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Awesome. That's a fantastic way to check. Thank you.

So, on our site, we have a list of related blog posts on a page that focuses on bamboo flooring.

These blogs posts have anchor text like "What's the best bamboo flooring?" "How to install bamboo flooring." "Yada yada bamboo flooring yada."

Because the main keyword for the page is bamboo flooring, would the presence of these words within anchor text on the page be considered as keywords on the bamboo flooring page, affecting that page and possibly stuffing within that page?

Thmbs up'd. Love the idea! Not super easy to execute but could be very well it.

Exact match on subdomains have very very low weight.  Anyone can create thousands of exact match subdomains without much effort and cost - in fact the exact match weight has been on the decline even on the root domain.

It could. It shouldn't weigh in heavily as 'time on site' does not always equate to quality of page or even the relevancy of the page. Some pages are more useful when short and the 'action' perhaps does not consume a lot of time but I assume Google looks at industry or "website type" averages, sets benchmarks and considers accordingly. This is what I 'think' - not something successfully tested and proven.

I would simply leave all PDFs as dofollow - unless they are not unique or if any of PDFs have content that has already been published on the site (html/ page).

Are all 52 PDFs have same content? If so I would let get 1 of them indexed and use NOFOLLOW/NOINDEX  on rest  (use robots.txt) and may be even use 'canonical' to prevent the others from being indexed and cause any potential duplicate content issue.

Some good reference for you:

http://www.seomoz.org/q/can-pdf-be-seen-as-duplicate-content-if-so-how-to-prevent-it

http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/021584.html

Killer question.  Once I had a coder do a quick mod to have fixed/ static block of content and show all the posts under it and it worked. I didn't carry that project too long and didn't try other alternatives - would love to know if there are better ways to go about it too!

Doesn't matter much since if you use NoFollow you still lose a certain rank "juice". If i were you I'd leave them as it is - but If you are using same content from PDF on other web pages, I will nofollow/noindex them

Headers are not as important as they used to be since they can be easily manipulated so I wouldn't put in too much time and effort on that. That being said, it's a good practice to use them.

There is no penalty for using same headers but its better to use unique headers for each page so they are not competing with each other.

Meta keywords: it doesn't have value in Google and other major engines at least - it could work against you as competitors can refer to it and easily know what you are targeting.

Bold text: it used to matter - but it's very less now - most likely has negligible affect now.

Internal link anchors can be duplicate - if you have a site-wide text link menu, wouldn't technically those links be 'duplicate' throughout?  No penalties/issues. My sugggestion though is to vary it occassionally even internally to get most of it.

Image alt attributes - no issue in have same of it for the Social buttons on all pages. In fact,  you don't want to tweak them and try to rank for some keyword. They are just social buttons...

Competitor: They are using DIV Scroll - I would be very careful in how I use it. It doesn't seem user-friendly as the box is too small and there is lot of content in it. I am not too sure if Google can discount it algorithmically but if their staff see it manually, it could be an issue. There is no 100% sure way to know the outcome of using div scroll the way they are using - as of now they probably do get benefit by using lot of text but using lot of content in a little box like that is not a sound long term strategy considering the risk of manual review and also with G-bots getting smarter

I always assumed Google would have 1 or more staff dedicated to manually hunt/ look out for link building networks. It doesn't take couple of hours to get a list of dozens of these popular networks where hundreds/ thousands people buy and exchange links. If anything I am surprised it took Google so long to catch up to them.

What would be even more interesting to see is if they are able to catch up to all the 'participants' in this network and be able to discount all those links

I will be going to Pubcon and Mozcon.

I went to SMX Seattle and IMC last year - would suggest SMX as long as you go for the main event and select the 'right' workshops.

Nope, in most cases these blogs are owned by people who simply sell links. To be able to sell links, they have to have some content around it and so they start publishing crap - since content quality/ people's opinion is not at all important here.

This is where the shady companies you mentioned come in - they create mini "review" sites and get links from these junk blogs. Obviously these are shady companies and they have something to hide which is why they are spending so much effort to bury the negative reviews, rather than go after the root cause of this negative publicity.

A rather not-so-exciting very long term strategy recommendation (for a legit biz/site) would be to 'feel the pain' of negative reviews -  leave the wound out in the open with fresh air and let it heal. Don't wrap it up as it just a easy lazy thing to do and it just numbs the pain and hides the problem  - the cause of the negative review still lingers around..uncared for.

