Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Excellent, did it, got data, very happy.

Just incase anyone else comes across this there is 1 correction to the above, and 1 missing step:

9. To match keywords to their change line, follow this specifically.  In H4, type =B1  This should now say your keyword.  Manually type in a few of these, so go to B8 and insert the formula =B5, then do the same with B12.  The formula is =B9.  You should see three keywords in Column H.

should be

9. To match keywords to their change line, follow this specifically.  In H4, type =B1  This should now say your keyword.  Manually type in a few of these, so go to H8 and insert the formula =B5, then do the same with H12.  The formula is =B9.  You should see three keywords in Column H.

So you only put this formula in Column H, referencing column B.

Then, between Step 10 and 11 you need to copy column H and do Paste Values, otherwise when you sort in step 11 you will end up with #REF errors.

This has yielded some excellent data for me to slice and dice.

WOW!

That is the most detailed response I have seen in a Q&A.  Thanks for going to so much detail.

Definitely write this up as a YouMoz, as I have a feeling this would be a great interest to a lot of people, and could well get promoted to the main blog.

Right, I'm off to fire up Analytics and Excel and see what I can see.

This truly is brilliant.  Thanks so much.

Keri, thanks for the heads up on the alerts blog post.  I have used alerts, but for some reason I just didn't think to use these to identify changing trends in keyword usage.  So I will give this a look also.

Thanks Guys

Hi Guys

I just spotted in the Google Analytics > Traffic Sources > Search Engine Optimisation > Queries section a keyword that on the 27th Feb went from generating 35 impressions per day to 2000 impressions per day.

This was down to people searching for a newly launched product.

Does anyone know how I can identify any increases like this easily?  I only came across this by accident, and I am 1 month behind the times.  It would have been ideal to pick this up closer to the time so I could capitalise and write some great content on the topic.

Thanks

Paul

Hi

Not sure why this is happening, but I am having a lot of trouble viewing your gzipped sitemap.

Your robots.txt file is pointing at a gzip sitemap

http://www.tomlondonmagic.com/robots.txt

http://www.tomlondonmagic.com/sitemap.xml.gz

Is that what you submitted to google?  Try submitting the non gzip version and see if that makes a difference:

http://www.tomlondonmagic.com/sitemap.xml

Thanks

I think to get any helpful responses you will have to give some specific details.

It could be down to a number of factors, so in order to help the community is going to need to know what your site is to be able to look at it and give you some pointers.

With the info you have given, you are just going to get a bog standard list of all possible reasons for delisting, which isn't going to help you at all.

Hey There

I would say if you think the content will be useful for your visitors/customers then add it.  If you are wanting to add the content to attract new browsers through the SERPs then you are out of luck.  As you say the content is not unique, so you are unlikely to be attributed as the source/original author of the content.

I don't think (although someone will come along and put me in my place) you will be penalised for adding the content, you just won't receive any SERP boost for it.

But as I say, if it helps your customers, then go ahead and add it.

Thanks EGOL

This all makes sense.  It's nice to get a bit of a sanity check.

I think I worry because in the SERPs we struggle against our competition, but once we get a browser conversion is good.  So I keep worrying about the SERPs.  But I know I need to just concentrate on writing good content and adding depth to the site, and that will hopefully give us the pay day we are looking for.

Thanks

Paul

Excellent, great stuff

Thanks for your help.  I think these blog posts provide real value to the customers, which is the main thing.

Thanks

Paul

Hi guys

I have an eCommerce site and a blog. the blog is on a suddomain. I am writing content about our products on the blog, I.e. Full in depth reviews and top 10 lists etc.

These blog posts link back to the main product page.

It would also be nice for customers on the site to a "blogs about this product" section. However, would a link from the product page to the blog weaken the internal link from the blog to the product?

Thanks

Paul

Hi Tom

Thanks for taking the time to help me.  I like your ideas.  It's good to get input from someone with fresh eyes.

