Probably a bad example with the oil, but with free xyz game as that page grows in authority it effects the domain authority of the site. As the domain authority goes up, the easier it is for the page authority to increases. So, each optimized page ultimately effects every page.
Best posts made by RobertFisher
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RE: Keyword placement on home page or throughout the website
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RE: Unlinked mentions that seem to be FROM by site
Hello NappyValleyNet
I took a look and recreated the issue myself. I tried it with and without the OR operator, etc. We need a Moz staffer to explain it but my guess is that the urls being dynamically generated is tied to the issue. To know it is dynamically generated as opposed to a static page, when you look at the URL you see question marks, equal signs, ampersands, etc.
Hey Moz Associates, hook us up pretty please
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RE: Issues with google places.
Unfortunately, I am having a problem with Imgur and cannot process url for some reason. Here is link to my image.
It appears there is an issue in that you have changed something other than category and description. This has resulted in the need for a new PIN. Because the images you show are snippets it is hard to tell what is up.
In my image from link above, you will notice one business still requires a PIN and has nothing to the right. the others have analytics to the right. IF you are not showing analytics, you likely have a need for a new PIN.
When you made changes did you change the account to you from the business owner? If you make any changes like that, or address, or phone, etc. It will require a new PIN.
Hope this helps, (If you can show larger image of page, we can likely assist).
[](<a href=)" target="_blank">a> [](<a href=)" target="_blank">a> [](<a href=)" target="_blank">a>
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RE: Google Contacting Clients in an Adwords MCC?!
I disagree with your "shitty practice from Google." I personally think it is blatantly unethical.
Edit: by disagree, I mean that unethical is worse than shitty practice.
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RE: What's best hosting option for web design company targeting UK market?
Jan
I will leave it to those who live and work in the UK to suggest a hosting company there. As to do you have to host there to target there, no you do not. You can have a .co.uk domain if available as that is a good indicator for those searching as well and no matter what way you go, you will set your domain to target the UK in GWMT. (Go into Configurations>Settings>Geographic Target and then select UK.
Here is a great place to start if you want to be really clear how to set this up the correct way:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/03/working-with-multi-regional-websites.html
It is updated so the material is relevant and quite helpful.
As to the dedicated server, we use dedicated servers as an agency as we want to insure our clients are protected. If I had a single site, that was not huge in traffic, revenues, etc. I would simply find a quality hosting company and get the best backup, recovery, etc. package they have as that is much more cost effective.
Hope this helps,
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RE: Local SEO for a company with 3 sites, for 3 different type of businesses
Unfortunately, it is still the same issue. I just made this up: Mess with the NAP, deal with the crap.
There is no way I would do this based on one thing alone: Experience in trying to assist those who have.
Sorry, I wish it was easier,
Robert
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RE: Bing - how come we are not shown in listing?
In Bing I just did a Site:www.mpnwindows.com and got a full return showing multiple urls for that subdomain. When I did same with Site:mpnwindows.com root, I got back the same. It appears you have a good canoncical redirect as well as it returns the www. subdomain on either.
Not sure what problem you are having or if I just hit it as it had been solved. Either way it appears you are good to go.
Edit - Also got clever and went to rank tracker and put in mpnwindows.com as keyword and http://mpnwindows.com as url and you are ranked #1 for that search term on Bing. (Just curious if it would work.)
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RE: Issues with google places.
OK for the description, click on the box where the description is and it will be available to change.
As to data, can you retrieve any at all? Say from the year before?
Did you change anything with location, business name, address, phone, etc?
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RE: Google Contacting Clients in an Adwords MCC?!
Alick,
I did use the Adwords community forum and was pleasantly surprised by the input. One person (level 13) stated this had happened to him and gave some good input. Another did as well. Thanks for taking time to send an answer to me.
All the best,
Robert
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RE: Geotargeting issue
Just because there is a reindex, does not guarantee that the rankings change that quickly. You should watch it and see. One thing to remember, make sure you are using a non personalized search when looking or run the rankings in moz.
I would watch it over a few weeks and see if you see movement.
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RE: Local Listings SEO: Which multi-location retailers are doing a super job with local listings? I'm also interested in finding retailers who are using schema.org microdata format to structure their store-level data.
Miriam,
You are so correct on this. It always amazes me how many large companies rely on their brand, people know them, etc. and are just unwilling to even look at the improvements they could make with SEO.
