It looks like duplicate content could definitely be the issue and is often not a warning inducing item in WMT. I'd recommend getting the .com site fully redirected and charting out PR around the move along with a healthy content schedule leading into the high season. Glad to hear the affects haven't hit you hard in Analytics yet and that your season will allow for the changes to go smoothly. Cheers!
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Best posts made by RyanPurkey
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RE: Drastic Drop in Link Juice
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RE: How much attention should I pay to Moz's DA/PA?
In addition to Don and Matt's excellent answers, I'd only add that you're giving the right priority to how you're measuring the performance of your site: increases in sales, increases in organic traffic, relevant links, and referral visits. Ultimately tools like Moz, Ahrefs, and Majestic are comparative samplings of the net and not the defacto proxy of Google. If they're helping you build out your network and find new places where you can connect then you're doing well.
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RE: SEO for local business directory type site
I would look at generalized searches such as "tattoo shops (city name)" and see what kinds of sites rank well aside from the actual businesses. Several sites do make the first page for things like this, such as Yelp, Best ## shops in City Name pages, best artists, and so on. Pick some markets that are way more competitive than yours and see what kind of backlink profile they have, level of social interaction, freshness of content, and so on. That should give you plenty to consider and help you decide whether or not to pursue it. Cheers!
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RE: Should pages with rel="canonical" be put in a sitemap?
Are the different views going to be substantially different pages or a reordering of products seen throughout each view? If the latter is the case I wouldn't use rel="canonical" for each view. If the pages are substantially different, like one is just displaying widgets, while the other is displaying widget maintenance tools, the having each of those pages as categorical sections to your store is worth it and worth being in the sitemap.
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RE: address on my websiteto help with local searches
I think that partly depends on the level of trust you have with your workers. If they are high trust and business dealings take place at those addresses then it might make sense, but if these are residential addresses you could be playing with fire as they, and your primary listing, could get banned.
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RE: Multiple sites in the same niche (Should we redirect these to our Main Site)
You'd want to get the redirect to go to the most applicable place as possible so if it's OLDSITE.com/apple it'd be best to send it to NEWSITE.com/category/apple if you have that level of information from old to new. Otherwise, domain to category would be second best. Third, domain to domain.
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RE: Home page links -- Ajax When Too Many?
As a crawl issue it should be fine as long as you're using a sitemap well and have a more static link structure one the more localized pages. You could also internally cross promote from time to time so that you have a neighborhood page being talked about on the home page as a great example of X, then you could have a neighborhood page from a different state/city talked about as a related Y on some of the deeper pages, if applicable. Think of it as similar to how Amazon promotes other products as, "...people also bought" or LinkedIn with, "...people also viewed." Cheers!
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RE: [wtf] Mysterious Homepage De-Indexing
VERY script heavy. Google has recently released updates on a lot of this (Q4 2014) here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.mx/2014/10/updating-our-technical-webmaster.html. With further guidance given here: https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/performance/optimizing-content-efficiency/optimize-encoding-and-transfer. Without doing a deep dive that's the most glaring issue and obvious difference between pages that are still being indexed and those that are not.
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RE: How to find which directories to submit my new site?
Hi Alec. I'd use the Link Intersect tab on the Link Opportunities tool in Open Site Explorer: https://moz.com/researchtools/ose/opportunities/link-intersect?site=yoursitehere.com, to compare your site with some of your competitors. In this way you'll find sites that are more like niche hubs for your topic and get an insight into how and why sites in your field are gaining links. These types of sites (or just pages within a site) make up more links than the classic directories like DMOZ or Yahoo. Cheers!
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RE: No cache still a good link for disavow?
Hi Shawn. Are the sites that you're considering disavowing spammy? It should be fairly clear by looking at their site directly.
Not having a cached page in Google isn't a solid indicator, for example, the Daily Record and Sunday Mail site (http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/) doesn't have their page cached in Google. You really need to go by the quality of the site sending the link. Cheers!
