I love the 'marketing angle' spin to this whole thing for the shelter structures. !! Great idea.

Just optimize your pages to focus on INTENT now, rather than specific keywords, thus reducing the chance of keyword cannibalization. Have an idea where you are going for each page, but really narrow down and focus the efforts. It's not really all that long, but Rand did an excellent write up on this (it's from 2007), but worth exploring further for sure to get the basics down. There is also a WB Friday from March this year where he touches on it. Anyways, hope it helps!

Oleg might have a point. A quick tool you can run to get a snapshot of his analytics, overlayed with the various updates for Penguin and Panda (and other non-named updates) that could have affected it. Use this tool quickly, and you should could correlate a penalty with his traffic. Titled the PANGUIN tool It's useful to get a quick look at his analytics when you connect the Google account. You will see a drastic drop in organic traffic, and it will align with an update Google did which may be the penalty Oleg was referring too.

Without direct access to his analytics, the site, his URL, the non-ranking keywords, the competitor site, etc, it's about the best we can do!

Hope it helps, if it's the case!

You'll have to have a very technical list of stages and list items closely monitored to ensure the best possible chance of success. In fact, in some ways, this could be a blessing if you have taken time to analyze the marketplace, the customer persona's, the sales funnel of your client, etc, etc. It obviously a tough call and you have some difficult recommendations to make to the client. I've been there!

Best thing is to be fully transparent and make sure they understand the implications of making a major move like this and the kind of time and work it will take to ensure a clean transition (well, cleanest it can be!)

You know they need it, but are worried about all the background work and critical technical steps to ensure a smooth transition to the new site.

Glenn Gabe wrote a great piece detailing some really important steps to take when going down this road! Check it out here.

Hope it helps! Rob

You could look at AWR 's (Advanced Web Ranking) software. I use it and it's awesome for tracking and reporting. Has the largest search engine depth for reporting (add any search engine you want/need) and product support will help you get it if they don't have it! It can be tailored to track any language KW needed and in any country. Reporting is awesome if you buy the PRO or AGENCY level software (I included the link above), but does require a little time to learn. It's costly as well, but proves to be a tool I can't operate without in my practices for client projects.

My advice is to purchase a domain you can/will build a brand around. Stick to the brand URL/domain as exact name match domains have been flagged by Google for top rankings. Optimize the site for both targeted traffic and local and national/international search traffic. I'm a big believer now of brand domains, and developing links to those sites with links that reflect, brand mentions, KW mentions for correlation, social mentions and inbound related marketing content development to strengthen the domain's total overall market presence.

Another reason to keep the domain 'brand related' is about the UI/UX for recalling it. If it's some crazy long typed domain name with KW's and brand mentions, it becomes tedious to remember and type out Using the brand name as the focus and URL will keep it straight to the point for the user and marketing behind it. NOTE: Make sure to research out the social profiles of any URL you are looking at, to build up around as you want to ensure you can lock them all up prior to purchasing anything

Either way, your best bet with a completely new domain will be to focus on developing out a local SEO strategy and supporting that with targeted content and social media profiles. This way, when you are ready to gain and target a larger audience (national?), you have the backbone profile on the site to reinforce the effort.

Hope some of that helps

You could use this strategy, if you wanted. There is nothing wrong with assimilating an x-competitors domain URL and turning that ownership into a site your company uses and 301 redirects (perhaps they had a strong brand following?). You might be able to leverage some of that related traffic and turn those visitors into customers. You will want to look at the DA/PA, but as well, the # and quality of the backlinks that were acquired during the process when they owned it. Make absolutely sure it's a clean URL, with clean related backlinks that aren't tied to bad areas, because that will funnel down through to your site via the 301 redirect, if you go this route.

I had this happen to a company/client site. They stole an expired domain from the main competitor who was still in business and re-appropriated it for their own use in PAY DAY LOANS (which had absolutely nothing to do with the original destination URL it was originally taken from). Then, that SPAM site/company went out of business for whatever reason, and I was tracking the domain to re-acquire it myself (through auction) and hopefully be able to re-use it for the main site. The site's profile will probably need a major backlink analysis to see if it has been corrupted by this company who bought it when it expired and used it for spam related work. Auugggh.

Sometimes, these types of strategies do work, but you have to carefully evaluate and plan the benefits vs the cons and cost. I'll leave it up to you, but that's my 2 cents

Cheers!

Hi Sina,

For your first question, make sure you have Google Webmaster Tools setup (which I gather you do) as you have received a 'low quality/spam links' message by them. I should add that dealing with an 'unnatural link profile by Google is a whole other project!) and super important to boot so get on top of that also! Open Site Explorer is a perfect place to start, to crawl the links and to profile your entire linking domain profile. From here you can begin to examine domain link profile by filtering through options to identify ones which may be causing you that warning from Google. This will need to be rectified in order to ensure solid indexing of your site pages. You will need to clean these up in order for the rest to work and be effective

Now, to look at the indexing issue you asked on. If you look to the right in Webmaster Tools once you login, on the dashboard, you will see a section called SITEMAPS (3rd on the right once you click into the domain) from the main panel. Click on the TITLE of this section from the dashboard, and you will land on the SITEMAPS report file. There is a wealth of information here from Google about the indexing health of your site.

There are 3 steps here, Google needs to have done in order to identify which to help you figure out the information you are looking for:

• Crawling
• Indexing
• Ranking (what you see in the SERP results pages using search terms or Google Operators for site review.

