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Hi Tony,

I had a very quick look at your site. Content ideas etc. from below are good.

One of the easiest ways to increase this aspect is to make it easy to Tweet / Share. Can you bring AddThis or similar Share services into the design of the site? If people can see these on the site it is easy for them to share. I increased Shares of a TV Advert by 10 times by including this feature (video been on the site for 2 years, one year of which with AddThis).

I hope this helps.

Regards

Geoff

No worries. With the URL I link to the branch's pages on the main site. I realize this may not be possible on some sites but I think this is better for users (I know I appreciate it as a searcher).

I might be inclined to list the head office under the brand and branches under the company name... it does depend a little on your unique circumstances. Feel free to DM me on Twitter if you want to discuss further @SEM_Freak

Within webmaster tools, where have you geo-targeted 7city.com? The other will automatically be set to their respective countries. Make sure you set 7city.com to the US. This might help.

Hi Derek, can I answer your questions in reverse order:

4. With Google Places you have 5 categories. One of these must be from Google's list, the other 4 are free form i.e. you can create your own. I always use all 5 categories and never put the location in the free form categories. For example, "halal meat" not "halal meat london". With the Google one use the closest match. With the others go for the most relevant keywords with high search volume.

3. With the citations, the company name, phone number etc. needs to be the same so you have to treat each branch as unique to get coverage across the directories

2. Make the listing as relevant to the local branch as possible. I personally do not see a need for unique descriptions - I have 600+ branches in my organization so this is simply not practical but with 5 listings I might consider it.

1. Not 100% sure what is going on here but I would use as close to what is in the company logo as possible (i.e. the name used in the company logo)

Hi Rob, I know an agency that got a penalty for doing exactly what you are doing. It's not worth going back and changing old links - maybe if you significantly change the copy in a blog post but not footer links. Leave them as they are and for new footer links go branded as Ryan suggests - you need to build a brand.

In Ireland it is useful to get a load of .ie links - don't worry too much about the anchor text - just get the local domains.

With this kind of foundation, you will only need a handful of keyword rich links. try to get as natural looking a profile as possible.

Hi, personally I wouldn't delete the Places page. It does look a little over cooked which might be why the description is being deleted. Try to objectively look at the copy of the description - is it factual or full of keywords? You may need to rewrite it.

There are people out there who can help you - have you tried http://getlisted.org/resources/trustedproviders.aspx ?

Not sure what to do about the sitebuilder. If the relationship is OK, you could ask for them to request the page is removed from the directory via their webmaster tools.

Good luck

Hi, I think as you offer translation services, you have an especially strong need to have real people translate the relevant parts of the website (rather than software).

With regards to geo-targeting in webmaster tools. The suggestion is to geo-target the /es folder rather than just a page. So all the Spanish elements are targeted within that folder.

Resources permitting and having a good understanding of your / your client's markets I would suggest extending this to the other Spanish speaking countries you are targeting. The nuances of language are enough to warrant this and it is an opportunity to demonstrate expertise in translation.

Hi Bob,

I think you are asking about PageRank Sculpting. There was talk awhile ago about this no longer being practical and that the juice was lost due to changes in the algo. I think SEOmoz ran some tests on this that were inconclusive... so generally I think opinion is still PageRank Sculpting is dead.

Maybe look up some stuff on faceted navigation to deal with the issues you may be having with the site.

Hope this helps.

G

If your campaigns mirror your search campaigns, use what you are learning from search with regards to keyword negatives to influence the management of the content campaign. Also take a look at the "Networks" tab - so you can better control the campaign.

With the display network, Adwords analyzes your ad group's entire keyword list when matching your keyword-targeted ad to a Display Network page. This means the keyword doesn't get attributed QS or clicks.

Lead Generation requires you to put yourself in the mindset of the consumer - do some keyword research to work out what is the search intent based on a need. In your example of "plumbing" trigger keywords might be "boiler repair", "radiator installation", etc.

Gather a list of relevant keywords and run a PPC campaign to get an idea of which keywords actually convert for your client – you might want to use modified broad match to cast your net as wide as possible.

Also you have mentioned onsite issues – make sure you have a clear call to action on each and every page. Personally I am not a big fan of squeeze pages / placing forms on every page. I feel it works better to have a call to action that is fairly noncommittal for users like “order a brochure” – the sales process can start once your client has the contact details. In your plumbing example, most people offer “free quotes” etc. (different in emergency cases).

Whatever your client’s niche – talk through the sales process and make sure you understand what would be the very first step in that process and focus on getting as many people as possible to make that step.

Back to SEO – while the PPC test campaign is running starting building links (try to avoid being too keyword rich in the early stages – especially for new sites – so get a lot of brand links). Also look for link targets – build a list of really high quality sites you want to get links from and begin to formulate a strategy to get those links.

Analyze the PPC data, optimize the site for the most profitable keywords and then start to get the odd link from the high quality sites with your important keywords.

Great advice from Matt and Aaron - also make sure you have no duplicates. Two listings for the same business means you lose trust.

All the citation stuff Matt is on about is Trust - show Google your listing is for a relevant, functioning business and you will make it in the local results.

Also try getting your business listed on the sites recommended on http://getlisted.org/

The best course of action is to 301 all of the pages as:

1. There may be some links to these pages
2. These pages may presently be carrying some authority which would be transferred to the new pages (i.e. where the 301 resolves)

You could update the older posts (making sure the new internal links are not overly SEO'd) and then ask your programmer to turn off date display on all posts more than 3 months old. Users then arriving on the posts will not be bouncing because they see it as an "old" post and will benefit from your updated content.

I guess it really depends how old the "old posts" are.

If the posts are relatively recent, "sprucing" up the blog posts to make them more readable and more engaging is a possibility (and maybe a good idea if the original was not well written).

It might be better and more natural to write new posts on the topic which add value to the original butink back to the older posts as a point of reference. This should improve the positioning for the long tail on the old posts and is

I would not recommend transparent activity like going back to the old posts stuffing them full of keywords and a couple of keyword rich links to other parts of the site - Google will see you are trying to game the system and most likely discount any potential benefit.