I hadn't thought about outreaching to Glamour, because we are a third party agent who sell subscriptions on behalf of the publishers of Glamour.  In effect we supply them with supplementary subscription orders, in addition to those they get themselves, so I think they would be unlikely to want to push people to us.  However, they may like to link to  that content, as it puts a fresh spin on their title.  I will look into that.

I like the idea about speaking to other bloggers.  Would you suggest opening with asking them what they think of the blog, and what they think about this topic of buying a magazine as a gift?  What's the best way to find these people?  Search for fashion blogs, twitter accounts etc?

Infographics, I have mused on these for a while.  They are all the rage, but I often wonder what percentage of total infographics actually become wide spread.  Therefore is it worth the time and effort creating one?  I might spend an hour or 2 playing with the idea and if it looks good I will add that to our blog also.

Thanks again

Paul

Morning Guys

As part of a bigger SEO Project I am writing some blog posts.  I am trying to use information we have based on shopping habits within our store.

So I have written this first blog post:

http://blog.uniquemagazines.co.uk/2013/03/top-10-womens-magazines-purchased-as.html

What can I do with my blog now to get more exposure?  I have submitted our blog to a couple of RSS directory lists.  I also created a pintrest board, and announced the blog post on our facebook and twitter accounts.

I am hoping to do 1 of these bigger posts per week, and this took me about 3-4 hours to research the stats and compile the information, so obviously the more I can get out of it the better.  Also, I am hoping over a number of weeks I can identify what sort of content relates best to our customers/browsers.

Thanks

Paul

Hmm, a bit worried you had some errors.  Thanks for pointing this out.  I can check our error logs around the time period you were looking and see what I can identify.

I will be starting on the Q&A content soon, just working through some check lists and audits first.

Right, best  get these errors checked out.

Thanks for your help

Paul

Thanks Alan

I am working through a number of audits/check lists now to basically identify as much info as I can and go from there.

Incidentally, I have started to read some of your posts on search engine journal.  Very interesting stuff.  Thanks for taking the time to help me with my issues, and my understanding of the issues

It is very much appreciated

Thanks

Paul

Hey Modulusman

Thanks for taking the time to look at my problem.  I think what I really needed was a fresh perspective which is what You and Alan have done.

I was wondering when you say you found quite a few errors, what do you mean? Duplicate content, duplicate titles, poor content, spelling mistakes?

I like your suggestion about writing content about things other than buying magazines.  I just need to identify what that content would be

As I mentioned to Alan above we have identified a way to get more quality content, about some longer tail keywords, is to write Q&A about the magazines.  So for example "Can I buy vogue for delivery to the USA?" we can answer  that question and write some nice content around that.

What I struggle with though is that question could be used for any magazine, i.e. "Can I buy Magazine X for delivery to the USA?"  Basically change the magazine name, and country, and you could spin out hundreds of questions.  But that to me is too much duplicate content.  How many times can you uniquely answer the question "can I buy magazine X to be delivered to country Y".

I think I have a fairly clear plan of action, but I still have some big questions or uncertainties which I need to address, this one mentioned here about Q&A content being a biggie.

Again thanks for your time, and if you could point me in the direction of the errors you mentioned I would be most greatful.

Thanks

Paul

Thanks again Alan

What you are saying reinforces the decisions I have come to.  I was just doubting myself with so many different view points and contradictory articles.

With regards to audits, I have performed a few over the past few weeks.  I have crawled the site with many tools to identify issues.  I have looked at the internal link structure.

I have been wrestling with the quality content issue in my mind, and the decision I have come to is to create a magazine subscription Q&A where we will write quality content about specific questions our customers have.  So for example taking Vogue magazine, we would write answers to questions about Vogue magazine.  Is this what you refer to as sub-pages which add depth to the topic?  This is what I understand you to mean.

Your point about content above the fold is interesting.  From a user experience point of view we took the decision to put the call to actions above the fold.  This means the content is below these call to actions (add to basket buttons).  What you are saying is because the mentioned competitor has content above the fold, this could be something that helps them.  I would be very hesitant to push our call to action down the page, potentially below the fold.  Especially as to test this would mean making that change and leaving it for several weeks for google to recrawl the site.  As you say this is just one of many things, but this is the sort of issue I wrestle with mentally.

