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I think it's OK either way. If you take a look, on Google News even the big players have their own rules about titling.
As you can see, ABC News uses "The World Is Getting More Corrupt, and These Are the 5 Worst Offenders" while USA Today or La Times prefer: "DUI case collapses in Nevada crash that killed 5".
If those comments are generating traffic it's ok, but I'd apply a nofollow tag to the links. They're simply not natural.
When linking to internal pages the preferred method is /.
Why?
Because it helps the speed of your site by saving a DNS query.
Hello Nikita,
No, you won't have to link to the actual sitemap. It is enough to create it with some software or plugin (if you are using Wordpress) and submit it via Webmaster Tools.
In these articles you'll find some answers and tips:
You might want to include your website in local directories.
Also, You could Capitalise your website's title first word, it looks like keyword staffing right now.
Hope it helps,
Cheers.
Hi Saijo,
it really depends about the user. Some might like seeing the capitalized thingy while others might see it as spammy/untrustworthy to click on (me included).
Secondly, also matters what's in that title, which is the transmitted message.
For example, there is a huge difference between:
Fish oils may raise prostate cancer risks, study confirms
and
The Best Prostate Cancer Treatment, Click Here and BUY NOW!!!
This whole thing whit "the best" "leading company", "Buy Now" etc in my opinion is so 2000-ish and looks spammy as hell. I mean, who certifies that a company or other is "leading"? We can say about Google that is a leading company in it's niche, but not about some obscure plumber company nobody heard of.
In a nutshell, I'd use the first title variation because my bet are educated people who can think for themselves not the ones that click anywhere if I tell them so.
I have used (a few years ago) subdomains once, for one of my website. However, for some reason, none of those subdomain built page were ranking so I gave up.
You need to think about it very well. Now, I wouldn't use subdomains but a normal directory structure like root.com/region/product/page.
Hi Ben,
If the redirect was properly done, you should wait 2-4 months to see the effects. Any algorithm, no matter who's is, needs to gather the new data, take into consideration the 301 redirects, and update the scores. This is not done, based on my knowledge, in 1 week.
So, ensure that both the www and non-www version redirects properly, verify both sites in Google's Webmaster Tools and setup the redirection there, too, talk with those you can reach and ask them to update the hyperlinks and... wait.
Hope it helps,
In my opinion you shouldn't worry too much about those links, although it is very simple to turn white hat: ask those bloggers to apply a rel=nofollow link attribute. As you know, Google is against every manipulative link building technique.
A few years ago Pay per Post type link building techniques were in vogue. You know what happened to them, I suppose.
I don't think Google can tell for sure if someone paid for a post if that certain post is published on a high quality blog. Let's say you know an editor from a certain newspaper, you give him $500 and he'll mention your website in one of his articles? Did you paid for that link? Yes. Can Google determine if that certain link is a paid one? I don't think so.
You should think that Google's algo it's all mathematics, it's all "if" - "than" causal programming.
So, if several spammy bloggers, that write mostly about products, services, giveaways link to you... that is not good and I'd avoid that. Unfortunately, the most starters will do anything for $5-$10 and, to some extent, it's understandable, because they have no revenue.
Also, many bloggers have that Disclosure Policy page, I'd avoid them all, or ask them to use nofollow.
If there are bloggers that own high quality websites, which ain't filled with reviews, maybe I'd pay for a natural looking mentions (can be your plain URL, words like "this website", etc.) but I wouldn't rely 100% on this.
Using nofollow will still deliver you traffic and getting traffic and high quality content maximizes the natural linking probability.
Hope it helps,
I'd mix things. The best, most informative, image rich article should go on the client's website (they'll attract natural links over time, which are the best), some good articles could be written for gust blogging (work only with high quality blogs), a few articles on article directories.
Keyword stuffing your homepage isn't the best decision. I'd keep my homepage something like:
Company Ltd.: Web development solutions (anyway, something that best describes your entire site, company)
The landing page(s) could have a title like:
****Company Ltd.: Web design services
or
Web design services | Company Ltd.
Good luck.
Hi July,
I'll start with the rule of thumb: The highest quality link is the one that flows in naturally (The one you don't pay for it, give something in return, etc.)
