In short, the content contained in iframes will not be indexed. It's a really bad idea from a SEO perspective. I use iframes when I intentionally am trying to keep certain content from being indexed.
Posts made by RyanKent
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RE: Iframes & SEO
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RE: Does Google respect User-agent rules in robots.txt?
Does Google respect User-agent rules in robots.txt?
Yes
I've seen googlebot ignore nofollow rules set at the page level.
Google honors the nofollow rules set at the page level. The issue is there may be other links on your site or elsewhere on the web that Google will find and follow those links.
Robots.txt is the absolute last means to use for blocking pages. You should not block a page with robots.txt unless you have exhausted all other options. A more appropriate method of keeping a page out of the index is the noindex tag. If you use the tag appropriately, Google will honor the tag.
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RE: Simple Joomla cart suggestion
Hi Kyle.
Magento takes up a lot of resources and seems best suited for sites selling many products. I believe the software supports thousands of items.
The specific need here is for a lite cart. There are only 2 products being sold. There is also a requirement that users only have to log in once at the site. Logging in once to the site and then another time to the shopping cart is undesirable. Therefore only a shopping cart with an established Joomla bridge would be workable.
Thank you for the suggestion but they are not options in this case.
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MozRank and mozTrust computations
Are there any details on the computations involved with mR and mT?
I am specifically wondering about Google.com. The DA and PA is 100. If that page does not max out on the other factors it seems that no internet page or site would.
The page has the following stats:
mR 8.68
mT 7.95
DmR 9.29
DmT 9.36
Until now I have only focused on DA & PA. I would like to better understand the mechanics of these other measurements.
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RE: Recommendations for a good FAQ system
faqme.com works by directing your site's traffic to their site. I would classify their service as being SEO unfriendly. You are taking your users away from your site.
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RE: Google sees redirect when there isn't any?
It is perfectly standard for the "real" page to show a canonical to itself. For example, look at the code for this Q&A question. It has a canonical tag pointing to itself.
A loop would be created only if you made an error. If you set the canonical for Page A as B, then you set the canonical for Page B as A, then you would have created a loop which should be fixed. If you designate the canonical for Page A as B, and the canonical for Page B as B, that would be perfectly valid.
In summary, yes I am suggesting that all pages involving /flash-templates.php including the page itself should use the canonical tag. At the very least add it to both the flash-templates.php page and the logo-templates.php page, each pointing to themselves.
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RE: Google sees redirect when there isn't any?
I noticed you still have not added the canonical tag to your pages. If you do not wish to add them to all the pages in your site would you consider at least adding it to a couple of your affected pages to see if there is any impact?
You wont notice any difference until the pages are crawled again, but if you don't make any change at all this issue may remain.
I would also suggest your site requires a higher level of security then most e-commerce sites. Your audience and customers are often developers with various levels of experience. Any unhappy customer or developer will often have at least some knowledge related to website security, not to mention your competitors.
If you use a solid backup system you can compare the files from your current site with the files from a backup taken in June to see if you have any infected files.
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RE: Directory Listing Quality
There is a very clear line in this regard.
Yahoo directory does not charge to be added to their directory. They are charging to review your website. They have specific standards. They do not accept all sites. If your site passes the review you are included in their directory. If your site does not pass, the fee is non-refundable and your site is not included. That is the line which Google permits.
If a site charges and any site which pays is included, that is not acceptable. If a site charges and any site which is rejected receives a refund, that is not acceptable.
Yahoo and BOTW are two examples of permitted directories where a fee is required to be added. BBB and other organizations charge a fee to be accepted into their organization then, once accepted, you receive a listing in their directory. That is accepted as well.
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RE: Some viagra spammer somehow fooled Google into thinking the title and description metatags of a site pointing to me are about viagra. How did they do that? How do I fix this?
Do not request for Google to remove the URL. It would mean the page would be de-indexed for 90 days.
The cleanup will depend on the root cause. If there is an issue on the site right now then you cannot resolve the problem until it is fixed. Report the issue to your host and ask they run a security scan. Meanwhile run your own scans and upgrade the site to 1.7. Change all passwords then check the site again.
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RE: Directory Listing Quality
Each SEO will have their own opinions on this matter. The best I can do is share mine.
NEVER EVER EVER advise a client to pay for a link.
I view SEO along the same lines as the doctor's oath "first do no harm". Paying for links is a clear violation of Google's policy. You are trying to assist a client to improve their ranking, and the result could be a removal of the site from Google's index. It's a bad choice.