Regarding back links, I do know that this competitor did some work around 2 years ago and had an SEO firm "obtain" a huge number of back links.  This killed them completely for 6-8 months, as the links were of poor quality.  They had to hire a new SEO firm to build new links.  So yes their quantity of links is huge, but there's a lot there which caused them some serious issues for a while.

So our strategy anyway is to

• add more quality content,
• develop sub pages around the top X products to add depth to those products/magazines,
• continued development of back links into the product pages not just the home page,
• identify the top ranked pages on our site and link those to top 2 products to channel rank to sub pages

Does this look like a sensible path to you?

Thanks

Paul

Thanks Alan

I think we are coming from the same angle.

I started this question asking how I go about doing an audit/analysis which would then give me some sort of roadmap down which I can go, even just a general direction.  I was hoping I might get some pointers on what to analyse, but maybe I was going the wrong way about it by giving a specific example with a specific competitor.

I guess I am on my own to figure this out, as no one out there really seems to have any clear advice for someone like me, other than entering into a contract with an SEO firm and pay £1000s a month, and let them do the same trial and error work I could do myself.

Thanks for taking the time to talk with me

Paul

Hi Alan

Thanks for your response.  To be honest it has confused me more than help.

I understand SEO is about a lot of different factors, but in certain cases there has to be certain things that can be looked at?  It can't just be a case of "throw 100 different things at the wall and see what sticks"?

There must be a way to perform some sort of analysis, and at least get a steer on the route to go down.

I am not sure what you mean about "You refer to a single competitor, yet you fail to even discuss the fact that you're five positions lower in rankings than they are".  I thought when I said "one of our main competitors in position 7,8,9 for Teen Vogue, Luomo Vogue and Italian Vogue.  We come in at position 4 page 2 (UniqueMagazines).".  Surely I was saying there that they are position 6,7,8 and we are position 14?  Isn't that what you are saying?

What I was trying to say is I didn't expect to fix one thing and all would become good in the world.  I know there are various factors.  What I was asking is if I take our website as a whole it would be a daunting task determining where to start.  Is it possible to take some specific cases, i.e. top 20 products, and analyse those to identify some opportunities.  But what would I analyse?  There are over 200 factors that go into a google serp.  Are you suggesting I analyse and target all 200?  (Given that not all the factors are known).

Thanks

Paul

Hi Guys

I am asking a lot of questions lately, so I am very grateful of the community support.  Hopefully I can start giving back soon.

I am getting myself tied up in knots with SEO on my site.  I have read so many articles, and many contradictory opinions that I can't workout which path to go down.  So could you look at this specific example and give me a brutally honest kick in the right direction?

If you do a search on google (UK) for "Vogue Magazine Subscription" you will see one of our main competitors in position 7,8,9 for Teen Vogue, Luomo Vogue and Italian Vogue.  We come in at position 4 page 2 (UniqueMagazines).

Why is it that our competitor ranks higher than us, for what is really an unrelated search?  I mean, yes Teen Vogue, Italian and Luomo are relevant to those keywords, but surely our page is more relevant?

Is it because the competitor has a slightly higher domain authority?  We are working on generating content to drive back links, and so get authority.

I have looked into so much, generating content, updating internal link architecture, creating back links.  What in this specific example should I be looking at?

I have analysed our back link profile, it's ok.  I did some work on internal links, as our site ranked first for Italian Vogue, which seemed to be due to more links internally pointing at the italian version.

What metrics should I be looking at to determine what makes our competitor rank higher?

Many thanks if you can help

Paul

That does indeed help.

Thanks

Paul

Hi Guys

I have worked throug this SEOMoz article to examine our back link profile

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-check-which-links-can-harm-your-sites-rankings

This is an image of the chart I ended up with.

http://bit.ly/Z7Pp1G

Does this look like an OK back link profile?  Should I be doing something about the high number of 0 and -1/NA rank links?