But that's my suggestion to a business owner not the SEO who has no control of the 'quality' of the offer and cannot improve customer satisfaction.

Regarding the places where they get links ~ from what I have seen most of them have links coming in from blogs that seem full of garbage - posts that re-written content that doesn't make much sense (probably auto generated). It's surprising but such links still have power to push up ranks even for a temporary period. When the sites links get get caught in the filter / ie. get their links discounted/ de-ranked, they probably have a bunch of others to rely on. There is not much risk since they are not playing with the main site.

I don't know of any plugin that does this but why not simply do it via robots.txt:

<code>User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /page/specificfolder/</code>

where 'specificfolder'  could be '/2/'  as in your example (domain.com/page/2/) - it would simply noindex all content under that specific folder.

Also, if you want to noindex specific pages/posts, you could do it by using this plugin: http://yoast.com/wordpress/meta-robots-wordpress-plugin/

It just means Google will weigh the easily manipulated on-page and off-page factors less than they have earlier.The anchor text might have as much important as it used to before - perhaps the context of link would be more important than the anchor.  It could be a factor - not necessarily THE factor ~ I mentioned that since you wrote 'anchor text' relating to 'rankings' and now the anchor factor is not as heavily considered......

"anchor text having the url as the landing page for the page you want to rank for."

If they pull the same content even from different sources, there still could be duplicate content issue. Most likely the higher authority site will be considered as the 'original' source.

The content needs to written uniquely - at least re-written extensively enough (new words, different phrasing, etc) so it passes Copyscape test

Changes should be on deepest level - words/ phrases. Rephrasing alone is not enough if the words used are exactly same.

Also, to get most bang for SEO campaigns/ traffic, I'd try avoiding having content that is 're-written' from just 1 source. I would use many sources and sort of give a 'new take' on this newly merged comprehensive consolidated content piece.  As I mentioned in another post, this huge content piece with a "new take" leads to your article being considered original and unique, and it also adds to likelihood of it attractive a lot more links than just a re-written piece would.

Are you and your client in the same location/ city? If not, that could just be the answer as Google gives different results based on location.

Also, are you 'logged in' to Google Account while searching? Personalized (logged in) search results are different from search results that show up when you are not logged in. For e.g. If you searched for a phrase, and clicked on your site, then the next time you search similar phrase, your website will show up higher than it actually is for majority of users (including your client)

It really depends on how you approach the advertising on the forum/community. If you do it in a positive way - by having helpful/relevant/subtle/non-intrusive ads, it could be a great strategy in the long run.

If you simply throw in some keywordy text links, the user experience is degraded and you also risk being 'reported' by competitors (who would be looking at your 'new' links; if niche is competitive).

It could be an affective strategy as long as you are very careful on how you carry this out - right from the initial strategy (where you host) to ads and link implementation (how you monetize)

I don't think there will be a "penalty" as per say but those links could definitely be discounted or filtered out if they are hosted on the same server (IP range).

We have many such domains pointing to our main domain and there is no issue at all. Do make sure that those 20 domains are clean and are not in 'bad neighbourhood' (bad links, hosted with bad sites, etc) as penalty could pass through a 301 redirect.

I believe its a keyword/phrase based filter. Meaning, the site probably got too many exact anchor links and/or used too much of the same keyword or phrase in the title, description & main body.

Also, like you mentioned, it could be a duplicate content issue - try looking at the re-written content: where you use the keyword/phrase that you are targeting. Perhaps, it wasn't rewritten effectively to be pass Copyscape/ considered 'original'?

That's probably just Google Bot getting smarter and incorporating Semantic more heavily than before. The link that you mentioned is most likely what you are seeing with your site as I am with couple of mine.

It's time to re-strategize.

Making links 'nofollow' to preserve link juice is a thing of the past. As of now, the "link juice" that you think you 'saved' just vanishes into thin air. Meaning, if you do use 'Nofollow' on links, you won't be saving it and passing it on to others.

100 links on page is just a broad suggestion for most websites. Our website have 180 links on homepage and we rank pretty well.

I would make sure its re-written to a major extent that it passes Copyscape check otherwise there is a possibility of duplicate content issue. Also,  if possible I suggest you try to refer to many other credible sources as well on the same topic and not just source from the 'larger organizations' piece.

