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I agree with Maxwell's comments.
Also, if your website is predominantly for UK visitors, may as well stick with .co.uk rather than changing to .com Your website is UK hosted so sticking with the .co.uk ties in nicely.
If your website is international/global then certainly consider changing to .com
If you do, ensure you use Google Webmaster Tools when making the change from .co.uk to .com to notify Google of the change.
Hope that helps.
Regards
Simon
Hi Shauna
Check out http://www.seomoz.org/blog/introducing-social-analytics-in-seomoz-pro#jtc160624 for your answer.
The good chap himself, Rand, has confirmed that both LinkedIn and Google+ are on the agenda for inclusion in SEOmoz's Social Analytics within Pro tools, probably during early 2012.
Regards
Simon
Hi ConversionChamp
Any private link network created to aid SEO (Rankings) is shady by nature, even if that's not the intention, there is no avoiding the fact that's it's not an ethical practice. Though granted that won't stop many from participating in it.
A far better, more beneficial and sustainable strategy (your white-hat alternative) would be to build up relationships with relevant site owners; do some guest blogging and provide them with content, socially connect with them and distribute your content around their audience, which will lead towards some awesome links. Building up your own contacts to engage with and hopefully get links from without exchanging links that go round & round the network, is the way to go.
Regards
Simon
Hi There
It seems like your client is requesting something that is considered to be unethical in terms of search. Stripping it back, they are asking if it's Ok to deceive Google Places by creating fake addresses, plus indicating that they are happy to display fake addresses to searchers.
With a well optimized Google Places listing and a well optimized webpage for the listing, it should be possible to show up for more than 1 of those home services.
My advice would be to avoid doing what they are requesting, as not only is is bad practice, it does present a real risk of being caught out, possibly during the verification phase that Google do, bound to get flagged up.
Hope that helps.
Regards
Simon
Hi Manoj
Chances are that it's the delay between the spider bot crawling the website and the index being updated.
When (most) bots crawl a page, they take a cache (spiders' copy) of the page and process that copy at a later time. Thus there is a delay between when a spider crawls a page and the search results being updated.
You may find at times that the meta description isn't the same as the one you've written anyhows, Google does sometimes create it's own description to display in the search results, based upon some of the actual page content.
I'd suggest resubmitting your updated sitemap.xml and waiting a while longer, chances are all will be sorted shortly.
Regards
Simon
Hi Mike
The last update to the Linkscape Index was on November 28th, the next one is due tomorrow (January 4th).
So the next time your site is crawled, you should see changes in the reports that reflect your recent changes.
The main thing is knowing that you've made the changes and improved your site, so long as your modified page titles are appearing in search results then all is good.
Regards
Simon
Yep, guest posting is on the whole a pointless exercise for Search purposes, the links that are followed will tend to be poor quality links.
That's why I suggested Guest Blogging which is different and with the right blog, most worthwhile, also for reasons of building up ones' authoritiveness. A good blog post will attract social sharing for example and those social signals and social links are very important.
One important service from agencies should be advising and educating their clients rather than doing all the work for them. Advice for the client on where to guest blog, what to blog about and why is an important part of the agency/client relationship I believe. If the client is unwilling to put any effort in and only throw the bucks at an agency to do it all, then perhaps they are not the best client to work with.
Going back to how viable is it to build up a network of sites for linking purposes? It's time consuming, resource heavy and more often than not will provide very little benefit, those days have gone. So it's viable in that it can be easily done, given the time and resource, though totally non-viable from an expected results perspective.
So education, advice and encouragement can go a long way in helping the client to achieve their goals, so long as the client is up for it 
Hi Niall
Google no longer use the Keywords Meta Tag in their ranking algorithm, **officially announced back in September 2009 **so from an SEO perspective in relation to Google rankings, not worth spending the time on.