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RE: Multiple Locations with Branded Name/Keyword in URL
Oh! That makes WAY more sense (as to why he'd be mad). The way you phrased your question earlier made it sound like the store owner was your client and that you had interactions with all of the parties involved.
It sounds like the store manager is asking you to try and do things that could run contrary to what the store owner wants. The best situation for you would be to work directly with the owner, not this manager. If that's not possible, you might have to just let this client go.
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RE: Can you nofollow a URL?
I think your problem may be one of differentiation. While example.com and www.example.com are technically two different domains, they're not substantially different enough when it comes to creating a new site on the ashes of a negative one. (i.e. canonical redirecting off www or non-www for the same domain name is a common practice for websites that aren't trying to change their image). I can't speak specifically to your situation but you might consider creating an entirely new domain if you think example.com is that negative.
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RE: IP address means Google shows keyword page 1 position 1 or for keyphrase only?
Possibly, but the search of "plumber" is going to be a much more varied result than "city name plumber". Google knows that people typing just plumber could be looking for plumber training, plumber how to's on youtube, plumber photos, definitions of plumber for their first grade school report, and so on.
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RE: No cache still a good link for disavow?
Since those types of links are created automatically and aren't some form of paid linking, I tend to ignore them. Trying to disavow each and every one would be like whack-a-mole. Hit one, another pops up.
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RE: Business in one location, be found in others?
Hi Harry. To rank for those other cities you'll want content around them as well, but is the product area specific? Maybe if it's a car dealership or larger purchase you could do a few things like add service area to their local listing based on where they'll do pick up and drop off for repairs; or if an appliance type of business, installation based service areas. If you're a bit more specific with your example people here could come up with more precise ideas.
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RE: I have 2 keywords I want to target, should I make one page for both keywords or two separate pages?
Hi Sherry. Have you been running any paid campaigns targeting these specific differences? They can be very useful in getting some quick testing in place before deciding on changes like these.
It's a bit harder to parse without specific examples, because if you had distributors or a physical presence in each of these states, then you'd definitely want to have content relating to both boats in each location, plus you'd want to be using local optimization tools as well for the brick and mortar locations.
Still, if the site is purely online--like a craigslist or boat trader or the like--and is a focus point for boat sellers within each state then creating the always present categorical versions like you talk about is beneficial as well (both for attracting buyers and sellers).
In any event, there's a lot of content that can be localized on pages like these--fishing spots, lakes, rivers, races--that then fold into the pontoon designs for some, and the sail designs for others. Cheers!
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RE: Citation building for multiple locations
Google's guideline is here: https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177 with the most applicable portion being in the address section:
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Make sure that your page is created at your actual, real-world location.
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Use the precise address for the business rather than broad city names or cross-streets. P.O. Boxes are not considered accurate physical locations.
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If you need to specify a mailbox or suite number within your physical location, please list your physical address in Address Line 1, and put your mailbox or suite number in Address Line 2.
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If your business rents a temporary, "virtual" office at a different address from your primary business, do not create a page for that location unless it is staffed during your normal business hours.
So his locations need to be staffed, open to the public, office based locations. If he's serving clients in 4 different cities, but only has one office in one city it's not the same thing as the requirements above. That would be, "Service-area businesses--business that serve customers at their locations--should have one page for the central office or location and designate a service area from that point. If you wish to display your complete business address while setting your service area(s), your business location should be staffed and able to receive customers during its stated hours. Google will determine how best to display your business address based on your business information as well as information from other sources. Learn more about service-area businesses."
The document as a whole is worth the read. Cheers!
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RE: Old Press Release sites - Which ones do you Disavow and leave alone
Stephen Kenwright wrote a nice post on this in November, "Should You Disavow Links From Press Releases?