You can try and a have a unique take on this much more comprehensive piece. This will do two things: make sure your content is considered original & it could also make content more "link attractive" - so you attract more links & get good returns on the extra writing effort.

The 2 links you are seeing in opensiteexplorer is most likely the 2 unique domains that link to you. 101 links in SEOMoz toolbar is the number of pages that link to you from those 2 domains.

If that's not the case, just make sure you are using the exact same url including the 'www' in the beginning.

We use DreamSystemsMedia, owned by Matt Siltala and they do a pretty good job at it.
Website: http://www.dreamsystemsmedia.com/

To get Data for these infographics, you can refer Stephen's answer in this thread as it pretty much covers it all: http://www.seomoz.org/q/data-for-articles-and-infographics

If it's one IP I suppose SEOMoz would be ok with that, but I'd contact them just to be sure ~ http://www.seomoz.org/about/contact

What would work like a charm is if you did embed that video (linking to your site) from other websites. Acts a "video link" or sort of "votes" for the video on your page -  increasing the likelihood of appearing on Google results.
Also, why not just use Youtube to embed. Since its Google's baby, they may prefer to display it over other hosted services.  Just look at what they're doing with G+ personalization results.

In the long run, having a blog on your main domain is going to outweigh the benefits of having a separate one.

Google is looking for stronger brand signals and pooling all your great content and resources under one roof will play a key factor in SEO.  If you have a blog on a separate domain and if you generate tons of links via social media.. all that "juice" is not being sort of 'transferred' to your main website, which I am assuming is the money maker.

Furthermore, Google is giving much less importance to 'keywords' in a domain. You can assume that keyword in domains is going to decrease in weight as a rank factor even more, as they can be 'gamed' easily so I wouldn't worry too much about that.

Having a separate domain could make more sense for big brands especially if SEO is not of great importance.

Press Releases are a much better traffic/clicks generating strategy than a purely SEO one. If you just do PR for the sake of links or SEO, the 'story' probably won't be compelling enough and will likely only get picked by scrapers and lower quality sites - still giving you lot of backlinks but hardly of any real SEO/ranking value, some even possibly detrimental to your link profile if yours is not an authority site - since lot of duplicate articles with exact anchors will be linking to you in a short span of time.

If I were you, I'd do not more than 1 press release a month and make sure that the story/content is 'press worthy'. Make sure you have content that you think others (your peers or audience) will like likely benefit and pick up to share. Of course, this is could be very difficult or easy depending on your industry and niche and how 'press friendly' it is. Another suggestion - go with quality PR distribution sites, not those $9.99 PR submission services

I would have said Google Directory just looking at all the importance Google gives to their own services (look +1, personal results, etc) but its been taken off couple of months ago - so Dmoz it is for Free.  And definitely BBB for paid - great to give trust signals as BBB verifies business extensively and I am positive Google wouldn't ignore that in their algo. but its pretty expensive and time-consuming to get listed there though.

When it comes to links, I'd trust SEOMoz 100x more than any Google's tool, any day.

If you'd like to verify further, I'd suggest comparing SEOMoz  link data with MajesticSEO

On-page looks good to most extent. If you just build 6-7 quality/authority links that are relevant, you have a good likelihood of outranking several competing sites to be at least on the 1st page.

If I were you I'd go for 3 word phrases first, rank for them (enjoy the traffic), and as you do that, you would be also building enough authority and trust to be strong enough to compete for major 2 word phrases. Having big goals for rankings is good but breaking them into small milestones makes them easier to achieve IMO.

We had offers from a quite a few well reputed News sources to syndicate our content but we declined those for exactly this reason.

These media sites are usually of very high authority and there is nothing much you can do about as of now to prove that you are the original source of the content as Google unfortunately still allows higher authority sites to outrank the original provider. I believe Google Authorship will reduce this issue to a good extent but right now if you don't want them to outrank you, just don't let them syndicate.