This morning I smiled a bit, while reading a post written by Jim Boykin back in 2005. This phrase was the reason:
"And in Matt’s perfect world of the web, no one would need SEO’s as everyone would just create great content, and people would link naturally, and Google would sort it all out with the best results on top……yea right."
Now, there are several factors you should consider when judging the quality of a backlink. I'll name a few:
It might be a good idea to get a link from your friend, sounds like a good plan. He could write an article about you, mention your website in a post he'll write, cite some awesome information you wrote, etc.
Avoid sitewide, footer, blogroll links.
As you may know, Google's algo implies hundreds of factors. The importance of on page SEO, compared to the importance of relevant backlinks is almost neglectable.
I've seen websites without any onpage SEO ranking better just because they have a buch on relevant backlinks.
According to OpenSIteExplore, you have 2962 backlinks from only 27 root domains.
You can use the "Keyword Difficulty Report" and select Google UK.
For me, for the search term "Online Creative Writing Courses" you're on page 1, Place 2. You can also run a full report for more detailed data.
Also, you might want to check out in opensiteexplorer the anchor texts you and your competitors are using.
Best of luck!
Hi Juan,
Those links are in your source code:
Right click: view page source.
However, "Server returned HTTP Error 404: Not Found" when accessing you feeds.
A. To fix the problem, you'd have to make some blog posts or try this plugin or its variant:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/rss-includes-pages/
I suppose you created only pages.
B. Or, if you don't want to have feeds at all, you can remove those links from header.php file of your theme.
Another easy way, is to install Yoast WP SEO plugin (yoast.com/wordpress/seo/) and at the Titles and Metas section:
Clean up the head check the Hide RSS Links option.
Hope it helps,
Maybe it is beneficial to do a PR once a year or so, when you really have some news about your company, but only to your reputation/branding.
Links From Press Releases Won't Help - (Search Engine Roundtable, an article by Barry Schwartz).
If you distribute the same PR to 1 or 20 PR sites, it has the same effect. I mean it won't affect you in any way, Google will show up eventually 1 result out of 20 and 19 will be supplemental (Google handled the last PR I released like that).
Hope that helps,
Hi Ben,
If the redirect was properly done, you should wait 2-4 months to see the effects. Any algorithm, no matter who's is, needs to gather the new data, take into consideration the 301 redirects, and update the scores. This is not done, based on my knowledge, in 1 week.
So, ensure that both the www and non-www version redirects properly, verify both sites in Google's Webmaster Tools and setup the redirection there, too, talk with those you can reach and ask them to update the hyperlinks and... wait.
Hope it helps,
The opinions about the usage of internal nofollow links are mixed, but since Google changed how they treat nofollowed links using nofollow for internal links is not such a good idea.
Basically you are loosing link juice.
Now, what you can do, is to have (if possible) targeted links in the footer (if you are using WP you can accomplish that by using conditional tags).
The idea is to let PR flow naturally. This is the conclusion of my readings.
Spare 2 minutes and check out this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=4SAPUx4Beh8
Hi Saijo,
it really depends about the user. Some might like seeing the capitalized thingy while others might see it as spammy/untrustworthy to click on (me included).
Secondly, also matters what's in that title, which is the transmitted message.
For example, there is a huge difference between:
Fish oils may raise prostate cancer risks, study confirms
and
The Best Prostate Cancer Treatment, Click Here and BUY NOW!!!
This whole thing whit "the best" "leading company", "Buy Now" etc in my opinion is so 2000-ish and looks spammy as hell. I mean, who certifies that a company or other is "leading"? We can say about Google that is a leading company in it's niche, but not about some obscure plumber company nobody heard of.
In a nutshell, I'd use the first title variation because my bet are educated people who can think for themselves not the ones that click anywhere if I tell them so.
As you may already know, Page Rank update occurs every 3-4 months, but this is not a rule.
All these years, PR updated like 3-4 times/year.
So, the last update took place at the end of January (I think) so In May or June it is highly possible to roll again.
Anyway, it is good to know that PR constantly changes and what we see in our tool-bars it's just a snapshot.
Good luck!
It's been a while since I haven't used GWT, but I thing you have a limit of 500 requests/day or something like that.
As soon as those requests are processed the counter resets.
Coder, designer, editor.