Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Aggie,

I see the G Verification meta in the old site as of June 27th, 2014. I would go on the WMT forum and the fifth item down is verification. Ask your question on there and you will likely get what you need. I have done a lot of change of addresses and not run into the problem. 
One question is did you have a preferred domain for the old site (non-www or www)? I noticed that the old site is without WWW and the new is with. If the preferred domain was without, be sure you put the old in as no www and try that.

Let us know what you find if no one here has a good answer.

Best

Virrtuo

Your question is very very broad so I will keep it very very general:

• Define the customer your client wants

• Define the query terms your client's customer searches on

• there will be high competition terms that need patience

• there will be lower competition terms that you should search for to get lower hanging (slower falling) fruit

• this is where you will analyze the keywords and pick what you believe to be the best starting point for them to find clients. Do not skimp on the time you allocate for this process. Make a decision on what you will use. (200 pages covering every term is not the way to start).

• Look at website as is and grade it based on

• Architecture

Is it built in a way that does not cause problems for indexing, Does it have too many internal links and ads, is on page SEO near perfect, does the navigation lend itself to easy movement for the searcher, does it have good content that speaks to the person coming to the site (does content = query), is the content fresh.

• Meta Description

When I search on "staff leasing" for example and read the snippet on the SERP, do I read about how your client will solve my staff leasing problem or about what a great company they are (STAFF LEASING please)

• When I land on that page because of your stellar meta description, do I easily find the answer to my questions, am I compelled to contact you?, have you made it very simple for me to do that? If I do, are you sure you are tracking everything about that contact and your client will follow through on it (I spend 10% of our time on insuring the client followed through when developing business leads - it is important).

Wherever your client is, have you absolutely, positively, without a doubt maximized local for them? If not start now, no, I mean it stop reading and go do it now.

Now, if that is all in place and wired very tightly, I will begin to analyze results by looking at analytics, webmaster tools, campaign reports and deciding where I may need to strengthen pages, meta descriptions, etc. and where I need to put up others. I need to know that I am either moving a page up (and it is getting traffic) or not. If it is page 1 number one and no one goes there are converts there, there is a problem or two.

Assuming you have done all of this and you are beginning to get traction, see some leads, etc. you need to keep after it, when you find terms that don't work, you can quit bothering with them, change them, add a new page, etc.

Make sure your client is keeping you abreast as to their industry as they are the subject matter expert not you. They need to be told to write a blog or get someone to be the info giver to one of your copywriters, etc. They need to keep you appraised of every event they attend, convention, etc. you need to go grab those links.

Keep up with infographics, link bait, etc. BUT, if you get that first - prior to everything else, it will not matter. Get the first part first. Then the other.

Lastly, now to really help them, get up every morning an hour early and learn the potential impact of Schema, or the next pandanization, or etc. Read, study, question, etc. When you see someone ask a question on moz, take ten minutes and answer it, you will either do well, medium, or poorly. When you do well people will clap, when you do medium people will say, OK, when you do poorly people will correct you....and you will learn.

OK, very lastly, have fun, make some money, smile.

Sarah,

I see you placed this question almost a week ago and received no help with it. First, I should say that probably the complexity of it without a url or example.com diagram makes it quite difficult even for those who are very experienced in Local optimization. Next, I saw a red flag from the beginning and I want to be very sure I understand what you have: You have bricks and mortar stores in various locations and you have an ecommerce site that represents all of those stores (my first thought is, like a Costco or other discount warehouse merchant).

You have claimed all the locations in Google (you mentioned hummingbird) and have a local/G+ page for each and now, you are slipping in the rankings of the Local (7-pack) or for terms with keyword and geo keyword? (which or both).

Now, you want to implement a branch locator on the site and "from looking at other websites with branch locators, they tend to a separate button/page with which you can search for a branch etc. However, they don't have location specific pages." This practice makes you wonder what a best practice would be (correct?) If the find a location link is in a sidebar or header (not the footer as that would be poor UI/UX) it will show from any page.

To me, the second question is telling in that you are looking at someone searching for a location who is already on the site. While they will do that, you also must consider those who are searching and see your page in the SERPs. What do you want them to do? Do you want them to come to the site before they find a location? Or, are you fine with them shopping bricks and mortar first and foremost?

I would set up each location with a "location" page that is reached from a separate branch locator page that is linked to from the other pages you want searchers/shoppers to be able to find locations from.

So, if you sell furniture, I would have a link in the outdoor furniture section, the tables section, the bedroom section, etc.  and all would link to a single locator page where one could input a zip or city, state. (It could even have a list of locations if there are not too many for that.)

If the page is on your site and the onpage SEO is around Find A Store Near You for example, there is a good chance that Google will site link that page. (Now, your searchers can choose find a store or shop online.) With the individual city or store pages, I would optimize them so they work for you Local G+ and you will still have the opportunity to rank for non Local SERPS with other pages. The 7 pack is local and the other organic listings allow you more possibility to rank. Remember, typically, a page that is in the 7 pack, etc. will not show in the other organic listings.

One assumption I am making is the stores do NOT have their own websites.

Hopefully, I have given you enough or provided good questions so that with answers we can assist you further.

All the best,

Robert

Jonathan,

First, go back and read what I wrote and read my response to AWCThreads as well. Now, you can believe me or not, but I am talking Houston TX and a competitive vertical. And, yes, my clients want to rank in all the suburbs and neighborhoods, etc.