One of the first people I ever heard the term SEO from was Jon Schepke who with his cousin Steve were co-founders of Meandur Internet (Proceed Interactive). Jon is CEO of SIM Partners and I know they do local on an enterprise level. Out of curiosity, I looked at their clients page and did not see any retailers that I recognized. What stood out is that companies involved with destinations are all over local.
I do not see larger retailers who are making an attempt at really making local work for them (and you and I know it would), no microdata, etc. But, when things start going a bit South, I am guessing we will see it then.
Best
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RE: H1 and title tags
A lot of great responses to this from great contributors. Here is another point of view. (Full disclosure: We have sites each way).
If you consider a title a title and a heading a heading, the H1 would be different, but still on subject. I know of no empirical data that states a slightly differing H1 is a negative from an SEO perspective but keyword usage in H1 may provide some benefit. If the title is Used Cars Denver, to me, it makes no sense from a writing perspective to make the H1 Used Cars Denver. I think a reader gets that the title brought her here, so you use a variant in the first part (H1) of the content: Used Cars Denver - Under 10,000 miles. You still have your keyword, but you are giving the reader (searcher) more depth in the next paragraph.
Obviously, the H2 could be Used Cars Denver - 10001 to 25,000, etc.
Even though we do it, I think part of it is driven by tools we use for keyword optimization on page (think SEOmoz Pro Onpage Optimization Grader) as opposed to what might be more readable or potentially more SEO friendly. Yes, I know about keywords in the H1, etc. but I do not think you have to match the title tag. I think it has to make sense from a reading perspective or you are just being redundant. Again, we do both... But, maybe I will revisit this
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RE: What is the best way to host a video on my site from a SEO perspective?
Daan,
EGOL says it well here.
A few months ago, Phil Nottingham with Distilled posted a response to a question and contained some of what EGOL has here and additional information. I suggest you look at this too, as it was excellent. Phil Nottingham - Best Way to Host Video
Good Luck
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When Company names confuse search
I am currently perplexed over a client's search results. They are an established company and well known in their field. (Unfortunately, I am not comfortable providing a link or their name.) The company is a consulting firm and let's assume it is an accounting firm, which it is not. When you search on BSC Accounting the results give them the first result but the next 18 results are around education - BSc Accounting. Consider the DA on the site is 34 and the PA for homepage is 39.
Is there a chance that when someone is searching on accounting firms that having the BSC in the name skews what they are able to rank for? Forget about searches for their exact name, I am more interested in thoughts as to how the BSC effects general searches for their specialties.
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RE: Local Listings SEO: Which multi-location retailers are doing a super job with local listings? I'm also interested in finding retailers who are using schema.org microdata format to structure their store-level data.
Let me see...
Getting a group of franchisees to agree on marketing could be replaced with herding cats, pulling teeth, root canal, flat tire on freeway, all at the same time and you would avoid a lot more headaches.
Best
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RE: What is the best out-of-the-box optimized WordPress Theme?
I can speak to this from what my developers say. I personally like StudioPress and have always felt it was a quality set of themes that provided a lot of what clients want in look and at the same time allowed us to personalize it to the degree that made it perfect.
Our lead developer who is a bright guy (prior to us he was a huge Drupal developer, etc. One a national award for a television station site from ABC) likes themeforest. From the point of view of additional coding our interns who are seniors in digital media at a university are able to work with it as well. So, I can't tell you from a pure code point of view, but as being the guy who says yes or no and who listens to the ones who get the job done, I would have to say we lean about 30 studiopress and 70 themeforest.
Hope it helps,
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RE: Google places: how to deal when competitors spam?
Amit
We run into this regularly and there is a way to deal with it.
Whether or not the business is verified in Google Places, click on the Edit this place button in the top right of the Places for the business. You will see a link that says report a problem.
What we do that has worked in the past is to report the business as closed but you can check any of them and a detail box will appear for you to write in the problem. Now, it won't happen overnight and I suggest that if you don't see a change in about 4 to 6 weeks you have someone else report it as well, etc.
Typically, we will see a change in a few months.
Best -
RE: Accidentally checked privacy setting in WP to "not to index" and dropped rank...how can I fix this?
Evers, the good news first - the change is not permanent. Good move on sitemap resubmit. One thing is that it will depend somewhat on how long the noindex was on: If you had a top ranked site in a very competitive vertical and rebuild occurred a year ago it is much more problematic. If it was two weeks ago, it is much less.
