Welcome to the Q&A Forum

last Thursday Google rolled out a EMD update targeting low quality sites with EMD. However Google also rolled out a Panda 20 update. Does anyone know what this new Panda update was targeting?

Hi,We are currently working on location based info.Basically, when someone searches from Florida they will get specific Florida results and when they search from California they will specific California results.How does this location based info affect crawling and indexing?Lets say we have location info for googlebot, sometimes they crawl from a New York ip address, sometimes they do it from Texas and sometimes from California. In this case google will index 3 different pages with 3 different prices and a bit different text, and I'm afraid they might see these as some kind of cloaking or suspicious movement because we serve different versions of the page. What's the best way to handle this?

We do many Press Releases for many clients and it is recommended to have an about us at the bottom of each Press Release... If we have 200 words at the bottom of each Press Release that we submit to PRWeb should we change them up so they look unique? Will this be considered duplicate content if we leave the bottom section of our PR's identical?

Do regular citations have the same impact as featured citations for Google Local? or is it the higher a company is isted the more impact it will have on a google local page?

One of my listings says it has been closed and the business is not closed. On Google + / Google places there is a field that allows users to check that claims the business is closed. Can they actually close it? Your Google Places listing has been updated Dear Google Places user, Google has updated your listing data on our consumer properties such as Google and Google Maps to more accurately reflect the latest information we have about your business. We use many sources to determine the accuracy of our listing data and to provide the best possible experience for business owners and consumers who use Google and Google Maps to find local information. Based on our sources, the following listing has been marked as closed: Company info... If you disagree with the changes we have made, please visit your Place Page to edit your listing. Note that if you are an AdWords or Boost customer, your ads will be unaffected by this change and will continue to display the listing information you have provided in Google Places. To manage your online advertisements, please sign into Google Places or Google AdWords. For more information about updates to claimed listings, please visit:http://www.google.com/support/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1318197 Sincerely,
The Google Places Team |

We ave a prospect client that wants to start doing SEO for his Shopify site, we are unsure if this will be SEO friendly. Will we have enough control to get great placement? Are we better off rebuilding the site for the client in an OpenCart?

I work with a web design / SEO company and when we complete a site we want the credit for it, a link at the bottom of the page we build does suffice... Problem is this causes irrelevant linking / unnatural linking. If we "nofollow" these are we ducking the penguin? Are we better off not linking at all?

SEOmoz recommends a bunch of directories and some cost money. How much influence do these directories have? Is it worth investing in some where the category makes sense or all where the category makes sense?

A report card is directed towards one keyword. What if one is to target two keywords on one page? For example, if I want to target SEO in Miami, Miami SEO, and SEO Miami it would be impossible to get an "A" on the report card for all three. What is the best way to target two-three keys on one page? Lets say these keywords are equally beneficial to the site, and we do not want to have to use hierarchy for one key over the other. Would it be wise to build a page for each? I feel like that would be redundant to the user. It says I need the keyword 4 times in the body so I should have 4 "SEO Miami" and 4 "Miami SEO". High importance factors. What makes them high importance? The keyword should be in the beginning of the title. How does this make sense as a high importance factor. Many titles are going to sound spammy if this is how they are written. Lets use Miami SEO again as an example: Miami SEO from [company name] bla bla bla sounds like spam. Learn about SEO in Miami from [company name] sound much better and is probably more likely to get clicked on. How important are these High Importance factors? I was always under the impression that we build the site for the user however the report card changes that perspective.

Does indexing category archive page for a blog cause duplications? http://www.seomoz.org/blog/setup-wordpress-for-seo-success After reading this article I am unsure.

We have submitted our sitemap.xml to search engines so now that they have that should we use a nofollow attribute on the sitemap.html? Do we even need a sitemap.html? For other links on the site such as: Contact us About Us Locations and other phrases that we are not trying to rank for should we set these to nofollow?

Ive gotten many mixed opinions on Link Assistant and its complete suite, I wanted to get some opinions on the matter.. Anyone use these tools? What is the difference between these tools and other tools on the web? Would adding the free SEOmoz API into this software show better results?