In order to see any results at all, you need to ensure you have a SITEMAPS.XML file built, loaded and submitted to Google. It also needs to be configured properly and have no errors for proper processing. This is the only way you will get clear snapshot of what has been indexed based on your XML file by Google. This will tell you have many pages you have indexed in their index, but not identify. If you don't have any at all, it will state it.

it's also time to look at your robots.txt and .htaccess file to ensure those are configured and installed properly. This would be another troubleshooting step, but seeing as you have a unnatural link profile, you may want to take these steps first. Ensure you don't have any of the   <noindex>meta fields listed here as well site-wide.</noindex>

So, from here, once you login to Webmaster Tools (dashboard for the site you are referring to you) under SITEMAPS, you will see a section saying XXX number of pages submitted and XXX # of pages indexed along with any errors and warnings you are getting from them now in that box (link warnings will be here too!). This will give you some important informtion which you can log in an Excel file later Here is where you will most likely see that linking domain link alert from Google as well.

Now you have Google's 'indexed pages' view. Now you have to dig a little.

----- GOOGLE OPERATORS ---- Now, once you have some data from Google WebMaster Tools as mentioned above, You can now go to Google.com (or the Google index you want to see like .ca. or others) and use Google search operators to speficially see which URL's and pages have been indexed by the engine. There are a few different ones you can use below. I found a great resource below and copied in the link.

Domain search with - site: Operator 
(site:google.com)
This should returns results only from the specified Domain.
So you will need to be careful if your site is with a SubDomain (or multiple SubDomains) ("www" is a SubDomain).

Domain search with - inurl: Operator 
(inurl:google.com)
This should return results that contain the specified Domain.
This may not be only from the site in question though!  It is possible for other sites to contain your domainname in their URLs (whois.domaintools.com may have such URLs etc.)

Domain search with - site: and inurl: Operators 
(site:google.com inurl:google.com)
This way you limit the results to your Domain Only ... and it seems to generate more "reliable" results than the site: operator alone.

Domain and Path/Query search with - site: and inurl: Operators 
(site:google.com inurl:/somepath/somedirectory/)
(site:google.com inurl:?this=that&rabbits=lunch)
This way you limit the results to your Domain Only ... and focus on a specific directory/folder or set of paramters etc.

Domain and FileType search with - site: and filetype: Operators
(site:google.com filetype:html)
This limits the results to those from your Domain, and to a specific type of file.
Please note - the filetype: operator may not show All of that type - it may only work for URLs that end in that type.  thus if you serve content as html, but without the .html in the filename - they will not show in the results!)

Domain and Path/Query search with - site:, inurl: and inurl: Operators 
(site:google.com inurl:google.com inurl:/somepath/somedirectory/)
(site:google.com inurl:google.com inurl:?this=that&rabbits=lunch)
This permits you to start limiting the results to specific parts of your site if you need too.

Make sure that your site pages also don't include in the section the <meta-noindex>or <meta-nofollow>tags. This would tell Google not to index or follow the pages from your site  </meta-nofollow></meta-noindex>

Ensure that you have, in your .htaccess file the proper redirects for the site if you find you have duplicate content. Ensure you are 301 redirecting the non-www to www versions of your site and pages (or vice-versa), whichever you prefer to have indexed by Google to ensure clean indexing of the site. This will make sure you don't have problems indexing wide for search.

TO NOTE

---- SERVER LOG FILES ---- (Note: please make sure that you request log files) from your hosting company too. If you don't have access to server log files for hosting traffic, switch! Log and keep an eye on these as well for information for your needs. This process is not a fast or easy one and does require some work to detect. Don't get lazy. This is a crucial step to keep an eye on.

What I recommend next is starting to keep log files if you aren't already and tracking those on a weekkly pr monthly basis (which ever is easier). The reason being is once you get indexed to Google, you always want to keep an idea of what is indexed and what isn't (dropped) or de-indexed pages. This can also help identify early problems (or penalties) from Google if you see trending things happening day over day or week over week.

Hope this helps point you in the right direct. Remember don't be lazy here Exhaust all options to indentify your problems! Cheers,

Rob

Hey Justin,

I've done the complete DistilledU training. It's advanced in sections and at times, very basic. It's pretty much covers everything tho. It's very much learn at your own pace, as is MarketMotive and I have all my strategists or consultants work through Distilled and Moz as part of the their training for in house work. I don't know anyone who has done the Market Motive courses, but I can tell you after spending a little more time on it today, that I will be going through and possibly ordering it. We are also HubSpot certified as an agency so many of these certifications would benefit that tie we have with their products.

My guess, the advanced training you would be looking for - would be MarketMotive.com as I am looking at it myself for our agency and our teams! That's my 2 cents I plan on getting budgets set aside and getting it all lined up. I'm sold and going to move it into the pipeline.

My suggestion would be to go beyond creating 'yearly' top lists for the site (these are old and tired). Look to create an 'Evergreen' content page that you can use and leverage year over year, build on and create a community and discussion around. Discuss the changes each year by revamping the list, ask people their input (UGC) and discuss why some of the one's that fell, did, while also pointing out new one's didn't fall and why

By creating a page like this - you leverage the long term effect of a page that never gets old, or outdated (as one does with regards to a specified URL like 2012 or 2014) in your examples. This will also help you create a very strong profile from a backlink perspective as your links will accumulate into 1 evergreen/lasting URL - that never gets outdated with yearly updates you will make. Might want to use the META information for data posted and date expired to ensure that the crawlers know to come back and recrawl when a page is live. Ensure it's mapped and setup properly in the Sitemap XML file too

I think the advantages of moving towards this will help your link profile, leverage a great piece of content year over year, making it move 'sharable' from a social media perspective and leverage long-term value.

