Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Phil,

This is one of the most concise, well written docs on video streaming and the Internet I have seen. Frankly, I am sending it to several of my staff and I will re-read it several times as well. On the ads, the problem is not that they are there - it is that many clients freak out when they see a competitor show up at the end when they have placed the YouTube feed on their site to run their commercial. Frankly, If not for that, we would do more with it and some clients when informed ahead of time have no problem.

Thanks for a well written answer that went above and beyond.

Robert

We use Vimeo for many of our clients with local business due to the ads that follow on YouTube. To our local business clients, when they have a video piece on the site and it ends and the option is there to pick a video from their competitor......well, it is not a good option usually. 
If we are not as concerned with the ads that trail using the YouTube feed, we will go ahead with the it but let the client make the choice.

Hope this helps.

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.

Alan, 
Well done, thanks for the links to the bing blog.

Luke,

You could send out demands for removal, etc. but I doubt they would get too far. I think the easier thing to do would be to move forward from where you are. First, most are not going to remove them and second, there are likely better places to spend your time (more SEO valuable). If you want to cover your client's butt in the event of a Google interdiction, send out some emails requesting the links be taken down, keep copies, and start building new links. At least you will have something to show them if there is a problem.

I have often run into this with clients and at first panicked. Today, I just move forward. Focus on the bigger issues:

Does the site have good content or is it spammy?

Is the SEO on page/site, etc. solid?

Are they targeting the right keywords?

Did I mention Content?

Are there ads everywhere?

Do you need a freshen up campaign? etc. etc. etc.

I think if you focus on those things and, if still nervous, send out the emails, you will likely be fine. If all else is solid and the site is quality, go get them some good links as I don't think Google is going to kill you over the links alone.

Best of luck.

Uhhh, Corey,

You said you have always paid in the past for SEO, I know SuperlativeB and I sent invoices, did you not get invoices from Alan or Simon??? Odd, they usually send first.

Laidlaw,

With any of the engines, when changes are made it really is difficult to know what will happen. I would think you are close to seeing them back in the rankings but it is hard to say without knowing the site. For us, when we make changes we are almost always surprised at how fast or slow they change. When they do reappear, do not be surprised to see some ranking swings for a little while. You mentioned redirects toward the end, I am assuming these are 301's, if so did you go url to url and do so in the .htaccess file? If not, this could be the culprit.

Hope this helps

Patrick, SEOmoz only crawls once a month as they need time to process the data from the crawl. It is likely you will show up corrected within the next few weeks. If you did it just after a crawl and had to wait a month it would then be a couple of weeks before results show. So, likely within 6-7 weeks from when you removed redirect. 
Hope this helps

Gareth, 
Unless something has changed in the last week. You have must put in their default category as the first. So, if you don't choose from their dropdown, you won't get the Places category info to populate when you are done with editing. I have not been able to move it down to place 3 in categories - it stays first.  Unfortunately, Google has some areas where there is simply no correct answer.
For us, in those cases we choose as best we can and then stay diligent on what we enter as custom. Also, and you likely know this, try not to stuff with items that are near identical. A little depth is best in our experience.

Hope this helps you out,

Good one Alan!

Max,

Because the links you put are to your private data, SEOmoz won't let anyone follow. Can you put in a screenshot and then just give a link tot the actual url that is a problem? Thanks.

We were in the middle of looking at a lot of the PR submission sites and at that time the latest Panda came crawling. We did a bit of checking and even the one with Warren Buffet and the patented SEO program took a hit. From what we have been able to learn PR Web did not take a hit, but....we are still not ready to spend client money on it until a few more weeks past.

Alan, I liked the infoGraphics suggestion to help in the pickup of the article. Good suggestion.

Simon and Alan are correct here, but there was a recent post by Dr. Pete that also sheds a bit of light on this. Quality Raters.

This is an interesting post and I have looked back at it several times. That said, when you redesigned the site, if you took off ads, got rid of superfluous information, etc. You likely improved the way the algorithm looks at it, too. As Simon said, if you improved the ability of the spiders to crawl it, that helped. As Alan said, if it is just a freshness factor it could drop again soon. So, keep it fresh and keep it simple.

By the way, this was a great question and followed by two good answers.

Steve, Alan and Joshua have some good points here. If your desire is to franchise, you almost certainly have to go with a 301 redirect to the site you wish to brand with. You also don't want those typing in that brand to end up on a site where the URL is AustinFitnessGyms.com on a lot of levels.

