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Google have not used they keyword meta tag since about 2009 IIRC

See here for more details: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html

How that helps,

K

It depends, if it's a .com you are going to be waiting a month at least probably 2, same for a .co.uk

You can use godaddy to back register domains then as soon as the domain is available it will register it for you, I think it costs around $10 per domain.

If Wendy has a keyword heavy domain why not just build the links to the home page?! I would avoid repeating the keyword again in the URL if the domain already includes them...

I could understand this strategy if the domain was branded and did not include the target keywords, but that's not the case here.

Keith

Hi Todd,

A site can still rank for the keywords you are optimising for with on-page alone - if the area is niche enough (or the other pages have poor on-page SEO).

If you mean that you are appearing on page one and you are not getting people link back to you organically... That's just life

If you mean you have built links and they are not showing up using Open Site Explorer then either Roger has not crawled the site with your links on or the index has not updated (IIRC OSE's site index gets updated once a month).

I would just add:

rel="canonical" href="http://www.mycompany.com/blah.html" />

No need to add 301's.

This might be useful it's Magento specific: http://www.magentocommerce.com/wiki/adding_canonical_url_to_cms_pages

Hey Ahmad,

OSE (open site explorer) only shows links from the more reputable sites and does not show links from low quality sources another reason could simply be that Roger (the SEOMoz crawler bot) has not yet crawled sites with your links on.

You should attempt to build an organic (looking) link profile... If all your links are anchor text for "engraved wedding glasses" it looks unnatural and spammy.

There is no golden number of links that triggers googles algo, but don't build stupid amounts in one go, a few per day should be fine I'd say no more than 20 and ideally gradually increase more per day as your site authority grows.

If you are asking why your ranking has not increased... My answer would be due to the quality of your inbound links, most are from low quality forums, directories or low authority sites.

The quality of the inbound link matters greatly.

I would simplify your robots.txt to read something like:

**User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/

Sitemap: http://www.your-domain.com/sitemap.xml**

Hi Diane,

You need to add your blog's RSS feed to FeedBurner, when you create your feed in FeedBurner it should ask you for this information.

FYI, Feedburner is system that enables users to sign up to your blog and be notified when new posts are made, it is not a platform for blogging.

Here is a blog post I wrote a while back explaining how to use FeedBurner with Wordpress, but it's applicable to any website with an RSS / Atom feed http://techspotting.org/how-to-use-feedburner-with-wordpress/

It's a nice step by step post with screen shots

307 Moved Temporarily (HTTP 1.1 Only)

A 307 Redirect is the HTTP 1.1 successor of the 302 redirect. While the major crawlers will treat it like a 302 in some cases, it is best to use a 301 for almost all cases. The exception to this is when content is really moved only temporarily (such as during maintenance) AND the server has already been identified by the search engines as 1.1 compatible. Since determining if the search engines have identified this essentially impossible, it is best to use a 302 redirect.

Source: http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection

Hi Vjay,

TBH it's probably your back link catalog... It's mainly built from blog comment spam.

Yes that's normal Google have more power and can crawl more of the web than roger, plus roger chooses to not show low quality stuff (I am pretty sure this is still the case!?). - FYI roger is the bot that crawls the web for OSE.

And yes it is possible for people to point bad links at you, your site is on the internet anyone can link to you.

The best thing you can do is build a strong back link profile, then a few low quality links won't hurt - tbh a few links should be ok any way most people have some spammy stuff in their back link profile...

OSE only shows links from the more reputable sites and does not show links from low quality sources.

Majestic index shows more links and has a larger index - this could be better for you, personally I would rather see all link data possible for a domain.

Google Webmaster Tools is always going to show more links, Google for obvious reasons have a lot more power to crawl the Internet and store large link databases (GWMT is typically more complete IME).

That is why there is such a difference in back link figures between these services.

I use all these services + bing webmaster tools link checker (it allows you to check back link profiles of other domains, not just the ones you own like GWMT).

Hope that helps,

Keith

It looks like this plugin will add the rel="canonical" tag for you automatically: http://yoast.com/tools/magento/canonical/

View the source code after you have installed it to confirm it's working as expected.

If you have paid then contact customer care http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/ysm/ll/contact/contact-01.html?last_url=http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/ysm/ll/basics/basics-08.html

Those pages are very similar so it's probably throwing the duplicate content switch in SEOmoz, you might want to ignore it in this case.

I would add some more text to those pages personally to aid with ranking, you can position the text over the images with CSS.

If the pages you are redirecting have links pointing at them and you 301 them to your home page, chances are your home page will rank higher and DA will increase.

Whatever plan you decide on, my advice would be to do it a few pages at a time and see what happens.

If you are happy with Wordpress why change? I would not load your site up with plugins though, your blog / site will end up slow and insecure.