From my understanding its best to get likes on a website rather then from within the  Facebook page for SEO purposes. What is better to set up a photo gallery with a like button on each image so that every URL gets liked separately for each image or having a like button for the entire gallery. 10 likes on one page or 1 like on 10 pages?

I thought it is best to use your current site and build a new page targeting 2-3 key phrases max. Lets say I have a current site that is ranking for a few keywords, why would I build a landing page when I can just add a page to my site and target those same exact keywords?

I think this tool is a bit off : ) This morning I checked my ranking for a keyword and every time I recheck it I see my results in a different place. I checked on word 5 times and got three different results. Is Google brocken or is the tracker doing its own thing? This is not the first time I am seeing this issue only today its really acting up. IMHO I think it would be best if the tool just says out of order 🙂 rather than 3, 10, 6 for one keyword phrase within ten minutes...

Is there a way to optimize for google merchant. One of my clients sells mac decals and when you go to google type it and hit shopping it seems like every site is amazon.com Are they covering the SERP because of there authoritative qualities? How does this work?

After reading this SEOmoz thread http://www.seomoz.org/q/getting-reviews-to-stick-on-yelp-google I have learned that one cannot leave fake reviews because Google and yelp can see if the users are real by the user behavior. If one of your clients is happy with your service and they have never left a Google review or yelp review and you have them leave your company a review it will be filtered and not count. Google’s +1 is fairly new and I am not sure if many users use it. IMO a user is much more likely to Facebook "Like" something. Same goes for Yelp, I feel like many local services don’t have a high enough search volume to benefit from these areas. If a company cannot have a satisfied customer leave a review on Google + or Yelp because they are not active enough on these networks, the company does not receive the credit they deserve. I'm assuming SEOmoz has the contacts to make a change, well here is my idea: How about Yelp and Google + send a letter to the address of the review... (Same as a Google places listing, reviewer will receive letter and enter a pin number online to confirm review) this solves the issue and businesses can receive the credit they deserve. In all fairness if a company does right by someone, the company deserves the review, right? Otherwise this should not be a ranking factor IMHO!

We are currently in one location and we are moving our office. Would it be better to leave all the directories and add new listings with the new address? This way we get 2 listings until someone in this address claims a business here. or Would it be better to change all the existing to the new address?

http://www.gglpls.com/ is this site legit? Submit website to google + directory?

Using wordpress or any other blog to properly syndicate an article without duplication risk. Can I trackback by just leaving a link to the original within or at the bottom of a post or is there a specific code to add.. What is the best way to trackback?

I wanted to add my google + signature to every post I make on SEOmoz and I think every user should do the same... Two reasons why... Google helps our existence so we should help theirs. If someone likes what I wrote or vice versa we should be able to follow each other in a simple click. In my opinion all blogs forum posts etc... should Lead to a user not a website, this will prevent spam and help people network. In other words blog spammers and forum spammers will be SOL (Which they all ready are lol).

Now I know that shortcuts are usually not a good sign for SEO. However if I am on a group on linked and there are Facebook like exchanges going on I am getting real people in the right market, right? See picture for more details. Is this valuable? NGpT0.png

Anyone have any SEO strategies to incorporate into the new Bing layout?

We are currently working on a new site structure and we would like to take out a WP plugin that adds a .html to the end of every URL. From my understanding it is best to not use this plug in. Once I take out this plug in will I need to do anything for all the external links to count. Will the link juice pass through? if you type my url now without the .html in your browser it adds it in the .html. However, all the external links we built have the .html in the URL link. Do I need to do any 301 or canonical to pass link juice or will I be fine after taking out the plug in?

With all the new over opting talk, one of the things mentioned is having the same anchored text linking to a page over and over without variation. Is there a good estimate on how many external linking in keywords should be exact versus how many should be in variation? Also, keeping value of pages links in mind. Would it be best to use [Exact] phrase for the higher PR sites or more relevant higher traffic sites? and save the long tail or keyword variation text for the lesser valued sites. When to use exact phrase and when to long tail is my question/discussion I always stay relevant in my link building, and all my links are liking within context. Because I know that relevancy has been an important factor. After watching this video from Matt Cutt's http://youtu.be/KyCYyoGusqs I assume relevancy is becoming even more of an important factor.