You absolutely should be adding press release sites to your disavow file. Google stated in 2012 that links from press releases won’t help your rankings, so there should be no danger in disavowing old press releases." From: http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2383492/press-releases-are-not-an-seo-strategyThe entire post is good and will provide you guidance on working with the press in the future. For your specific case though if a bunch of press release sites were used in a manipulative link manner, feel free to disavow. Cheers!
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RE: Business in one location, be found in others?
One idea around content would be to create a portion of the City B, C, D pages as a test drive map and description. That way you're talking about the different neighborhoods, landmarksm and such as you describe the route. Make it legitimate though. Plan out a route that actually tests the different characteristics of the vehicle. Something like that would be useful to user, regardless.
As mentioned earlier, you can probably expand to a lot of the places via service area based on the service portion of the dealership.
Those things combined with being the only brand of dealership in the area should help influence "brand dealership city X" as pointing to you as the nearest resource.
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RE: I have 2 keywords I want to target, should I make one page for both keywords or two separate pages?
Excellent. Thanks for the clarifications. Within your paid campaign you can split test two or three different landing pages to see which ones convert the best and that might further inform your decision as to what you want to do. I think it's mostly a user experience question than one for SEO as Google has gotten better and better at sending multiple keyword results to pages that have clustered semantic relevance; meaning, a page can talk about boat sales in Michigan, focusing on pontoon and sail boats, seasonal watersport recreation unique to Michigan, other localized events, etc and see strong results in each, all delivered to the same page.
Now that you have the campaign running though, work on some landing pages to split test as that would give you some of your best insights. Cheers!
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RE: Does Google local account access affect local rankings?
I've never heard of that being the case, especially considering how many people / companies handle bulk listings. It could easily affect your spot check of their results unless you have a localized machine dialed in though. Local Rankings are much more likely to be affected by the things listed here: http://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors. Cheers!
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RE: I have the trial of MOZ right now but the open site explorer hasn't updated since Dec 4th
If you're looking for fresher results, try the Fresh Web Explorer tool (http://freshwebexplorer.moz.com/). Open Site Explorer derives most of it's value from looking at the history of a website: cumulative links, what goes into getting a site it's domain authority, domain trust, etc. It's very useful for digging into how 3 or 4 competitors got to where they are now, and areas that you could target as well. That being the case its index update isn't as mission critical.
If you're trying to find information on your own site and it's brand new, you'll probably be better served by using the webmaster tools available at the engines for the first month or so. Can you expand on what type of results you're trying to achieve with the OSE and maybe I could give you more specific guidance or alternate methods / tools. Cheers!
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RE: Top Pages analysis showing wordpress site pages when it was in a subdirectlry
It sounds like your host didn't implement the 301 redirects were correctly. When I try to go to one of the pages listed above it tries to send me to this page instead: http://www.morganlindsayphotography.com**//**2012/11/04/a-new-product-addition-to-weddings/
See where I bolded the // after .com? that should only be a single /. If you get that changed it should work correctly; however, it doesn't look like the page http://www.morganlindsayphotography.com**/**2012/11/04/a-new-product-addition-to-weddings/ exists anymore either. So if no such page exists and you wanted the old pages to point to a page discussing your wedding services send the redirect to: http://www.morganlindsayphotography.com/packages/ (Your wedding packages page).
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RE: Can 410 links trigger a penalty?
When disavowing links, you can also disavow by domain, like: about1.typepad.com... This can help speed up the process in some cases.
The work you've done currently seems in order. 410 is fine to use per Cutts himself: http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2340728/matt-cutts-on-how-google-handles-404-410-status-codes.
Has the press come before or after the problem with the spam? It'd be nice to get a similar amount of press as link recency plays a part too.
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RE: How valuable are citaitons/consistency (Moz Local) for a NON-local business?
I'd put this in the worthwhile column. Google is trending towards standardization of things somewhat like this: mobile, pagespeed, facts -- so having outside data that universally agrees about a company's site, location, etc would further their standing in my opinion.
Another factor is that reviews and social presence might be not connecting up as well as possible if the associations above aren't being made.