There is an interesting YouMoz blog post here on SEOmoz by DinkyDory from a year ago entitled "Why I Still Use Meta Keywords" which details a few reasons other than Search Rankings as to why they can still have a part to play.
My take on Meta Keywords though is that if everything else was done & there was nothing left to do, then perhaps just for the fun of it and because some directories still use them, though that really is clutching at straws. As there will always be endless tasks to do, I for one along with many others will continue to give them a miss.
I hope that helps,
Regards
Simon
Alan is most probably right, that's the most likely reason.
If your site hasn't been down as far as you know though, I have another possibility for you.
I just had a check of the cache of your homepage though and it showed the page as last being cached at "13 Nov 2011 12:45:47 GMT"
If you search on: site:www.bollywoodshaadis.com within Google, then hover over the preview arrow next to your homepage result, you'll see:
<cite>www.bollywoodshaadis.com/</cite> - CachedClick on that Cached link and you'll see (I hope) that it was last cached on November 13th.It seems like cache:www.bollywoodshaadis.com may actually bring up a real Error page rather than a cached version of the page.If you can see what I see then chances are all is fine with your site. If you still get that error page, then it's likely your site was down at the last Googlebot visit.RegardsSimon
Hi There
It sounds like your old URLs have not been 301 Redirected to the new URLs. If so, it's now a case of damage limitation.
As a matter of urgency, you'll need to map your old pages to point to the most appropriate new ones, then 301 redirect those old URLs to the mapped new ones.
Then update your sitemap.xml and submit/re-submit it via Google Webmaster Tools (GWMT). Also ensure that your robots.txt file is up-to-date.
If it's not too late, which it probably isn't yet as you say that Google is showing your old URLs, this will ensure that as much page strength as possible is retained, by being transferred from the old page to the new one via a 301 redirect. It will let Google know which old pages to replace (reindex) with the correct new page.
This will also reduce the number of 404 pages that are presented to your visitors as the search results (old URLs) will be redirected to the correct new pages.
As for your homepage, hopefully that hasn't changed (as in a new domain name). If it is indeed the same as before, you'll still get visitors finding that page correctly. Though with the site showing so many 404 pages and at present, old pages loosing strength as they cannot be found, your domain authority and homepage strength could start to reduce soon, thus reducing your rankings for your homepage.
If your domain name has changed, you'll need to inform Google of the change via GWMT.
If the above isn't done and done soon, your old pages will start to disappear from search engine indexes and you'll be starting from scratch with your new pages.
Hope that helps,
Regards
Simon
Agree it would be good to see a historical record of these changes over time.
I believe the only way to do this at present is to save the pdf exports or manually record them each week (or month is usually fine, weekly is a little too often for most). A tedious manual process, though would get the job done
Hi there
A few ways to change the location of your search to provide different location based results include:
1) Advanced Search - can change the region of the search
2) From a search results page (Google) you'll see a 'Change location' option over on the left, this can be more specific than region level.
3) You could add the location into your search query, e.g. pizza seattle
All those will provide different results to that of your default location. You could also get somebody in the desired location (if you know anybody there) to search for you with a non-personalized search.
Hope that helps,
Regards
Simon
Can't blame anybody for caring about their site and business That's a great thing.
Have another search tomorrow, clear out your browser cache first and chances are all will be back to normal as others can see your site ranking just fine
Hi Jon
This is a strange one, I too haven't found a link to your admin page. There could have been one at some point in the past. Google's bot is rather clever at finding pages on the so-called 'invisible web', so best to request non-indexing of pages that you don't want indexed (covered below).
You're right in thinking that search bots follow links to find and index pages, whether it be an external or internal site link or a sitemap link. They also find pages through actual submissions.
Hope that helps,
Regards
Simon
For somebody new to SEO, there is a great guide available at http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo
Your website looks great, is certainly in a competitive space though, ranking for generic keywords will be difficult. I'd suggest doing some keyword research around longtail keywords, which in time can lead to supporting the more generic higher volume keywords.
