, generally placing the most important keywords first (but keeping the titles so that they accurately describe the page the user is on - EX: Theatrical Talent | BeLa Rouge Agency)
  • Specify your meta-description tags (these will show up in google, and should clearly describe your pages).
  • Add more text to the pages on the site.  The text shouldn't be superflous, but at present your site is primarily images, which isn't great for SEO.
  • Edit your image alt tags so that they describe the pictures.
  • Update your URLs so that they are SEO friendly.  EX:  Change "http://www.belarougeagency.com/index.php/our-clients/glenn-pakulak" into "http://www.belarougeagency.com/our-clients/glenn-pakulak"
  • Update your HTACCESS so that urls with a trailing slash automatically direct to a URL without a trailing slash (or use canonical tags).  Your developer will know what this means.
• Homepage
  • Add clear messaging to this page, "Premier talent agency" or something along those lines.  You need to tell your users who you are and what you do in about 3 seconds on your homepage.
  • Provide a call to action.  "Submit Headshots" or "contact us".
  • Pull in sticky (constantantly updating) content.  If you made the press section into a blog and fed that into the homepage, that would work.  You could also put social feeds on the homepage to help with this.
  • Once you have text on the homepage, add interlinking into the internal pages (link anchor text to relevant interior pages of the site).
• Press Section
  • Instead of having only images in this section, create articles with rich content.  Try not to duplicate content that is already on the web, leverage this section as a place to offer compelling, rich content for your users.
• Client Section
  • Finish the incomplete pages in this section.  It's good to have a complete site, this shows that you are a professional company.
  • See if you can get your clients to link to their completed profile pages on your site from their social media channels.
• Talent Section
  • Create landing pages with H1/H2 and supporting text.
  • Optimize this section as the others (more text, interlinking, page titles, descriptions, etc, etc).

You have the bones of a decent site, it just needs to be fleshed out a bit.  Ranking in google doesn't happen on it's own... it takes a lot of work (especially with the new updates to google).  Everything I mentioned above will get you on the right track on your site optimization, but the tricky part is getting natural links (what you need to really kill it in google).  Start updating your site and post again when you would like it checked again.  Once the site is up to snuff, you have your keywords together, etc... I can help direct on link building.

Cheers,

Brice

Hi Shane,

Use dashes, and make sure that the URLs are "hackable as well.  That is, they can easily be used to navigate to different sections of the site through modification.  For example:

You have a blog with two sections, news and movie reviews.  See two URL examples:

Good: http://www.myblog.com/movie-reviews/shane-reviews-ironman-3/

Wrong:  http://www.myblog.com/movie-reviews-shane-reviews-ironman-3/

If I am a user on your website, it would be a good experience for me to understand the structure of your site through the URL itself.  If I remove "shane-reviews-ironman-3/" from the URL, I should be taken to the movie reviews section of your blog.

Also, don't forget canonicalization.

Hope this helps!

Brice

Hi Becky,

What is the URL for your site, and what is it saying?  Also, I will paste here what I put into another post, and append a few steps at the top.

• Add Google Analytics to your website.
• Sign up for google webmaster tools.
• Sign up for google adwords.
• Perform keyword research.
• Prioritize a portion of your keywords based on high search volume, high relevance to your product/service, and low competition (pick out the best words from your list).
• Create Keyword groups from your priority list (you want to go after 10-15 keywords per landing page.  This can be done through effective keyword grouping).
• Create a landing page / content strategy to accomodate your keyword groups.
• Build the pages (or modify existing pages) accordingly, ensuring that you take in to account all of the onsite optimization techniques (H!/H2 structure, URL structure, interlinking, content relevance, keyword frequency, etc).
• Once you have the pages up, perform some research to determine the best places to get inbound links (I use Open Site Explorer on competitor sites to see where they get links, to start, and PageRank (google chrome plugin) to find a nice list of viable inbound link opportunities.
• Work with the inbound link opportunities and use a SERP tracker to monitor your progress, making modifications to the landing pages or link building campaigns as you go.
• Don't forget conversion optimization!  Test those landing pages out and make sure they are converting for you, if not then try things out like clearer messaging/calls to action, trust factors, etc.

Additionally, your site itself may need work in order to be acceptable for SEO.  If you post your URL, I'll check it out.

Ref.: http://www.seomoz.org/q/i-did-great-keyword-research-but-now-what

Hi Bob,

Google frequently updates it's algorithms (it is not uncommon for ranks to fluctuate), which could be the cause of the drop.  I did check your link profile in Open Site Explorer and it looks like there could be some spammy backlinks not only for your site, but for that specific keyword.

Potential Next Steps:

• I ran your site in GTMetrix, there are some development/redirect items that could be causing problems.  CLICK HERE to see the report for your site.
• Audit your backlink profile and see if you can remove any spammy links that are pointing to your site.
• The word "NLP" appears in the code for your homepage 171 times, it may be good to limit that a bit.
• Beyond SEO, it's always good to think about your users first.  When I visited your site for the first time, it was hard for me to answer some important questions:
  • 1.  Why am I on your website and what can you do for me? (Clear Messaging)
  • 2.  What am I supposed to do on your website? (Clear calls to action).
  • 3.  Why should I come back to your website (Sticky Content)
  • 4.  If I like the content on your website, how do I share it with others? (Social Functionality).

