Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi there,

For any such low quality pages, I'd suggest asking two simple questions first:

1. Is the page important for my users, does it add any value ?

2. Is the page beneficial for the site's SEO ?

which I think you have asked already from reading your question, so well done there.

Pages can usually be removed or redirected, perhaps not yet though at some point, they can be.

From what you've said, it sounds like those such pages are adding no value to anybody whatsoever, so Mike is right in suggesting to block them.

I have some further thoughts for you;

If the page adds no value to your visitors though could be useful for search, then think about Consolidating that page into another (re-using some of the content) or simply 301 redirect it to an appropriate & more valuable page.

This idea came from an SEOmoz Mozinar (web conference) from yesterday, is a great concept.

There is no point in keeping pages of no value there but hidden away from search engines or users, simple get rid of any such pages by Consolidation or 301 redirects.

If the page holds no user value though has some SEO value, then consider 301 redirecting it to another appropriate page.

Consolidation and Redirects help to keep a site clean, rather than blocking or noindexing pages that no longer need to be there.

If in doubt, then by all means make use of Robots.txt or the NoIndex attribute until you are sure of what to do with them long term.

Hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

Hi Albere

It sounds like you've done some good work to progress as far as you have. I'd suggest to keep going and not give up, if what you've been doing has worked then keep doing more of it.

I've seen on many an occasion that it does take time and perseverance to jump from the second page to the first.

Try performing a competitor link analysis if you haven't already, look for any linking opportunities. See if you can improve the anchor text of any existing inbound links that you have.

Check your on-page and on-site attributes with the SEOmoz toolset.  Ensure those keywords that you are targeting and included in your Meta Title, Description, H1 tag and throughout your page content (without over-doing it, everything in moderation).

Have a read of  "A New Way of Looking at Ranking Factors" and check out the periodic table of ranking factors within it.

Keep producing fresh, relevant, interesting valuable content and share it socially across the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Google+.  Do some online PR and share your content, this helps with acquiring new natural links.

Hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

Hi Gary

You'll find an excellent Link Analysis Guide at http://seomoz.zendesk.com/entries/20036956-link-analysis

It highlights all the important elements to analyze, such as Followed Linking Root Domains and Page Authority.

Really worthwhile working through it in conjunction with the available tools in your Pro account.  Focus on your own sites' strengths and weaknesses and how you can improve it in various ways, a competitor analysis will give you some ideas for links and such like, though the real effective work is focusing on your own site first and foremost.

Hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

Hi Maria, this usually has absolutely no effect at all on SEO, though can't be completely sure without seeing it and your website. The main consideration with such pop ups is User Experience rather than SEO. Hope that helps, Simon

I agree with Kyle's comments. Better off concentrating on building good quality links, plus don't forget about the all important content of course, keep it unique, relevant and interesting

I agree with Alan. For the most part, reciprocal linking results in a neutral result, it's as though one link cancels out the other as it's a spammy link building method that usually no longer works.

Exceptions of course, like with Alan's Microsoft example. Better off acquiring one way links from relevant authoritive websites.

Hi Bob

Some great advice from the guys already.

Don't be overly concerned about your domain name, exact match domains don't carry as much SEO weight as they used to.  Is more important to have a clear, logical URL structure that compliments your content strategy.

As the others have said, focus on creating and distributing fantastic content, that's unique, fresh, topically relevant, interesting, Valuable content and distribute it via all appropriate methods, such as social, universities...

Becoming an Authoritive figure on your topics of speciality is key, try some guest blogging also and participate in relevant forums.

Regards

Simon

Thanks Ryan. I like your more detailed answer on user experience, spot on!

Hi Kevin

That is a risk, you could end up blocking search engines from indexing your entire website. Usually, both www and non-www point to the same location, so one robots.txt file can apply to both (unless you've configured your site differently).

Check out  http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=44231

I'd suggest removing that Disallow command within your robots.txt file and do the following:

Within Google Webmaster Tools, go to 'Site configuration' 'Settings' ~ from there you can set how you'd like your pages to be displayed in Google's search results, either with or without the www. (or can leave Google to decide).

Regards

Simon

Hi there, a sub domain is a separate website when it comes to Search, so there is likely no quick method of ranking highly by ethical methods.

As you opted for the sub domain route, you'll have to approach SEO in the same way as for any new website, great content and great inbound links, amongst all the usual other important factors.