Just my 2 cents to help you out

Cheers, Rob

I would say there is another option Julien. Just because your 'primary' KW is the focus of the homepage, it doesn't mean it is the highest converting KW for your company/site or for that specific product. Of course, you have to dig for data a little looking at how best to approach it and how that internal page performs, what KW's drive traffic (digging deeper than not provided)

Yes, your homepage has the most domain authority value (mainly, but not always). It's again, not the best page to rank for all your terms, if the bounce and exit rates are above average and/or high. This indicates that those KW's are not converting for your homepage at the best possible rate.

In the past, I have moved the KW focus to the actual product landing page and taken the focus away from the homepage, optimizing and working on improving the UI/UX, information, product, image, video etc, on that specific page - in hopes it would outrank the main primary page and thus, convert at a higher rate. As these product pages when worked on helped the 'visitors' get directly to the page that they are looking for, without having to search for it and navigate to it from the homepage (yet, another click). Why not simplify the process sending them directly to the main page of information?

Work to identify other KW's you can use to draw focus for on the main homepage and shift that focus around.

When building out your product page for the KW, I suggest as I mentioned above - work everything about the UI/UX, design, information, photos, videos, etc etc making it an extremely valuable page (think - make it THE MOST valuable page you can think of) to help visitors, thus, more than likely converting at higher rates, decreasing bounce and exit rates to the page.

As well, the added page authority, which will strengthen the domain authority overall on the site will improve the overall experience to users.

Just a thought to help you out on success I have had with similar issues.

Cheers, Rob

Where did they get the information for your original 40 rank, before it shot up to 80? Do you know what software they were using to gauge this value? More information would help us put 2+2 together and help get you an answer. Happy to look into it for you if you need and get you a domain authority and page authority score/value.

This link and article would be a good place to start. Anything more specific might require more digging and testing to determine traffic isolated to that referral source. Not sure to the extent you need or are looking for, so more research might be needed.

I would take some time and check your other traffic and analytics sources. Ensure that everything is still up. Even take a few minutes to manually verify some of your known KW rankings. See if the site has plummeted or dropped severely. There would be some correlation between that and the impressions loss with GWMT. The overall algorithm might have some impact on any losses attained that you saw so take some time to look over the data..

I would be safe to assume if you don't see any major problems anywhere else in your research that things are find and Google has just had a glitch in reporting, which engineers are probably already working on

Might help you start identify the source of the issue on the site.

In my experiences and tests (although some disagree in search) don't forget to consider that (folder depth) IE - number of directories beyond the URL may have an impact on your search performance I can have an impact/factor in how deep spiders both crawl and index sites with regards to relevance and competitive landscape mapping. Just keep in mind

So you with www.domain.com/category/images/anotherfolder/ might be much longer to get your images ranking vs www.domain.com/images/ - but again, it doesn't always work in a framework for architecture if you have multiple, hundreds or thousands of /category/ sections in the sites design.

Try to trim down your URL to make it the most simplified, but user friendly (as possible :). Keeping it short for any pages and or directories also makes it more user friendly in that people can remember where the file was and the URL it was on

Folder location still has impact on crawl depth and rankings. The above mentioned features to improve relevancy for images are still useful (see post above), so ensure to name each image, and use hyphens between words, use the IMG ALT text on every image to identify, and the location of said images on various location page/URL's.

If you can get around removing the /category/ folder and reducing the URL to www.domain.com/images/ where all your image files are located, that might be better, but I have only used this in a handful of cases. Usually, more often than not .

Hope that helps!

Hi Natalie,

I would stick to trying to find a ccTLD that is US based, if you are going to be operating in the US. Buying ccTLD for other countries and trying to rank those in the US/CAN marketplace would be, essentially, VERY difficult and require extra long hours of link building strategy (content development, news, media, etc) to even consider ranking a high level ccTLD from another country in the US index, and for a top ranking.

I would not recommend this strategy, even around top level country domains outside the US (These countries also have strict rules and are usually specific to each country) about purchasing ccTLD's from areas you don't reside in, or have an 'administrative contact' address for. The geolocation issues associated with this are a problem too.

UNLESS, you have a company already up and running, buy a ccTLD from another country, are moving your companies based of operations to that country, could release press and news media about the move, and why - doing this will have little benefit and the work involved in ranking it, US based, would be much more than it's worth with regards to an advantage weight.

Also - just to note that KW rich domains don't outrank brand counterparts anymore, as Google has removed weight in their value. Sure they still rank and are here and there in the index, but I seldom, if ever see KW rich domains dominating the search index now. Sounds like it's a new domain, and either way, you are going to have to develop one heck of a digital marketing strategy around it, to build up the sites domain and page authority (links).

Best bet is to find a US based ccTLD and move towards building a brand around it, from within the US. Take the time to effectively build something of value that will WOW people, and have them coming back for more

Hope that helps a little

I think you should register the .sg domain for sure and get started. It's going to take some work to help get the domain built up with authority. If you start with the .sg, and later want to move into the more .com.sg, you could then strategically plan a 301 plan for all your sites and move the site to a new domain.

There you have it .sg is the best option for now. Just build a solid strategy around your site, social media, content and inbound marketing and help push and drive traffic to your business. It won't happen overnight and will require work Good luck!

There is no real tool I know of that you just plug and play for KW data, specific to 1 URL.

I would plug into various analytics platforms that you can collect data from (without keyword not provided) by Google now. Also consider setting up (if you haven't already) both Google and Bing Webmaster Tool accounts to collect KW data directly from the engine.