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RE: I have 1/100 PA & DA with a gTLD ".website" ?
Ah, I hadn't realized that. I can't speak to whether or not OSE is technically able to analyze tld of .website domains, but it appears they're all at DA 1 currently. We'll have to get tech support on this one.
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RE: Top Pages analysis showing wordpress site pages when it was in a subdirectlry
Hi Morgan. The example that you just posted is working fine, i.e. when you try to go to http://www.morganlindsayphotography.com/author/pnkspikchik/ you're redirected to http://www.morganlindsayphotography.com/ and now when you try to go to those old Wedding 404 pages it goes your current wedding package page. Seems to all be in order. Cheers!
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RE: .ac.uk subdomain vs .co.uk domain
From the details you provide, it sounds like the SEO benefits would be non-existent to worse than before. Are they not an academic institution? Is there some other factor pushing them from ac.uk to co.uk? There is no tld that carries an inherit SEO benefit and typically only SEO risks in migrating a site.
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RE: Multiple Sites, Different Names, Same Business. Gray Hat?!
Hi Kanya. Just to clarify, you're saying that this new site is going to represent a new store? And that the new store has a different phone, location, name and domain name? To some degree it sounds like it would fall under the franchise model when doing local listings... Yet it also sounds like they sites and stores are trying to be different enough that a customer wouldn't know that they are owned by the same person if they visited either a physical location or the site. Ultimately it sounds like more cost and work for the owner, but if they're willing to differentiate that much between stores, it sounds that's part of their overall model. Still, a few more details would help. Cheers!
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RE: Open Site Explorer is finding old html Files that havn't been on my site in two years... even after a 301 Redirect. HELP!
Hi Morgan. Your updates look good. One thing with OSE is that it doesn't update instantaneously and is actually refreshed on a monthly schedule or so which means any changes you make that work well in Google and on your site will take a while to get recorded in OSE. Did you try checking your site in the webmaster tools Google and Bing offer? Uploading the current sitemap should help clear things up further. The latest update is scheduled for March 11th at which time you might see this information updated, see: http://moz.com/products/api/updates for past information and this post discussing OSE: http://moz.com/community/q/have-questions-about-the-jan-27th-mozscape-index-update-get-answers-here in more detail.
There are also some other backlink checking tools out there such as Ahrefs and Majestic that are useful for finding even more links. Mostly OSE is suited for checking the link profile of several competitors and getting ideas one where else you can market your site. For example, if you know of some other photography sites that are ranking highly you can add them into OSE and begin to see what they've done and how you could improve. Your current work looks fine though so you should be good to go. Cheers!
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RE: Local SEO case with two physical locations
I'd definitely invest the minimum $$ required to get a phone number per location. These could all be setup to forward to the one mobile number--still keeping things simple that way while also allowing for each location to have a number.
Some questions though, are these physical locations client owned/leased and operated? Like is a permanent establishment with regular office hours and such? Or is this a testing service that is renting space just in time to deliver the course?
Cheers!
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RE: .ac.uk subdomain vs .co.uk domain
You're welcome. Definitely get to the 'whys' behind what they're doing or thinking about doing. Also ask them who they hope to compete with by doing so, or what problems they currently see that they think this will fix. Things like that should give you a much better understanding of what they're doing as well as ideas on alternate solutions.
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RE: Multiple Sites, Different Names, Same Business. Gray Hat?!
Thanks Kanya. That makes more sense. I would inform the client of the risks, restructure the contract to address those risks, then move ahead as though it is a completely different and non-client business.
In addition to the risks of some sites not wanting to list both businesses (I'm guessing that when people answer the phones from either one they say, "KM Realty") the other site would pretty much fall under the realm of competition if you're only contracted to work on the new site. From that perspective you're obviously not engaged in trying to affect it negatively, but you are trying to rank the new site as highly as possible which could in turn cause the old site to rank lower.
If the client wants you to perform a balancing act between the two, the contract should likely include both sites. Cheers!