In terms of how SEOmoz could help you in improving your rankings, there are some great Research tools available, have a look at http://www.seomoz.org/tools
Keyword Analysis, Crawl Test, On-page Analysis and Link Analysis in particular will be helpful for you.
There is a 30 day free trial available for the tools, give it a go and see how you get on. That guide would be a good read beforehand.
Regards
Simon
Hi Matias
Yes, indeed. You have 2 versions of your website live there, the non-www version and the www version.
Both will differ in terms of Domain Authority, Page Authority etc as they will have different authority attributes, different link profiles, different visitor levels etc.
One of these sites is duplicate and potentially harming. I'd absolutely recommend 301 Redirecting (or the equivalent) one to the other. When you have done, use Google Webmaster Tools to inform Google which version you'd prefer to have included in its search results.
Up to you which one, doesn't matter at face value. Though do check which one is currently appearing in search results for brand and non-brand search terms the most and which has the highest quality links pointing to it, then 301 the weaker site to the stronger.
Regards
Simon
Hi Shawn
URLs are case sensitive; so in the example in your question, yes you have duplicate pages there.
As Category is spelt with both an Upper case and a lower case C you will have two identical pages, which is not good for either Search or User Experience.
Some confirmation for you that it's an absolute must to stick with lower case URLs can be found under Point 10 of "11 Best Practices for URLs" which is a blog post here on SEOmoz from a long time ago by Rand Fishkin which is still extremely valid today.
So it's highly recommended that you 301 Redirect any URLs with Upper case letters in to the corresponding URL that's completely lower case.
Regards
Simon
Hi there,
From how you've described it, the risk isn't worth it. If the current site/domain is associated with unethical linking practices and has received a penalty in the past, which is likely from what you've said, then you'd be associating the negativity of that site with the new one.
I'd suggest rectifying the current site, improving the quality and making it a site that Google would want to include in it's index and rank for certain terms, then 301 that newly improved site rather than doing so in its current state.
(Public PR is only updated 3 or 4 times per year usually and is a not even worth bothering taking any notice of, the various stats in SEOmoz Pro tools such as Domain Authority and Page Authority, plus MozTrust are much more meaningful figures of which to take notice of).
Hope that helps,
Regards
Simon
Hi Christopher
There are pros and cons to both options.
Really, it's down to factors such as how the actual words read, brand or non-brand preferences, how it's going to be marketed, any surveys carried out...
When talking about your business/website and marketing offline, how would the web address be conveyed; "one dash two dot com" or "one two dot com".
Having a hyphen/dash in the domain name can cause confusion and memory issues for some, usually without it reads just fine in search results.
Some examples:
Well known brands indeed, however the concept of not having to rely on a hyphen/dash can be seen here, it can and does work for some, though granted not for all.
So another option if your preferred choice is taken ( e.g. onetwo.com ) is to choose something else, such as onefive.com if you'd like an option rather than a hyphen/dash.
Obviously this depends on Branding, could be that you really need the words "one two" in there.
Bear in mind that exact match domains don't matter so much for SEO as they once did.
So a tough call, go with what you believe to be best for the combination of both User Experience and your Brand.
Hope that helps,
Regards
Simon
Exactly, Robert is spot-on there. Buying new domains (with no prior history) will have literally zero SEO benefit.
The only reasons to do so are for future plans to host a site on them and/or brand/trademark protection through owning such domains.
Hi Julie
Your suspicions are well justified; that content is indeed spammy and certainly cause for concern.
What's more, most companies that say they will get a website to Page 1 of Google's search results 'for your popular keyword phrases' in order to win a pitch is likely to partake in unethical practices, especially when their services are free or way too cheap as in your example of $150 per month.
I say this because there can be no guarantees and any company that gives them (plenty do) cannot be trusted. Take a popular phrase such as 'life insurance' or 'loans', any guarantee could not be trusted.