If it's not too late, consider moving your blog into a folder on your main website, e.g. www.example.com/blog as you'll then benefit from your main site's strengths, history, authority.

Hope that helps, Regards, Simon

Hi Ilya

My first thought is why would those top ranking sites want to engage in reciprocal linking, what's in it for them!  If they are ranking highly, supposedly with authoritive sites, wouldn't make much sense for them to do so.  If the link was one way to them, sure, but reciprocal, doubt it.

Engaging with authoritive site owners/publishers and building up a relationship over time can lead to a one-way link from them, usually much more valuable than a reciprocal link.

I'd suggest spending your valuable time on tasks other than reciprocal linking, the benefits are not usually worth it these days.

Create high quality content that others, including those highly ranking sites, would want to link to, then distribute that content well, seed it, engage with others about it, sure, that's a more effective way to acquire those all important authoritive links that matter.

If you haven't already read it, a relevant blog post here on SEOmoz entitled "Proving Trust on the Web" is well worth a read. One of the topics mentioned is Links.  Time spent Building Trust to help obtain those all important valuable links is usually far more productive and beneficial than participating in reciprocal linking.

Regards

Simon

Hi Carl

It sounds like you have 2 live homepages there. If so, I'd suggest Redirecting the duplicate index.php one to the root (as in www.mydomain.com) either through a Rewrite or a 301 Redirect depending upon your server configuration.

Hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

Hi Diane

Domain Auction Services such as this one can either work really well in acquiring an already registered/owned domain name, or can be really frustrating as per your experience. (They usually work best when the domain is due to expire shortly and if the domain is infact not renewed, you may end up being the first person to grab it when it becomes publicly available).

Basically, Go Daddy try to contact the current Registrant for a period of 30 days, to inquire as to whether or not they are prepared to sell it (this page has some useful information on about buying through Go Daddy auction). If nothing is heard within 30 days, the request is cancelled. Sometimes, the messaging can be incorrect or confusing, causing frustration to the person trying to purchase the domain through auction.

The message you received, "This message is to notify you that the current registrant of in2town.com has renewed their domain name..." is rather strange as the current registrant did not renew the domain name recently going by a Whois Lookup as it was registered on September 24th 2010 and is due for renewal on September 24th 2012.

So it looks like that Go Daddy either got no response from the current owner of the domain or they were informed that it was not for sale. Their messaging and communication back to you could certainly have been clearer.

May be worth putting this domain on 'domain watch' (plenty of domain registrars offer this service) about 6 months prior to the renewal date so that when renewal time does arrive, you'll have a fair chance of grabbing it should it not be renewed.

Regards

Simon

Ok, all the best with your fitness site and forum, it looks great  

Hi Brandon

If you haven't seen this already, an awesome video here on SEOmoz entitled "I'm Being Outranked by a Spammer - Whiteboard Friday" is well worth a view, it was posted last Friday and Rand has some really insightful and valuable information to share.

I would suspect, though obviously can't know, that the links from this .org site to your competitors will not be the reason they are ranking so highly. If those links are being counted, it will be a small part of those rankings, takes a lot more than 1 good link usually.

Just because it's from a .org doesn't mean that the links carry any weight, it sounds like a site with little value from the way you've described it, I'd suggest focusing on creating and distributing some valuable content rather than chasing the links of competitors.  Link Analysis of competitors is of course important, just don't worry too much about individual links, especially if they are questionable such as in this case.  With some great content, you can attract some valuable links of your own that your competitors may not have.

I hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

Hi Alexander, a good question.

I'm not sure it will benefit yourself or your visitors by adding in a State element such as FL to your URL structure. Main reason being 'semantic search', Google will know that FL means Florida and vice versa.

The actual decision probably lies with your keyword research, as in what the differences tend to be in search volumes between States and State Abbreviations for your main target keyword searches.

The shorter option without eg. FL looks neater from a user experience perspective, slightly easier to read. So long as you optimise the on-page well such as Titles, Descriptions, H1 tags etc then you'll be able to cater for both with the shorter URL.

Hope that helps, Regards, Simon

Ok.  If a page has totally different content to any other page on the website, then a Canonical tag won't be appropriate. In this situation, use a NoIndex tag on the page and/or disallow it in the robots.txt file (only if you don't want any visitors to find it through search that is).

