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Hello Moz Community! I'm really struggling trying to decide on an improved site architecture. I run an online proofreading & editing website.  This leaves us targeting many different niche keywords. For example: blog editing/proofreading, essay editing/proofreading, book editing/proofreading, resume... you get the point.  I feel like editing & proofreading are similar enough to target on the same page(s). However, the issue is that I'm also having to deal with what I'm calling derivative keywords. For example, when I try to optimize for 'essay editing/proofreading', I also have to think about: paper editing, paper editor, paper correction, edit my paper, etc. I would have no problem optimizing the page for 'essay editing' in the title, H1, etc. and then targeting these words as secondary keywords within the body text, etc., however, I keep thinking 'a large slice of a small pie is better than a small slice of a big one.' You see, the keyword 'essay correction' has only about one-third the monthly searches as 'essay editing', but it is 50% less competitive.  The same is loosely true for the rest of the 'derivative' keywords. I'd have no problem building specific pages for these derivative keyword groups, however, I'm very concerned how this would effect my site from a user experience perspective.  I don't want to have a master "services" page with links to book editing, resume editing, essay editing, etc. and then also show paper editing, essay correction, etc.  To me, this would be confusing... "What's the difference between essay editing and paper editing?". Any guidance is much appreciated.  This has got my head spinning! Thanks!

I've been digging my teeth into SEO for a solid 1.5 weeks or so now and I've learned a tremendous amount.  However, I realize I have only scratched the surface still. One of the hardest things I've struggled with is the sheer amount of information and feeling overwhelmed.  I finally think I've found a decent path.  Please critique and offer input, it would be much appreciated. Step One:  Site Architecture I run an online proofreading & editing service.  That being said, there are lots of different segment we would eventually like to rank for other than the catch-all phrases like 'proofreading service'.  For example, 'essay editing', 'resume editing', 'book editing', or even 'law school personal statement editing'. I feel that my first step is to understand how my site is built to handle this plan now, and into the future.  Right now we simply have the homepage and one segment: kibin.com/essay-editing.  Eventually, we will have a services page that serves almost like a site-map, showing all of our different services and linking to them. Step Two:  Page Anatomy I know it is important to have a well defined anatomy to these services pages.  For example, we've done a decent job with 'above the fold' content, but now understand the importance of putting the same type of care in below the fold. The plan here is to have a section for recent blog posts that pertain to that subject in a section titled "Essay Editing and Essay Writing Tips & Advice", or something to that effect.  Also including some social sharing options, other resources, and an 'about us' section to assist with keyword optimization is in the plan. Step Three:  Page Optimization Once we're done with Step Two, I feel that we'll finally be ready to truly optimize each of our pages.  We've down some of this already, but probably less than 50%.  You can see evidence of this on our essay editing page and proofreading rates page.  So, the goal here is to find the most relevant keywords for each page and optimize for those to the point we have A grades on our on-page optimization reports. Step Four:  Content/Passive Link Building The bones for our content strategy is in place.  We have sharing links on blog posts already in place and a slight social media presence already.  I admit, the blog needs some tightening up, and we can do a lot more on our social channels.  However, I feel we need to start by creating content that our audience is interested in and interacting with them on a consistent basis. I do not feel like I should be chasing link building strategies or guest blog posts at this time.  PLEASE correct me if I'm off base here, but only after reading step five: Step Five:  Active Link Building My bias is to get some solid months of creating content and building a good social media presence where people are obviously interacting with our posts and sharing our content. My reasoning is that it will make it much easier for me to reach out to bloggers for guest posts as we'll be much more reputable after spending time doing step 4.   Is this poor thinking?  Should I try to get some guest blog posts in during step 4 instead? Step Six:  Test, Measure, Refine I'll admit, I have yet to really dive into learning about the different ways to measure our SEO efforts.  Besides being set up with our first campaign as an SEOPro Member and having 100 or so keywords and phrases we're tracking... I'm really not sure what else to do at this point.  However, I feel we'll be able to measure the popularity of each blog post by number of comments, shares, new links, etc. once I reach step 6. Is there something vital I'm missing or have forgotten here?  I'm sorry for the long winded post, but I'm trying to get my thoughts straight before we start cranking on this plan. Thank you so much!

I'm digging my way through my competitors' link profiles on OSE and came across one that had been using a site called ArticleBase.com Apparently you can publish articles for free and browse other published articles for usage on your own site (provided you follow their TOS).  It actually seems like a nifty idea. I'm wondering if anyone has utilized this site for re-publishing content and building external links. Worth the effort? Thanks!

I've been analyzing some of our competitors: essayedge.com and papercheck.com Both sites have a large number of 'total links'... about 93,000 each.  The former has about 1,200 linking root domains while the latter only has 195.  Even for 1,200 linking root domains, 93k total links seems like a ton to me. Our site has 101 linking root domains and only 299 'total links'. I'm quite new to this whole SEO game and admittedly still learning a TON.  Am I missing something here?  How do sites generate so many links?  This seems nuts to me. Thanks for any help!

I've been pursuing an internet startup for over a year now.  We've figured a lot of things out along the way and even managed to start making some modest revenue ~$3,000/month. We're just now starting to dig into SEO and I'm realizing that most of our keywords aren't very high volume.  The best have 1,000 local searches per month (exact match) with most being a couple hundred local searches. I'm worried that I've picked a market that's too small, but I don't have the SEO experience to know if this is normal or not.  Most of my keywords are rated 'highly competitive' and also are stacked with CPC ads upon Google search. I'd love to know what others' experience with keyword volume is and if I'm just overreacting on limited knowledge. Thanks!