Chances are they participate in questionable practices and/or only target very long tail keywords with little competition and low search volume.
That kind of rate of $150 per month leads me to suspect they will outsource poor quality link building to India or the Philippines for short term gains. There will be nothing sustainable or ethical in free work or work that's that cheap.
My advice is to steer well clear and invest in high quality content, seed and distribute it well, plus find an ethical trusted agency to help you out with the Search side. There are plenty of such agencies around, the one you've found there appears to be anything but.
I hope that helps,
Regards
Simon
There is a Feedback tab over on the far left of the screen when logged into SEOmoz, not easy to spot as it's in a strange location.
Agree with you that it would be a helpful feature to have, good luck with the request
Hi James
The short answer is 'yes and no'.
Solely Local SEO doesn't usually affect International SEO at face value, as local is local and international is everywhere, as I think you already know from your question description (though read on below...)
However, just about any aspect of SEO can affect the SEO of a webpage and a website from the overall bigger perspective. There are lots of common factors between local and international SEO, as well as some differences. For one website that is trying to cater for both, there will be compromises to be made in some instances, plus some advanced SEO to take care of too.
You'll find http://searchengineland.com/local-seo-international-seo-have-lots-in-common-47937 an interesting and helpful read on this topic.
An example, an IP Address can have a different effect on local SEO efforts than International efforts (i.e. location of where the website is hosted).
There are language differences, user behaviour differences...
I'd suggest reading that article and then figure out who you're targeting, where and how. The answer could end up in needing more than 1 website, subdomains for different geo-locations, a site/cms language translator...
Hope that helps,
Regards
Simon
Hi Spencer
Not sure in which regard you are referring to, so shall provide two answers;
1) This could be what you're looking for ~ http://www.hitwise.com/us/about-us/press-center/press-releases/google-share-of-searches-66-percent-in-sept-2011/ which is a reliable source for search engine market shares and very recent (September 2011).
Also check out ~ http://www.netmarketshare.com/ and http://marketshare.hitslink.com/search-engine-market-share.aspx?qprid=5
2) Hitwise http://www.hitwise.com/us can provide this kind of data/information, though Hitwise is very expensive, typically in the region of $30,000 per year.
EG. the search term 'auto insurance' it would show you which websites have what market share of natural and paid search visits for this search term.
Regards
Simon
Hi Phil
Without knowing the keywords in question, region etc it's difficult to tell.
However, most of the time in this situation, it can be that although there apparently isn't much search traffic out there for particular keywords, a lot of companies may still be bidding on them, thus the Competition would be high, resulting in higher than expected PPC costs. Can of course be other factors too such as low ad quality scores, broad match vs exact match...
Is it worth pursuing these or not ? Depends on the value of a visitor, if for example it's for "truck insurance", not a huge amount of volume though competitive because the average premium/purchase can be a couple of thousand, it could be worth bidding on these high cost keywords even though there isn't much traffic available.
A judgement call really as to the value of a visitor, likely conversion, other methods other than PPC of attracting them to your website...
Hope that helps,
Regards
Simon
Hi Matt
Through Google Webmaster Tools, you can request that the whole website (the development site) be removed from Google's index. Could speed up the removal process by doing so.
Regards
Simon
Hi Adam
Your best bet is to contact the Helpdesk with this one, via http://seomoz.zendesk.com/requests/new when logged into your SEOmoz account, or send an email to **sitesupport@seomoz.org **
It could be that 'rogerbot' hasn't been requested to crawl your website for a long time, or is being prevented from doing so. The Helpdesk will help you out I'm sure.
Regards
Simon
You're welcome.
If the address is exactly the same then it raises suspicions as each business should usually have it's own unique address.
Though if it is just very slightly different that will be fine, e.g.
those are different addresses so would be fine and not against the Guidelines as far as I know, so long as the other criteria are still met such as a local landline phone number...