I still suggest you use the KW Planner by Google to identify more KW's once you look over the Webmaster accounts mentioned above. This will help you reach a little further. Plugging into Moz, creating that campaign for a site specific domain is also a MAJOR plus and should not be ignored. Build the campaign, run it, analyze the data and then move it to 'archives' to save the data and not delete it should you need access to the setup again

Once you have KW's targeted for specific URL's (best practice), you should also consider picking up the AWR application (Advanced Web Ranking) software. It's a bit pricey, but worth every penny. I have been using it for 3-4 years now and is a major asset in my toolbox.

Just to note: I don't rely to much on KW rankings anymore, but more about conversion KW's. Because you have the top ranking for KW doesn't mean you are going to convert visitors. It just means high amounts of traffic. It's about analyzing and finding out which KW's drive sales or conversions on your site. Just a pro tip!

Thanks, hope this helps a little.

This information might help you make a decision, but it sounds like your strategy will be mainly focused on the Signapore marketplace. I would read this to help you decide which domain you want/should run with based on the business or personal site and geolocation for operations. Hope this helps you a little. Without more information from you, it's difficult to give you points on which one would be better based on your goals

|

The .SG domain has 9 extensions as shown below :

|
| sg | This category is available to all with a valid Singapore postal address. A foreign applicant may apply for a domain name in this category as long as it appoints a local agent having a valid Singapore postal address as the Administraive Contact. |
| com.sg | Commercial entities may wish to register in this extension. Applicants registering for a .com.sg will need to be either registered, or in the midst of registering, with the Accounting & Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA), IE Singapore or any professional body. A foreign company which is not so registered may only apply for a .com.sg domain name if it appoints a local agent as the Administrative Contact. This local agent shall be a legal entity that is similarly registered by any of the afore-mentioned organisations and is duly authorised by the foreign company. |

Absolutely. It makes total sense!

You are referencing the keyword you are targeting in the TITLE and Article TITLE (make this an H1 in your HTML) and as well the URL TITLE reflecting the article H1 targeting. It's all relevant to the goal of trying to signal the engines about the great content you are creating.

Make sure to write unique TITLES for each URL you create and target the keywords for each you are mapping against those URL's. Keep the Page TITLES in line as well and tie it all together. Very important to have a planned strategy around either working on a site that is already in place (and you are changing everything), or a new site with completely new development in and search targeting in place.

Although the Moz software is awesome, it only works to configure and setup campaigns if you are a PRO member which comes with a 99$ fee per month. This isn't for everyone unless they can use the software more than once.. I would suggest grabbing a few free tools online to use. You can check out : ScreamingFrog and/or Xenu Link Sleuth

Each will provide you with detailed reports to filter through and see content from your site. ScreamingFrog will provide you with data for up to 500 URL's for free. You will need to purchase the license to go deeper, depending on your site.

This one is a great for getting HTTP header checks and site wide duplicate content error notifications.

If you want to try a tool to verify online duplicate content - PageSpotter is a checking and monitoring tool.

A great post by Google Webmaster Center Blog about Duplicate Content and why you need to address it to help with your site.

If you plan to go the route of moving the site to a new domain/URL this is a great forum piece on the steps you need to plan and execute for a clean move.

Hope some of this helps you out!

Where are the links embedded? On the actual pages of your site (internal)? On the homepage? In the back-end of Wordpress (as you said it was a virus)??? Provide a little more detail and we may be able to find the right solution. Each of which would be different based on the various types of links going out to his site.

Thanks, Rob

Well, that makes more sense now !! I didn't read it correctly then. Sorry, my mistake. Well, to address your question in that regards then;

1. If I were you, and you have access to their amazon-like site, code and ability to modify, you could very well implement the canonical tag, and redirect all value and links to your clients domain. I wouldn't count on that other site driving any traffic at later points though once the value shift takes place. Those product pages will become mute.

2. Option 2 -> By keeping both sites open (amazon and client site), you have the possibility of driving multiple sources of traffic for the client domain and products, and building the main client site out to out perform the amazon-like site.

Still, following the steps above will help you plan a good solid strategy going forward and will help support the sites performance, user experience to ultimately improve sales conversions and revenue

Cheers!

Hey Bob,

This might be an older post from 2011, but Cyrus does a great job getting to the root of what you are searching for. I don't want to rewrite his suggestions, but let's say I have this page bookmarked to reference whenever I need it Understanding Google's freshness factor and how it affects search rankings

Oh, and read Justin's post on this as well! Great insight into the technical Google patents and breakdown.

Hi Guillermo,

First, do not place or run canonical tags from your site to the amazon like site. This would be telling Google that their site is in fact the authority source for the products which are for sale. Doing this in the long run would untimately kill your clients web traffic and site in time.

Next, look at both your site and amazon-like product site. Is it pulling in the product descriptions dynamically or do you have to update them manually between both sites (your client and the amazon site)? This is an important step when trying to strategize how to best implement the tactics you will use.

Next, look at the client site. If you really want to build this site up, it's going to take some work. Here are a few things you can do to improve the client site information and

1. Write ALL NEW content descriptions about each product (this can take time, but it's worth every second). Make them fun and detailed providing unique approaches to the products being sold.

2. If you can, provide video reviews of the products, or use video to showcase the product in a way that will help people searching and researching it. Don't let this slide. It can also help your 'time on site' and time on page metrics which we know improve the overall success of a site online within the SERP results (Google).

3. Provide numerous images of the product. Realign this with improving the gallery function of the site to showcase products. Use at least 5-6 images per product from numerous angles and allow for clear visibility of the product. Make sure to offer both small thumbnails and when clicked on - clear large images that users can see. This again will help with product showcase.