If you are having a bespoke site built and require a CMS I'v heard good things about MODx from a few dev's

Maybe explain to the client it's not going to rank as well without text and has less chance of getting found by searches (generally speaking...).

I get duplicate content flagging as well sometimes, I check the pages manually when it happens.

Just an idea, if you are part of the same company why don't you redirect the pages from the larger site and point them at your newly designed smaller site?

That way you won't get stung for duplicate content.

If that's not possible I would rewrite all the content from scratch, the problem with rehashing is that sometimes it's often harder, also you can write optimised SEO copy for your new site to help increase rankings and traffic

Personally I would do the following:

• Set rel="canonical" as Brent says below
• 301 redirect the preferred URL, so if you are using www.example.com redirect example.com, that way if anyone points links at example.com "most" of the juice will pass over (this will probably fix the issue you have posted about)
• Set the referred URL in Google web master tools

If you are using  CMS like Wordpress rel="canonical" will probably already be taken care of for your website, you can check this by viewing the source or using SEO Moz's on-page keyword optimization tool.

Personally, I would always try and host the server in the country you are trying to target for a number of reasons - mainly performance (and chances are it's going to be cheaper for me, I live in the UK).

However the video "SEO Executive" posted above is from 2009, since then Google have released the following: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2010/03/working-with-multi-regional-websites.html stating that the server location is irrelevant if you own the ccTLD e.g .fr

Martijn you might also want to check out the following whiteboard Friday video about international SEO: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/international-seo-where-to-host-and-how-to-target-whiteboard-friday

FYI: Opensite explorer (mozbar) is reading the PA wrong for Twitter pages.

Unless my personal twitter page has a Domain Auth of 98

So don't pay too much attention to the PA score on Twitter pages plus it's no follow any way.

To answer the "not showing in site explorer" question, for a start OSE does not crawl every page on the web, it does a good job of trying but SEOmoz don't have the horse power of Google. The more links you have pointing at your Twitter page the more likely Roger will pick it up, but I really would not worry about it.

Also remember that the SEOmoz index only gets updated once a month, so if your page is new that might be why it's not showing yet...

Hope that helps

Hi Hannah,

"I think" I will just leave the .com in place...

I can see a lot more .co.uk's in the SERP's for my keywords but perhaps that is just because I live in England and everyone has bought .co.uk's

I have already done the geo targeting in web master tools and claimed a places page etc.

Thanks for your help

Keith

I always use rel="canonical"

Hi Mic,

I would focus on Google Places optimization based on the time scale you have it is far more likely you will rank higher for you niche.

I have just posted an article relating to Google Places local search optimization on my blog at http://www.lionseo.com/blog/googl...

The post also contains a list of local business directories I recommend submitting your business to for local search optimization.

K

The short answer is no, there is no issue with targeting the keywords on each site but you will have to put twice the work in... A better option would be to use the same site and build more domain authority to that site and target some different keywords to increase traffic.

Or are you trying to appear on the first SERP page multiple times using different domains?

The rewrite rule above is not bad practice, it will fix the issue with your URL's

However it is good practice to use the rel=canonical tag on your site additionally to prevent any other duplicate content issues.

In short the rel=canonical tag tells Google which URL you wish to use, preventing Google from thinking you have duplicate content if multiple URL's exist for the same page.

Bryan, you need to redirect the page http://www.mobilemowermedicsinc.com/index.html and point it at http://www.mobilemowermedicsinc.com

To do this create a 301 redirect using a .htaccess file.

Connect to your server and look in the root of your web server for a file called .htaccess - if it does not exist then create one (make sure it's called .htaccess).

Add the following line to the .htaccess file:

301 redirect /index.html http://www.mobilemowermedicsinc.com

This will fix the duplicate content problem on your home page.

I would have them under one domain, pref something that is branded and not specific to any of your services...

Lets call it "www.totalservices.co.uk" (probably taken I know...)

I would then structure the main pages like this:

**www.totalservices.co.uk/driveways **

**www.totalservices.co.uk/driveway-cleaning **

**www.totalservices.co.uk/patios **

www.totalservices.co.uk/artificial-grass

(etc etc)

As the guys have already mentioned, any links you earn or build to your site will count towards your domain authority... Also link juice will flow through your site "helping" you rank.

By splitting the sites into 3 you are going to be increasing your work load by 3.

Plus by having a branded domain name you will likely get a higher click through rate from the google search results - keyword heavy domains look spammy and "typically" are trusted far less IME.

Hope that helps...

Keith

Brian, if you 301 the example.com to www.example.com that will get rid of the duplicate URL issue server side. (this will resolve your current duplicate content issue).

Additionally I recommend you add the rel=canonical it will prevent other potential duplicate content issues that may arise and is considered good practice to implement.

The tag looks correct, note the space after the domain in quotes:

Are you using a CMS ?