Regards
Simon
Hi Daniel
An interesting question.
widg.et ~ I can see why this was chosen, spells 'widget' stating the obvious. However in terms of search, it doesn't work like that, the keyword in the domain is 'widg' the top-level-domain isn't included. 'widg' isn't a word as far as I know, so not particularly helpful for Search or Usability as it does take a second look to figure out what it's supposed to say.
Exact Match domain names don't carry as much SEO weight as they used to, especially with regards to Google. Better off concentrating on getting the URL naming structure right, plus the Titles, Descriptions, H1 tags and the anchor text in some great inbound links.
If the website has become known as 'Share Widgets' (as in www.sharewidgets.com) then may as well stick with this rather than confusing existing followers & visitors with another change.
So out of all the options you're considering, I'd recommend going for No. 3, keep the current domain name and focus on optimizing that both on-page and off-page.
Hope that helps,
Regards
Simon
Hi Simon
I currently see your homepage ranking in 30th position on a Google UK non-personalized search.
Rankings do fluctuate constantly, there are so many factors as to why they do, such as different data centers, different locations, constantly changing strengths and weaknesses of sites, just to name a few.
As you are still ranking on the 3rd page and appear to have over 4,000 pages indexed by Google, I very much doubt you've been peanalized in any way, a penalty would cause your rankings to drop further than from the 2nd page to 3rd page.
Try searching again, from different browsers, even different locations, try exact and broad searches. Chances are you'll see your site coming up again as it is still there.
Hope that helps,
Regards
Simon
Hi Joe
A good question. You'll find most of your answer in a video by Matt Cutts at Google http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ets7nHOV1Yo
As you are running different Top Level Domains (TLDs) then chances are that your websites and content won't be classed as duplicate, however saying that, if they are both hosted in the same country, e.g. the UK, then potentially they could be classed as duplicate, with only one of them showing up in search results.
Your best bet would be to Host the .co.uk in the UK and the .com in the US. That way, it's more likely that neither site would be classed as duplicate.
Regards
Simon
Hi Neil
Would that be feedback on whether or not it's worth doing?
If so, then from my experience with it, yes it helps to have some GA traffic data alongside the rankings, brings more meaning and context to the ranking reports then. The other analytics data within Pro Tools is also handy to have at hand at times.
I still use GA on a regular basis, has so much more information there than just visitor numbers from targeted keywords.
It only takes a minute to setup GA within SEOmoz Pro, is worth doing I've found.
Hope that helps,
Regards
Simon
Hi Cyto
I've had a look and they do have alt-text on the three feature screenshots. Granted the alt-text doesn't seem to appear when hovering-over, but the alt-text is there. In their respective orders:
The actual code is:
<div id="<a class="attribute-value">home_border</a>">
<div id="<a class="attribute-value">home_contentC</a>" class="<a class="attribute-value">hverts</a>">
<div class="<a class="attribute-value">wrapper</a>">
<div id="<a class="attribute-value">manageC</a>" class="<a class="attribute-value">clearfix</a>">
<h1>Effectively Manage Your SEO and Monitor Your Social Media
h1>
<img src="[http://cdn.seomoz.org/img/transparent.gif](view-source:http://cdn.seomoz.org/img/transparent.gif)" id="<a class="attribute-value">stars</a>"
class="<a class="attribute-value">hsprite</a>" alt="" _cdn="<a class="attribute-value">true</a>" />
<div id="<a class="attribute-value">link_analysis_ss</a>" class="<a class="attribute-value">span-8</a>">
<a href="[/features](view-source:http://www.seomoz.org/features)">
<img src="[http://cdn.seomoz.org/img/transparent.gif](view-source:http://cdn.seomoz.org/img/transparent.gif)" id="
<a class="attribute-value">link_analysis_ss</a>" class="<a class="attribute-value">sprite-screenshots ss</a>" alt="<a class="attribute-value">Link
Analysis</a>" _cdn="<a class="attribute-value">true</a>" />a>
<div class="<a class="attribute-value">span-2</a>">
<img src="[http://cdn.seomoz.org/img/transparent.gif](view-source:http://cdn.seomoz.org/img/transparent.gif)" id="
<a class="attribute-value">link_analysis_icon</a>" class="<a class="attribute-value">hsprite icon</a>" alt="<a class="attribute-value"> </a>" _cdn="<a class="attribute-value">true</a>"
/> div>
<div class="<a class="attribute-value">pull-1 span-6 last</a>">
Analyze links and track key performance metrics in an
efficient all-in-one dashboard.