But, you are going to have to be very careful with what you do or you will have a real problem on your hands. As it is now, you are redirecting the MMA site to the Austin Fitness site. When you have the 301's already set, if you go into MMA and set new ones you are going to create an endless loop and your pages may not show. This is a pain to deal with so take it one step at a time.

As a franchisor, if you had two locations, you could just keep the Austin Fitness and use the other location for inclusion in your Franchise Offering Circular. If you are selling franchises it will be hard to do so without a proven product so leaving it as Austin Fitness will be hard. You probably need to insure the signage, etc. is all MMA. You could start a new site, but that will likely not solve the problem and you will have to build links for it.

When you did the 301 from MMAsite to Fitness site did you do every url and did you use the .htaccess file? The reason I ask is that when you put in the www.impactMMAFitness.com and the non www of impactMMAfitness.com it returns two different results in OSE.

My suggestion is this: Choose to reverse the way you have the 301 and do it methodically. First, take the 301's off of any of the ImpactMMAFitness.com (check each url as Screaming Frog does not show each having a 301). After you do that, resubmit the site map to Google. Then, go into the .htaccess file of the AustinFitnessGyms.com site and use a 301 on each url to the respective url on ImpactMMAFitness.com) also go into Google and select a prefered site for ImpactMMAFitness.com - www. or non www. Make sure you have done the same on AustinFitnessGyms.com, so that either iteration redirects the juice to the Impact site.

Once you do that, resubmit the sitemap to the engines. I believe, this will fix the error of choosing a domain that was best at the time. For your local, you leave it the same as it will end up on the main site. You should also look at the rules around franchising and the Internet when it comes to marketing. Think of someone having a location in San Antonio or even San Marcus and their being a conflict of borders.

Hope this helps. Please remember when you redirect from the Austin to the MMA, if you have not taken the 301's off of Austin it will likely bite you in the butt.

Thanks for catching it, really. I actually laughed, and while kicking myself said...bright one bigfish.

Best

Simon is correct, I was being over simplistic and imprecise. From GWMT: Google supports frames and iframes to the extent that it can. Frames can cause problems for search engines because they don't correspond to the conceptual model of the web.

The content can be indexed but it will typically be from the originating url as opposed to the destination url.

The question was: How does the iframe effect my SEO? Can I just optimize the main domain for search? I want the spreadshirt shop to be found under the domain name (www.blowingminds.de)

As it stands now, from looking at www.blowingminds.de, there is nothing outside the iframe. All of the iframe urls resolve to the subdomain = blowingminds.spreadshirt.de. So, once shopping begins, a product is selected for further consideration, then you are redirected to the subdomain.

If the SEO he is speaking of is that of www.blowingminds.de, and if by I want the spreadshirt shop to be found under means that when someone searches on a search engine for it I want them to find blowingminds.de and not blowingminds.spreadshirt.de then, it is likely he is going to be disappointed.

While I agree that user experience is important, Spreadshirts appears to have developed an affilate model that utilizes an iFrame wherein they keep all the juice. They do not want blowingminds.de to become stronger than spreadshirts.de. They are fine with the subdomain gaining authority (this is my opinion).

So, it would appear what he is asking is (for practical purposes) not doable. He can either use the subdomain provided by spreadshirts:  .blowingminds.spreadshirts.de or redirect to that from an Iframe which is provided.

Good catch Simon. Helps keep us on our toes to be more precise.

Jason,

Go in and turn off your twitter, G+1, plug in and then re run the app. My guess is you will then see title tags through any moz tool. If so, you can choose a different widget or move placement. (when you deactivate the plug in make sure you clear the cache before running crawl).

Hope it helps

Malte

First content in an Iframe cannot be indexed. Your site http://www.blowingminds.de has all content inside an IFrame so no value for SEO.

With some of our sites where a product/service provider provides their info via feeds to an iframe, we build the site to have its own content, etc. and place an iframe on the page with the feed coming in. (In the US we see this a lot with real estate sites though it appears to be going away even there). If we want to optimize around something within the Iframe, we have to optimize what is outside the frame in order to do so. 
As it stands now, unless I have missed something here, your site has no chance at Domain or Page Authority.

Hope this helps

I think many of the moz users who are involved in SEO as a primary business utilizes multiple tools for links, etc. First OSE is updated monthly. There are multiple ways to check links, but the quick and easy for me is SEO for Chrome as it pulls up Yahoo's Site Explorer, Majestic, OSE, etc. The drop down will take you where you want to go - quick and efficient.

