Welcome to the Q&A Forum

First and foremost on page and on site optimization. Fix any issues with duplication (especially an issue with commerce site that may be multiple pages with products under different urls/categories) and optimization the product pages so they are properly and specifically targeting the primary keywords. ie. if you are selling Nike basketball shoes model XYZ, you want that reflected throughout the product page! Use the Moz on page grader to fine tune.

That can be an extensive process, but I would do that first and then start link acquisition outreach and content asset generation!

Check this article out to get started..some good stuff here http://blog.kissmetrics.com/seo-errors-ecommerce-websites/

Hey tcolling!

Whatever you decide, I would guard against looking for a "good deal" in terms of price. REAL, quality link building efforts that have the potential to drive real results for you is not going to be cheap. If you have the budget, I would consult with Eric Ward before you do anything. He is THE expert in the field and can provide a great consultation for you that details the type of outreach and specific targets that will benefit your efforts the most.

Eric had a quote somewhere that went something like this...

Links can do 1 of 4 things:

a) help search rankings

b) help drive quality web traffic

c)neither

d)both

I'd make sure whomever you use is focused on link acquisition efforts designed to do both. THOSE are the links that Google generally values the most anyways.

There are many people who would be happy  (myself included) to provide link building services, but anyone who does it the RIGHT way will need a fairly large time investment to do so (especially since you are dealing with multiple sites). I would say $1000/month/site would be a realistic starting point for someone qualified to produce for you.

Link building is no longer a manipulative task centered around manual link placement. It IS a process of outreach, networking, relationship building and research that (when done properly) can drive business to your sites, increase brand awareness and drive search rankings!

Check out Moz approved companies here...http://moz.com/community/recommended

Just as an example, let's say we generate a website lead from John Smith. Can we trace John Smith's activity back through AdWords or Analytics to see exactly where he came from and (with AdWords for example) what keyword he typed in before clicking our ad and converting?

Thanks for the help!

Not familiar with AddThis, but as long as your URL's remain the same if you stop using AddThis, you should be okay! If your URLs change, it could be an issue

I think any directory that is either niche relevant or local is still valuable! Especially in terms of local optimization because they also serve as citations!

Hi all,

So if we used to have a domain (let's say olddomain.com) and we had a new site created at newdomain.com how do we properly setup redirects page to page. Caveat, the urls have changed so for instance the old page oldomain.com/service is now newdomain.com/our-services on the new site.

• Do we need to have hosting on the old site?
• Do we need to setup individual 301s for each page corresponding to the new page?

Just looking for the easiest way to do this CORRECTLY.

Thanks,

Ricky

For ranking purposes I don't think it will make much of a difference whether you go with blog posts or service pages. I think it just a matter of preference. If I HAD to choose, I would probably go with adding the pages and created a "services" page with links to each specific page!

I'll be interested to see others responses...

From what I have heard/read, Google's seems to want you to believe that press release links are not valued, but from what I have seen they definitely seem to have some impact on rankings. Maybe they have turned down the tuners on links from press release sites, but they certainly seem to have SOME positive effects.

Just my thoughts!

Agree with this, Those are all variations that you would likely consider your "primary" keyword target. Although making separate pages with unique content will probably help you out short term, it is a near sighted strategy. A) Google is getting smarter and wants to display results for synonymous terms or for different search queries that have the same intent. B) Three pages means watered down link equity and page value.

I would however do some keyword research to pick which of the above has the most search volume and make that keyword the primary target of the page. Then, interchange the synonymous terms where it makes sense like AutoBoof said!

I would spend your time finding quality links instead of having to boost the source of your links!

It seems to me that Google would see all of that duplicate content and simply have 1 page ranking as the canonical page. If they are seeing organic traffic and rankings for multiple pages, I am not sure how long that will last. From what I understand, it would be best to start the slow process of making the content on each page somewhat unique.

Twitter and Google Plus!

We've used Twitter to build relationships with authors/bloggers that pay off over and over again for our clients. We usually try to start of by following them and learning more about what makes them tick. Before we ever have an ask of any sort, we usually try to find ways to engage and help THEM over a period of weeks/months.

Use Twitter regularly and stay tuned in. You'll find ways to help them out by listening!