BBB is Better Business Bureau, an independent agency that verifies and accredits businesses - verifies address, etc. Their review process is pretty extensive (official visit from BBB staff in many major cities) and I believe a link from that site should be quality one, giving your site/biz location signals to Google

Here are some suggestions to rank specifically in one country

The first 2 points could be important or not depending on case by case basis (depending on competition, branding strategy, etc)

• Try getting the site hosted on that country's IP/ server
• Try using that country TLD
• Definitely get lot of national/local signals - country directory links, links from same country hosted sites, BBB or similar accreditation listing in that country,  etc

I checked the first site you linked to and it seems pretty new - just about 2 months old I believe? It doesn't seem to have any links/ authority as of yet and thats why it gives you that "No Link Data Available..." message.

Try acquiring some links on other relevant websites and checking back a few weeks later.

I have seen many cases where the 1st position holder has PA and DA less than the lower ranked ones, however, it definitely does help a great deal to see your site and page authority generally. Just putting it out there so you don't expect to automatically rank higher if/when your PA DA increases

It depends if yours is a high authority site or not. If its a relatively new site or with low-avg authority, it could very well have fallen under the 'fishy' side of the radar.

Its unlikely that nofollow links would trigger a penalty but the # of links you mention here is staggering so I wouldn't count that out.

Also, Google made 40 changes 5-6 days ago, which is when your saying your site traffic fell so it could be that as well:  http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/02/search-quality-highlights-40-changes.html

Thanks Alan - we are doing this  as of now.  I suspect  it will come at a cost of conversions/ user experience. We probably we need a lot more testing and several pages to get the right balance and decide on one.

We do use optimizely, which I believe is pretty similar to Google Optimizer. Both are JS based but from what I understand optimizely is a bit simpler to work on.  Thanks for the input!

Hey Mozzers!

We have come up with a new layout design for a category page and would love to have your opinion on it, specifically from an S_E_O perspective

• Here is our current page: http://www.builddirect.com/Laminate-Flooring.aspx

• Our new page (pending approval):  http://www.builddirect.com/testing/laminate-flooring/index.html

Just to brief you in on the key differences b/w old and new layout:

Left text link menu is removed in new layout
New layout looks funny with JS disabled - long vertical line up of products(Perhaps important keywords/ content in new layout appears way down?)
Lot of 'clunk' has been removed (bits of text, links, images, etc)

Thanks for checking this out.

May be I am not seeing properly but where is your sitemap?

Also, do you add fresh content deeper pages frequently? These intelligent little bots crawl a good deal initially but they tend to 'learn' the frequency of your content updates and update their re-visit schedule accordingly. As busy as these little ones are, you have to feed them something worth devouring and do it so frequently, so their frequent visits to your site is worth their time.  If they keep visiting your site and don't find nothing new..they have just spent all their energies for nothing and hence they become lazy for future visits, and this could explain delay to deeper pages. Just my thought... there could be something to else to it too.

Go to online marketing conferences and do the hunting there - Pubcon, SMX, etc. If not all, a lot of the healthy deer go there for fresh water, and hunting becomes really easy.

You will find lot of talent there no doubt; it's just being able to persuade them where its a bit tricky

For informational and educational websites like wikihow.com - links come naturally and easily as compared to other biz/ecom websites.

Wikihow has over 1,800 backlinks from Educational / university sites, and over 200 links from Government sites and that speaks a lot about their content. This is not to say that they can skip link building strategies, but it is just a lot easier to get links for such websites.

Mashable links to them: http://mashable.com/2009/02/18/how-to-guide/ , and so does Google: http://www.google.com/adplanner/static/top1000/

In short, the quantity and the quality of their content does the link building for them to a major extent.

Title change and textual content/ description change (target keyword change) happens with many websites naturally and there is nothing suspicious about it.

The only challenge here is to convince SE's the homepage is about the new phrase, not the phrase you have been working on, and that involves throwing lot of signals (social, content, links, etc) that would resonate this change. The signals for new phrases probably would need to overtake the old phrase ones to be effective - but this doesn't have to be if the competition is not very high.

I imagine it has something to do with IIS compatiblity issue with Wordpress/ PHP. Your host might have to spend $10k or so to get the latest IIS to make it compatible with PHP and that's my best guess as to why they won't do it.

Here is a link for the IIS compatbility with PHP, it helps: http://php.iis.net/
My recommendation for an easy to use simple shopping cart is OpenCart. I find it much simpler than Magento and has a host of features that most webmasters would be content with. The script is free but if you want more advanced options/ features, you can get those 'extensions' for $5-99. The script is easy to work on and customize.