Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Mark,

Creating 100,000 pages is definitely good for Search Engine because you have a lot more contents for them to crawl and have more chances your pages might show up on related keywords.  However, the problem is do you have enough unique contents you can post on all those 100,000 pages.  If you use similar content, I am afraid it will be duplicate contents.  You may think changing up the town names will be enough but it might be risky.

If you can create 100,000 unique contents, Sure go ahead.  If not, don't take the risk of duplicate contents.

Hi,

Google is blocking all the analytic on organic keyword search.  Therefore, i doubt there is any tools that can give you solid data on the low ranking keywords.  If you want to rank in Google, i suggest using Google's very own tool.  Google's keyword research tool is your best bet for a free tool.

You can also use Moz's analytic tool.  They give a 30 days free trial so give it a try using it to research for keywords.  http://moz.com/products

Hi Scott,

Glad you getting into SEO.

Yes, you are correct that submitting articles to other sites is a great way to build links back to your site.  HOWEVER, those are strategies and tactics people used probably 3 years ago.  Google see that people are doing that instead of building quality/natural links, they rolled out Penguin and Panda to prevent people from doing that.  By doing so, you are creating something called Duplicate content and that will either harm your website ranking or your website may not show up in the search results because the website where you submitted the article has better ranking than you.  Therefore, they are showing the other website instead.

It is best to write new articles and post it in the blog under your website's domain.  Such as blog.website.com or website.com/blog.  This will give your website more benefits of freshness and more content to crawl and possibly backlinks and social signal for your blog/website.  Thus increases your chance of appearing in SERP with more content and higher ranking due to backlinks to your website.

Hope this helps.

Hi,

I agree that the second option of removing the category makes your website looks "flat."

I would go with the third option by creating an actualy page for the category.  If anyone clicks on the category of simply visit the category URL, you can promote or display all your Natural Stones products.  Furthermore, you have more page for bots to crawl on keywords that you might want to rank for.

Hi Daniel,

Using 301 redirect is definitely the best bet.  301 redirect usually transfer 99% of the SEO to your new page so I don't believe there is any risk other than making a mistake while setting it up.

When you are redirecting make sure that eacy specific page is redirecting to another specific that is similar.  You don't want a visitor wanting to learn something specific and you redirect them to the home page.   You are losing opportunities there.  So redirect home page to home page, topic A to topic A, topic B to topic B.

After setting up all the redirects, it might take a while for Search Engines to recrawl so don't fret when you still don't see any effect after a week or so.

SEOmoz wrote a SEO Redirection Best Practices Article, hopefully it will help!

http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection

Hi,

I took a quick look at the website and actuallly did the search on Google.  Although the word "Yellow Diamond" is never mentioned in the text ,but they did use yellow "text text" diamond (such as Yellow Radiant Cut Diamond) and from what I see, Google is picking up on that.  Furthermore, I see that they also used Yellow "text text" diamond for the Image Alt Texts and Image URL  which are also factors for on-page SEO.

Furthermore the keyword yellow "text text" diamonds are mentioned a lot of times in the related items section.

I understand why you wondering why although they didn't use  "Yellow Diamond" on any on-page factors, but since you are familiar with SEO, you should know that backlinks are really important to ranking factors as well. I just used SEOmoz's research tool to check on bluenile.com's linking and saw that they have a lot of backlinks from high authority sites.  I believe that is the reason why it is ranked 4th.

Edit: I just saw the video that Tyler mentioned in his answer and it seems like it applies to this situation as well.

Hope this helps!

Hi,

Having more product pages doesn't mean better ranking.  However, having more pages just simply mean that they have more pages for Google to crawl but doesn't help with ranking.  In the end it comes down to backlinks, on page SEO (product description, title tag, url...), social mentions and etc.

I believe your competitor has better quality links as you've mentioned and probably performing better on other on site and off site activities.

Hi,

1. Blog links are still important in a way so I believe you can say it is worthy. However, since most blogs have no=follow tag, you don't get any link juice but by providing good and informative comment, it helps build your brand and direct peopleto your website.