One thing I would look at is the pages indexed in GWMT and see how they look pre change and post to track if you are getting back. (This way if you are not seeing reindexing, you will act faster). Depending on the size of the site, you could also "fetch as Google" for some of the important pages as a way to speed up the indexing of the more significant pages.I am assuming that if there were url changes you took care of them with 301 or canonical.
Take a breath, but keep an eye on it all.
Robert
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RE: Has anyone ever used a specific page (instead of home page) when building links in directories?
Max,
Let me try to clear up this "deep linking" question for you. First, I do not use the term deep linking and am not sure the entire goal of it. If you are going out trying to set up links in some way and direct them to specific pages, IMO you are going to a lot more trouble than it is likely worth today.
Your content should be able to get you links. If your "deep" pages have good content they will get links, Period. Here is an example and it is one that for us was really irrelevant content.
One of our people did a post and included something on 3-D printing. We do not own a 3-D printer, I would not know how to use one, etc. Yet, we got people linking to that. Another was about 18 months ago or so, we did it a post on responsive design. The post was done just to talk about responsive design. We did not send it out to people to get links, we did not submit it to article directories, etc. Yet, it is one of our most linked-to pages on our site. The reason seems to be due to the image and people wanting to use it. BUT, we did not set out to get links.I would worry a lot more about ensuring you are creating content regularly and that it is not just content for content's sake. Make it readable, interesting, engaging. If you are "deeplinking" whatever that practice is, you are trying to create links to specific pages and I just think that is a waste of time 99% of the time.
Best
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RE: 301 redirects / clean urls
First, your dev is wrong. The url your dev has first is a dynamic url and you do not want that. You can spot dynamic url's by virtue of the ?, &, .cgi-bin etc. The problem is more in conversions than in a lack of indexing, etc.
You do want to redirect url to url and most believe you will get 90 to 99% of the juice. (My experience is that it is over 90%). The preference from what you provided would be the http://www.k9electronics.com/designer-dog-beds/
Lastly, since you are going down this road, I suggest you read this post by Dr. Pete. It gives good advice on eCommerce. I think based on your question you would find it very helpful.
Best
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RE: Encouraging people to review my client's business on google places
Taysir,
Google Places does not exist. I believe the effective date of the change was June 1. So, as to a badge or seal, there is none (for either).
As to encouraging traffic to the Google + for business for your client. For us, we set up ways for our clients to ask their customers to place reviews for them. An issue here is that if you are getting too many or you try to do the reviews via proxy, they will be removed.
I think you would be better served to put G+, FB like/share, Twitter, etc. buttons on the page in a conspicuous place and, possibly, put a slight amount of text or an image below asking them to click if they love you.
Hope it helps,
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RE: My backlinks do not register on your software but are registered on my google webmaster tools
Stephen,
Open Site Explorer does not crawl as "deeply" as Google. It hits roughly the top 25% of the web and therefore will not show everything that you will see in GWMT. Obviously, to have that type of depth would require a lot of bandwidth and servers and that is what makes Google, Google.;)
Also, it would depend on when your links were established as it can take up to 60 days for OSE to show the links. One thing you can do is check when the last crawl was by moz and compare that to when the links were created. I believe the last one was Sept. 12.
Here is a post by Rand regarding the August mozscape crawl which will give you a lot of info as to what is crawled, etc.
Hope it helps,
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RE: No Location option in Incognito Search Settings
If you read above you will see that it has been removed.
This is what many are using instead: http://isearchfrom.com/
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RE: How to avoid content duplication of my websites
You will not have a duplicate content problem if the sites all target different countries. For each site, set your country target in GWMT. With sites targeting different countries but using same language you need to insure correct language meta tags (EN-US for US, EN-GB for UK. etc)
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RE: Multiple Locations for Tire Shop Should I Name them Differently?
greenhornet77
There is no need to name them differently in Google. What you are after is accurate NAP, Name, Address, Phone (and consistent) for each. Obviously, there are many businesses that have the same name for each location without a #3, etc.
Assuming you have no Local issue with any currently, you should set up each with its own directory listing and insure for each there is ONLY one address and ONE matching phone number. No other number anywhere (think YP and other tracking numbers). So, Bobs 1234 Hoho road, Bobs 3587 Hoho Rd., Bobs 4564 Ace Ln., Each with own phone number.
Check to insure any citation or directory site has exactly the same for each. We go so far as to insure there are differing photos, etc.