I've had similar issues working for clients. In my experience, breaking these out into two separate pages can be beneficial if people are actually searching for lifts based on capacity, for the generic terms related to the lift it can be problematic. Essentially, if you have two pages about "mobile xyz lift", you are going to be cannibalizing to some degree. I'd strongly recommend making one page that talked about both with sub-headers for each.

If you do what your boss wants, you might have two pages ranking closely together in search while hurting the ability of one page to prosper to a higher degree. I don't have any hard data to support this, but I've experienced it anecdotally several times. In your case, the topic is too similar.

I don't think that would cause any issue as long as the navigation links are all to the same page/url! You should be fine!

Yeah, I hear ya, but I would still lean towards focusing on attaining the one good link over trying to boost the 10 decent links by performing tier 2 linking. Way too much work involved in trying to manipulate the authority of 10 other websites!

I personally would go with your option 2 (Create a page that says areas served... then each page would have a non-duplicated and original content for that area.)

Building out those landing pages for your urgent care facility on your current site makes synergistic sense (since the businesses are very closely related, same industry etc.) and allows allows you to leverage the current link profile of your existing domain.

If it is truly and independent business run completely separate from your existing practice, it may be a good idea to creat a site.

Hope that helps!

#1 problem=Almost NO quality links pointing to your site. I know that content marketing is great, but I would reference Rand's recent whiteboard Friday regarding hitting the ground building links. Competitive link mining would be my number one go to here!

Also, I'd do some more research into your on-page grades, looks like you may be cluttering for too many keyword combinations on a few of the pages. I would also try to shorten your url's, they look a bit on the spammy side. Since you don't have much link equity built up, it shouldn't be a problem

Im having  a similar problem with a client right now and it's killing me! Best of luck

Hi Igor!

While there are many different attributes that can make a link valuable to your specific site, a very over-arching method for checking link quality would be to sort by Domain Authority. This will give you the most authoritative sites that link to your competitors. Please keep in mind that it does take some investigation to sort through this list to find high quality opportunities.

For example, a competitor may have a link from a Wordpress blog that shows a 100 for the Domain Authority number. In reality, that blog may have very low Page Authority, may actually have low authority and low readership.

I'm a fan of Eric Ward's golden rule. Review link opportunities and if they provide your site with an opportunity to earn some quality referral traffic as a result, then they are likely "good" links to pursue. If not, it may be better to pass.

Diversifying your traffic sources through quality links is much more valuable long-term than simply pursuing links to obtain better search rankings.

Let me know if that makes sense and I'll do my best to help and/or elaborate!

-Ricky

Hi Beth,

If you go to Moz "pro" you can see any of your accounts that existed during pro in the old Moz Pro format. Any new accounts only allow for you to use the Moz Analytics interface!

Do you have a bookmark for Moz that is taking you to the old Moz Pro possibly?

Hi Andrea!

You will not be "penalized" for duplicate content, but Google probably won't be indexing pages seen as duplicates in their search results.

If you are optimizing those category pages for specific keywords, then you will need each category page to have content that is mostly original and unique on each. If you really only have one of those pages optimized and the others are there mainly to help the user on your site, you can use a rel=canonical tag to "tell" Google which version of the page (the specific category page) you wish to display in search results.

Let me know if that helps! If not, ill try to eloborate

I asked here https://www.google.com/moderator/#7/e=adbf4 but figured out ask the Moz Community also! Is it actually best practice to create landing pages for nearby cities if you don't have an actual address there? Even if your target customers are there? For example, If I am in Miami, but have a lot of customers who come from nearby cities like Fort Lauderdale is it okay to create those LP's?

I've heard this described as best practice, but I'm beginning to question whether Google sees it that way.

Hi Rich,

To the best of my knowledge, most of the directory type links are unlikely to get you penalized. If anything, those types of links are likely to be devalued as Google learns more about their inclusion process etc.

I'd keep most of the directory links unless there is something that is clearly off-the-rails bad!

Look forward to hearing insights from others.

Ricky

Hey Matt,

If this works, you are THE MAN! This is exactly the type of solution I was looking for. Thanks a ton.

http://www.seroundtable.com/google-advertorials-16859.html

For inactive product pages I think it's usually best to send them to a 404 page. I'd make sure the 404 page includes a nice index of product categories and a mention that the product or page they were looking for is out of stock.

These pages don't usually contain much link value, so you shouldn't worry too much about having to set up 301s to similar products etc.