What everyone needs to realize is that they are not taking into account whether or not a business is a service area business and whether or not you have an actual physical address. Assuming (from your question) you do not have a physical address for city B, you can't go in and set it up as if you do for Local. But, you can use two pages on the site to assist you in ranking in both the 7-Pack and the organic. (Given that availability, I am at a loss as to why someone wanting to rank would do one page.)

Now, as to PA, etc. If what you are wanting is some type of "instant" ranking, I do not know what to tell you. I can tell you that we are able to gain ranking for our clients with this methodology but each individual city/area/neighborhood is different as to how quickly. Ranking for a given city + Keyword is ranking and it requires the same efforts, etc. as any other keyword or phrase. But, if you have good content, include the geo + KW as I said before and the images, video, google maps API on one of the pages, etc. You should be able to rank in a reasonable amount of time. (Say page two within 2 months).

I hope this helps clarify.

Robert

EDIT: I wanted to add, if the site has pages with reasonable PA, make sure a few are linking to the new pages without being unrelated.

Jamie,

Again I agree with Alick and I would say this regarding anything where there are suggestions to do or not to do: You have to take them in context and look at the overall picture. You can take any website that we have recently done a lot of SEO on and I will still find little things that could be changed.

An example is if you use a tool like Google Pagespeed Insights. There are going to be a lot of recommendations but once a site is within a reasonable range, you can get into total overkill. An example could be that while it is nice and helpful for sites to utilize a CDN, frankly, not every site needs to.

Hope that helps,

Robert

Jasarrow

I am going to try and hit this from a broad brush vs. a dissertation on internationalization. Also, I understand the limitations you face with the all too important "prospective client" issue. So, (Are they using a gTLD? = .com, .net., .euro, .asia?)

First: Your toolkit for internationalization is GWMT. The knowledge here is good and on the whole understandable.

Next, you can use geotargeting in GWMT for sub domains. Same place.

there is a blog for internationalization questions: Google WMT Intl. 

Your English language problem is first in that if the main domain is US English and they want a sub domain from the UK to outrank it even though it is in US English: I am assuming by subdomains they are using uk.theirsite.com? de.theirsite.com?

If you set the geotargeting for the uk.theirsite.com to UK, leave the (assumption is .com) .com as US, but set the geotargeting as US as I am also assuming the server is UK based. If server is US set location anyway given that you are trying to "tell" Google what is what. (server location is an inference of country)

In the query you say subdomain for language as opposed to sub domain for country and even GWMT says this can be confusing. If they are using sub domains, I would suggest for country not language - especially for those who are users of the sites. Beyond the English problem, you have the French: Canada, France, etc.

Lastly, with your UK problem I would go one step at a time. I abhor multiple corrections to single problems as they leave you with unanswered questions. The easiest first fix is the geo targeting in GWMT. Then if you are still having issues, you may need to consider utilizing rel="alternate" hreflang link element. (From GWMT -Many websites serve users from around the world, with content that's translated, or targeted to users in a certain region. The rel="alternate" hreflang="x"_ annotations help Google serve the correct language or regional URL to searchers._)

So, you have some work to do, but I  hope this helps provide some direction, Good Luck with Prospective Client,

Robert

Good follow up question and I probably should have mentioned it even if GWMT did not. Yes, if you are a local business use that Schema. If you are an organization use that schema. It will help with your geo targeting.

Best

We were having a conversation re urls that are indexed for images that are stored in various media plugins in WP.

My question for anyone who is an uberWP person is: What is your opinion re best media storage plugins and how these URLs affect pages on a site for ranking, etc.

I realize this is broad, but it is driven out of my concern that I cannot touch everything. When I see a url like this:  http://www.drumbeatmarketing.net/wp-content/themes/drumbeat2/img/DB-LOGO-White.png

I know there is no way with all the sites and clients we handle that I can get it perfect but this just bugs me for some reason. Should I just chill since it (seemingly) affects so little....?

As Antonio says, you do not want to affect your ability to have people login. His answer is well thought out.

I am going to go out on a limb and give you a suggestion from a guy who is likely older than you with a tad of experience.

Do Not Lead With The Answer

This is a prospective client. If you give the answer as a sales tool you devalue the answer. let them know that you have an answer, you understand that answer and what work it will take to alleviate the issue. Remember you will have to monitor the change over time and BE SURE to take a baseline before you change anything, if you get the client.  
You may state that the issue revolves around how the sites were originally set up and that now there will need to be multiple fixes most likely. One fix will be in establishing the way in which Google views each sub domain and that you would do that change first for each sub domain. Then, as you watch pages rank up or down, you will making coding changes on a per url (page) basis in the event important pages are not ranking (hreflang). You will drill down to the lower hanging fruit as you progress, assuming these sites have a few pages. (you don't want to over promise if you have to do a long with hreflang).

Think on what I say here and you will likely get the sale and make more from it.

All the best,

Robert

Will,

That page shows 43 links to it in Majestic and only two of those are since late Sept. The only negative I see is one domain appears to be a sitewide with about 33 links from it. That may be affecting you.
Short of that, have you changed anything in the last 90 days?

Good luck,

Robert

Ian, Make sure you added your HTTPS version into WMT (search console) and also choose www as preferred domain. Rewrite is fine.