Hope it helps,
Robert
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RE: Just read Travis Loncar's YouMoz post and I have a question about Pagination
Dana
Great and informative question,
Jared
Great Answer
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RE: No Location option in Incognito Search Settings
Thanks, I think it just adds more info. Seems to be a bug at the Google. OR if you are more into the conspiracy realm, it is some surreptitious way of tracking where we think we may want to be if we lose our memory on a day we are logged in....
Best
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RE: Duplicate content? Not sure.
You are being perfectly clear and these, in my opinion, are not duplicate content and I will endeavor to show you how I drew that conclusion:
First, in looking at your code, you have a feed that is throwing up the blog from 8/19 that has the above quote in it. That is why it shows on your home page.
On the next couple of pages they are:
story....com/tag/mugs title tag is mugs archivestory....com/tag/publishing title tag is publishing archive
story...com/tag/photo - photo archive
story...com/tag/memory - memory archive
then the post itself: http://www.storybooksforhealing.com/publish-cup-of-joy/
**then the blog pulled to the home page. **
So, your issue is really not one of duplicate content, per se. But, there is a way to fix it.
Since most of these are archives, go into all in one SEO (this is in your WordPress dashboard), Plugins (Yes it is there, I see it
You will see All In One SEO (I have attached screenshots to assist you)
The first image is just the top of All in one SEO, the second is scrolling down and the third is the one where you will see Use noindex for Archives:, No noindex Tag Archives:
Check each box.
Now, note that if you go do a Site: again it will still be there and you will need to give it time to fall away. You could likely resubmit the sitemap, etc. but don't need to. Just wait.This way Google will not index these and you will not have duplicate content issues. (I don't think you would have had an issue with it, but this will keep it clean for you.)
All the best,
[" target="_blank">iframe>](<iframe class=)
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RE: Business with Google + Business Page not showing with map
You are saying the business has been verified - we claimed their address - is that correct?
One thing we have no way of knowing i_s this a service area business or not?_ You cannot really set up a places account for a service area business at this time; that would negate the suggestion from AC Pro if it is a service area business. If it is not a service area business, given you would need both Local and G+ set up, AC Pro's suggestion is helpful. So, a few more questions:
When when you search on the business - Joe's Tires and Dresses Houston TX - you do not see the map and info to the Right on the web serps page. (see attached).
Have you gone into mapmaker to edit the location of the business at all? If you do, are you seeing the business on the map? Go to mapmaker.Google.com (be logged in with your G+ or master account). In the search bar at top left put in the business name. Does your G+ info show up?
One issue is not knowing precisely what is occurring for you or being able to see the business, etc. If you can provide just a few more details that would help; if you can't I would be happy to take a look if you can PM it.
Let us know please,
Robert
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RE: Help fixing the traffic drop that started on 4 September 2012.
Kasutubh
I think Dana gives some great places to look. The first place to look from my vantage would be Google Analytics (GA). I would go back to the good old days and start moving forward to find what happened when. Especially if you know you made change one on day one, change two on day four.
That said, I think it is a cautionary to any who are changing site structure/architecture or anything within the realm of UI/UX that results of changes can only be tracked to the degree that a single variant is isolated/isolatable. (Yes, there could be an argument to this-I am speaking broadly).
By making one change at a time, you are able to insure you have no oops moment that is lost in 5 changes of redesign.
I would focus on what most likely effected the ability of the user to get to the site. Did you change meta descriptions, were any outside the site changes made; do you advertise somewhere and now have halted it?
At the end of pondering I keep coming back to the ad changes and am wondering if the look of a month ago and now is so different you are getting people to the site but they are not going deeper (analytics will tell)? OK I have a thought. AH HA:
Using the wayback machine, I looked at home page cache from July vs Now. I like July 100% better. (Dana, don't think it was the tag cloud even though I am not much on them.)
I think you have messed with a UI/UX issue and need to slowly step back. when I look at both pages I just do not like the look or feel of the new. It is sterile, too news oriented. There is not a community feel at all. On July cache I have the FaceBook app showing people who are a part of your community (a good example of this is a site called SEOmoz), below that I have what an engineer said. They get to be involved. I was just looking at wired magazine and I had no sense of community but I did not pick it up for that. Here I came for community, saw a question that intrigued me, liked what Dana was saying and wondered if there was anything I could add. THINK ABOUT IT.
If I had to place a $100 bet right now, it would be that this is where your problem lies.