But, remember these tools also provide other features, benefits that are independent of one another. With Yahoo Site Explorer I get a more varied view of my links. With OSE I get less of the links picture but I also get additional actionable data and a filtering function that often allows me to cut to the chase on competitive analysis. AsI look at the available tools (on the bar) on my laptop, I truly see an array. This is a set that is personal to me and the functions I perform. For you, they may well be different. My suggestion is try several over time and do not be surprised when you use this for that and that for this.

Here is a message from Rand that I would suggest you read regarding the latest and greatest from the moz engineers.

Does anyone have any empiric data on the effect of an embedded map on SERP's? Please understand that I already have anecdotal info and a personal opinion. I am looking for data.

Thanks

Yes, from what you say here, i would call it a natural link. Make sure the link comes from content and not footer or sidebar and that the content around it is good and germain to what you do.

Nextman,

I would say that if you follow the rule that is shown in the above link:

Pace yourself. A good hint I got from Ian Lurie's Fat Free Guide is the 2:1 rule: for every two directory links you build, make sure to build one genuinely natural link. This helps to keep your link profile looking “natural”.

That rule will guide you with your link building. Also, remember that links are about 20 to 25% of SEO depending on who you speak with. So, make sure all else is right as well. Spend time on on page optimization and quality keyword research then write compelling content.

Best.

questions would be...How new? How many pages roughly? Rankings drop for all pages or just random, home page?

With new sites, I try not to look if at all possible I will never fully get that I get a report on a client page that has them overnight to 11 on google for termX. Then a week later drop >39 (off chart). Next week back to 25, then 17, then 9, then drop 27 when no change. So, let it settle a while is my advice. Second, are you being careful about the directories you are submitting to? Cyrus's post on directories (Keri linked to this on another earlier) is helpful along with the SEOmoz Web Directory list should serve you well.

Assuming you are not linking to every casino be happy directory or those in Urdu or Sanskrit or Chinese, and that you are not over linking pages, etc. You should be ok. Without more context it is a bit of a struggle to assist, but I hope this helps.

Dennis

Go to OpenSiteExplorer.org and put in the url.

Before the links are listed there are 6 tabs across the top with the first being Inbound Links. You want to be on this tab.

It will say Show    ALL  Links from (Internal, External, All) pages to this page. If you want to see only followed set at show FOLLOWED links from EXTERNAL ONLY..... Then hit filter.

Once it populates you can download in CSV format.

Best

For me, I don't use them but only because I have not had a need. Our sites, blogs are a bit more specialized and are smaller sites typically designed to develop professional practice clients. I have to be careful to stay true to quality subject matter and would rather have one or two great posts than to have 5 so so.

Ghulam

You can run up to 5 campaigns using up to 300 total keywords between them. Any one campaign will crawl up to 10,000 pages. Go to 'My Account' then Billing and Subscriptions and it lays all out simply.

Best

Stefano,

A question near and dear to my heart. What we do is to utilize a few well paid ($50 to $100 US per page depending on topic complexity and past performance) copy writers for web site builds. This is where we are able to recoup the costs for new or improved client content. These copywriters have been given basic SEO through CMS training to get good H1, H2, etc. but are not the last word in SEO.

For a blog, what I have done is a couple of things that are working well: First, go to the local universities and advertise for interns in marketing, web dev, etc. and require writing samples. In the US, we can get quality people who are happy to work for around $10 to $12 per hour.

Another avenue I am using is to assist sororities and alumnae associations with their websites for a very small fee in return for some blogging and the ability to post on their blogs with us managing the cms.

As with everything we all do, it just takes realizing there are those who are good and would love to do the work. Anyone taking a language major, journalism major, etc. are great resources as they need the practice. You just have to screen the work before, during, and after the hire. The beauty here is as an intern, I am not compelled to keep a position open, etc. But, if someone is a super star, I start looking for a spot for them after graduation.

Best of luck.

Fidelity One,

First, maybe yes, maybe no.... Good that it is white hat though.

Assuming your interior pages have importance to someone making a query regarding the product,

Assuming the "unrelated links" are not Casino Envy, ProSportsTips, etc. and have at least some form of business purpose (certain directory sites) etc.,

Assuming your links to promo sites, etc. are reasonable and within the rules...

They could provide some assist to the main domain over time. How much is dependent on way too many factors based on what you have given us. If you are looking at should I/should I not, I would say it is really dependent on how secure you are in the belief all is on the up and up, and how much effort you have to expend for the potential return. 
If the site is up tight on on site, on page, etc. has great content, etc. has a relevant set of pages based on likely (researched) queries, etc. and the only thing left is trying this magic..... Try it in small doses and monitor it.

But, that is just an opinion...... Let us know how it works out and then when successful I want to see the youmoz blog on your technique!