Or alternatively don't do anything, it sounds like the pages have some unique useful content on them  

That's a superb answer from Alan.

The only thing I'd add is to also consider what the most logical and easily navigatable structure is for your website's visitors, which will likely be one of Alan's suggestions for your structure anyway as they are logical suggestions. Just make sure that you're chosen option caters well for your visitors as well as for Search.

Regards

Simon

Hi there

From the sounds of things in your question, yes, you will likely be better off targeting your internal pages to rank for relevant search terms rather than your homepage as a 'catch-all'.

So e.g.  http://xxxxxx.org/the-keyword-for-ranking  try to acquire (natural, not paid) inbound links to these pages from relevant authoritive websites with relevant anchor text.

Your homepage will acquire links anyway (usual scenario), this page will rank for your brand and perhaps main overall keyword, difficult to tell though without knowing anything about the website.

There was an interesting White Board Friday recently entitled "Mapping Keywords to Content for Maximum Impact" which is worth a view. It introduces the concept of the 'Frankenpage' which is best avoided (e.g. a homepage or internal page that tries to cater for too many different topics and keywords), better off targeting 1 page for one or two phrases based around 1 main topic.

Hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

Hi SEOPA

A good question. I can see two main options for you;

**1) **Have 1 physical home in a chosen category on your website for the product. List the product in the other category though point the URL of the menu item/link to the other category where it physically sits. So 2 separate listings for the product, though only 1 physical landing page for it. No duplicate content issues here, simply an extra navigation path which can benefit usability as the product fits within more than 1 category.

An example that I can relate to your question with regards to this option; on a site that I work with, we have 'buy to let insurance' under a property category and 'landlords insurance' within a business category. It's the same product, with the business category listing pointing to where the page actually sits, which is within the property category. This benefits visitors as the product applies to both property insurance and business insurance, this method aids user experience & easy navigation.

**2) **You've kind of answered this one already. The 'similar' product would have a Different Name within each category, with unique content. The product would be geared towards different audiences, so essentially, two different products both with unique content. So long as the navigation is clear and obvious for your visitors as to which one to view, I can't see any issues with this, other than page maintenance (am guessing there would be changes to make to both pages from time to time as the product changes/develops).

With this second method, you could potentially gear each product page towards different primary keywords, if indeed that's appropriate to do so.

• So either option can work well. Focus on the User Experience first and foremost, get that right, then optimize your chosen option for search.

Hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

Hi Bistos

Your website appears to only have 27 links from 3 different domains. One of those domains is yours, the other two are from Korean websites.

You have two Homepages (maybe more), one of these is http://www.bistosamerica.com/ and the other is http://www.bistosamerica.com/home

The later is in your sitemap.xml file though the first isn't, which is your main homepage (the /home version should be 301 redirected to http://www.bistosamerica.com/  )

I've noticed that your homepage is using 2 iframes. This could also be causing some indexation issues and worth considering what can be done to cater for that content without having to use iframes.

Because you have zero links pointing to the homepage that's in your sitemap.xml chances are that there will be some indexing issues or delays. I'd suggest correcting your sitemap.xml to include http://www.bistosamerica.com/  then resubmit it to Google via Webmaster Tools.

If you can acquire some natural (non-paid) links from other relevant reputable websites, that will help speed up the indexing.

This will help with getting your website indexed, can then focus on the on-page and further off-page SEO.

Regards

Simon

Hi Pano

1)  what may be the cause of some rank declines?  ~  there are literally so many possibilities as to why your rankings have dropped, impossible to have any realistic idea without a site history brief and a full analysis.

Have a think as to what changes, if any, have been made recently, such as new content, content removal, lost links, new competition, site restructure, redirects...  the possibilities are (almost) endless.

A 'decline in traffic' can be attributed to a decline in rankings, there is often a correlation that exists, however that's just one factor out of so many, so is likely to be a more heavily weighted factor or even more likely, a combination of different factors that have caused a drop in rankings.  More to the point, it's the drop in rankings that will likely cause the drop in traffic, though not always.

2)  how do I bring them back up when the indexed page is the homepage?  ~  there are a few changes you could make, the first one I'd suggest is looking at your site structure and perform some Housekeeping.