Dr. Ian

Great question. The first hurdle I see with a desire to be in the US using a .co.uk site is one of perception from the searcher/customer more than one of ranking with Google. While it is talked about more with some other countries, people here still look at the .uk and ponder it. I will tell you I have quite a multi cultural family(Syrian wife, son born in Paris, etc.) and when searching personally for a product, the idea of purchasing from a .uk vs a .us site is part of the decision. Not from a quality/etc pov, but what about the shipping? (I think that before digging into the site.)

Now, when you say, "acquire the .com and insure all the pages are very different to the UK site (a lot of work)...", I would ask why does it need to be "very different" and why does it need to be a "lot" of work? What if instead, you acquire the .com or other gTLD, 301 redirect from the .co.uk to the .com, and have a single English language site that is out of the UK? Then, for pages that are more US with US $, etc. you could use rel=alternate hreflang="x" to distinguish for Google. Because all are used to the generic TLD, you do not have the perception issue. (You would need to do a 301 redirect to the new domain to maintain link juice, etc.). This would also allow you to use same for Australia, etc. as the site grows.

In this way, you could have duplicate or near duplicate pages, have a single site, and grow rankings on both sides of the pond.

Hope this helps,

Robert

edit to add GWMT link

SamCUK

You are harming your site (who knows how much) and given your topic I do not think you are going to get as laser like (longtail is a laser) as you want. The first question when I see "landing pages" is are you also doing PPC using this technique? If your drop was in and around October of 2013 (8 months) it is more likely the drop is due to links (penguin) especially given the timing and severity.

As to your question on will traffic return if you remove the pages, there is no answer available other than trying it. If you are concerned, pick out some of the pages with known traffic loss and return to where you were before with 20 or 30% of them. Check it over 30, 60, and 90 days. But, also check your link profile.

Best,

Yes and No,

You said to the same website so are the urls redirecting to pages that are similar to the ones that they are directed to? Multiple must be defined, but let's say it is 30 and they are going to similar pages on the site; there is no problem.

If you simply got a bunch of sites that had lost their domain and they all have disparate content, then you could be setting yourself up for a problem. Could be is the operative term though. We took over a client who had roughly 100 "micro-sites." They were all for the same service and were not strong sites. For most we redirected only the home pages and let the other pages 404. For a few sites we let them die and for a couple the client refused to let us take them down (even though they had no traffic!).

I hope that helps a bit.

Sorry, but had to take care of clients.

1. Again, not that they don't want to purchase from, just there would seem to be a hesitation to click on it vs a .com.

2. What risk is there in a 301? First, you mention throwing away years of work, how? The loss of link juice for a 301 is generally said to be 1 to 10%. However, my experience is and I have done more than a few on sites from 25 page professional practices to 800+ page ecommerce sites (I have not done a massive ecommerce site but would without worry as long as I was clear as to what I was doing and why.) With the sites I have done I have NEVER lost even 2% of the link juice. It usually takes a couple of months for all to transfer and that could present a problem if the site is going to dip for a month and lose some revenue. (Remember, all alternatives have costs so you have to measure each and look at modifications - e.g. if you are going to fall a bit in rankings as 301 works, you might increase PPC). As to domain age, the last one I did was 10 year old domain and the client is quite happy to be getting more customers.

3. You would not need subdomains. The best thing I can do for you is to direct you to an expert with a recent blog here on the moz. Gianluca Fiorelli lays it out brilliantly in International SEO: Dropping the Dust. 

Understand, with any of what you are doing, experience will help and you might consider getting assistance and working with someone while looking over their shoulder.

Hope this helps,

Robert

First, the assumption is that you are saying you have a page that is ranking for the term Blue Applesauce but it is ranking below the Red Applesauce page when searching on Blue Applesauce.

There are a lot of factors that can go into this: recency of content of one over the other, links to red applesauce may be stronger or more prevalent, the poorly ranking page may need to adjust on page SEO, etc. Also, while the readable content on the page may be the same, does one have better markup than the other, get more traffic, etc.

There is no one answer and certainly no one cause. Look at the content understanding that when you know your pages very well, sometimes you "miss the forest for the trees." So, have someone else go over it to see if they see it differently. Also, be clear that not all keywords are the same... So ensure the query you are using is very specific to what you want to find in search results. Adding any modifier like cold, great, tasty, etc. can impact which page ranks for Blue Applesauce based on the content and on page seo.

Now, if you are speaking about you have a page and are being outranked by a less relevant page that is someone else' you have opened an entirely different discussion: beyond the issues above, this one pulls in the subjective idea of what is relevant issue.

I hope this assists you to some degree.

Robert

Deacyde

First you said, "however that page isn't used by google since it's brand new with a PA of 1. " I suggest using Fetch as Google and then once it shows as complete, click submit to index.

As to when is a specific link or group of links worthy of disavowal tool, that is a bit broader answer. You have roughly 400 links and roughly 100 or 25% are spammy directory links. IMO you likely are not being bothered by penguin IF the other links are at least reasonable. Also, with rare exception, most directory links are not doing you much good so losing them is not going to do much, if any damage. Think of it this way: Your client is a plumber, doctor, lumber store, etc. On a directory most of them have low value pages and then link out 20 to 100's of times. I have seen very few even higher value directories that are not either sending out a ton of links per page OR blowing it by using sitewide links, etc.

I think you can always experiment. Do the disavowal and leave in the few you think are higher value. For each of the questionable directory domains disavow the whole domain to save time assuming they have multiple links. Also, a strong caution here is no matter what link tool you used, also go look in GWMT (search console) to be sure there aren't any really dastardly ones you have missed  as many directories now block ahrefs, majestic, moz, etc. 