There are many SEO sites out there that have an SEO Pricing page, IMO this is BS. A SEO company cannot give every person the same quote for diffirent keywords. However, this is something we are currently debating. I don't want a pricing page, because it's a page full of lies. My coworker thinks it is a good idea, and that users look for a pricing page. Suggestions? If I had to build one (which I am debating against) is it better to just explain why pricing can be tricky? or to BS them like most sites do?

I have read many posts on this. However, the one thing I find challenging is getting an expert to give me a social mention. In many cases they have shared something similar in the past, and in many cases they are too busy. IMO building relationships via forums is the easiest way to find experts who will mention my site. I can engage them in a thread, and eventually take it to a Personal Messages. After building a relationship I can ask for a link or a social mention or to guest post or something. I have attempted contacting many experts via Blogs, E-mail, Facebook, Google + etc. for many different sites, IMExperince most “Experts” (people with large followings) will not give a noob (new site w/no rankings or new user w/no following) the time of day, nor a social mention. I have read many posts on engaging experts: tag them; send them flowers; like every post; make great comments. My result… bruised lips (from kissing behinds). I work with an SEO company, and every new site we work on seems to require a unique strategy for ranking. When we work on building relationships in fields we know nothing about, the outcome is weak. Unless we use forums. What are some strategies that work for you? what approach do you take when you have to build a relationship with someone you cant give value to?

Hello, I have a client that has a site with a .html plugin and I have read that its best to not have this. We currently have pages ranking with this .html plug in. However If we take the plug in out will we lose rankings? would we need a 301 or something?

Im moving a page over from www.domain.com/page to www.domain/category/page currently www.domain.com/page is ranking in google. Would a 301 do the job? is there anything else needed to help keep SE positions?

If I am building a Nav bar should I use my keywords or make it easier for the user to find what they are looking for. IMO one should ALWAYS make a site based on user experience. If it Google and other SEs do count Nav links, would it be best to place more important keys first?

Here is Matt Cutts video, for those of you who have not seen it already. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4dAWb5jUws   (Very Short) In this Video Matt explains that Google does not look at backlinks. Many link spamming sites have detected, there have been many website receiving warning messages in their Google web tools to deindex these links, etc.. My theory is that Google will not punish sites for backlinks. However, they manually check for "link farming sites" and warn anyone affiliated with them, just in case these links were built from a competitor. This way they can eliminate all the "Bad Link Farm" sites and not hurt anyone who does not deserve to be hurt. Google is not going to give us all their information to rank, they dont want us to rank. They want us to PPC. However, they do want to have the best SERPs available. I call it Google juggling! Thoughts?

http://www.linkaloha.com/ This company claims to have a good tool. To me it looks like spam. They claim to automate link building and they claim to use Googles Panda to their advantage. This site does however use link diversity, not sure about how relevant the sources are for each keyword... Would this fall into black hat or gray area SEO?

I am able to do keyword research for any term that I want,. However, I want to see results for broad keywords in local areas.... For example.. Hair cut Miami may get 100 searches a month. How can I find the number (x) of search volume for "Hair Cut" searched within Miami, FL.? If I add the 100 and the other number (x) it may be worth the while to build.

Hello, I am fairly new to creating case study material, can some of you share some strategies that work for you.

Does Domain length matter for SEO?

I have been doing some research on onsite optimization and I hit a dead end, need some help with OnSite.... These three I get for the most part... (If you would like to add anything please do) Title optimization - needs to be unique with keywords included under 90 words Meta description - needs to be unique with keywords included under 150 words Meta keywords – all keywords Questions begin here... H1 headings – Should this be the first thing the spider crawls? Should they be unique? Is there a penalty for having this content the same on every page? (H1s are under the logo at the top of every one of my sites pages) H2-H6 headings – Should they be unique? Is there a penalty for having this content the same on every page? Bold text – does this matter for SEO? Italic text - does this matter for SEO? Link anchor text – These are the same on most pages. However, most of these links are part of the navigation, does this matter for SEO? is this duplicate? how does the search engine analyze this data? Image alt attributes – I have the share image buttons on my site (Facebook, Twitter, etc...) and they have the same alt attributes on each page. Does this matter for SEO? Body text – I found a competitor site that’s ranking #1 for a key term. This competitor has 11,106 words in their body with the keyword mentioned 29 times (0.8%). They placed all this text in a small scroll down on the bottom of their page. Its strange how they included it. Please review attached image. the competitor URL is http://www(dot)1804design(dot)com/ w6AiM.png