Make great content and promote it. That is the best means of obtaining quality links.
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RE: Some viagra spammer somehow fooled Google into thinking the title and description metatags of a site pointing to me are about viagra. How did they do that? How do I fix this?
A search of your site shows this issue is more widespread then the one link. Perform a Google search for "viagra insite:planetherbs.com"
I have seen this issue before and my recommendation to resolve it asap in Google is to add the canonical tag to your pages.
As to how this happened, you can review server logs in an attempt to gather more information but I would recommend taking all steps possible to secure your server. I am not a security expert nor a Joomla expert but I notice you are using Joomla 1.5 as a CMS. Joomla 1.7 was just released and addresses numerous security issues.
There are a few other SEOs who have more experience with Joomla then myself who can offer more details. In general, upgrade your software then do a basic security check of your site. There are many Joomla guides online for this, but here is one of them: http://docs.joomla.org/Security_Checklist_7
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RE: Tittle + keywords = ?
Your SEO strategy depends upon your desire. You stated your wish to "improve my rank for couple of terms". Everyone wants to improve their ranking. The question is, how bad do you want it?
If you wish to maximize your ranking on a given page, you will focus one keyword or phrase. Your page title will focus that same phrase along with your H1 tag. Your content will also begin with that phrase.
There is nothing hidden or ingenious here. It is pure SEO basics applied. The site that executes best on this process is wikipedia, which is a large part of why they rank so well on so many terms. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_C
Example article on Vitamin C
Title: Vitamin C
H1 tag: Vitamin C
Article: Vitamin C is an essential nutrient......
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RE: Google sees redirect when there isn't any?
I have looked at your page header codes, anchor links, html code on both pages along with the robots.txt for your site. There is no apparent reason for this issue.
The google cache URL for your logo-templates page is: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.templatemonster.com/flash-templates.php
Your Google cache is clearly displaying the wrong page as it appeared on July 19th.
You have two options. You can do nothing and see if the issue resolves itself after the next Google update. Another choice, which I would recommend, is to add the canonical tag to all your pages. The canonical tag is helpful for numerous reasons. I add the tag to every page. That tag should clear up any confusion that occurred.
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RE: Maximum length of a URL for good SEO?
The longest functional URL that Google will crawl and index is approximately 1855 characters. There are other limits in place from various browsers and other search engines. In short, the technical limitations on URL length far exceed any reasonable usage.
So the only question is the subjective nature of your question's reference to "good seo". On this point I'll agree with Theo. Keep your URL as short as possible while describing the target's content.
If you desire a long analytical discussion on this topic: http://seocollege.org/news/?p=8869
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RE: Good content but high bounce rate
I agree with EGOL's suggestion. After looking at your site I would recommend using a lot more anchor links. Your use of anchor text is confined entirely to the last paragraph which seems to be tacked on as an afterthought. Take a look at a wikipedia article on a similar topic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perdeli_pilav.
The links offer readers an easy opportunity to drill down and find relevant information as they are naturally reading an article. Many readers have developed a form of tunnel vision that allows them to filter out sidebars but they still see the anchor links. A couple small images such as found in the wiki article would be helpful as well. The images can contain links to an image gallery on your site.
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RE: Does it hurt your site to syndicate content on other sites?
You would determine the quality of a site based on all the normal factors. If you have a URL to share I would be happy to take a look and share an opinion on it's quality.
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RE: Does it hurt your site to syndicate content on other sites?
If you offer a quality article to other quality sites who properly tag the article, it can be quite beneficial to your site. There's a few carefully chosen words in that statement so I'll offer some clarification.
Quality article: If you offer some helpful, informative "best on the web" type of content then share the article on other sites, you are exposing yourself and your site to an audience that may otherwise have never known about your site. I would make sure you already have solid content on similar topics so when your article attracts traffic, you can keep them interested in your site. If you write an article on the health benefits of Vitamin A, then a "related articles" area that talks about other vitamins or health issues which vitamin A addresses would be great.
Quality sites: If you share your article with sites that already have established audiences, then your article will be exposed to new viewers. Anything from social media sites like Reddit, to topic sites like Glamour magazine, or PC Magazine can be helpful. What you want to be careful about is sharing the article with sites that do not have established articles. In that case the benefit is minimal and the published article on the other site can wind up competing with yours in SERPs for traffic.
Proper tagging: The article should either use a canonical tag to identify your site as the source, or the new meta tagging such as rel=author. It should be clear that your site is the original source of the article.