Overall, consider having an SEO consultant or agency audit your entire website.  Google is cracking down on over-optimized sites, so having a ton of anchor text links from a handful of potentially spammy domains pointing to a page that contains a copious number of the targeted keyword may cause google to raise it's eyebrows (potentially hurting your ranks).  Create great, relevant content, and execute natural link building/content strategies to procure those valuable inbound links.

Cheers,

Brice

Hi EGOL, great job... you have completed a very important step!  Try the following process to move forward (I know this is an old post, but it may help if you have missed any steps).

• Prioritize a portion of your keywords based on high search volume, high relevance to your product/service, and low competition (pick out the best words from your list).
• Create Keyword groups from your priority list (you want to go after 10-15 keywords per landing page.  This can be done through effective keyword grouping).
• Create a landing page / content strategy to accomodate your keyword groups.
• Build the pages (or modify existing pages) accordingly, ensuring that you take in to account all of the onsite optimization techniques (H!/H2 structure, URL structure, interlinking, content relevance, keyword frequency, etc).
• Once you have the pages up, perform some research to determine the best places to get inbound links (I use Open Site Explorer on competitor sites to see where they get links, to start, and PageRank (google chrome plugin) to find a nice list of viable inbound link opportunities.
• Work with the inbound link opportunities and use a SERP tracker to monitor your progress, making modifications to the landing pages or link building campaigns as you go.
• Don't forget conversion optimization!  Test those landing pages out and make sure they are converting for you, if not then try things out like clearer messaging/calls to action, trust factors, etc.

Hope this helps!

Brice

Hi Becky,

What is the URL for your site, and what is it saying?  Also, I will paste here what I put into another post, and append a few steps at the top.

• Add Google Analytics to your website.
• Sign up for google webmaster tools.
• Sign up for google adwords.
• Perform keyword research.
• Prioritize a portion of your keywords based on high search volume, high relevance to your product/service, and low competition (pick out the best words from your list).
• Create Keyword groups from your priority list (you want to go after 10-15 keywords per landing page.  This can be done through effective keyword grouping).
• Create a landing page / content strategy to accomodate your keyword groups.
• Build the pages (or modify existing pages) accordingly, ensuring that you take in to account all of the onsite optimization techniques (H!/H2 structure, URL structure, interlinking, content relevance, keyword frequency, etc).
• Once you have the pages up, perform some research to determine the best places to get inbound links (I use Open Site Explorer on competitor sites to see where they get links, to start, and PageRank (google chrome plugin) to find a nice list of viable inbound link opportunities.
• Work with the inbound link opportunities and use a SERP tracker to monitor your progress, making modifications to the landing pages or link building campaigns as you go.
• Don't forget conversion optimization!  Test those landing pages out and make sure they are converting for you, if not then try things out like clearer messaging/calls to action, trust factors, etc.

Additionally, your site itself may need work in order to be acceptable for SEO.  If you post your URL, I'll check it out.

Ref.: http://www.seomoz.org/q/i-did-great-keyword-research-but-now-what

Hi EGOL, great job... you have completed a very important step!  Try the following process to move forward (I know this is an old post, but it may help if you have missed any steps).

• Prioritize a portion of your keywords based on high search volume, high relevance to your product/service, and low competition (pick out the best words from your list).
• Create Keyword groups from your priority list (you want to go after 10-15 keywords per landing page.  This can be done through effective keyword grouping).
• Create a landing page / content strategy to accomodate your keyword groups.
• Build the pages (or modify existing pages) accordingly, ensuring that you take in to account all of the onsite optimization techniques (H!/H2 structure, URL structure, interlinking, content relevance, keyword frequency, etc).
• Once you have the pages up, perform some research to determine the best places to get inbound links (I use Open Site Explorer on competitor sites to see where they get links, to start, and PageRank (google chrome plugin) to find a nice list of viable inbound link opportunities.
• Work with the inbound link opportunities and use a SERP tracker to monitor your progress, making modifications to the landing pages or link building campaigns as you go.
• Don't forget conversion optimization!  Test those landing pages out and make sure they are converting for you, if not then try things out like clearer messaging/calls to action, trust factors, etc.

Hope this helps!

Brice

Hi Bob,

Google frequently updates it's algorithms (it is not uncommon for ranks to fluctuate), which could be the cause of the drop.  I did check your link profile in Open Site Explorer and it looks like there could be some spammy backlinks not only for your site, but for that specific keyword.

Potential Next Steps:

• I ran your site in GTMetrix, there are some development/redirect items that could be causing problems.  CLICK HERE to see the report for your site.
• Audit your backlink profile and see if you can remove any spammy links that are pointing to your site.
• The word "NLP" appears in the code for your homepage 171 times, it may be good to limit that a bit.
• Beyond SEO, it's always good to think about your users first.  When I visited your site for the first time, it was hard for me to answer some important questions:
  • 1.  Why am I on your website and what can you do for me? (Clear Messaging)
  • 2.  What am I supposed to do on your website? (Clear calls to action).
  • 3.  Why should I come back to your website (Sticky Content)
  • 4.  If I like the content on your website, how do I share it with others? (Social Functionality).

Overall, consider having an SEO consultant or agency audit your entire website.  Google is cracking down on over-optimized sites, so having a ton of anchor text links from a handful of potentially spammy domains pointing to a page that contains a copious number of the targeted keyword may cause google to raise it's eyebrows (potentially hurting your ranks).  Create great, relevant content, and execute natural link building/content strategies to procure those valuable inbound links.

Cheers,

Brice