4. Implement a feed which will allow users and visitors to comment on products (after purchase), thus offering some user feedback to visitors about each one sold, experiences, etc. This also helps improve sales conversion ratios and can also help the company identify trouble areas that need attention (customer service, shipping, the product itself, sales funnel and process, etc). If monitored, these can be invaluable info to help improve conversions and increase ROI.

5. Offer a blog on the site which reviews products to start. Use this tool to promote various products and offer in depth information about them. You can then move to develop a content strategy to improve the long tail search. Look to find keywords that revolve around clients 'searching' for the product using questions. Use these questions to develop content which provide answers. This is a key element now in search and should be leveraged to the best of your ability.

6. Implement a full social media strategy for the client site. Line up all the social media accounts to accurately reflect each other and unify them in the way they look and feel (descriptions, picture, info, phone #'s, etc). Make it all uniform. Next ensure you have the key elements and pages ready (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest). Line these up so that the client can use these to not only promote their products, content, etc, but to improve brand development and especially customer service. These platforms can be leveraged to so much more now than just 'sharing' good content and the client needs to understand this. Embed all these through social media 'share' buttons on each product page to improve the 'sharability' of these products online.

7. Research both the local and global search markets and align yourself with building each profile out (store location, local search, etc) Work to build and drive traffic on both levels using all the strategy.

8. Run A/B tests on the pages once all this is done. Look at your analytics data to identify things that need improvement. Funnel, descriptions, pages, added video, user feedback and reviews, etc. It will all help provide the depth you need to surpass the amazon-like site Ultimately, work to make the pages unique in every way. See what this amazon site is NOT doing and work to improve the user experience.

Also - (but you should already know this ensure that each page has clear and concise meta data, product descriptions, titles, image ALT tags, etc. This will also require some work, but is very key move. Not only will adjusting the content on the page

Taking the time to develop out a strategy like this, in the long run, will help improve the user experience by offering a superior site, customer services and sales!

Cheers!

Of course. BING data is for BING search and Google Data for Google. I should have clarified that to make sure they understood, but at the same time. BING is just doing some kick ass stuff that Google should have been paying attention too in the last year

It doesn't actually help. All this does is bookmark your information for users quickly so they can access pages quickly that they want. I do this quite often when I have a site or page that I want to get to quickly - just a regular bookmark. NO impact on SEO/SEM what-so-ever (but it could in the future if Google added another feature metric/variable to track!)

Bing has great search and keyword data in the BWMT section of the site. You can also explore the data for your sites. I'm very impressed with what BING has done in the last 1-2 years and their webmaster tools central is really great. I've just started using Jaxxy and have a full 30 day test account running now. It's only free for the 1st 30 days, and I'm not sure yet where they are pulling there data from.

Google dropped the ball on changing up their KW tool. I don't think they took the time to work with and poll SEO's as BING did. Duane Forrester was really involved with making sure the data we get, KW data etc, and the UX on it was what SEO's really needed when working on sites. Check out this Duane Forrester WBF from a while back. I'm sure he would have even more to share on top of that!

Yes! I actually find it very frustrating. I'm not happy with the new tool by Google, and with the new tool, we will be losing more valuable search data to make decisions from the old Keyword Tool. I'm currently use Jaxxy (testing it out) and Bing. I'm still using the old Google keyword tool, until the take it out of commission in the coming months.

You generally want to have the

tag at the top of the page, above the content paragraph. Keep it close in relation to the content that is below it also for correlation. Typically, you don't place a

inside the HEADER of the page, but rather the of the site.

Make sure to limit your use of the

to only 1 time on a page. Use other elements of <h2-h4>throughout the page, but again, only use each element for various sections 1 time on the site page. I've worked on clients sites that had 5

tags, 10

tags, 15

and so on. The pages focus was a real mess. It gets a little stretched out, the engines have trouble determining /or narrowing down what and where the importance of what you are trying to say on the page is, thus affecting you negatively in the SERP results because they can't figure it out.

Keep it clean, watch the code on your site, use elements carefully and do not overuse them. Keep this in mind, and you should be good to go!

Cheers and good luck!</h2-h4>

Yes, it looks spammy too and really isn't helpful to users and visitors who are reading the information you are writing and sharing. Don't scare your users away with spammy looking links. It's probably affecting the on page elements as well as constantly reproducing the same (internal or external links) on all these blogs posts. These type of 'footer' links at the bottom of all the posts also look spammy to the engines. If you do keep them there, select only 1-2 that are of importance and rel=nofollow the others. I

My recommendation if to link naturally inside the site and blog. Don't just link to yourself., your products, or your pages. Be bigger than that Link to other outside sources as well. Don't be afraid to expand on the type of links you use inside your content. Most people are, but when you link intelligently, and for the benefit of the user, the page's performance, click through, time on page/site, etc will improve. It's a win/win for you and your users experience. Not only will you see in time that you are linking to other really valuable sources for your clients, those sites will be watching who is linking to them, and might garner the attention of the staff there for a natural link mention on their site, or request for a 'quest post'.

Hope some of that helps! Cheers

Are these FORUM posts/page URL's part of the primary root domain? Are they in a separate FOLDER or DIR within the ROOT of the site? How is it structured? Are they still being crawled and indexed? Are they still indexed?

My bet is that you could map out these old post/URL's and possibly 301 them to more relevant information on your site, that deals with, or discusses the topic at hand. You don't want to flat out remove them, have a pile of 404 error's show up and then have to worry about salvaging the damage later. Map out the pages you want to dump - see if there is relevant more up to date conversations that are within the same topic and 301 redirect them to those locations.