Once you do that if you don't gain traction, resubmit adding additional "good" directories to the disavowal. With what you have as a fairly low number the disavowal should be fairly straightforward and easy to get done. Nothing like dealing with a few hundred thousand bad links!

Let us know if this helps,

Robert

Sherry,

First, you are going to use Google US or Google Mexico. Next, you are looking for odd queries that will not exist. Try searching on ropas and then vender ropas. Or try searching on abogados. What you will see is that the results are all over the place. The most telling is ropas - search returns everything from the designer by that name, rock/paper/scissors game, ropas (as clothes in ES), etc. If you then look at abogados, you see the attorneys who get multilingual and those who don't. 
I was talking with one of our fluent Spanish speaking SEO's and we stuck in zapatos rojos. (Red Shoes). I am a big believer in what an excellent company Zappos is, but their ad returned a Spanish title with totally English ad.

If you type in English and Spanish, (which is going to be rare, I repeat - rare) you will see what comes up and you can do the KW research on the terms.

I will say to you what I say to many: If this is not something you are strong in, find a company that will work with you and let you learn as you work with your client and them. (Get an upfront agreement that they cannot approach, etc., NDA,). I can tell you I am not too proud to ask for assistance and recently contacted a European SEO firm re a Chinese site we are going to handle. I will work with them as I have no experience in that market or with Baidu directly. You cannot be afraid to say you don't know it all in this business. Trust me, I am here to learn just like you.

Best

For something like this, I think your best place for help will be on the Google Webmaster Help Forum. If you post your question you will likely have someone respond who has experience with this or how to correct it. 
Another thing you might check is to see if there was a message in WMT about the complaint.

ALSO Go to this page about removing content from Google. You will see What product does this relate to and click on Web Search.

You will see a group of options and you want to check: "One or more items of my site have been removed due to a legal complaint and I would like them restored.

When you do that you will see a lot of legal writing and the option to either proceed or not. You want to proceed by checking  The DMCA complaint filed against my site was mistaken... (Note: Don't get frightened by all the lawyer writing.)

You will then see some instructions and a link to submit a counter notice: Otherwise, please complete this form to submit your counter notice.

This will at least get the process started for you. Frankly, if it were my site, I would do both the forum and file the notice.

I hope this is helpful,

Robert

I am not sure I understand where you say, " ...it will end and change to "page 24 of 201 results." I have used the site: operator a long time and I think it is reasonably accurate. One thing I notice is the occasional "some pages have been ... duplicate" and do you want to see those? So, if you include all of those what's the magic number?

Is there a reason you want the data that demands an exact result? I am not sure of anything that would give you that. The question is "indexed" within the given search engine. If you crawl with screaming frog, etc. you may see pages that are not indexed, so the comparison is not apples to apples. Just curious as to what you are wanting to know exact indexed pages for?

Interesting question.

Jbanz,

I am happy to help. I want you to realize that for a first multi-lingual, international site, you are taking on a big project. You need to be very clear as to what you are doing before you do it. The reason I preface my comments is: I think you are getting confused between language and country/region or seeing them both as the same (they are not). NOTE: Before you begin to make changes to URLs, use a program like Screaming Frog so you do not lose any of your urls. You will be able to go back afterwards and compare apples to apples on your 301's. (Yes, based on the structure you gave in the example, I do think it would be good to clean them up.)

You state:** Their main content and audience is in the US, but they have started to add translated versions of the content in different languages (about 30 different** languages).

Then you state:  **...****Webmaster Tools accounts and geotargetting them by language **If you are geotargeting, you are saying I want to influence a region (not a language). So, a gTLD for the US would set the geotargeting in WMT to US. That same site could have Spanish pages (we do this a lot in Texas), Vietnamese pages, etc. but you are geotargeting the US and you are providing content to people in the US who speak these various languages. That is different from having a gTLD that is trying to influence many worldwide markets. If the US site I mentioned wants to influence (target) all Spanish speakers in the world, you would not set the geo-targeting in WMT to the US as that would dampen your exposure in Spain, Chile, Mexico, etc. You would instead (if using a single site and directories) use the sitemap approach talked about in GWMT. It clearly says, "These annotations help Google serve the correct language or regional URL to searchers." So, you are deciding what you want to do and you can do both.

If you use the example from GWMT, they have an English site, but they want to target German speakers worldwide. So if you are saying that you have German pages and you want to geo-target German speakers in Switzerland and also all German speakers the sitemap would look like theirs.  (See notes after code).