-RIcky

I see no reason to leave Moz! Their stuff is AWESOME!

From a search perspective, It may be a bit more beneficial to use the directory route but that is often difficult to organize when we are talking about multiple pages (ie a previous years entire website).

In my opinion, the subdomain route seems like the best option. It will allow for the previous pages and content to contribute to the current sites domain authority while also serving as an extremely organized presentation of the previous years events and attractions!

I have a client who does patio furniture repair and restoration. When performing keyword research in Moz for terms like "patio furniture repair" I see that only 11-50 people in the entire US are searching for this term according to the Moz data. However, running an Adwords campaign currently and our top keyword is the phrase match for "patio furniture repair" which has generated over 100 clicks in just a couple of months in ONE county.

Is there a better way to research more accurate results on search volume estimates? This makes organic SEO and keyword targeting hard!

Thanks,

Ricky

As far as social media goes, I would follow this rule. If you manage ALL Facebook marketing activities for all locations use a single brand facebook page. If each location does their own marketing/Facebook then having separate accounts could help them engage more specifically with their local communities.

Hope that helps! I had the same issue for a client who was trying to manage multiple locations Facebook pages from a central command. Leads to mediocrity in my opinion!

Isn't it essentially the same thing as using the "find keywords" aspect of SEOMOZ?

Completely agree that on-site is needed, however, i'm not sure HOW much good it would do for that keyword phrase.

You are competing against one site for that term that you are extremely unlikely to outrank due to high DA/PA (2 SERP listings for houzz.com)

That being said you are competing with ashlimizell.com and down2earthdesign.com for the spot just ahead of the local listings (which may be hard to rank for due to the fact you are not actually located in Philly) and I think the on-site changes should take care of winning over that #3 ranking!

I also agree, kill the linked footer text. The anchor text doesn't really even match the corresponding page (ie interior design bucks county links to about page)

Also check out the Moz 2013 ranking factors for other areas that could help you get a boost in the SERPS! http://moz.com/rand/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/rank-factors-pie-2013lrg.gif

Hi there!

Im not sure that I know the answer to this questions as it is a bit outside of my area of expertise and experience, but I figured this page may be able to provide some help.

https://sites.google.com/site/webmasterhelpforum/en/faq-internationalisation#q8

I assume not. I believe Google will just use your first line of content as the H1! I think Rand did a video on this not too long ago. I don't think he believes H1s were very important.

Since Google is tailoring search results to user IP and location, is it still best practice to optimize your site titles etc. with long-tail geographic keywords? For example, instead of optimizing a page for "dentist in West Palm Beach, Florida", search users who are IN West Palm Beach can just search "dentists" and a list of local dentists will be displayed (both in the local listings AND organic search listings).  I'd love to see Rand cover this on a Whiteboard Friday!

I would just double check your link profile with this http://smallseotools.com/backlink-checker/. I sometimes find links there that do not show up in open site...not sure why that happens though. Anyone?

Hey guys, not sure what was going on but it looks like the page is now registering the link juice passed from the www. version!

I appreciate the help!!

Hi Ian,

Unfortunately, no one call tell you exactly why you're seeing so much success with that page for that term, but we can give our best guesses based on what we do understand about Google's algorithm.

Some contributing factors from what I can tell...

1. You have clear on-page targeting (title, heading, url) related to the exact keyword in question that seems to be lacking (fully) on other pages showing up on page one.
2. Your domain authority is on-par with other pages ranking toward the top of page 1 for that term (26).
3. Your page has a very large number of internal links point to it (396) vs other pages showing up on page 1.
4. The fact that this topic is mentioned in several places through your site may be helping (http://www.laughology.co.uk/teacher-workshop-s-inset-days/inset-days)
5. User behavior/experience seems to be good (the fact that you have all of these other resources linked may be contributing to longer time on site, high user satisfaction etc...signals we BELIEVE Google is using to some degree).

One thing I also checked was site speed...to my surprise your page speeds were VERY low..so you're winning despite that at this point. I wanted to point that out though because it could be something that helps improve performance of other pages for other terms!

Just tried again and got it to work!

Thanks again!