You might want to considering removing the one's you can't 301 to more up to date relevant information, if there is no page to do so. You could map these out and possibly create content on the site or BLOG that answers the forum's post, but that might take time and money? That way, future people would find information to handle that very question and not be posting a question about it in the Forum

Unfortunately, in my experience, FORUM's have this issue and I think will continue to have this issue. There is no once recipe to fix the problem of outdated forum posts, or outdated URL's  - but you can leverage some of that and turn it back into traffic for the site - and traffic that is still valuable if it has a purposes (redirect). If not - you can remove the old URL's/posts, let them 404 and remove them through GWMT systematically as they begin to populate your crawl reports from Google.

Either way, it's an option to look at to clean up the site and site pages/depth if you feel those pages have little to offer UX or visiting customers Remember, Google has confirmed that pages that hurt your overall site score, can pull down your natural rankings in the SERP's if pages that are of low-quality don't help the site, users or the user/customer-visitor experience.

Hope that helps a little! Cheers

No trouble! Glad I could help out

First, Google doesn't do this for an entire site, at any given time, so it's best you take the time to work on client sites/pages and optimize the TITLES and DESCRIPTION you want to use. If Google uses /or changes anything for pages you have written descriptions, titles or page content, they won't advise you either.

Google's updates of these page titles, is very common when they feel the title they use for the SERP index to be more useful or accurate of the page's content. Watch for very long titles, as they are more prone to being identified by them, and rewritten

Yes, it can be quite frustrating, but it's not a total loss when working on sites.

Even if Google does change something, you can still make changes to the client site pages that might have been rewritten by Google, and hope that your new updated page info is taken over the Google TITLE rewrite..

This was a good post on BLOG. SEOmofo had a really good posting as well about this very topic.

Barry had a small but good to the point post on Google Title Rewrites at SE Round Table too

Hope some of this helps point you in the right direction!

Cheers,

It could be noted that depending on the DMOZ listing you are going after, in the vertical or niche you focus on, it could be months to get a listing approved depending on the moderator watching that category. Just a little something to consider after you submit the site, if you haven't already. Don't submit multiple times

Also - if you are using the DMOZ listing (after it's live and approved), and have a specific "description" or "title" for the site or page you are using, and don't want to use it across Google's search index, make sure to use the META field on your page. NOTE: This will only apply after your listing if/when is approved in the DMOZ directory. I took a small piece of the content from Google's product support page below and pasted it in right here:

One source Google uses to generate snippets is the Open Directory Project. You can direct us not to use this as a source by adding a meta tag to your pages.

To prevent all search engines (that support the meta tag) from using this information for the page's description, use the following:

To specifically prevent Google from using this information for a page's description, use the following:

If you use the robots meta tag for other directives, you can combine those. For instance:

This is a good Google Product Support page to visit about TITLES and DESCRIPTIONS and how they handle sometimes overriding the TITLE or DESCRIPTION field based on your DMOZ directory listing.

Cheers and good luck!

Hi Patri!

OK, don't get frustrated too easily, it's really not that difficult but I could understand how it might look confusing to a newer client with the site redesign.

NOTE: MOZ doesn't work like Screaming Frog, with instant results upon crawling a domain, this you need to take into account first and understand. You need to setup a profile (campaign) for the website you want to crawl for data. With each PRO account, you get 5 campaigns to build and track while working on them.

First, sign into your account from the homepage

Second, click the MOZ logo and go to the site's main homepage. Look to the far RIGHT MARGIN at the TOP and click the button saying CAMPAIGNS & TOOLS. Once you are on this page, you will see a BUTTON in Blue titled SETUP A CAMPAIGN. Follow the steps to enter the URL, search engines to track, a few keywords to get you started and possibly the Google Analytics profile, to start gathering the information. This will create a CAMPAIGN for the site you are trying to crawl. It will start automatically and email you when the report is ready to be viewed. It's not automatic and might take some time, depending on how big the site is to get your crawl and data report.

You can access all the Products MOZ offers at this URL: http://moz.com/products and from here, click on the old disk (looks like an old 8" floppy disk), titled TOOLS and DATA. In this section, you can get to all the various tools we use as SEO's to analyze and get work done

Hope this helps! Cheers

Just to touch on Chris point, (great point too!!) for your content production, make sure everyone on your staff contributing to the blog and/or content (or any Guest Author for that matter,/have Google+ profiles setup), so you can use the rel=author tag Here's a great step by step guide on it. It's an awesome way to get your content noticed in search results and helps people identify with the production. This will in turn, help your staff build a reputation and authority in the niche you are building and contributing too!

Cheers!

Hey Ruben,

Are you looking to build out content for your own blog as you mention in paragraph 1, or for other blogs and media sources, that would be hosted on alternate sites/blogs etc? I found this to be slightly confusing, but not in a bad manner.

Creating content is the first part of the puzzle You then need to figure out how to best get that content out to the world, and 'shared' across the web and in front of people to view, read, share and share more!

I would look Rand's recent WBF posting and figure out where you fit and into which path. Of course, you want to provide great content, that's the ultimate goal, but at the same time you are in the long run hoping for inbound links to be sourcing your content as an authority, right? This was a great Link Building vs Content Marketing post. It'll be very useful and help you identify which path you need to take or which one works best for your firm's resources. As you will handling your content development or content calendar, you will essentially be working as an SEO to get that content created around target keywords you have or research and topics you want to cover in the legal industry - while also trying to engage users and readers to read and share it across the web with other groups.