div>
div>
<div id="<a class="attribute-value">identify_seo_issues_ss</a>" class="<a class="attribute-value">span-8</a>">
<a href="[/features](view-source:http://www.seomoz.org/features)">
<img src="[http://cdn.seomoz.org/img/transparent.gif](view-source:http://cdn.seomoz.org/img/transparent.gif)"
id="<a class="attribute-value">identify_seo_issues_ss</a>" class="<a class="attribute-value">sprite-screenshots ss</a>"
alt="<a class="attribute-value">Identify SEO Issues</a>" _cdn="<a class="attribute-value">true</a>" />a>
<div class="<a class="attribute-value">span-2</a>">
<img src="[http://cdn.seomoz.org/img/transparent.gif](view-source:http://cdn.seomoz.org/img/transparent.gif)"
id="<a class="attribute-value">identify_seo_issues_icon</a>" class="<a class="attribute-value">hsprite icon</a>" alt="<a class="attribute-value"> </a>"
_cdn="<a class="attribute-value">true</a>" /> div>
<div class="<a class="attribute-value">pull-1 span-6 last</a>">
Identify critical SEO issues and get actionable
recommendations.
div>
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<div id="<a class="attribute-value">monitor_changes_ss</a>" class="<a class="attribute-value">span-8 last</a>">
<a href="[/features](view-source:http://www.seomoz.org/features)">
<img src="[http://cdn.seomoz.org/img/transparent.gif](view-source:http://cdn.seomoz.org/img/transparent.gif)"
id="<a class="attribute-value">monitor_changes_ss</a>" class="<a class="attribute-value">sprite-screenshots ss</a>" alt="
<a class="attribute-value">Monitor Changes</a>" _cdn="<a class="attribute-value">true</a>" />a>
<div class="<a class="attribute-value">span-2</a>">
<img src="[http://cdn.seomoz.org/img/transparent.gif](view-source:http://cdn.seomoz.org/img/transparent.gif)"
id="<a class="attribute-value">monitor_changes_icon</a>" class="<a class="attribute-value">hsprite icon</a>" alt="<a class="attribute-value"> </a>"
_cdn="<a class="attribute-value">true</a>" /> div>
<div class="<a class="attribute-value">pull-1 span-6 last</a>">
Automatically monitor changes to your rankings and
take control of your organic traffic.
div>
div>
div>
Regards
Simon
Hi Fuad
A good question.
The answer kind of depends upon your intended structure for your website going forwards. It's usually advisable to keep pages at as high a level as possible, as in having a fairly flat hierarchy.
If you are to have a sub-folder for each country, then from the above, my answer would be:
because you won't need 'uk' to be there twice in the URL.
If these were deemed to be really important pages for your visitors, then you could even consider:
so that these pages are at the highest possible level. Though this depends on how you are structuring the rest of your website, could be that it's best for the User Experience & Navigation that all UK pages fall within a UK sub-folder.
Also consider whether or not you need the www. as that is a subdomain, could go for **example.com/uk/visit-visa **
As you are new to SEO, check out 'The Beginner's Guide to SEO' here on SEOmoz. Chapter 4 has some coverage of URL Structures.