Thanks

Paul

backlinkprofile.gif

Hi LIttlesthobo

We did run a competition/giveaway for around 2 years.  What we found though was that we got the same people entering the competition all the time.  i.e. professional compers.

Are you saying that your competitions give you continued social interactions and are generating back links for you?

Thanks

Paul

Hi Egol

Thanks for your assistance.  We are looking at building more content through Q&A sections, video etc.  As you say this is a significant investment.  How do you gauge the ROI on a content writing project like this?  At the end of the day we are in this to generate revenue, or otherwise we might as well put on our coats and go home.

Something we did try in the last 12 months was adding more detail to our products.  Ok, let's be specific.  We sell Magazine Subscriptions, so we started adding details to the magazines about the target audience, if a kids magazine we listed what the target age is.  We listed the ISSN numbers, as schools and libraries search by these.  We added a whole raft of information bits to the magazines.  The net effect, we dropped in the search results.  This is probably down to other factors.

So now we are looking to build a Q&A, but I don't need to tell you how much of an investment that will be.  And with our experiences its difficult to walk down that path not knowing if it will make any difference, and what ROI we can expect.

What makes it even tougher is a competitor of ours who does very little in the way of content marketing, and does nothing more than add a magazine to their site, gets ranked far higher than us.

So we work our socks off going backwards, and this competitor simply adds product and does fantastically well.  There seems to be something amiss there.

I am waffling on now so I will end that there

Thanks for your help

Paul

Hi seomoz guys

So I read a lot on seomoz and other sites, and see a lot of info about earning links, but this all seems to be aimed at blogs and brochure sites.

Being blunt, we sell stuff. Our competitors sell the same stuff. We are limited on what we can do product description content wise as our suppliers expect us to use the content they supply.  We are now putting together q and a pages based on a great article in the seomoz blog.

Does anyone have any great ideas for developing link bait or just getting links to an eCommerce site?

We know our service is good, and our product is good, but that's not enough to convince someone to link to us.

Help

Thanks

Paul

Thanks Chris

I checked the links to the UK Vogue page with both the internal link checker on web master tools and screaming frog.  There were less to the UK page. So that's pretty clear I need to improve the architecture of links here.

Regarding the top 10 women's magazines area, what would be the most effective way of utlising that content?  I could do something as simple as a numbered list 1-10 with the mag names in a side bar, or I could do a seperate page, with a paragraph of content or 2 for each title.  This could take the form of a blog post.

I guess I could do both?

Thanks for your extremely helpful input.

Paul

Hi Guys

I think this sounds like a right noobie question, but I am amongst friends so here goes.

So our website is an ecommerce site selling magazines.  There are certain magazines, for example Vogue, where we sell the UK version, USA, italian, spanish, french etc there's basically 13 different Vogue magazines on our site.

The more niche ones attract some good long tail traffic.  However, the UK version is competitive and so requires some extra umph to get us a half descent rank.

However, when you search "vogue magazine subscription" for example, it's our italian vogue which is listed first.

When I looked into this, I found that we had linked out from our UK Vogue to Italian vogue.  Could this have given the italian vogue a marginal boost, as it had the additional internal links?

What I have now done is add to some, not all, of the variations something along the lines "you will find the UK Vogue magazine here" where "UK Vogue Magazine" is the anchor text.

Is this the right thing to do?  Will this identify that the UK Vogue page is the higher priority page, or the more important page?

I was also going to add to a category page a "Top 10 Womens magazines" section, and link to Vogue from there.

Am I barking up the right tree?

Thanks Guys

Paul

Just checked google analytics, and the mobile site is getting traffic from google, yahoo and ask engines.  So inbound traffic is coming through.  And it is converting to sales, which is the important bit.

I will update the DTD, and monitor it over the next few days/weeks and see what happens.

Thanks for all your help Mike.

That's great Mike, thanks for your help.