From what you've described, you are correct, it's (usually) not at all feasible or realistic to target 1 page (the homepage in your case) for a variety of different keywords.  It's lately been deemed a Frankenpage when that does happen, as in one page trying to be the jack of all trades, ends up in an ugly mess and can be detrimental.  Check out a Whiteboard Friday Video entitled "Mapping Keywords to Content for Maximum Impact".

So the answer to this question is above;  figure out what page is supposed to serve what purpose, do some housekeeping to ensure that the navigation is easy and logical so that users can find the right page for what they are looking for.  Focus on your Category Pages for those important Yoga keywords that can't be catered for on the homepage yet are still very important to be found for.

I hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

Exactly. A great answer from Adam.

Stick to the Blog rules/commenting policy, otherwise you could find that your comment is removed by the blog moderator.

Hi There,

A good question.

**1)  **Your example for Ted Baker based on a similar Title structure for your own site:

Ted Baker, Ted Baker London, Ted Baker Clothing, Ted Baker Men's Clothing, Ted Baker Clothing Collection - Buy Online Now at Manamialameseo.com

This is not an ideal title, it is spammy with all those mentions of 'Ted Baker' within, is too long and is simply not necessary, it's not good for Search and also it's not that good for User Experience/Readability.

So it's best to avoid these types of Titles

2) Your example from the SEOmoz blog post that you linked to:

Ted Baker London - Men's Clothing Collections 2005-2008 | Sartorialmoz.org

This is a much better Title structure; it starts off with the main keywords/keyword phrase (great for search) followed by a descriptive title element based on what that actual page in question provides.

NB. The Domain Name/Business Name at the end is usually unnecessary for pages other than the homepage, about us page and contact page. In this example, it seems to repeat the domain name, a waste of valuable space and simply doesn't need a repeat of the domain name. Other than that, it appears to be a great Title tag for what I imagine the page is about.

What this better Title example in 2) above is getting at is Symantec Search.  This can be two things:

i) Words that are closely related (Collection and Collections) (Clothes and Clothing) are assumed to be the same thing, so if the search phrase contains e.g. Clothes, relevant pages optimized for Clothing can be returned in search results.

ii) Where words in a title are taken to form the phrase being searched on, as per your suggested example in your question (Ted Baker Mens Collection). The words don't have to appear in order, if they are close together, that can be good enough, so with a great Title, you'll be catering for many different versions of a similar search.

So to sum up, start replacing your current Title structure with the structure in that Blog Post (it's an old blog post, though still spot-on today) and in your question (and 2) in this answer).  From your question, it seems that you suspected this to be the better option of the two, which is most certainly is.

So that's an example structure of:

**Ted Baker London - Men's Clothing Collections 2005-2008  **

as your new structure, for appropriate pages, without the domain/business name at the end for most pages.

Hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

You're welcome, glad to be able to help.

301 redirecting that many pages would take a while for sure and probably unnecessary for many of them.

I'd suggest individually 301 redirecting your most important pages, such as the obvious ones like your main product pages, about us, contact us... plus pages that have any valuable links pointing into them.

Then for the remainder, you can do a Wildcard 301 redirect, for example, redirecting all pages within a certain directory such as /news/

Regards

Simon

Hi James

If you have reason to believe that your website has received a penalty from Google, then I'd suggest submitting a Reconsideration Request once you're sure that your website no longer violates any of Google's guidelines, such as excessive duplicate content in your case, going by what you've described.  It sounds as though your traffic levels have dropped as a result of significant drops in ranking.

There are two main types of penalty;  'Algorithmic Penalties' and 'Manual Penalties'.

If you received an Algorithmic Penalty (more common of the two) then your rankings will start to improve anyway, once some time has passed since you rectified your issue with duplicate content and have added value to your website.

If you received a Manual Penalty (less likely for duplicate content issues though certainly still possible) then a Reconsideration Request would be worth a try.

So once all is great & healthy again with your website (which it could be already) then decide whether or not to submit a reconsideration request based on how much time has passed since you believe you received a penalty and rectified the suspected issue. If you feel enough time has passed and your rankings haven't started to improve, then go for it.

Hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

Hi Luke

What you will be risking with this strategy is creating a Link Profile for the website that looks Unnatural for which a negative impact such as devaluing the links could potentially occur.

By all means work on getting some great links into this important page, but don't ignore the rest of the site in the process, ensure that other pages and areas of the site also receive some good links too.