2. Off Page strategy is not simply build backlinks.  By commenting on blogs and participating, it helps your brand build awareness and possibly increase traffic as i mentioned above.

3. As I mentioned above, majority of blogs don't give link juice in comments but people still comment because they want to participate in the community.  It is another way to help your website or brand indirectly.

I believe you get the point from the answers above.  Comments don't affect SEO but it still plays a role in marketing strategy such as building brand awareness and recognition, making yourself look like expert in a field., hopefully increase traffic via links and simply like to participate and network with other smart people.

Like what Wiqas and Adam said.  Wiki links are nofollow so in SEO sense, it may not provide you any value.

However, it definitely brings in a lot of value in driving traffic to your site.  In the end, you are doing SEO because you want more people to notice your site and increase traffic which is what Wiki is doing.

In conclusion, i would say it Wiki links bring value to your site.

Hi,

I believe your suggestion or what you have in mind is good.  Your Alt Text includes keyword and describes the image.  It is ok to have similarity in title and alt text as long as it is not exact similar.  Just make sure all your alt text and titles are different and be as descriptive as possible.

Hi Edward,

Here is a good source to start learning SEO for E-commerce sites: http://blog.kissmetrics.com/seo-for-ecommerce-websites/ 

In summary, you should conduct keyword research and target low competitive keywords and also create unique content and unique product description.  Furthermore, optimize on-page SEO with keywords and most important of all, build quality backlinks.

You can also learn more about SEO from this guide; http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo

Hi Felip,

Posting on ezine and other article directories are tactics from few years ago and shouldn't be using because Search Engines see that as duplicate content on the web and if the those directories have higher authority than your site, it doesn't benefit you at all in SEO stands.  I'm pretty sure most people recommend not to use it anymore.

However, talking about any good for these sort of directories.  Yes, i believe they are still a bit useful.  For example, if your website is not getting any traffic and you have no luck in building up the traffic via Social or Search, posting on article directories with thousands of visits, it helps your article get more impression.  That is the only good I can think of for using article directories now a days.

Hi,

I believe the attached video from Rand's whiteboard friday answers all your questions.

4)>>>Which URL strategy is best choice from a SEO standpoint?<<<

for the best result, I find using a CCTLD will have the most benefits in search ranking for people in that country.  If you use a France ccTLD, then it will have a higher ranking than the .com site if the searcher is in France.

3)>>>Do translated URLS have any mitigating affect on duplicate page content?<<<

Google mentioned in their webmaster blog that if the content is in a different language, it will not be considered as duplicate content.  http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=182192

2. Using Geotargeting on the French subfolder will give you more benefits in just using a .com site.  However, compared to ccTLD, ccTLD will have more power and benefit than the subfolder.

international-seo-where-to-host-and-how-to-target-whiteboard-friday

Hi,

You should not do directory submission at all due to the low authority links it passes on.  However, if you do decide to do directory submission, I would suggest having evertyhing unique or close to unique meaning different title, different description, different content, and etc.

As long as you have a chunk of similar content, Search Engines will pick it up as duplicate content.

Hope this helps a bit.

Hi,

In additional to what Andy mentioned, there are a few ways to avoid duplicate content even though you are using the same content.

If you are targeting different locations, you can either use subdomains or subfolders for each location and by using the hreflang tag, you can tell Google which location you are targeting.

You can learn more about the hreflang here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/12/new-markup-for-multilingual-content.html 

Hi Russell,

You can either purchse separate domains for each location or create separate pages for each city under the same domain.  Both way works.  But I would prefer using the same domain and create different pages for each location.  This way, you will have all the backlinks/link juice to one website instead of having to build differetn backlinks for each website.

For each location, you can create a page and insert the location name in the URL so that Search Engines and visitors will know that that page is for that location.  For example: www.sample.com/locationA/services/folder, www.sample.comlocationB/services/folder

Hope this helps.  .