I hope this provides some direction,
All the best,
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RE: Has Google Local search algorithm changed in the last 6 months?
With Local being so labile right now, we need to know what business, what vertical, etc. If you cannot share it here, you can PM me and I will be happy to keep it all confidential.
I think all the same key ingredients for good Local still exist like NAP consistency, single page for each location, etc. You also have to look at what are competitors doing differently, are there new competitors, etc. We had a client who was ranking in their community at 2 or 3 for a long time in Local and after the three pack change all of a sudden was at 5 or 6. Our Local person who was fairly new was the one that discovered that their business we just outside the city limits for where they wanted to be listed. I am talking max 2 blocks outside. I cannot tell you that was the reason for the change, but you sometimes have to get really granular if you are to impact things.Hope that helps,
Robert
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RE: The Value of Internal Links?
We do a lot of WP sites for clients and I do not like the auto generated internal links plug ins. The problem is they have a tendency to link back in a loop to the page they are linking from and some over do the internal linking. The best bet in my opinion is to know that internal links are good as they can help spread link juice to deeper pages (use them judiciously) and they do help the bots crawl.
So, IMHO, internal links are good but you need to do them by hand in my estimation so that you control them.
Hope this helps
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RE: Having Yelp Reviews Removed
Hello Miriam,
Thanks for posting the "We is soooo Good" blurb from Yelp. I hesitated to do so. The issue with overstating is it comes off as less than genuine and Yelp way overstates. I know that when there are review issues that are pointed out, you can talk with your rep, show them a problem, and they in some way deal with it. It is disingenuous for Yelp to say there is zero relationship between Yelp Sales and other departments.
1. Agreed on the close manual management. The issue is it is a ___ management firm. (Left blank as I prefer not to identify them here as I am in ongoing talks on a major issue and at this time there has been positive change so far on that side.) They have changed some management, but that should not allow you to carte blanche say: "We got rid of the bad actors and the new team are all well dressed. Take down bad reviews." Obviously, Yelp would have no way of knowing the new "team" will be any different. Also, if that works for one, it should be done for anyone with a bad review.
2. On this, you know that I would not cut and paste. I did make multiple negative reviews, but all were different. Given they are the same complaint, one could say spun, but they were spun by me in a way that was, IMO, legit. The one thing here is they could say that the ones where I am not located are not reasonable and I would say OK. But, they should have the courage to tell their Reviewers, members, etc. that we took this down for this reason. Or, with someone who posts reviews and assists their property in doing so, at least realize that if you posted 50 plus reviews with all types of stars, good bad and mediocre, etc. that it is unlikely you have now become a review spammer.
I will share whatever I receive from Yelp, but I am not holding out any hope they will even respond. On other much less problematic issues, I have emailed, used contact form, etc. and failed to get even a response.
Thanks Miriam,
Best
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RE: 301 permanent re-direct
Martin
It should be accessed no matter what is placed in the navigation bar. The thing to look at is whether or not you have a preferred domain set in GWMT. (Google Webmaster Tools). To do that you simply go to GWMT, Dashboard, configuration, settings, and set preferred domain as one or the other.
In terms of an "error 301-redirect" I am not sure what type of error you are showing. Typically, any error would be problematic.
Hope this helps,
Robert
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RE: New URL Strucutre
When looking at what people search on, besides tire or discount tires, the brands are right up there. Given that most recommend a structure of Category/sub category/product I would suggest: company.com/Michelin/all-terrain/60,000-mile or the same with 60,000-mile replaced with heavy duty or some other product descriptor. Here I am assuming all-terrain would be a model. (My guess is that all companies use their own independent model names and unless someone knows that model they would not necessarily search on it). An example would be a Michelin Primacy MXV4.....how many people search on that model??? Compared to how many search for automobile, light truck, off road, etc. I want to hit what the majority are searching on.
You said you are using the model page (again, Michelin Primacy? or something like All-Terrain?) as the primary SEO page and I am not sure about what you mean. Based on how people seem to search for tires, I would think having the Tire Brands optimized and then optimizing the model would be best (Frankly, short of the tire size links, I don't see a reason to not fully optimize any page - that way they are all working for you).
Another item you did not mention was the ability of the shopper to look up their auto, year, model, etc. and find the tire for their vehicle. Are you including that functionality on the homepage? I think most would like that as it is easier than trying to go figure out what type tire they have.