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RE: Submitting my URL on web/business/service directories
In general there are three major directories which can offer value to most any site:
DMOZ (free)
Yahoo (around $300)
BOTW (around $150)
In my experience the rest of the general directories are a poor use of your time. A few months later you will find you submitted your site to hundreds of directories and you would be lucky to have 5 visible followed links to show for your efforts. Even then the value of those links is quite low.
I agree with James. The list he shared offers some solid directories which you should review to see if your site is in alignment with the topics they cover. If you find a directory related to your site then that can be of value.
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RE: Google preview magnifying glass icon
I would recommend reviewing any content including your images for their names, alt tags, and anything which may indicate your content is adult oriented. If some of your competitors are succeeding in an area where you are not, I would suggest taking a closer look at their site and noting any differences.
A bit of conversation around this topic:
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=5515ba22bd52d12e&hl=en
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RE: Can including advertising slots have a negative effect on SEO?
There isn't the hard science we would like on this topic (i.e. a Q&A from Matt Cutts). There is a bit of discussion you may find interesting: http://www.site-reference.com/articles/%E2%80%9Cdo-ads-affect-rankings%E2%80%9D
The way I see it Panda is an effort to break away from the traditional means of ranking and move towards a more algorithmic approach which aligns with what user's like. It's clear most of the best, respected sites that user's like are corporate sites, government sites, schools, wikipedia, etc. that do not contain ads.
I've read quite a bit on Panda and it is my understanding user's rated sites, then Google's programmers try to compare the higher ranked sites as a group, and the lower ranked sites as a group, then determine measurable differences. Based on the process I believe advertisements either are or will be a ranking factor.
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RE: Google preview magnifying glass icon
The issue is your Search Safe settings.
If you go into your Google Search Settings the default is "use moderate filtering". If you change the setting to "do not filter my results" then the view cache icon (the magnifying glass) will appear.
I understand you choose not to show any explicit images but Google's crawler can't see images. They have identified your site as being adult in nature and therefore the search safe settings apply.
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RE: Robots.txt
I added a page to an existing site named trackback.php. I generated a sitemap using xml sitemaps and did not see the page. I added a link to /trackback from an existing page on the site then generated a new sitemap where I saw the page.
Finally, I added the entry into the robots.txt file and generated another sitemap. The page no longer appeared.
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RE: Can including advertising slots have a negative effect on SEO?
Advertising can negatively affect SEO.
Anything which negatively impacts the user experience can affect SEO in our post-Panda world.
To minimize the negative impact of advertisements be sure they are done tastefully. Pop-up ads, ads that play with volume, or any ad that is annoying should definitely be avoided.
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RE: Robots.txt
Peter,
I just completed some tests in order to answer your question.
Disallow: /*/trackback would block domain.com/fred/trackback but would NOT block domain.com/trackback
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RE: Is this new? Anchors showing in Serps.
Last year Google made 400 changes to their algorithms. No reasons to suspect they wont do the same this year.
I had not noticed that feature before now. I checked the page and "natural treatments" is anchor text used on the page.
I also tried searching "thunderstorm phobia" and the results did not include the "Jump to Natural Treatments" text. When I tried searching for "natural treatments thunderstorm phobia" then it appeared.
I had not ever noticed the feature before now. I am not sure how it will impact CTR but it does appear interesting.
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RE: Are URL shorteners building domain authority everytime someone uses a link from their service?
Jay, you are asking a great question and the answer is yes, links that are offered from URL shortener services build DA.
Think of those links as 301s. When you use http://bit.ly/xyz that URL is 301'd to the actual web address. As with all 301s, you do lose a bit of link juice due to the 301, but 90%+ of the value will remain.
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Simple Joomla cart suggestion
I have a client with an online store which currently offers two products and is hosted on a shared server. As a result of my SEO evaluation his site will be redesigned in Joomla.
Does anyone have experience with or a suggestion for a simple, light cart that would be open to standard SEO changes and work in this situation?
The cart should accept both Google checkout, Paypal and support international customers from Europe, US and Canada.
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RE: Copywritting Service Recommendations
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Do you have another sample which is indexable (i.e. doesn't require a login)?
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RE: Twitter as a website's #2 ranked linked page?
I think I speak for many when I share my enthusiasm towards hearing the results of your experiment Mike.
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RE: Twitter as a website's #2 ranked linked page?
A twitter page is like any other page. It can link to other pages and be linked to from other pages.
Since it's lunch time for me I will use the following example: http://twitter.com/#!/pizzahut
The Mozbar shows 189 linking domains to the page which gives it a PA of 73. It has over 60k followers and is a very legitimate page. If that page linked to another page, the link will appear in OSE.