Generally speaking it's a lot harder to rank on google.com than it is for a geo location like google.co.uk - perhaps you are sending stronger signals to google that you are a uk based company?

FYI if you are only trying to rank in the UK then anyone going to google.com gets redirected to .co.uk any way.

It's the same thing the rewrite is a 301 it's just using Apaches mod_rewrite to achieve it.

You can use either option, after you have setup the 301 you can check the Apache status code, If you have shell access you can tail the access log file.

If you don't have shell access I am sure their are Chrome / Firefox plugins that will verify your 301 code, or you could use Screaming Frog.

Brian, it's the same thing just a different method both 301.

No it would not cover the issues site wide only for the home page.

CMS = Content Management System (an example would be Wordpress or Drupal).

You should still do the rel="canonical" site wide (on each page).

All make sense ?

Instead of removing UK ranking signals, would it not be better to add some US ranking signals in addition - in an effort to rank for both .co.uk and .com?

The short answer is yes, google have reduced the weight of this (apparently) if i was picking a brand I would probably try to include a partial match for one of the head terms without it looking spammy if possible... (like SEOMoz.org).

Spammy keyword match domains (no1-cheap-car-insurance.com) don't look as pro a branded domain IMO.

Obviously this is only one ranking factor out of many...

Hope that helps,

Keith

I recommend you update each page, note the rel canonical tag will be different for each page. And 50 pages should take you less than 15 mins

Hey Davinia,

Check the screenshot attached, as you can see I searched for "medical call center" and in the first organic result it's parsed the domain for that keyword and made the keywords bold in the domain name.

Google's parse domains for for keywords, it's pretty basic stuff... You don't need to have a hypen (dash) in there as a delimiter any more (although this used to help years ago).

I was not simply suggesting building links to the home page will help (which it obviously will if done correctly), what I meant was there is little point building a page that as the same keywords as the domain and then building links to that page.

As the domain in question has the exact match keywords Wendy can use the home page to rank for those keywords without the need for an additional page targeting the keyword "medical call center".

Keith

medecialcallcenter.png

Sorry I just read this again, the 301 will fix the URL issue site wide.

A branded root domain = google.com, nike.com , apple.com etc any domain that uses a brand name and not a dictionary keyword's like "cheap-cars.com" or "cheapcars.com".

SEO's define a root domain as the domain name on it's own with no sub domain etc so google.com not www.google.com

Hi Dr Pete, Would correcting the current issue with a 301 and adding the rel=canonical tags to each page be the best option? My thought being any future duplicate content issues that may occur (not caused from this issue) would be avoided.

Hey Wendy,

I was just reading an article on exact match domains and thought it might be of use to you http://www.seomoz.org/blog/are-exact-match-domains-in-decline

Optimise your home page for your chosen keyword and 301 the page /insurance to your root domain.

To do this you need to create a .htaccess file in the / directory on your server and enter the following information.

Redirect 301 /insurance  http://www.mydomain.dk

About 90% of the link juice "should" flow through if you use a 301 redirect, you can test the above is working by visting http://www.mydomain.dk/insurance and making sure it redirect you to your home page.

Note that a 301 can take a few weeks (possibly longer) for Google to pick up so do not expect overnight changes.

Hope that helps.

I would not worry about it... That's like saying "For next day delivery lease make sure you order before 3pm monday - friday." - which is completely legit.

It's when you have two pages that are almost the same you run into issues, or two urls for one page Or you are copying content from other sites.

I would either use rel canonical as Nakul instructed above, although this is a bit of hack IMO.

Or just build some better quality links at the page you want to rank, I don't see a problem with building links to the /insurance page?

Again, my advise would be the same as Bryan's - leave it alone and build more links to the insurance page.

I don't see a problem with that page out ranking your home page?

I have a new domain and I am beating pages with much higher page ranks / DA etc

Typically in the niche I am targeting if I use the Keyword Difficulty tool i get an average of about 50% - I think this tool mainly uses DA / PA to work out the difficulty %.

After I will do a Google search and look on the pages for mentions of the keyword's I am going to target with my pages / posts.

Often I find there are few mentions or 1 exact match mention in the content with the page title being something different / not exact match.

I will then build a page which is targeted specifically for the keyword and optimise for it, I don't over do the optimisation - if the other pages only have 2 mentions of the keyword in the content I would normally build a post with say 3 - 5 mentions. I have noticed when going over 5 keyword (aprox) pages tend to rank poorly or rank badly then crawl back up the SERP's slower - this could be due to the domain on the site being 1 month old.

I also only build quality content that is relevant to the search term, this should prevent the pages dropping from the SERP's (I hope!).

Obviously if your niche has highly optimised pages and a bunch of links pointing at each page then this method is not going to work.

Hope that helps.

If you know you have claimed the google places pages and get listed is saying you haven't - what does it matter?

Get listed just shows you where your business is listed across the web?

Keith