Best

Thanks Kyle, 
We utilize social bookmarking on almost every client site we have and you are correct. My interest is much more based on just not seeing the efficacy in building site type pages for clients on social media. I want them to spend their money where they get a bang for the buck so that is the reason for the questions.

thanks again.

Stefano,

Again thanks for the responses, but..... The "social media is a must" and pro's outweigh the con's statements don't really provide depth. Is there anything in your experience that says: this is where it makes a difference. Something more tangible? I know all the arguments around everyone is there, its how people communicate, building buzz, etc. What i am after is more numbers, etc. - Bob's Tire House started an FB page and with no other advertising built a viral community and sold a thousand tires (yes it is an exaggeration, but purely for illustration of what I am looking for).

Or, an FB page when implemented as such will provide X or Y to your business. Just understand I am looking for a prove up on X or Y. Not being a pain on purpose, just bugged by this question.

I think this really is helpful. It would appear, that in order to make it work, there must also be someone who is monitoring it to insure a client is responded to? I would wonder about a time/value problem here. 
With our clients, some do and some do not have say a FB page. (For all professional practices we encourage them being on LinkedIn). How do you judge the cost vs. benefit of monitoring this?

Thanks for the response,

While I understand it is a "must," my question is, "why is it a must?" Just because people are on facebook, etc? I am wondering if there is any data around what verticals are able to quantify anything from same? 
The biggest thing I have seen from (FB for example) is that when doing contextual ads on it the leads generated were purely worthless. I can see where a Groupon type ad, etc. would work, but am really ambivalent to spending a client's $ (even though I am making money by doing same) when I cannot see a real return. Even with throwing out the direct response or ROI piece, I do not see where a physician, attorney, manufacturing company, etc benefits from having a specific FB page.

Thoughts

I have a client (professional practice) whose father is a marketing professor. He is pushing the client that he should have a professional page on  social sites. While I believe having FB likes, shares, Tweet links, +1, etc. on the page, I really am ambivalent about building pages specifically for social media sites. 
For some of you who have tracked the efficacy of these it would be great to know your pros and cons.

OK, this is not really different than many of the directory sites doing this. I work with a lot of professional practices and it is a bit of a pet peeve that google allows such, but that is not what you asked.

If you look at this the actual "site" is a subdirectory of plasticsurgery.org. Go to plastic surgery.org and look for the menu item where you can "find a surgeon." When you follow that, you are redirected to a sub domain 1.plasticsurgery.org. You can then enter various zips or states, etc. His zip when entered allows a sort option and when you find his name you will notice a badge with enhanced listing. He is paying the ASPS additional to be "enhanced" - no pun intended but I did lol when I first wrote this. So, they are likely setting up a program in which they potentially do the local listing etc. and allow the site as a subdirectory.

What is really bad about this is his places page is not even filled out 25%, there are no reviews, etc. I could not find a different site using variations on the title or searching on him as a surgeon in Phoenix using name only. I would think that means Phoenix is a great market to go after Plastic Surgeons if you are an agency!

Yes, it is not really reasonable, but maybe in Panda 99.90.

Hope this helps

Have not, but based on the service for free, it is likely worth a try given it is more robust. With most of our sites we do not have the level of complexity so it is less of a need. Hopefully, some of the mozzers with more eCommerce will see and respond. Also, if you have a private question available, you might use that to go straight to moz and see what they could suggest.

Mon.itor.us works well and is free.

It seems you are looking for something that constantly monitors the site and simply alerts you to problems. From my point of view as an agency that has more than a few sites up, it might be overkill and I am not sure of what it would be. What we do to cover what you are listing is this: We have a pro plus moz membership and do campaign tracking with it. We can see on a weekly basis via email and daily if we just log in: 4xx, 5xx errors, dupe pg titles, missing pg titles, blocked bots, etc. as well as on page SEO issues, and general robots, rel - canon, etc.

For content checking of page changes I am at a loss, error reports as above and server downtime as below (mon.itor.us) with good result. The beauty of the SEOmoz campaign for me is that it also tracks rankings, connects to G Analytics, and provides competitive link analysis DA, PA, etc.

For the Headers you can use Screaming Frog (I just love that name and it works).

Hope that helps.

From the standpoint of Bing not indexing all pages my first guess would be poor internal linking and then insure you have a good site map. One of the biggest errors I see when we have a problem is that we have not paid close enough attention to our internal linking.

Hope it helps.

Had to go look again. From what I see the only link to Conservatories Llanelli is in the footer. This may be where your problem is as it appears the others all have other links. Try putting a link from one of the other areas on the page and see what affect it has.

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.

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.)