I would consider, if you haven't already, creating a LinkedIn page for the Law Firm. I researched it quickly and couldn't find the firm itself, but did find 2 of the people/attorney's that work there now. By creating your firms page, you will have a place to publicly share your content to build a following of readers. LinkedIn is a great resource for networking as well - and building that trust there is a key factor. Having your blog setup with RSS will help move the content into the media stream, which could potentially share the feed across other sites looking to pull in RSS links to their blogs or sites of similar niche markets. Don't forget all the social media profiles you should have, FB, Twitter mainly. Perhaps if you wanted to start doing video and media marketing a YouTube channel for the firm? Remember, you have think about the ways to get your content out to the marketplace, to share Tie any social media accounts to tour site, law firm online and the LinkedIn profile so people can find you quickly and easily. Maintain consistency among all the profiles (descriptions, pictures, info, phone numbers, etc) to keep everything lined up too.

This was also a great resource in Link Building and Growing Popularity by Moz. It's part of the Beginners Guide to SEO series, but should also help you wrap your head around the processes involved. The 2013 Link Building Survey by Moz offers some great up to date insight as well. Read that here.

Doing reverse search might also help you. Find legal firms that are ranking in positions you want to try to achieve. Research and profile their back-links and see if there are sites/blogs/sources/news or sites that you should be getting links from, or want links from Then it's about 'outreach' and contenting them to see if they might be interested in allowing you to guest post on their media sources. It's a long process, but worth the effort and time. You really identify some sites that you want to set as goals to start ranking against. If time isn't an issue - this is a perfect avenue to take. They might even be interested later in guest posting on your site/blog. If you want your blog to be a source for valuable content, don't always assume you should have the posting done in house of by your staff. Find sources that might help you build a valuable community with information that matters, and work to build that community into the best blog about legal information/etc ever!! Keep them coming back - and that might mean working with guest postings, guest authors, professors, other lawyers, etc, etc.

You might want to consider running an analysis of your site now (back-links)- see if you have broken links in your profile that you can repair and reuse. A great way to fix possibly 404 inbound errors that might be driving traffic nowhere!

NOTE: Do watch how you handle the anchor text now though going forward. Really work to keep a totally organic and not 'indexing footprint' with overused anchor text. This should and will keep you in the good graces of Google Ross Hudgens had a great post I just linked to for you above

You might also want to consider reading the following article on Scalable Content Production. It's got some really great insights on building content and scaling it out. This will help you plan going forward as you start producing content for the web.

Do you have a program to start tracking projects, and processes going out for content creation? I have been using Trello for some time and it's great for SEO or content writing project tracking. Try it out, it's free and a great source you can tie into anyone involved with your ongoing projects.

Anyways, don't want to keep you forever and a day! Hope some of this helps you out and gets you started. All the best.

Cheers!

Make a list of each site you want to look for guest blogging and posting opportunities. You are geo-located in the UK, so I would even segment those lists into 2, .com and .co.uk sites. Then look at the domain profiles, DA/PA and back-link structures. Map out all the data to profile each site you can (use Moz! tools) and list out all the data.

I would then start to prioritize them in each category. I would certainly look to use the .co.uk sites over the .com, unless the .com sites are heavily authority related. That's about that. The .com's aren't a total loss, and consider using them when the domain profiles you gather show that they are themselves authorities in their niche markets.

Cheers!

Both Lance and CleverPhD have some good points. Really go page by page and map out the entire domain. Both on the PR4 and PR5 sites. Create excel spreadsheets to align up the location and destination of your 301 redirects.

Then, calculate the # of pages you have listed on the PR4 site that need redirecting but really don't have a home. IF the number is small enough, just redirect those pages/URL's for visitors to the homepage. Google doesn't like mass 301 redirects to the homepage, but if those pages have small inbound links, and some value - that will get pushed back to the main index URL.

You could also let it 404 as CleverPhD said, but what I would map out, is a kick-ass 404 redirect page. Include elements like a search function for people to look for new content, add a link to a form that people can fill out to advise of the 404 error. Offer up alternatives and/or pages-URL's that might offer something similar. Have fun with it and add some creativity to help convert those almost lost users to possibly visitors and then clients. Don't just let the 404 page be the end all of the site visit. I have found by really focusing on 404 error page improvements, you can improve both the bounce and exit rates of said pages, and as a result retain users that become clients in the end - all because you were able to take the time to build something that caught their attention, and thus - kept them inside the site Some great examples of creative 404 errors might include this or some creatively funny ones like that. This is another one I liked here.

Hope some of that helps Cheers!

Don'worry! It will take time. Google isn't lightning quick with drop requests or URL removals. They take time to filter out. Give it time and monitor it weekly to see they start to diminish

Cheers!

As Mike said, it could take months for Google to remove all the indexed content from the DEV side (that was crawled and indexed). Looks like you did it all right too. I wouldn't worry, let it filter out. You won't be able to rush it any faster.

Had a few minutes and wanted to help out...

Google doesn't always index/crawl the same # of pages week over week, so this could be the cause of your indexing/report problem with regards to the differences you are seeing. As well, if you are working on the site and making changes, you should be seeing these numbers improve (depending on site size of course Enterprise sites might take more time to go through and fix up, so these numbers might look like they are staying at the same rate - if your site is huge

To help with your 301 issue - I would definitely look up and download SEO Screaming Frog. It's a great tool to use to identify potential problems on the site. Very easy to download and use. Might take some getting used too, but the learning curve isn't very hard. Once you use it a few times to help diagnose problems, or see things you are working on improve through multiple crawling. It will allow you to see some other things that might not be working and get to planning fixes there too

As well, make sure to review your .htaccess file and how you have written up your 301's. If you are using Apache, this is a great resource to help you along. Read that 301 related article here

Make sure to manually check all 301 redirects using the data/URL's from the SEO Screaming Frog tool. Type them in and visually see if you get redirected to the new page/URL. If you do, it's working correctly, and I'm sure it will only be a matter of time before Google fixes their index and displays the right URL or 301. You can also check this tool for verifying your 301 redirects using the old URL and see how it performs (here)

Hope some of this helps to get you off to working/testing and fixing! Keep me posted if you are having trouble or need someone to run a few tests from another location.