• <urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9" <br="">xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
  <url><loc>http://www.example.com/english/</loc>
  <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
  hreflang="de"
  href="http://www.example.com/deutsch/"
  />
  <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
  hreflang="de-ch"
  href="http://www.example.com/schweiz-deutsch/"
  />
  <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
  hreflang="en"
  href="http://www.example.com/english/"
  /></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></url>

  <url><loc>http://www.example.com/deutsch/</loc>
  <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
  hreflang="en"
  href="http://www.example.com/english/"
  />
  <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
  hreflang="de-ch"
  href="http://www.example.com/schweiz-deutsch/"
  />
  <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
  hreflang="de"
  href="http://www.example.com/deutsch/"
  /></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></url>

  <url><loc>http://www.example.com/schweiz-deutsch/</loc>
  <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
  hreflang="de"
  href="http://www.example.com/deutsch/"
  />
  <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
  hreflang="en"
  href="http://www.example.com/english/"
  />
  <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
  hreflang="de-ch"          **This is saying German speakers in Switzerland and establishes a location. **
  href="http://www.example.com/schweiz-deutsch/"  **This is the url for those in Switzerland who speak German. **
  /></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></url>

  You must create a separate url element for each URL. Each url element must include a loc tag indicating the page URLs, and an xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="XX" subelement for every alternate version of the page, including itself. </urlset>

• This example uses the language code de for the URL targeted at German speakers anywhere, and the language-locale code de-ch for German speakers in Switzerland. If you have several alternate URLs targeted at users with the same language but in different locales, it's a good idea to provide a URL for geographically unspecified users. For example, you may have specific URLs for English speakers in Ireland (en-ie), Canada (en-ca), and Australia (en-au), but want all other English speakers to see your generic English (en) page. In this case you should specify the generic English-language (en) page for searchers in, say, the UK.

Again, you are taking on a big task. Go at it slowly and methodically until you get the hang of it.

Best, 
Robert

Paul,

The content above the images is not very good at all and could be seen as spammy. I also noticed as I read it that these are actually antique or vintage door handles and knobs. I would want that to be clear on the site. So my paragraph would make that clear from the beginning: If you want REAL Antique or Vintage door handles and not replicas, you have come to the right place! Each of our door knobs or handles have been slightly reconditioned... Then for the types I would use bullets and not keep repeating the terms.

I looked at the site and this page has no external links to it which would be helpful. You would also be well served to implement product markup using schema.

I also noticed that when I did an image search on the 20's rose brass ball handles there was your image and then the same one for tons of ebay listings. One thing that can be helpful with products is to have your own images that you have taken. If these are your images I would put a copyright symbol on them, and I would make sure that weekly to monthly someone does an image search and files complaints on anyone using them without your permission. (You could also email the person using them and tell them if they use that image they MUST link back to you with a followed link to your page!)  You are fairly niche, so this should not be too difficult and it could be very helpful to you. 
I personally do not focus a ton on the competitor pages until I have things "near right" on the page.

This should at least give you something actionable to start with that should help with rankings over time.

Best

Based solely on how you have written this, it is hard to believe it is algo change or any type of penalty. If you are ranking in the same places and CTR is same, it would seem that overall traffic for those terms is down. I realize it is not yet a month but have you checked the terms in Adwords to see if traffic is off this month?

Best,

Well put by Vitalscom. He went to the site, looked it over, and diagnosed the problem. This is just overkill with keywords, etc. Follow the advice given, make the content readable, etc. for example: http://www.cardiffhypnotherapy.com/Anger-Management-Therapy.html

In the first paragraph there are two sentences with three internal links (anger management therapy appears twice, anger management classes once) back to the same page where the links are all for the purpose of stuffing keywords/links into the paragraph. In the first three sentences you say the same phrase five times and the titles before and after those three sentences are also Anger Management Therapy.

Here is what a response to this question would look like using the same methodology of writing:

SEOmoz Contributors Answer Questions

SEOmoz Contributors Answer Questions about the questions you have regarding SEO because SEOmoz Contributros Answer Questions to help you. If you have questions about SEO, SEOmoz Contributors Answer Questions quickly and efficiently.

SEOmoz Contributors Answer Questions if you Have Questions.

OK, would you really want to read that????? Think about it. Content really is king. Content really is king. Content really is king..... Just kidding there

Good Luck, Good Question,

Carlos,

It is a bit difficult to help without a bit more info on your site, your keyword desire, etc. With any website there is the potential for links and anchor text like you describe here. I went to the above url and the anchor text and links are very reasonable given the site. (See Screenshot) In fact, I would say they have a decent link profile.

They have 39 linking root domains and nearly all anchor text is around Intl MBA, etc. No site will be necessarily devoid of links from questionable domains, it is really the overall you are looking at. Also, are the links followed, no followed, is all anchor text identical (unnatural), etc.

When looking at competitive sites and links, you should not link to see if they have an unfair advantage, etc. Look to see what good links you should be going after.

Hope this helps.

[](<a href=)" target="_blank">a>

Jill

You have a problem in what is showing as a page and what is not. If you will PM me I will endeavor to assist you. You have /wp-content/.../photo showing as pages. There are at least 6 pages using the title tag -  Rejuvalon Skin and Spa |  -

All of the SEO could use a bit of help. I am happy to assist you with it but will need access to the dashboard.  (No charge, you can help a homeless person for Christmas if you feel the need to repay it).

Best

I think this is a good question Greg and it is likely asked by some of us every day. Given that the keyword specific domain seems to be losing some of its value in SEO, I would say its likely now or never. http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors

From this the best and brightest seem to think the value of exact match domains will diminish and it would stand to reason that it would. But probably not to zero in the next year or two in my opinion.

So, if your site is a large site with many Keywords, my suggestion would be to set up micro sites utilizing the exact match domains and link to your main site (remember that you need a different IP or C Block). Or link from the larger site to the exact match and build its value quicker while potentially being able to gain more ranking real estate.

The other thought for a more narrow site would be to do a 301 redirect to the new domain from the old. We do this often with professional practice clients and over about 90 days we do see their domain authority rise. (Remember that the 301 is url t url and has to be placed in the .htaccess file to be effective).