I hope that helps,
Regards
Simon
Sure have Crystal;
Content - unique, relevant, topical, interesting, valuable content that's well written is absolutely essential.
Distribution - distributing content online such as through Marketwire and high quality blogs, plus through social sharing, is very important.
Link Building - Producing and Distributing great content will result in some great natural links for you. Aiding the process can make it even more successful, such as sending an Infographic (with a text link within it) over to relevant sites that host and review infographics.
So in summary, Content is still King, it's so very important, the right kind of high quality content that is. Then comes the distribution and the link building.
There are so many factors that count towards rankings, it can become overwhelming if you start thinking about them too much. Focus on delivering as valuable a website and experience for your visitors that you can and that will in itself take care of a vast amount of the SEO for you.
There is a great SEO Beginners Guide at http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo which is well worth a read.
Regards
Simon
Hi There, Lots of reasons, including: Webpages are crawled, not keywords. If your pages have changed, the keywords the pages rank for could also have changed. Google make over 500 algorithm changes a year, rankings are constantly changing for many many different keywords. Personalised search may be showing you different results to what you saw before, as can location changes and browser caching. Perhaps the inbound links to your site have been devalued, which in turn can lower your rankings. I'd suggest performing an on-page analysis to help identify any page errors that you may have. Check out the inbound links to your website for anything dubious. There are plenty of other tools to use, SEOmoz has a great set that you could find useful. Hope that helps, Regards Simon
Hi Steve
It appears that your reviews are being marked-up with Count instead of Vote.
An example is http://www.freeindex.co.uk/profile(looking-glass-photography)_34386.htm which has a Count of 33.
Check out http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=1093493#countvote for more information on this, could be what's causing some issues with your reviews in search results.
Though with a Google search on 'Looking Glass Photography' you do have some reviews starting to appear on page 2 of the results.
Regards
Simon
That's a spot-on answer from Alan.
A search term without quote marks is known as a Broad search, that's where you'll have loads of competition for any popular words that are included.
Put in the quote marks and you'll have a Phrase search, where the all of the words in the phrase form an actual part of the search, though not necessarily in order.
Put the search in brackets [keywords here] then you'll have an Exact search.
Regards
Simon
Hi Marty
Rand did a Blog post on this back in October, check out http://www.seomoz.org/blog/exact-match-domains-are-far-too-powerful-is-their-time-limited
Historically, exact match domains appear to have proved great for rankings (high correlation, though not necessarily causation). It seems to be the general expectation, which I agree with, that recently and moving forwards, exact match domains won't have such a high weighting by the search engine algorithms, Google in particular.
If you can get hold of an exact match domain, then great, though not necessary if the website does it's job well and has all the usuals, such as great content and high quality relevant inbound links.
An example to build confidence; Google 'car rental insurance' you'll see that the 1st result is www.insurance4carhire.com which doesn't have the term 'rental' in the domain name.
Backlinks; naturally looking is usually the best policy. Certainly some to the homepage, some deep links too, usually to the main product pages. Depends on which pages you feel to be the most important to your visitors.
301'ing backlinks and subdomains; not advisable and usually some of that valuable link juice is lost. Best to have all or as many as possible pointing to the ultimate destination page.
Hope that helps,
Regards
Simon
Hi Sagar
That was a good reply from Ryan.
Check out http://www.seomoz.org/dp/rogerbot
rogerbot is the name of the SEOmoz crawler bot, the above page has all the info you require.
Regards
Simon
Ahha, all makes sense now, thanks for the clarification.
Seems like you're already on the right tracks, what will be tricky is getting your site known as a review site by Google, so that when searches such as 'ServiceMagic' are performed, your site's review page for ServiceMagic appears.
Once your site is classed as a reliable review site, you'll find the reviews starting to appear. Just need more reviews and to keep all the usuals such as on & off-page SEO going strong.
Seems like you're part way there as 'Click for Full Review >>: already appears.
