Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Thank you for the in depth response.  I agree with you and EGOL that it depends on the type of client and size.

You have definitely given me a lot to consider.  I'm starting to think I need to audit my own role and come up with a more strategic approach to how I handle each client.  And your advice on how to "outsource" or manage parts that I am not personally executing on is helpful.

Hello Mozzers,

I'm wondering how many clients or SEO customers you all oversee?  Do you execute on your own?  Do you collaborate on every client or is one person responsible for their own.

Thanks

My client has a pretty creative idea for his web copy.  In the body of his page there will be a big block of text that contains random industry related terms but within that he will bold and colorize certain words that create a coherent sentence.  Something to the effect of "cut through the noise with a marketing team that gets results".  Get it?

So if you were to read the paragraph word-for-word it would make no sense at all.  It's basically a bunch of random words.  He's worried this will affect his SEO and appear to be keyword stuffing to Google.

My question is: Is there a way to block certain text on a webpage from search engines but show them to users?  I guess it would be the opposite of cloaking?  But it's still cloaking...isn't it?

In the end we'll probably just make the block of text an image instead but I was just wondering if anyone has any creative solutions.

Thanks!

What a thorough response!  I'm in the Option B scenario.  The old content has nothing to do with my site so I don't need to redirect the old URLs.  I will just wait out Google crawling those 404s.

Thanks!

Hello Mozzers,

So I just purchased a new domain and to my surprise it has a domain authority of 13 right out of the box (what luck!).  I needed to investigate.  To make a long story short the domain used to be home to a music blog that had hundreds of pages which of course are all missing now.  I have about 400 pages on my hands that are resulting in a 404.  How or what is the best method for eliminating these pages.

Does deleting the Crawl Errors in Google Webmaster Tools do anything?

Thanks

Thanks!

Creating instructional content would be a great way to capture more of those long tail searches about their products.  Thanks for the idea!

I have a client that is targeting some product related keywords.  They are on page one for them but Amazon, OfficeMax and Staples are ranking in the top 3 spots for this specific product.

Before I start targeting completely different words, do you have any advice on how to tackle big name eCommerce sites who are ranking higher than you.

Thank you!

Google has various rules surrounding bidding on and using other businesses' trademarked keywords in ads.  My understanding is that you can bid on the trademarked key phrases but you cannot use the in your ads.  Is that correct?

I was wondering if search engines see duplicate content on two different URLs if the content is available via www.xyz.com/services or www.xyz,com/services/

The site has about 30 pages in total so it's definitely on the smaller side.

We haven't set up a custom 404 yet but it's definitely on my To Do List!

-There was not a significant drop off in traffic month over month

-We don't have any links on the current site that link to the 404 pages.

I have a client that we recently (3 months ago) designed, developed, and launch a new site at a "new" domain.  We set up redirects from the old domain to the new domain and kept an eye on Google Webmaster Tools to make sure the redirects were working properly. Everything was going great, we maintained and improved the rankings for the first 2 months or so.

In late January, I started noticing a great deal of 404 errors in Webmaster Tools for URLs from the new site.  None of these URLs were actually on the current site so I asked my client if he had previously used to domain.  It just so happens that he used the domain a while back and none of the URLs were ever redirected or removed from the index.  I've been setting up redirects for all of the 404s appearing in Webmaster tools but we took a pretty decent hit in rankings for February.  Could those errors (72 in total) been partially if not completely responsible for the hit in rankings?  All other factors have been constant so that lead me to believe these errors were the culprits.

What do you think are some of the least talked about topics of SEO?  Do you think these topics need to be given more attention?  Why do you think they've been ignored?

A colleague and I were discussing whether or not iPads should be considered mobile devices.  Obviously, developing for a mobile phone is different than developing for an iPad so we're trying to determine if mobile is the correct umbrella to put both of these devices under.

A colleague and I are discussing the most optimal URL structure for both search engines and users. Our first disagreement comes in terms of files.

So for instance if I have a small site, www.abc.com, with a service landing page and 3 specific services, which structure is preferred?

• www.abc.com/services/service1
• www.abc.com/service1

The second issue is in terms of breaking up words in the URL. Should you use hyphens or not? Using the first example, which is preferred?

• www.abc.com/services/home-remodeling
• www.abc.com/services/homeremodeling.

I'm also looking for articles/case studies that support either side.  Thank you in advance for your help!

Thanks for the feedback everyone! I think it's safe to say that we're sticking with the old Analytics account.

We recently developed a new site for a client and they have opted to move forward with a domain change.  Should we create a new Google Analytics account for the new site?

Thank you! This will be very helpful to send along to our client.

Can you do me a favor and google the term "corporate video production" and send me a screen shot of the top 10 search results? Or just send the names of the sites in the top 10 search results.

Thanks so much for your help!

Hi Daniel,

Thank you for your response. My browsing history was cleared and I still saw my client's website showing up in the top 10 search results.  SEO Book's Rank Checker Tool also produced the same ranking as my manual search.

I have looked up SERP position in 4 different tools, 3 out of the 4 (Raven, SEO Moz, and Google webmaster tools) are telling me that the site is ranking in the 90s range. When I manually search for the term (when I'm logged out), the site lists on the 1st pages. I also see it listed as the #9 spot when I use SEO Books Rank Checker. Last month, Google webmaster says that the term got us 200 impressions. Has anyone seen this before?

Thanks

It depends on whats currently out there and how the page is being redirected. If the page is being 301 redirected from http to https then you may lose link juice if everyone is linking to the http version. For most webmasters, you only need a handful of pages to be https so I would consider that as well if that applies to you (it may not). As Alan mentions, you may run into duplication issues if the web page can be accessed by http and https.Check out this article by Search Engine Journal.

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-for-http-and-https/15055/

its pretty awesome. Welcome

Something that was challenging for me at first was finding .htaccess file. It should be in the root directory of where all of you website files are stored. It may be hidden or you may need to create one. If its hidden, find out how to un-hide files in your specific FTP program. If you need to create it, simply create a blank file with the name .htaccess and paste the recommendation that Ryan made.