I have also found this webmaster guideline

" Pages we determine aren't viewable on a mobile phone won't be included in our mobile site index (although they may be included in the regular web index). This determination is based on a variety of factors, one of which is the "DTD (Doc Type Definition)" declaration. Check that your mobile-friendly URLs' DTD declaration is in an appropriate mobile format such as XHTML Mobile or Compact HTML (3). If it's in a compatible format, the page is eligible for the mobile search index"

This links through to http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=72462

I think I should change the DTD to a mobile friendly one and see if that helps.

Thanks Mike

Silly question, but how to you check specifically the google mobile index?  Is this just by doing a site:m.uniquemagazines.co.uk search in a mobile device?

Thanks

Paul

Thanks Mike

I must admit I have done so much reading, to the point of confusing myself totally.  When you say no pages are indexed to you mean in the mobile index?

When I do a search on normal google, site:m.uniquemagazines.co.uk it tells me that 5480 pages are indexed.  Now, I am hoping this is because initially we didn't have a rel=canonical on the mobile content and so it has ended up being listed in normal serps as duplicate.

This may be why the m.uniquemagazines.co.uk domain is not indexed in the mobile serp index.

I am assuming that in web master tools our mobile site should show a number for indexed pages next to the Mobile submitted section.

Many thanks for your help

Paul

Wow, so many responses

Just as an update I have implemented canonical and alternate tags on the desktop and mobile site to clarify to google et al that the mobile site is the same content as desktop, just an alternate delivery.

Will see what that does for me.

Hi Guys

I wonder if you can put me right on this query please?

We have a mobile version of our site, on an m. domain.  it is actually http://m.uniquemagazines.co.uk.

I have created a mobile sitemap, and added the sitemap reference to the robots.txt file.  I have setup the site in web master tools, and submitted the sitemap to web master tools.  The sitemap can be found at http://m.uniquemagazines.co.uk/sitemap.xml.  This is an index file, which in turn links to 3 sitemaps, one for pages, one for product pages and one for category pages.

I have not blocked any crawlers in the robots.txt file.

My query is we have some products showing up in the SERPS with both the mobile and normal website.

Secondly, in web master tools I am told that our mobile sitemap contains 3675 submitted URLs.  However, it states under the WEB banner that 3675 submitted, and 3675 indexed.  But under MOBILE it states 3675 submitted, none indexed...

I will attempt to attach a screenshot from WMT of this.

Do you have any ideas what has gone wrong here? is it wrong, or is this what you would expect to see?

Many thanks

Paul

ScreenHunter_18%20Feb.%2021%2010.55.jpg

Hello

Did you get any further with this? We are in a similar position with shop wiki and would love to know how you got on with this issue.

Thanks

That's great thank you.

I don't want to get hung up on building a website which is good for Google, I want a website which is good for users, but of course I want to get as much benefit from Google as possible.

One aspect cutting out nearly 300 links has had is the site loads faster, which is good for users, so a great benefit there.

Thanks again.

Hi Guys

I am new here, and very much learning a lot, and enjoying the benefits of being an SEOMoz user.

So here goes with my first question (probably of many).

I have known for sometime that our website has a top heavy number of links in the primary navigation.  But I wasn't too sure how important this was.  Our main objective was to make an east to use nav for customers.  All of the feedback we have had says that customers really like our navigation, as it is easy to use etc etc.

However, when running an SEOMoz campaign on our site, again we got back that there are too many links on the pages.  Example, home page has 500+ links.

So I decided to do something about this.  I have implemented what I think is a good solution where by the drop down navigation isn't loaded on first load.  If the user then hovers over one of our "departments" the sub navigation is loaded via Ajax and dropped in.  This means if the user wants it, they get it, if not then it's not loaded with the page.  My theory being that Google loads the page without all the links, but a user gets the links as and when they need them.

I tested with the SEOMoz toolbar and this tells me that when I load the home page there is 167 links in it vs 500+ previously.  However, the my campaign still tells me that my home page has 450+ links (and this is a recent crawl of the page).

Our site is here: www.uniquemagazines.co.uk

Can you tell me is what I have done is a) a good solution and b) does the SEOMoz crawler have the ability to trigger the hover event and cause the AJAX load of the sub navigation content?