"Everything in Moderation" (everything ethical & good practice that is) as the saying goes, is usually a safer bet when it comes to SEO.  Vary the type of links that you actively try to gain and where those links are going to.

Regards

Simon

Hi there,

You have a fab website dedicated to your son and his amazing progress, you must be very proud of the little chap.

Your question;  there is some tidying up required moving forwards.

An example of a good redirect that you have is:

www.noahsdad.com/  is being 301'd to  www.noahsdad.com

You apparently have 23 other pages being redirected from a version without  /  at the end to a version with  /  at the end, e.g. http://noahsdad.com/story  301'd to  http://noahsdad.com/story/

The main issue with redirects this way round (non / pointing to a page with / at the end) is that with inbound links, the vast majority will point to pages without  /  at the end, so you'll be loosing some link juice through the redirects.

However, you already have many links pointing to your pages with a  /  at the end, some of this link juice would be lost if those pages are redirected.  Though looking to the future, it could still be worth doing this sooner rather than later, so long as you try and request that your most valuable inbound links kindly have the  /  removed from the link, a time consuming process.

So an option is to remove the redirects that are in place, then 301 redirect the URLs with a  /  at the end to the corrosponding URLs without the  /  at the end.

You'll also need to update your sitemap.xml ( http://noahsdad.com/sitemap.xml ) to remove the  /  at the end of URLs once the 301 redirects are in place.

Over time, the URLs with a  /  at the end will disappear from search engine indexes.

So it's a calculated decision to make really, whether or not to change your Redirects around.  It will likely result in some ranking drops (and more importantly, some visitor reduction) in the short-term, however would likely be more beneficial to do so in the medium & long term.

I hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

Chances are that if you keep doing what you're doing with the link building and take my advice and suggestions above, then Google will, at some point (impossible to predict when) switch back to your original landing page or list it as well as your homepage.

So yes I expect your original landing page to be there again, though can of course be no guarantees, so keep working at it

Hi Gajendra

That's a good answer from James.

Also inform Google of your preferred domain using Google Webmaster Tools.

Additionally, some information to try and help you out;  your website has some areas that could be improved on the SEO and User Experience sides, such as your URL structure which is not currently ideal for the user experience or for search. Your current homepage is:

http://joeyvalyphotography.com/#/special/splash/orlando-wedding-photographer--portrait-photographer--joeyvaly-photography-/

which is 4 levels deep with some unnecessary folders there, such as # and special and splash

These Splash pages are very 1990's and create an unnecessary step and barrier to your main content, I'd suggest getting rid of it and bringing your homepage up to the root level ( i.e. http://joeyvalyphotography.com )

I know an impressive good looking website is usual and really good to have for a photography website; you can still have that on your homepage without a Splash page getting in the way.  Also worth considering HTML5 rather than flash moving forwards.

I'd also suggest considering adding some real textual content to your homepage, such as migrating your Information page content over to your homepage, to benefit both Visitors and Search.  Adding to this content with some fresh unique interesting & valuable content is worthwhile spending the time on.

That's just a couple of areas to start with.

I hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

Hi Casey

Yes, that would likely be fine at face value (though still not ideal for reasons covered shortly) and in Luke's question it's about one deep page rather than another page at top-level.  If the page is so important, then probably a good idea to move it higher up as shown in your example.

With this suggestion though, it's very much 'putting all the eggs in one basket'.  It's usually a better strategy to create a really valuable website rather than relying on just 1 valuable webpage.

Using an analogy;  a one-man football team wouldn't be that successful no matter how many fans he had, a strong team supporting that one-man would surely achieve more and please the crowd more-so.

Creating other useful pages to support the site overall and this page in-question, with link building to those pages, would provide a better user experience and offering than just having 1 useful page amongst lots of useless ones.

Though if the business strategy is fulfilled by just relying on one page and one page alone, then yes it would be the best option available to concentrate on just that one page.

So two possible options between us, depending on the business objectives.

Regards

Simon

Hi Dan, they are separate pages, so 301 Redirect the default.aspx page to your root domain. That'll do the trick.

Also, check to see if you have any links (internal and external) pointing to your default.aspx page and get them changed (if you can) to the root domain.