You said you retail tires so I am assuming you have a retail location (if you are also ECommerce, insure that your CMS will adjust for dynamic urls to search engine friendly like you are describing here). If you have retail locations insure that you have optimized for Google Places, etc.
With this, a final consideration for me (and I am not a subject matter expert in tire purchase habits) would be to be sure I was mobile compatible especially if I was retail.
Hope this helps, got any good deals on Goodyear P285 70 R17's..
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RE: Will adding affiliate links negatively affect my SEO?
Samuel,
I don't think there will be a negative effect unless there is an abundance of these and the page becomes spammy. A couple of cautions would be: "at the bottom of articles" links lower in a page have less value, links in the footer are IMHO of little or no value and tend to clutter everything.
Your site has a nice clean look right now and you dont want tons of links all over the place. If you keep quality content and diverse links you should be fine.
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RE: Having Yelp Reviews Removed
Miriam,
This is why Moz is still worlds apart from so many online organizations whether SEO, SEM, directories, SaaS, Etc. Honesty. Frankly, I would not care if Yelp showed some favoritism to their paying clients: Just let me know you will occasionally work with a paying client to ameliorate a bad situation. (Yes, even keep it a bit obtuse. Then at least it is no harm no foul...somewhat.) If more companies would understand that you selling a trillion in whatever does not always have to be negatively affected by doing the right thing.At some point we all must ask ourselves as business people: What are we going to stand for. To this day, I give Rand and the Moz crew huge credit for all they did to get their beliefs out early and to stand by them when it was surely not expedient. Just be nice.
Thanks,
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RE: If I reply to a PR7 blog does it create a backlink?
Mark,
That will depend on whether or not you place a link back to your site and whether or not they allow it. But, I would be cautious as the many of these are those who are not trying to contact you for great hair products.
Best,
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RE: Changing a domain for local.
First, I have not dealt with a client utilizing a subdomain from a paper, etc. Second, it sounds as if the only change you are making in Places is to the domain name, is that correct?
If your address, phone, etc are staying the same and you are only changing the domain name there are a couple of things you can do and we have done before as well. I do not see how a change in domain name would affect traffic coming from Google Places.Assuming there is no issue with the paper, you can do a 301 redirect of the current to the new domain. (make sure you 301 from like url to like url for every url that will be utilized on the new site. So, YourSite.Newspaper.com/T-shirts to YourSite.com/T-shirts.
Now, if there is a problem with the paper and doing this and you are starting from scratch, you will have a domain that is at a DA of 1 and pages at PA of 1. You will edit your places to change the web address. This should not affect your Google Places listing. (We have done this for clients and they are still in same spot).
Would love to know how you work it out.
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RE: Google SERPS showing wrong page.
While you use "corporate entertainment" more often on your desired page there is a big difference in the page showing in SERPS and your desired page: Home Page is PA=50, desired is PA=20 and home page has over 100 linking root domains while desired has one.
Remember, optimized is more than the keyword term. Also, recheck your on page as there is no H1 in desired. Don't just repeat Corporate Entertainment. Make the content make sense.
Best
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RE: Is Moz Local any good? Any better Alternatives?
If I had a choice between the two, Yext and MOZ, I would choose MOZ based on TAGFEE reputation alone. You have to understand with any of these services, they are a paid service and you get what you pay for. If you are not an SEO professional doing Local as a big part of your practice, these services help a lot with basic local citation placement. With Yext, there has been a lot written about them removing citations if you cancel which, IMO, is a very low rent tactic if true.
We are an integrated marketing firm heavily invested in SEO and Local. We cannot provide low cost options because our clients demand a lot more. I get that there are companies that don't need our level of service and for them, I would recommend MOZ Local because I cannot see a time when MOZ ceases to be TAGFEE. TAGFEE is more of their brand than MOZ.Best
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RE: Duplicate Title/Meta Descriptions
LBM
As to how long does it take for a full crawl, it will depend on how long it was taking before the change. Depending on how many pages you had to fix, there are a couple of avenues you could take: resubmit the sitemap or if less pages, you could fetch as Google for those.
As to the example question, that depends on the site, pages, etc. If the concern is to optimize for only the main ticket page to rank, it is possibly a good idea. The problem will arise as in this example with what if the searcher is searching more specifically? (For a given date - bears tickets 10/15/2012, etc)
Hope this helps
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RE: What do web designers consider to be SEO
I think Alan has laid out a lot in his response. One thing that I tell clients going in is that there is a thing called an SEO friendly site, meaning that it had some of the basic SEO work done, but SEO is not a static process. Because the web changes, because peoples needs and queries change, because the rules the search engines apply all change, the website must be capable of changing as well.