We did this recently with an attorney where we utilized an exact match phrase around bankruptcy and his location with hyphens and redirected his www.thebillyboblawfirm.com to that. I was surprised that we were able to transfer his original DA and PA so easily and now we are growing both. Obviously, it is harder to tell how much the exact match has to do with that versus the fact that we are engaged and whomever he used previously was not.

My opinion is that it does have significant impact as we are now ranking on terms where we were no before. While I am unwilling to share the site particulars en masse, if you contact me via private mail, I will share the data with a simple promise of confidentiality.

Hope this helps,

Thanks Rand, I will send an email to Andrew. The issue for me is that someone is looking at it and I have always felt you guys were proactive. As a businessman, I have a lot of things I would love to be doing for my clients, but I, too, have to take my time and pick my battles. 
I think one of the reasons the moz community is so strong, is because of the proactive stance and the TAGFEE approach. (Thanks for sharing that one with me, Sha). When I say strong community, I also mean bright, inquisitive, educated, robust, etc.

My best to all.

BTW: Z it would be cool if you let us know if we were persuasive in our anecdotes. Best

If you do not want to have two pages, one singular and one plural, I would set up my SEO for the one with the most queries if I thought I could handle the competition and rank for the term. If I felt I would have more chance of ranking and converting with the lesser queries, I might set it up for that.

One way I look at this is to do broad and exact match to see what the difference is on each term. As an exact match (see Andrew's response) Custom cases gets more than double the queries, but the broad match custom case wins 165K to 135K. My guess is that I would go with custom cases and I believe I would be served up more times in broad match. Just IMO.

With either case, I would also insure there was the opportunity to rank for both by including say an H2 on the secondary, etc. (also use that keyword within context in the page).

You, obviously, could set up two pages if you felt one would not dilute the other. I always worry about dilution on plurals though.

Best

Jules

We work with quite a few law firms and I understand what you are wanting to accomplish. Since they are criminal lawyers, I will assume they are not trying to go nationwide with say...mesothelioma. Most criminal firms work within a city so my suggestion would be to use the city name as opposed to their name(s). This will also help with optimizing them locally (Google Places, Bing Business Portal, Yahoo Local).

Given they are a "new outfit," now is the time to make a change. Assuming you already have some ranking and some links, you do not want to have to redo that. You want to 301 redirect from url current site to url new site. This will preserve what you have. The only negative would be losing the authority or rank you now have so this will handle most of that (you will get roughly 90%).

On new site, make sure each attorney has a local listing as well as the firm. Being you are already doing Adwords, I would think the rest will be easy for you.

Not a bad question at all. I own an SEO, SEM agency so my answer comes first from ROI: Did the investment bring me a reasonable return. Current one year pro is around $950 or $99 a month. We charge our clients a fee for ongoing SEO. The Pro Tools allows us to utilize less people to provide that service and to provide the written deliverables to the client. (For us, we have no contract and we are not cheap. Every client is told at the moment we begin they only need give us 30 days notice and we will leave without a fight. We follow that with this, "If we are not providing you what we promised or what you needed, the greatest thing you can do for us is to fire us - that will be a wake up call that we have lost our way." 
Obviously, I do not want to lose a single client and I do not want to see a single client lose. By having so many tools and resources (such as this Q and A) available to me on a moment's notice, I can deliver as promised. _Just the Q and A alone has been worth every dime I have spent.  _

I have only asked one private question in 17 months, but I had a top staffer continually answer follow up questions for about a ten day period. The insight gave me what I needed to conquer the issue. (And, it has never recurred.)

Beyond that, I have in the last month ended two other relationships with a similar fee structure. I just did not see any evidence that the $139 and the $79 was giving me really actionable data. One was actually mentioned multiple times on SEOmoz, but I found the data too broad and too irregular in timing to assist me in assisting clients. So, I am not bashful about pulling out if it does not work.

Now, I do have a beef with SEOmoz. As it stands now the membership "levels" are too rigid and in no way help me. I am pro, will be going to Pro Plus in the next few days, but am disappointed in the way campaigns are geared more to large sites. Pro = 5 campaigns and 10K pages with 300 keywords. Pro+ = 12 campaigns, same 10k and 1K keywords. Pro Elite is 30 campaigns, 3500 keywords, and 20K pages. So Pro = $100 per 10K pages, Pro+ = $199 for same, and ProE = $500 for 20K pages. Or P = $20 per campaign, P+= $17 per campaign, and PE= $17 per campaign.

We have a lot of clients with multiple small sites (less than 10 pages). Most are focused on not more than 5 to 10 keywords generally. But, for us the 5 campaigns equal 45-50pgs. and roughly 50 keywords - counting dupes among sites. Someone with one site and 5K pages with 250 keywords gets a better deal. Yet, I am still here and increasing my spend.

The reason for me is that the package of tools (some are available elsewhere for free) along with quality staff and phenomenal members is just a no brainer. I make at least a ten to one return on what I spend. No BS.

Hope you join Pro and give it a try. Would love to know your before and after opinions.

There are several determinants for where you will rank in Google SERP's, but the most important is PR. When you say Google's keyword rank what do you mean? Alexa shows traffic and there is not a corollary per se to where you will rank. mozRank will be closer to PR than anything I am aware of.

The other issues will be recent traffic to page, local optimization as applicable, competitiveness of the vertical, etc.