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RE: Does using Sucuri block Moz?
Doubtful. Several sites mentioned on their clients page are showing numbers in OSE. Try out a few from: https://sucuri.net/clients/. Chances are you have a robots.txt issue blocking OSE, the site is brand new, or it's on a tld domain that is currently not compatible with OSE, such as http://example.website If you list your site here more details could be provided. Cheers!
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RE: Local SEO case with two physical locations
Hmm... This is kind of borderline with the physical location requirements outlined by Google, "If your business rents a temporary, "virtual" office at a different address from your primary business, do not create a page for that location unless it is staffed during your normal business hours." Even though it's staffed for testing it's not staffed when you'd expect people to contact you or 'visit'. That only happens with your online interactions. It'd probably be most accurate to do the business as a brand, with addresses for the testing centers. They likely don't need separate phone numbers as they're not staffed locations. Anyone visiting outside of testing hours would find an empty building.
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RE: Safely change canonical URL many times
Hi Julien. Got it. The method you're describing sounds contradictory to the designed uses of canonical and as such will be difficult to make work in this approach. Here's a few reasons...
- You're relying on the search engines to recognize the changes and apply them in a distinct time frame. While Google tends to be quick there's no guarantee that the changes will be applied in a fashion that lines up with your campaign dates.
- The thing you want to make canonical (the product) is moving from location to location. Canonical is specifically an attribute for URLs and ones that are supposed to stay static. It seems like it would make more sense to have the product be on a dedicated, canonical URL and just change the promotion around it.
- A redirect could better serve your purposes. With conditional time frames and offers you're probably best served by using 302 redirects.
Cheers!
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RE: Deciding whether to list multiple locations
I would list all five as it gives the customer a better since of which location is nearest to them as well as your size of company. You can also consider including the locations within your footer of the site as well.
Getting consistent Name Address Phone across listings is definitely a best practice and one of the core aspects of local optimization. That's one thing I'd make a priority. Cheers!
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RE: OSE not picking up all internal links?
OSE also clusters by domain, so for a given link you're not going to get near the 700+ which are internal. As a general practice OSE is great for getting at link diversity, goal setting, and seeing where the competition has gotten links in the past. It should give you plenty of ideas that way. Cheers!
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RE: Local SEO case with two physical locations
Currently your client is at a disadvantage due to not having physical, staffed, testing centers and thus doesn't qualify for Google Local in the same way as competitors that do. Even if your competitors have one receptionist staffing the building during non-testing hours but is open to receive inquiries and appointments that puts them ahead of your client. If the outlay isn't there for an additional phone number then I would compete on service and service area, not trying to outstrip the competition with fictitious locations. If you're successful at that then perhaps growing to the point of having fully leased centers makes sense. Cheers!
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RE: Google Mobile algo traffic issue?
Hi Luke. Yes, Google has been putting an emphasis on improving mobile, especially from a UX perspective. As such I've seen sites get the following message in GWT:
Fix mobile usability issues found on example.com
Google systems have tested ### pages from your site and found that ##% of them have critical mobile usability errors. The errors on these ### pages severely affect how mobile users are able to experience your website. These pages will not be seen as mobile-friendly by Google Search, and will therefore be displayed and ranked appropriately for smartphone users.
If you have access to their GWT you'll likely find the same with further details on what needs improving. But this ranking drop is very much an official stance from Google and you can find several blogs discussing it, for example: http://www.vpdm.ca/mobile-friendly-websites-important-to-google/.
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RE: Which keyword for title
Hi Clay. Google will be able to parse your page meaning not only from the Title Text but also the semantic linking to and from your page, so "structural steel fabrication" should be a fine choice. Something that could help you test the efficacy of your title tags though would be to start up a small paid campaign (AdWords) around the company brand and then split test the various titles you come up with amongst people searching specifically for the company brand. Then you'll have data on which title tends to beat out the other from a CTR stand point.