With all the above understood, twitter's external links are nofollowed so the value of that link is minimal from a SEO ranking point of view.
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RE: Keywords and content and seo advice please
Your keyword choices are: cheap flights gatwick, holiday magazine and travel magazine.
I have not put a lot of thought into this but another URL you may consider is gatwickmagazine.com. It contains one keyword from each of your phrases, is only two words and doesn't seem spammy at all.
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RE: Keywords and content and seo advice please
There is a lot of good advice shared. I'll take a moment and focus on your URL choice.
In short, I hate it. If all your site offered was cheap flights to and from Gatwick, then it works. If you want to be thought of as a site that covers "holiday magazine" and "travel magazine" then I would suggest finding a URL that might suggest you offer such information or at least not causes users to think you don't offer that information.
You can make any URL work. It's possible to rank #1 for a pizza restaurant with the name "cheapflightsgatwick.com". But why paint yourself into a corner for a site that's not even built yet? That URL sounds like the doorway page to a site that offers air travel services, not the main URL.
I am learning Joomla right now and I just checked....joomlatravel.com is available right now! I am not suggesting that to be your new site name, but I would choose it for a name long before the one you selected.
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RE: SEOs and web developers frequently leave links to their site in the footer of their clients' sites. Does this negatively impact the site with the links?
Does this provide any SEO value to the receiving site?
No
Has anyone experienced problems doing this?
There are not any problems that can arise from this issue unless the target site which belongs to the SEO receives a penalty. If you stick with SEOs whom use only white hat techniques this should never be a problem.
Does this negatively impact the site with the links?
No. If you want to really look at this topic under a microscope then a very small amount of PR would flow from your site to the SEO's site. How small? If your site had 100 links per page and the PR flowed evenly to all links then we are talking about 1%. Google has inferred they devalue footer links so most likely it is a fraction of one percent.
If the SEO is doing their job well and you are pleased with their performance, I would suggest leaving the link. If you are unhappy with the SEO's performance and would not recommend their services, remove the link.
Personally, the link is something I discuss with clients upfront. I inform them exactly the words I shared in the above paragraph. If you are happy with me, leave the link and otherwise remove it.
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RE: If two links from one page link to another, how can I get the second link's anchor text to count?
You do not want to no-follow the image link.
There are two methods which you can use:
1. Re-order your html code so the anchor text link appears first. Feel free to use CSS or whatever means necessary to achieve this effect. For example, on my site my navigation bar is located at the bottom of the html but it still appears at the top of my site.
2. You can add an anchor link to the end of your html. Example: mysite.com/example#. Several people have theorized this method works and some have offered test results as evidence. I would use the first method if possible but otherwise this is an option.
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RE: Is My Competitor Beating Me With A Better URL Structure?
I am sure they have the ability to tell the difference. I can't say for sure Google's feelings on this particular use. If Matt Cutts was to make a video about this method my guess of his response would be something along the lines of "I don't like it, it's not user oriented, but I can't say it's black hat".
This reasoning is why I referred to the tactic as questionable. I would love to hear discussion about this topic from other SEOs.
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RE: Is My Competitor Beating Me With A Better URL Structure?
All content on the page is considered but the primary issue is the pop-up paragraph.
Step back and read that paragraph then look at your page. As a user which would you prefer to read, that paragraph or the paragraph on your page?
You can also use that LDA tool. The tool can be used as a guide, and not by any means an ultimate way to choose which is the better page. When I compared both pages, I felt your competitors page offered the better content from a pure keyword phrase ranking perspective, and the LDA tool agrees with that assessment. I used "apw wyott parts" as the phrase, which appears to be the phrase you are both targeting.
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RE: Is My Competitor Beating Me With A Better URL Structure?
Yes, the keyword in the domain makes a noticeable difference. Some other issues with your site:
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#1 take care of any outages so your site is 99.999% stable
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you show 3 meta description tags. Delete the last two
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you show 3 meta keyword tags. I would recommend deleting all of them
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your copyright date is 2009. It's not a SEO issue per se but it should be udpated.
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your competitor is clearly beating you on content. Try using the SEOmoz LDA tool and comparing your sites.
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RE: Is My Competitor Beating Me With A Better URL Structure?
It is a lot of content buried at the bottom of the page which is most likely not seen by viewers. If you were to install tracking analytics to the page, what percentage of readers do you think would actually click on it?