Best

Oh if I felt like agreeing. Understand it was a challenging day. I have one client site surpassed by two sites with PA and DA of 1. No links, on page worse than my clients and, arguably, we have better content. 
On top of that I have another client site surpassed by clowns with Chinese and Australian links to no where, etc. The others are all junk - literally 40 to 60 linking root domains with maybe five even close to unpaid, non-reciprocal, and that are at least within 90 degrees of the site content (the others are somewhere beyond 180 degrees.
Yes, Google occasionally has a moment and a JC Penny feels the sting. On the whole, I see too many who do not and the rankings in anything competitive are replete with BS content, from BS sites stuffed to the gills with Keywords and linked to Bangladeshi laundromats.

So, why the rant.....I was getting ready to suggest PR Newswire to my clients as a counterposition after seeing so many competing sites simply run the same content as on their homepage over and over through our RSS feeds.

Yes, both Ryan and Justin are correct; I just wish Mr. Google would take some uppers and get about the business of cleaning out the junkers. 
Don't worry, I is still smilin' cause we are smarter than them!

First question is: Have you thought of using the .cc instead of the sub directory? Rand speaks to the .fr issue in his WBF mentioned by iBiz Leverage.

As to canonical to avoid duplicate content, you shouldn't have a duplicate content issue even with the two languages so long as you set your country target for each. But, read or watch the WBF by Rand as it is full of info on this subject and domain auth, etc.

OK Jeff, what are the urls associated with these? These are where you are ranking, you have to remember that if you are not using non personalized search it will be different on your machine it will be different for you than on moz

So, Domain.com redirects permanently to Domain.com/software-consultancy? If so, then directing links to either will give essentially the same value as the majority (90% +) of the juice flows through on a 301. You have a small software consultancy so the fact that Domain.com/software-consultancy is homepage is in no way a negative. (Visitors are not looking for off the shelf software and landing on consultancy.)

_If I start link building using the phrase "software consultancy" to the home page should I link to domain.com or the 301 redirect URL domain.com/software-consultancy ? _

Even though the 301 sends most of the juice I would still go to actual homepage. No need to give up 1 to 10% even.

I think based on you putting "company name" in you clarified for me a bit more of what you are asking which is "should I make an effort to have Brand {company name} have more status?" Well, based on current thinking, unless you have a well known brand, having it in the url/title tag won't help as no one is searching on it. You want to get out what they are searching on. They know they need to look for a software consultant, they don't yet know it is you.

But, one bit of advice on your structure: If area is really not something that needs to have its own page with sub headings (subdirectories) afterward, flatten it by pulling out the areas: domain.com/software-consultancy/London, New-York, etc. That would allow you later to still add specifics to London or New York if services are different for each, etc. I do not see where having Areas helps. For someone searching your site, unless you have a lot more categories or are going to list 8 -10 cities, you can get away with just listing the cities.

Now, that was a good question. Why not send a quick email to help@SEOmoz.org and just ask if there is a way to circumvent? LMK please.

Come on Nick,

I made some good guesses there and you go and tell us this. I am so hurt, I am not going to wash my SEOmoz T-shirt this week. No, no, I am not.

Certainly gonna quit guessing at ----.

Thx for the update,

Absolutely. Too often with law firms and other pro practices their first pass is all about the site and name being an icon to their current or soon to be greatness. You have to focus on what do people query in the search bar (and get them to understand that is what you do): Felony theft, DWI/DUI Defense/Criminal assault, etc.

Typically, with local firms, I find the terms with localization are best with the query term. So, Omaha-criminal-lawyers.com, omaha-criminal-defense.com, etc. Out of curiosity I checked the following in adwords with keyword tool: Criminal defense, dwi defense, criminal lawyer. (I used Omaha as I have no clients there).

What came back was interesting: Criminal Lawyers has many more queries than criminal defense, but when you look at one Google through out along with mine - criminal law, it gets as many queries as criminal lawyer/lawyers and is much less competitive.

You will have to look with the local added, but I think it is a good change as long as you url to url 301 for all that are applicable from old to new site.

Hope it helps, PM me and let me know how it works out.

Rob,

As long as you have it set to the root domain (you have to as a default unless you have the sub domain www on it), it won't matter as it will track all sub domains within the root. All is well.

Best

I do not know it Naghrniac. I took a look at it and don't see where it has any real diffierentiation from others (like Moz). As an agency, we obviously need more campaigns, keywords, etc. than an individual with even a few sites. So I look from an agency perspective. 
First, I don't see anything that we do not possess already. Note that we use Xenu, Screaming Frog, Wordtracker, Moz, and several others  that escape me.

I went and looked at IBP and they appear fairly close. Is this just an upgraded IBP?

Thanks,

I just reported it to the help desk as well. May be doing some maintenance, etc. We shall see.

Red or Blue,

Having not seen Linkdex prior to your answer, I will first say that I have no experience with it.

I went to the site and read a bit of the data then downloaded their "white paper."

I also joined on the free trial and would suggest to Vince that he can do the same. (I like the sites where I don't have to dig out a credit card to try it out for a month and this is one.) NOTE: GeoRanking is not available on the free trial????? What's the point?

Unfortunately, I do not see how this could assist Vince given that the software is geared toward showing you where you rank and not toward showing traffic for the given keywords in a specific industry in individual cities. If, you are doing market research to determine an expansion, you would not have a site up and your competitor ranking in that city cannot be compared to where you are (because you are not there).