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RE: OSE not picking up all internal links?
I wouldn't use OSE as an onsite crawler. That's what a tool like Xenu Link Slueth or Screaming Frog is for.
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RE: What is the optimal approach for a new site that has geo-targeted content available via 2 domains?
Hi Ben. Thanks for the link. After looking through the site I'd stick with my above rec and just make them both as branded as possible for their respective locations. With some color coding and visuals you could incorporate both pretty well. You can also advertise the city site internally via linking, the addition of related articles, and so on. Basically the stuff you see done on other sites with systems like Outbrain could be done internally with these two sites as well.
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RE: Google Search Results...
Ok, but what's your goal with this? And why don't you know your own subdomains that you've created? It seems like you could work backwards from a better starting point by applying those things.
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RE: How Do You Find the Total Search Volume for an Industry?
Getting precise numbers on such a broad topic will likely be a bridge too far, plus they start to move and oscillate into the future so some projection factor is going to have to be used for any sort of planning as you make them. For example, look at Google Trends analysis of the topic LEGO: http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=LEGO&cmpt=q. And look at some of the ways it begins to get messy: Is it just the industry of toys? What about the movies LEGO is now producing? Or are Legoland searches at the core of it?
The broader net you cast the more odd intersections you're going to come across...
It sounds like you're trying to use these numbers not as an industry report but for actionable budgeting and tactical planning for the nationwide business. Or maybe I'm mis-reading your question. The point being, your existing business should have some reliable numbers on current conversion rates and traffic that are much more applicable to scale into other locations. Why not use those and first apply some level of market penetration based on demographics and populations?
TL;DR: I'd project some simple trends for the industry, but then be tactical on the small scale. Work where you can move the needle most. Cheers!
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RE: OSE not picking up all internal links?
Doubtful. Running a site:holidayhypermarket.co.uk search in Google returns 10,700 results, plus from the help documentation on OSE it says, "The second thing to keep in mind that the exported data will only include the top 25 pages per linking root domain," from: http://moz.com/help/guides/research-tools/open-site-explorer/top-pages-ose
So by design it's not really a tool that's trying to duplicate Google, rather make an actionable scaled down copy of what's going on.
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RE: The best SEO practice for a .hk domain
With the .hk top level domain you'll have enough of an indicator to get localized boost so you could continue to maintain hosting in a different location. A few things to check in to:
1. Localized load times. Do HK customers experience slow or speedy load times of the site?
2. Customer privacy. Is the hosting in a country that matches up well with HK (or UK) laws on privacy?
3. Localized conversion rates. Does having a site with the HK extension help or hinder conversions?Most of the other best practices when it comes to domains are going to be pretty universal and similar to what you've done with your others I'm guessing.
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RE: Best tips for getting a video page to rank?
Hi Jess,
I'd look into embedding the video into other pages on your site versus trying to get a standalone page to rank highly. It's a value add in your proposition so why not integrate it into your home page scroll in a spot that makes the most sense when you're telling your story? Even if you get this page to rank well, other pages are going to be getting traffic so the embed strategy works in the near and long term.
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RE: Targeting newly identified keywords with Landing Pages
Hi David. Congrats on the rankings. Something I'd consider for a project like this would be split testing what you currently have with new designs. For example, the flyer printing page might work well talking about all the ways the company's superior printing has met customers needs, then you can show several examples--nightclub flyers, community board flyers, handout flyers, etc.--with testimonials, content, and imagery around each.
That way you're not only increasing the content that could possibly rank, but also focusing on driving more business for your clients. Key features would be simple anchor-based on page navigation, engaging content and graphics, stories of past customer satisfaction.
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RE: HTTP Status no data to report
Hi Jeannie. You'll want to check the links being reported in a tool that specifically displays HTTP status such as: http://httpstatus.io This will tell you if those pages are having specific problems or if it's an error within the Moz tool. The result you should be getting will be 200 OK. Cheers!