I have a new customer and he wants me to clear up the SERP for his branded keyword, the SERP currently has his site and two other sites related to him under his result... Under that is bad reviews and old reports. My client does own the top spot (#1) for his branded name. My client has a: linkedin facebook twitter myspace I was thinking to push all these to the first page, this will clear up some of those bad reviews. What are your thoughts? Have any of you ever had this type of case? I need to get 6 different sites to all rank for the same exact key term, however I have the top spot to link from...

I am using website auditor for my onsite SEO and I am getting a ton of CSS warnings. How important is to fix these issues? Where would you place this in you priority list?

On SEOmoz I am getting duplicate errors for my onsite report. Unfortunately it does not specify what that content is... We are getting these errors for our photo gallery and i am assuming that the reason is some of the photos are listed in multiple categories. Can this be the problem? what else can it be? how can we resolve these issues?

What is better from an SEO point of view a Page with Page Rank of 5 with 0 clicks linking to your site or a page with a Page Rank of 3 with 1000 clicks linking back to your site? Is link juice important? do search engines count Link Juice?

I have a blog that I post articles to, would it be ok to submit these posts to Ezinearticles as well or will that be considered duplicate content?

i have been working on an SEO site and I wanted to add a website checker tool to my home page to help keep users on my site for longer and start interacting. Are there any available scripts for a website tester that I can place onto my home page? This way when a user lands on my website they can check their "score" and then they can read more about how we came up with this number or what they can do to help it etc..

I am reading a thread right now and I came across this statement: Search engines can view clicks only if websites have Google analytics or some toolbar installed. Obviously that's not the case with over 50% of the websites. That's why I don't agree with your comment. True or False?

I am building a forum and its a general forum, what are the best practices to gain users/members. I dont expect to rank for every category in the SERP's. Doe's anyone here have any experience in gaining traffic/members to a forum?

What is a natural backlink? is it a backlink that someone gave a site for their great content? (this is what my common sense tells me) and this is what someone else's opinion is: No, quality backlinks are the one which are highly relevant, is from a high <acronym title="PageRank">PR</acronym> page. However, a natural backlink is the one which is within the body of the page, which is surrounded by relevant text, you can also call it a contextual link. Except links which are placed on a resource page which have no content in it and links which are placed under blogroll etc. this dosent even make sense to me : )

I found these two sites giving my competitor link juice: http://www.webnamelist.com/alexa/Alexa_186.html http://www.list-of-domains.org/alexa/Alexa_185.html I have seen these sites before and I just dont get why they are authoritative. The funny thing is I did a search for my competitors link on the page and its not showing up, is this a problem in site explorer? Why is site explorer mentioning these sites as my competitions best links when these links do not exist on their site?

I want to build a forum, and I was wondering, can anyone please help me find an open source platform for building it? I want it to be custom and I want to create my own rules. Also I want this forum to be about all topics, is that going to be an issue?

what is the point of having www. in my URL? does this help, hurt, or influence anything?

I spend a good amount of time on SEO forums and I found a thread about building links within comments.. I personally don't see how putting my keyword in my name place and linking it to my site will benefit me, I feel like google is already on to this and no one is going to click on it. Is this a waste of time?

I have a guest blog prepared and several sites I can submit it to, would it be considered duplicate content if I submitted one guest blog post to multipul blogs? and if so this content is not on my site but is linking to it. What will google do? Lets say 5 blogs except the same content and post it up, I understand that the first blog to have it up will not be punished, what about the rest of the blogs? can they get punished for this duplicate content? can I get punished for having duplicate content linking to me?