Hi Gregory, I'm sure there are MANY others but here are some I read...

http://blog.hubspot.com/

http://searchengineland.com/

http://searchenginewatch.com/

http://www.seroundtable.com/

If you are interested in link building, I would definitely check out http://www.ericward.com/linkmosesprivate.html for 8 dollars per month. Good stuff there from Eric Ward

Thanks Tom! I thought so, just wanted to make sure. The domain with dashes doesn't have a spammy link profile, just a spammy url We finally got our hands on the non-hyphenated version!

Thanks for the help!

-Ricky

Too close on those numbers, especially in terms of spots 8,6,5 & 2. You're going to have to take a deeper look.

I'd start with digging into the link profiles. Find the links that your competitors have that are really high trust links--I'm talking BBB, industry accreditation sites, quality PR hits/mentions etc. Find the easy wins and try to identify the really high level links that your competitors have that you may be missing.

My second priority would be to check out your bounce rates and time on site. It may be that traffic is better served on those sites and therefore Google is giving them the nod in the rankings.

Third, I'd check out http://moz.com/blog/ranking-factors-2013. Dig in and see where your competitors are beating you in that regard step by step. Process of elimination I'm afraid....we can't really know for sure!

Just out of curiosity, I checked out your website also. You may want to consider toning down the keyword placement on the homepage! If you run the homepage in the Moz grader for "wicker furniture" you will see that it suggests that you may have overdone the keyword mentions. This may adversely impact your search rankings and I noticed you have much better stats in terms of link authority than the pages ranking on the bottom of page 1 for the term. May help!

gg06ORn

I would maybe check to see if the cover photo was designed with high image resolution? For example, GIMP defaults to a resolution of 72 pixels, but I find that changing that number to 300 produces higher quality on large image files.

Also, check out this article http://ideasandpixels.com/the-new-google-cover-image-size-dimentions

Not sure on this one..hope you find an answer!

To accomplish ranking for synonymous search terms, are we better off just letting Google make the connection? Should we put the secondary synonymous term in our page titles? Is it best practice to create a completely unique landing page for the term? Not sure how to go about this. Some examples would be "miami lawyer" or "miami attorney", "obgyn" vs "gynecologist" etc. Any help on this would be much appreciated!

Hi Taysir, just saw that you hadn't received any feedback on this so I thought I throw in my two cents!

Instead of creating a mess of navigation tabs, I would simply have each locations primary page list the service offerings with anchor text linking to the corresponding page. For example...

Plumbing Company in Specific City, NC

[primary page content]

Our Services Include:

• EMERGENCY PLUMBING in Specific City, NC (linked to page)
• WATER TREATMENT in Specific City, NC (linked to page)
• etc.

I think that should provide a framework that makes sense for the user AND gives the bots an easy way to index the pages without going deep into a navigational structure!

Would like to hear other opinions on this as well

Totally agree. Keyword density is really the last thing you should focus SEO efforts on (other than meta keywords :P).

From my understanding, the only important part of the page lies in the body frame. Sidebars, headers and footers that are constant throughout the site don't really factor.

-Ricky

Hey guys, i've seen some stuff about this before but I recently found an opportunity to put it into action and wanted to make sure I knew what I was getting into!

I am looking at buying a domain (expired and now only 10 dollars) that has a decent domain authority and has some keywords in it related to my clients practice. I plan on using a 301 redirect to pass "link juice" because this client is looking for a quick bump in rankings.

Thoughts? Benefits? Problems with this?

Thanks guys! I've got a solid checklist now to complete to qualify a site!

Though for anyone else reading this thread--@salman...sounds like a very old-school, black hat SEO tactic! Not only do I doubt that would work short term, I KNOW it is something that Google will be looking to penalize. A link network/ link farm like that is not really a legitimate SEO practice and violates Google's guidelines.

Hi Hashtag,

If implementing a 301, there is no need to delete a page from your server. A 301 will essentially "delete" the page to both users and search engines while directing both to the new url. You can do it, but there is no need to.

Hope that helps!

-Ricky

I know that rand recommends hosting your blog on a FOLDER of your root domain instead of hosting your blog on a subdomain.

The reason for doing so is that the domain authority of the subdomain will put a slightly larger distance (in terms of authority signals carrying over) from the root.

For example, its better to have your blog at bobsmithdental.com/blog vs blog.bobsmithdental.com.

After that, its really a matter of tightening up your keyword optimization on the blog posts and building and earning quality inbound links!

-Ricky