Lol, can't argue with that answer, No says all that needs to be said
Hi Aran
With Search, 'duplicate' can also mean 'very similair' as well as actually the same, hence why they've been flagged up as duplicate, which I think you already get from your addition of 'Almost'.
What I'd suggest is to make sure that the Page Content is noticeably different on every page. Still relevant to that page's product, just different enough from the other pages so that it's not classed as duplicate.
That way, the overall pages will most likely not be seen as duplicate pages, thus avoiding any duplicate content penalties.
Could also consider making use of the Canonical tag where pages are very similar with no real chance of them being made more unique.
If there is any way to distinguish some of the page titles and descriptions further then go for it, for some of them make use of the 65 to 70 available character space in the title.
Hope that helps.
Regards
Simon
Hi Diane
There's an awesome White Board Friday video by Rand entitled 'Article Marketing + Submission for SEO' which is well worth a view, seems like it will provide some useful ideas and suggestions for you with your article marketing.
It is a real shame to be giving high quality topical content away to other sites that benefits those sites but not your own. There are ways to address this issue, such as:
Also, Google's Search Plus Your World (and an SEOmoz post here) is worth reading up on and viewing the video. Ensure that your website has the Publisher link between your website's pages and your Google+ profile. Also ensure that your articles link to your Author page (about you page) on your website and that that page links to your Google+ profile with an Author link.
Regards
Simon
Hi Monique, well done, you already know the answer Use a Canonical Tag for all the duplicate pages, to point back to your main login page http://www.quicklearn.com/maven/login.aspx (adding a couple of unique sentences may not make the pages unique enough to not be classed as duplicate, as duplicate includes very similar pages). Regards, Simon ~ (PS. sorry for the lack of paragraphing here, doesn't work on an iPad)
Hi Matthew, you are quite right, there is little to be gained by this.
Only provide a link out to another website where it benefits your visitors from visiting that other site. Links out are good, but not as a part of a link exchange, that can actually be poor for your SEO efforts.
Always think of the user experience first and foremost, that way, the SEO you do will be ethical and beneficial, you'll gain more that way.
Regards,
Simon
You're welcome Joe.
Regarding those links that you mention; they could potentially cause an issue such as link spamming, which can happen when two websites send each other a lot of reciprocal links.
(Simpler solution towards the end) ~ My advice would be to remove them and make it clear on the website that those on the UK site, in the US, can visit the US site and vice versa.
As some landing pages will no doubt be deep pages (i.e. not the homepage) perhaps a widget type of box in a prominent position would help to direct visitors to the other site if they are on the wrong site at the time. EG. "If you're a visitor from the US then visit our site especially for our US customers" or such like.
With some clever coding (and use of nofollow for such links) you could get it to work that when clicked on, the visitor goes to the corresponding page on the other site.
Or alternatively, an easier solution, make sure that all those links are "nofollow" links so that search spiders don't follow them, reducing the risk of a penalty.
Regards
Simon
Hi FishEyeSEO
That makes sense from István.
An example of structuring a website based on International location without a dedicated TLD and separate hosting is Nike, check out:
http://www.nike.com/nikeos/p/nike/fr_FR/?ref=
you'll see the /fr_FR/ which is for France
and http://www.nike.com/nikeos/p/nike/fr_CA/?change where /fr_CA/ is also in French, though for French speaking Canadians.
I hope that helps,
Regards
Simon
I wouldn't suspect so. Wiki is seen as an incredibly Authoritive site and has many high quality links pointing to it, so it's high rankings are mainly down to the site being so authoritive and huge.
Wiki fulfills many of the factors within the periodic table of SEO ranking factors at http://searchengineland.com/seotable It's a difficult site to beat, though can and is certainly achieved.
Glad you like the suggestions, they will help to get there.
Regards
Simon
If your website has a history of acquiring 45 to 60 links per month, then 75 shouldn't cause any issues, should be fine, in terms of the number that is.