Regards, Simon

Hi Brian

As tempting as it may be, this would run a high risk of being classed as Domain Spamming, by creating Doorway Pages that link through to the real website for the purposes of trying to manipulate natural search rankings.

At best there would be some short-term SEO benefits, it's not considered to be ethical SEO though and chances are it would end up back-firing in the medium term, doesn't take that long these days for the main search engines to notice this kind of practice and to apply penalities.

Best bet is to spend the time creating valuable unique content and to distribute it well & obtain high quality natural links that way.

Hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

Hi Bob

On the SEO side, keywords in domain names don't directly matter as much as they used to, especially with Google. That's the general consensus these days.

On the Usability side, it still helps if there is a keyword or two in the domain name, it helps with that remember-ability as you mentioned plus can help with Click Through Rates if it 'does what it says on the tin'.

What the keyword(s) is depends largely on whether Brand or Product/Service is your most important selling point.

If 'Bob Weikel' is your brand that you'd like to be the main selling point, then include those words.

If 'Health Coach' is what you'd like to be foremost known for, then go for that.

And of course, your suggestion of  'bobweikelhealthcoach.com'  includes both brand and service and isn't too long, though more difficult to remember perhaps than either or.  Perhaps drop the Bob and become known as 'w****eikelhealthcoach.com' as a suggestion.

There's no definitive right or wrong, it's what best matches your business purpose & goals.

If you haven't already read it, have a read of a Domain Guide here on SEOmoz which may help you further.

I hope all that does help you out,

Regards

Simon

Hi Atul

You are correct, it's considered SEO best practice to host a blog on the main domain rather than a subdomain (No. 5 in http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/domain which I'm sure you've seen).

As for the naming of either 'Folder' or 'Sub-folder';  both are used and either one is appropriate, they are essentially the same thing.

To try to remove any possible confusion though, I tend to call a deeper part of a main site a Folder, whereas a deeper part of a sub-domain a Sub-folder.  Thus keeping the word 'Sub' associated with a Sub-domain.

So I'd call www.example.com/blog a Folder  and  blog.example.com/news a Sub-folder.

Regards

Simon

That's a great answer from Marcus.

A blog post here on SEOmoz from last week entitled  "The Exact Match Domain Playbook: A Guide and Best Practices for EMDs"  is well worth a read too, check out the section towards the end, "A few things to consider for solving problems with EMD sites".

Regards

Simon

Hi Pano

Timing is one issue, it will take longer. First the pages need to be indexed which can take much longer than 36 hours for some websites, then the pages need to be ranked for their targeted keywords. You say it's a new website, in which case this would be the case. If the URLs are the same as before, then just a reindexing delay and the ranking factors.

Though the Main Reason will be that your internal product/landing pages most probably do not have any (or any good quality) inbound links to them, chances they are all going to your homepage. I'd suggest looking at this as links are a major ranking factor.

So take a look at the on-page SEO again to ensure that it's as strong as can be, then analyse your inbound link situation and if necessary, get some high quality relevant links from reputable websites to link into your internal pages (though don't pay for the links, free natural links are the way to go).

Also, make sure that visitors and search spiders can easily navigate to your internal pages that you are trying to get ranked, have a check for any crawl errors and make sure that your robots.txt file is not disallowing any such pages from being indexed.

Regards, Simon

Hi there

To answer your specific question, "Is it worth starting a blog like this for SEO?" :

When contemplating starting a blog, it's imperative to really consider just how much resource will be required to regularly post new content to the blog and to moderate and engage with the readers of your blog.

All to often, a blog is started with great intention however soon becomes too much to maintain and starts to dry up.

• A blog with regular high quality posts that gain a lot of readership, comments and sharing can provide some SEO benefits to the main site that it supports, if setup and run in a professional way.

You'll find a really insightful blog post here on SEOmoz from July this year, it's entitled:  "Blog Design for Killer SEO - Infographic" and is by Cyrus Shepard. It includes an awesome Infographic with full explanations of all 15 points covered.  Well worth a read, is probably just what you're after.

However before embarking down the path of creating a blog, ensure that the resource is there to make it a sustainable blog that will add value and gain readership through high quality content.

I hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

Hi Zsolt

I don't believe there is a way to, not in a Windows environment anyway.

Robots.txt has to be hosted at website root level, as in  example.com/robots.txt which is where search engine bots look for it.  If a bot can find it (which they usually need to if one exists) then a person can too.