I am guessing the way it is presented it would be in the very low single digits. That is a lot of content to display in that manner.
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RE: Is My Competitor Beating Me With A Better URL Structure?
Greg,
While your competitor appears to have cleaner URLs, the difference is relatively minor. While URLs make a difference, they are just one of the many factors involved with your site's SEO performance. I would recommend looking at other factors.
A large factor involved is your competitors domain name. After checking Google it seems you are being outranked by partstown.com. The domain portion of the URL is given a significant amount of weight and will help your competitor on any "parts" related searches.
A tactic your competitor is using is questionable. Look at the the bottom of http://www.partstown.com/apw-wyott/parts. Notice there is a "Read more about APW Wyott" link. When you press that link a new window appears with a large paragraph of content which can substantially help their page ranking.
I tried to look at your site but received a timeout error twice. I tried from another pc and browser and received a "could not find etundra.com" message.
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RE: Is a listing in this directory really worth $365/year??
A quote I enjoy...."Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true".
You earned the #1 spot which is great. It sounds like your plan is to wait for someone else to step up and take your spot and then react. I prefer to be proactive but the choice is yours.
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RE: Backlinks to home page vs internal page
Based on your prior reply I believe by "tiny" you mean they are long tail keywords.
In that case, yes.
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RE: Ability to have .csv files automatically emailed on a weekly basis (after rankings are updated)?
Chris,
I would suggest sending this request directly to the SEOmoz help desk. They are in the best position to reply and add this to the wish list if it is not already being worked on. The help desk does not normally read the Q&A section.
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RE: 301-redirect
To be clear, you would use Google IN ADDITION TO the other changes, not instead of.
Google WMT will alter how your URL appears on their search pages. If you don't address the issue on your site you will still have the same negative effects.
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RE: What to tweet and blog about?
For content ideas, set up a news feed for yourself that is filtered for "teachers". I just read a story last night: http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/07/20/why.quit.teacher/index.html?hpt=hp_c1
Take recent news stories, add your experience, insight and commentary so the article will be helpful to your readers.
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RE: 301-redirect
excellent point Rene
This works well for links you create but not for any UGC
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RE: What are your views on link submitters / directory submitters?
Pure fluff, a waste of time and it makes it harder for a good SEO to do their job.
The analogy I like to use is an electrician doing their job. You want to move power from point A to point B. You want to monitor the flow of that power as well. If you have 10 power cables then you can clearly view your power flow. If you have 1010 cables but only 10 of them are actually flowing power then it's a mess to sort through.
The only caveat I will add is there are some sites with good DA and decent PA which can be manipulated to flow rank to your site. For example there are some Chinese government sites that don't nofollow links and a few asian blogs as well. I am confident Google will catch on but for now, it works. I don't believe the submitters you shared use these particular sites but they are examples. They could anchor their sites which lack value with one or two sites that actually flow link juice right now, but it's only until Google pulls the plug.
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RE: 301-redirect
Your host can create one entry to redirect all non-www traffic to it's www equivalent.
It's easy to confirm the change was made properly. Simply go to any page on your site and you should see it in the "www" form. Then, go to your address bar and remove the "www." portion of the URL, hit enter, then the "www." portion should be re-added and you should be on the same page.
Also, use your SEOmoz toolbar Analyze Page > Page Attributes and check the Status Code section at the bottom. When you try to access a "www." page the status code should show as 200. When you try to access a non-www page the status code should show a 301 redirect to the www page.
Lastly, check every internal link of your site to ensure you are using the www version, along with any signatures and company pages you may have on facebook or other locations.
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RE: Is a listing in this directory really worth $365/year??
OFF-TOPIC reply: @Storwell
I am offering this "free advice" in an effort to be helpful so I hope you take this the right way.
You are spending a lot of time focusing on your competitors when you have plenty of opportunities for basic on-page SEO within your own site. I know you have been around SEOmoz for a bit and have already read the Beginner's Guide to SEO, but read it again!
Work on 1 chapter per day or whenever you have time and apply the principles directly to your site. I would not worry about competitors until your on-site SEO was solid. Last week I shared an issue with your alt text. You have a lot of fantastic images but their tags are all identical: "self storage mississauga tour". You use that tag a dozen times.
Make one improvement to your site today. Go through the entire site, find every image and update their alt tags to an accurate description which also includes helpful key words. Examples:
Self Storage Security
Storage Garage
Self Storage Area
Think of any terms that users may use to search for your services but also apply to the image.
Climbing to the top is much faster if you can pull yourself up rather then pulling your competitors down.