Cheers!

I have worked on a few sites with issues exactly like this (Drupal, Joomla, custom based CMS), with lengthy periods of time since the changes took effect at the search level. Overall, we did see increases in traffic related to <kw>related organic traffic. My input, is although it's a lengthy process, the benefits outweigh the length of time or complexity to implement.</kw>

Shortening the URL, will increase the <kw>relation to product and brand. It also opens up doors for later expansion if needed, as you want to try to minimize the URL's length. Getting rid of that slug folder will save you character space at later points in site development, if you choose to go another level deep in URL string/folder.</kw>

Devanus is right in most likely losing some related searches to people searching for 'category product name', but in your life an experience, how many times have you actually searched for that yourself? A good thing to do would also run by your analytic's and keyword metrics from organic traffic and determine the potential loss of any traffic related to direct 'category' related product searches.

Just my 2 cents Everyone has different experiences when implementing changes like this, and it may not all be the same across the board.

Good luck. Cheers!

No problem. I think cleaning up the error's and redirecting traffic to where it should be going, is the first step in improving the user experience. If you manage to squeeze some 'juice' out of those outdated links, that's great!

You should consider using the disavow tool, when needed, but only after the a very thorough back-link analysis. This tool can be used for good

What's the domain you are working on and what are the KW's you are targeting. Graph's work, but without actionable information, it's difficult to look over and help make a few suggestions

If you want to know how I would approach this in a new light and strategy. It would take some time, planning and work to develop, but the rewards down the line would be much greater! It looks like the way you have things setup now, look like a potential link wheel of sites playing off each other with specific 'KW anchor text rich links internally.

Here's a detailed plan I would put in place. Granted this is a rough outlook without having all access and full disclosure on the sites.

1. Look to develop your Brand! Build a brand name that you can expand on product wise. Develop out 1 site which encompasses all the products you sell. Perhaps later you want to add more? Is there any reason why you could not assimilate all these sites into 1 Brand site?

2. Plan to move all products under one shell site, and plan to redirect all your traffic to the new BRAND site Work with one domain you can build on for clients, products, social, content and link building.

3. Register a new BRAND domain once you have decided on one. Make sure to remove any <keywords>from your URL and build a brand people can relate too in it's product niche. Keyword rich domains have been hurt in various niche's from the last few updates. Build something that people want to share is your best bet.</keywords>

4. Migrate all your content, products, and pages to the new domain/brand site.

5. Plan out detailed 301 redirect from all your old sites, domains and internal pages to the new MASTER BRAND site where it will hold all your products for sale, keeping some of your link value.

6. Run detailed back link profiles in OSE on the old sites, to weed out the weak one's and the make to be very thorough. Remove any back-links you don't want (many methods), and clean up the link profile until it looks very clean

7. Plan and prepare a social media strategy around your products and brand. Get the clear one's setup and build out from there as needed (specific), to aid in reinforcing the brand and site.

8. Plan a content development strategy around your products. Develop out information, product details, where they can get them, why it' better. Find linking partners through sharing information and content. Build links to external sources that relate to product in your niche. Get people talking about you and what you offer

9. This way, when you tie in the social media strategy with content development, you can handle working with one domain, and drive all your efforts to one site/domain and location.

The way you have it setup now (4 sites and 1 blog), your are turning your efforts into more work!!?? Running multiple domains, social media and content development and link building. Why would you cause yourself so much work???

Ultimately, building a brand site is the best bet. This will also help you with the link building and content development to support the domain and site.

It's a rough sketch and requires work but would pay off in the long run. The way you have it setup now, needs to be modified to succeed in the long run

Hope to see a future post once you get it all aligned and working for you!

Cheers.

Hey There, been there, done that!

The old sites' pages and value have more than likely been lost due to many things (lack of new content, no fresh content, lack of content updates, abandonment, etc). Most of the value is most likely lost over the last 2 years.

I would still map out and put in place the 301's. You will need to have an exact match of any relevant pages from the old domain - and 301 redirect them to relevant pages on the new site/domain. The back-links might still be there, and there may be some value to trickle through in old page-rank but I wouldn't count too much on the value. From a user experience, it's always best to send your customers to the right pages, rather than a site with outdated information. That won't support and help build the brand

You should also ensure that WMT in Google and Bing are configured correctly for the new site. Run profiles on both sites in OSE to map out any links that may be list. If you have access to the old profiles for WMT, check into that as well. Correct anything out of date for the profile on the site.

You may also want to map out any links in the profile that are of really high value and authority. Isolate these in a Excel file and profile them to contact later. Perhaps establishing contact with them, you can get them to find interesting material and content on the new site they would consider linking too or sharing.

All in all, first map out and complete a full 301 redirect to ensure it's in place. Map out the link profiles of both the old and new sites, and try to align things over time as the 301's take effect. Watch for any broken links and 404's in your reports and ensure those get corrected too. Don't leave anything to chance. Cover all your bases.

Cheers !

Hope some of this helps and good luck