If there are pages or folders that you don't want anybody to know about, exclude them from robots.txt and edit the Meta Robots tag on each page concerned to e.g. NoIndex, Follow or whatever is appropriate.

Regards

Simon

It is indeed, I already answered that question though; you won't be penalised by Google purely for different designs.

Hi Damien

The SEOmoz bot is  rogerbot

Check out  http://www.seomoz.org/dp/rogerbot

As for an IP Address, rogerbot is crawling from 'the cloud', so doesn't have a static IP address, it's constantly changing.  This is confirmed by Aaron Wheeler (SEOmoz Staff) as the last reply on this answer to a previous question.

I'd suggest checking to see if rogerbot is Disallowed in the robots.txt file

If not, chances are the website is simply not on rogerbot's radar yet.

Hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

In which case go for it if that's all that matters. User experience may be affected, depends on the designs, though as SEO is your only concern here, you're all set to press ahead

Hi Zsolt

You'll find a blog post here on SEOmoz really useful, entitled "URL Rewrites and 301 Redirects - How Does It All Work" by Jennifer Sable Lopez (SEOmoz Staff).

There is a section on the '301 Redirect process', you may also find the first section 'URL Rewrites' helpful.

There are some useful links within, depending on whether you're using Apache or IIS.  The reason for the redirect and your technical environment will determine the most appropriate way.

RedirectMatch 301 /folder/filename.php http://www.domain.com/newlocation

is probably what you're after anyway going by your example in your question.

Also some really helpful information at http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection

Hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

Hi James

A good question.  1,500 visits per month is enough for A/B testing, just means that it takes longer to get any useful or conclusive results than say if you had 1,500 visits per day or week.

Check out 'Google Website Optimizer' if you haven't already, is really useful for such testing.

Hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

Hi Rodney

There are two ways to look into this, Correlation and Causation.

Some Correlation seems to be there from what you've said, with the widget being added about the same time as your rankings dropped (though would likely need longer for the pages concerned to get re-crawled and any effect to be seen in the SERPS).

However I'd be extremely surprised if there was any Causation.  I've never experienced or heard of this particular AddThis widget or a similar social sharing widget to cause a websites' rankings to drop.

Likely nothing more than coincidence with the timing.

Have a look for any other correlations, check back over the past two or three weeks and if you've made any other changes or acquired any suspect links, look into those to see if they may have caused a drop in your rankings.

Hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

Hi Marie

Have you considered **Rackspace **?  They offer a range of hosting options and are at the higher end of web hosting.  As such, they aren't cheap, though as you don't mind paying more, definitely worth looking into.

If they do turn out to be rather too costly, then check out GoDaddy who are less expensive though still provide a great hosting option, so long as the right hosting service is chosen.

Regards

Simon

Hi Robert, thank you.

Indeed, it would be great to have some research to validate the actual answer, if indeed there is a definitive answer.

From reading my original answer and your reply above, it seems that we are both in general agreement that hyphens in domain names tend to have no bearing on SEO. User Experience is key to choosing the better option rather than SEO. We've just gone about explaining the same thing in a different way.

From my experience and knowledge, hyphens in a domain name have Zero Direct Impact on SEO and search rankings, they make no difference either way.

However, there are Usability factors such as User Engagement that do affect SEO; if having a hyphen in a domain name or not affects the click through rate one way or the other, that could well have a small part to play in the overall ranking algorithm, thus in search rankings.

Personally, like yourself, I like to see hyphens in domain names because it does often read better.

So to summarise, I believe there is No Direct Impact when it comes to hyphens in a domain name, however I believe there Is In-Direct Impact through User Experience factors.

With best regards,

Simon

Hi Matt

You say that you 'don't have a homepage built yet'  ~  if you are planning on creating a true homepage, then consider a 302 redirect as supposed to a 301 as a temporary redirect sounds like it could be the better option until you're completely sure on your site structure & what's best for the user experience.

If you're just planning on publishing a blog without a primary website, then why not host your blog on the main domain, e.g. http://myblog.com

If you are planning a primary website as well as a blog, then my advice would be to create a homepage on your website, even if it's just a quick first draft version, then link to your blog from there rather than redirecting to it.

Though if you are set on redirecting, then consider the first paragraph & a 302 for now.

Hope that helps,

Regards

Simon