I appreciate you providing the info on Linkdex and will try it out for the month. If I am missing something as to how it could be used for the purpose Vince wants, please let me know.

Link juice is divided among links and effects internal and external links. Most data supports internal linking being very important for this reason among several.

Because, I am older than you. The older you get the less you sleep. Why, because you realize you have less time left and you wanna be busy....

Just kidding. Was working on a new project, got tired of it and wanted to moz around a bit. BTW, you gotta send me a pic of that cat! Amazing. Just don't tell anyone I like cats and the like as they may think I'm a bit of a sissy or something....

Urkeman,

There is no concrete answer for "Why?" Please understand you are not the only one who has ever asked this question. The answers are many, but first I suggest you take a step back and understand that what you or I think is "the most useful content" is very subjective. You may not be doing anything outwardly wrong, "malpractice," but still not doing the best in terms of the algorithm and what result it has calculated based on your site.

Is your content regularly changed up? Is your content relevant to whatever group you are trying to reach? Is your on page SEO great? Are your links high quality even if you have more than the other guy? Is your content DEEP, in other words, more than just a rehash of all the other info on the web.

I decided some time back to look at what the sites ranked ahead of me are doing better as opposed to bothering myself with, "Why are they in that position?"

SEO is something that is done over time and requires a semblance of patience. Take your time, look at any possible changes that improve your site in the eyes of Google, Bing, etc. And if you are relentless, you will move up.

Best,

Robert

Bondtana,

First, Power of a link is relative to the Domain Authority/Page authority of the site that is linking to you and to the number of links originating from that page. By having reciprocal links between the two sites, you are going to negate most if not all of the link juice. So, make a choice. Link from one to the other and not between the two. Also, if you are wanting to operate the two as separate sites, why would you want to announce the acquisition at all? Yes, being hosted on different servers is helpful, but if you are shown as the owner of both, sooner or later the search engines will know it. Again, a loss of "power."

So, if you are wanting to acquire more customers, readers, etc. Maybe you are better off not announcing and then utilizing the sites as separate entities. Or, if site A is the one you really want to rank for and site B has a massive DA, PA maybe you would be better doing a 301 redirect from urls on B to A.

As with most things SEO, it is always relative to some other issue or standard. If one site ranks because it is highly informational and the other is highly optimized to bring customer conversions, you will be served to understand that and utilize the informational to in some way drive traffic to the customer site.

So, no easy answers. But, a lot to think on.

Best

Richard,

One question is how long ago was before your time?????

That will be a factor in all of this. Next, Advice:

Do nothing first. Sit for a moment and develop a Plan. Find out where you are on the map before you take off to another direction. Know the variables.

So that we may understand:
Before you had   and you had

Sitesmall.com/pg1 SITEBIG.com/pgA

Sitesmall.com/pg2 SITEBIG.com/pgB

Sitesmall.com/pg3 SITEBIG.com/płC      up until highly successful BIG bought up and comer small.

Each site had separate sitemap, content, urls, GA tracking code.

Then you had:

Sitesmall.com/pgA SITEBIG.com/pgA

Sitesmall.com/pgB SITEBIG.com/pgB

Sitesmall.com/pgC SITEBIG.com/pgC and this was simply because someone changed all on Sitesmall to look and feel identical to SITEBIG?

I cannot understand how you have a SITEBIG.com sitemap for Sitesmall with BIG urls? Are you simply saying the domain is different but url sub directories are the same on sitemap? Are they following 0.9 from Sitemaps.org? Otherwise I cannot see how this is constructed. (Look at Sitemaps info in GWMT)

As to GA code being the same, have you looked at analytics on both and does it make any sense? Have you looked for occurrence of GA code in other places (head and body, etc.) on both sites?

FIRST THE BIG CAVEAT:  you may save yourself a ton of work, trouble, and time... by turning off sitesmall.com and going to work on SITEBIG.com....... get it SEO perfect using all the time this will take.

On the historic, I would go to archive.org and see what is there using wayback machine. Look at what was there - when. So if the old site was six months ago, you at least know where you are reaching to and can look at old urls.

On the, did they 301? I would first for ease of looking put current homepage url in OSE and see if it says anything about redirecting. Then I would run the whole thing through Xenu link sleuth to see what is/ is not there. So Sitesmall.com then SITEBIG.com run both and see what you will see. Lot of answers there. Response codes, etc. I do not think you will find 301's as the way they changed the urls would not seem to make sense for same.

You can look to see if they used 301's in the .htaccess file, but I do not believe you will find them.

Once I knew what I was dealing with only then would I develop a plan.

Assuming SiteSmall had some Auth, PR, links, etc. and some of that still existed, I would begin the redirect plan. In the SEOmoz search bar I would place the query How to use 301 redirect? You will find a wealth of information. There are also numerous sites with code laid out, etc. in a simple search query online.

Note, I would not be using 301 of current to current as that is without value. You have to try and reconstruct old to new. Real Sitesmall.com to SITEBIG.com as it is now. Remember this is not a .com to .com redirect as that does not work. 301's are url to url. You need to know what the url was with the juice and use it.

For GA code, I would definitely change it prior to 301 if you can get it to old that might help.

This is the way to clean up the site duplication, capture a bit of juice, and possibly correct a mistake.

Hopefully, given there are some unanswered questions from what you stated, this is still helpful.

For your A. As per above.

B. Read above

C. Read above

Best