The issue you raise is not black and white though. I will tell you that my chief developer is an excellent developer and he will tell you he learned more about SEO upon coming to our firm than he did in his previous position of three years. His role was with a design firm. I cannot build a website beyond the most rudimentary and it would be ugly. He can and with the two of us working together we do a good to great job.
You cannot have a website that is a slave to a designer/developer where they must be called to do something each time you need a change. (Frankly, of all our clients we only have two where we work with outside developers any longer as it became too much of a hurdle to try and get changes made). So, CMS is a must for most sites. Many designers do not want to relinquish control and that is part of the rub with SEO. As you stated, if they already built the site, where does that leave you?
You must educate the client in the basics and how you are going to proceed. If you are at a hurdle: Client wants to know what's wrong since they are ranking first for "gasoline go kart engines route 6 Tampa, Fl." or client states we never ranked before this company and now we are number 2 on Google for NNNN. You have to ask them questions around keywords and be prepared to show them analytics, ask about ROI, etc.
One last thing and its a big one: Since you are speaking of web designers and SEO pros, if you are going into see a client for the first time...have a lot more questions than answers. Become the teacher that leads with questions.
Looking forward to the article.
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RE: Effects of changing your city to overall rankings?
Ruben,
Amber, who heads up Local for us is a master of G maps application for this. Contact me as before and I will get you the directions so you won't have to worry over it.
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RE: Should I worry about these 404's?
Can your developers instead put a 302 redirect that goes to the same page that says,,, this member profile does not exist?
Seems simple, unless you have a vast membership.
Would love to see other answers.
Robert
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RE: SEO list for creating the *perfect* website
Good job Miranda,
This is a thought provoking question. When I first read Alan's response I thought, "wait a minute, Alan" and then realized he answered it perfectly for Alan. I am not a developer and the thought of providing a client a site that required them to have one available did not make sense. At the same time, I can tell you with several of the known CMS's available there are problems within the SEO that if not addressed are at least annoying.
So, I would say, to the developers:
Use a CMS that allows the client the most ease of use within the context of providing the best framework for their project.
Make the key on site/on page SEO pieces easy for someone with even a small amt of ability: Title tags (Alan would give us code that would not allow a duplicate as an example), You would be required to use an H1, etc.
I would tell them I wanted a url structure that was almost flat.
That an internal link had to go to something relevant.
But, before I went to them, I would be very clear what it was we desired the web site to do for us.
Thanks,
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RE: Hyphens in Domain Name
I would just really have to see the test and the data. Here is the issue as I see it:
First, someone who already knows the name of the site and is going there is a given they are ok with it. They are not searching for it per se (even though many still use search to go to a site), so CTR would be a given.
So, we are speaking of those searching for a given product. Let's say Oatmeal Cookies.
Assuming someone created Almond Oatmeal cookies and there were two people selling them: One bought the Almond-Oatmeal-Cookies.com domain and the other bought the AlmondOatmealCookies.com domain.
If I am the searcher for these cookies my friend, Doug, just PM'd me about, am I going to click on AlmondOatmealCookies.com if it is ranked third over the hyphenated version at two or four? Are most people going to do that for that one reason? I just have a hard time grasping that, but I learned a long time ago that in marketing never assume people are like you.
This also may be one of those that EGOL talks about where it is dealing with the minutiae of SEO that has very little impact on the result. I would allow that your CTR issue is the first time someone has made me think more about the issue. The, its spammy, argument is just not thought out enough for me.
As usual, all the best to you and yours!
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RE: Enabling Rich Snippets for Reviews and Ratings
Ryan
It appears you are wanting to choose where the reviews show in spite of where the reviewer left them and I fully understand why you would want to do this. I urge you not to do that. The reason is that the review was left where it was for a lot of reasons and moving it could truly mean that you changed the intent of the reviewer.
Place your markup on the page with the reviews then make the home page available to also leave reviews. Sooner or later you will get reviews there if that is what you want.
This is not unlike an ecommerce site with multiple products, you can leave reviews on any of the products, but you don't want your review moved if you do.I get that the page you are using will have the review content, I just do not believe it is a good practice to move it.
Robert