Hi Daniel,

Another option may be use java on your filter page so that however customers filter the product, the URL will remain the same with extra parameters in the URL to filter out the products.  I find this the best way as you have the same URL for all sort of customization/filter and able to avoid duplicate content.

For example: Macys

Hi Mark,

Google only spends a certain amount of time to crawl and there is no way to tell them to crawl more or faster.  If you have a lot of pages, it might take longer.

One way to make them crawl faster may be optimize your internal linking.  If you have links pointing to other pages in your website, it makes it easier to crawl.

Other than work arounds, there are no ways to tell Google to crawl faster or more pages.  They have their own speed.

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=34439

Hi Mark,

If A,C, and E's page is similar to B,D, and F's page it is still consider dupllicate content.  Based on Webmaster's definiton:

"Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar"

Each of your pages should be unique and different from other pages.

I suggest you to continue providing quality content and target the long tail keywords.  That alone will help you generate more traffic.  Furthermore, out ranking is not a problem.  You should focus on getting to the frist page (providing quality content with long tail or regular keywords) and when you are on the first page, try to get searchers to click on your link using Title tag and Meta descriptions.

Out ranking just means they are ranked 4th and you are ranked 5th, 6th but as long as you have a better title tag and meta description. I believe searchers will click on the more attractive results.

HI Harvey,

Like Rafi said, I don't believe domain registrar location will affect SEO but the host location will affect SEO.  It will be best to host based on where your domain is targeting.  For example, it is recommended to host in UK if you have a .uk website.  Search Engines will see your host location is in UK and assume you are from UK.  Furthermore, the load time will also be faster if host location is the same.

Rand had an amazing Whiteboard Friday that explains where to host

international-seo-where-to-host-and-how-to-target-whiteboard-friday

Meta Descriptions and Meta Keywords both don't affect SEO ranking on BIG search engines but meta descriptions plays the role in getting people to click on your link so what you said is true in having meta keywords repeated is not as serious as repeated meta descriptions.  Meta descriptions may not affect your ranking but it is still **important!

I suggest making both meta keywords and description unique. ** Work on the meta descriptions first then if you have time, work on the keywords.  No rush in keywords though.  If you have other more important SEO related issue to take care of, do those first.

Hi Bryan,

Does those blogs have a contact us page or any Social Media network they are participating in?  You can fill out the contact us page or reach them via social media.

Another way I see this is that might your competitor be the owner of those free blogs and simply linking back to himself?  I've seen people creating free blogs and linking to themselves as a link building tactic.  I am not sure if it works and I am planning on testing it.

Hi Simon,

Setting up a ccTLD is definitely the best approach but it seems like it is anot a solution.  How about creating subdomains or subdirectories for each location and use rel="alternate" hreflang="x" tag and Google Webmaster Tool to Geo-target?  The tag and the tool will tell Search Engines that these content are for people in these location in these languages.  It should avoid duplicate content and you don't have to use 302 redirect.

Do you think that will be a possible solution for you?

Hi,

I'm not sure whether Google will know if it's Google translated but the golden rule is usually be as humanly as possible.  Do everything for human eyes; therefore, i would suggest translating your text by a human.  By using Google Translate, it might not make sense to your customers and sometimes a word might have 2 or 3 different meaning depending on the context; therefore, a "local" human translator would be the best bet since they'll be aware of any local interpretation and etc.

Regarding to Penalty, i don't think Google will penalize you for using Google Translate, but if your translations don't make sense, you will definitely get a lot of bounce rate which will affect traffic and thus affect your SEO work.  I guess that's a penalty.

My 2 cents

As long as the directory is not spammy and have a decent authority, the link from it wouldn't hurt.  However, majority of the directories on the web are usually spammy; therefore, I suggest not doing it and try other backlinking strategies to earn your backlinks.

Furthermore, if you content is unique, then submitting to directories would cause duplicate content.  Overall, provide unique contents and titles if you are really planning to do directory submission.

Hi,

As of now, Google didn't say anything about having too many ads on a webpage will affect your SEO.  However, based on the new search update in 2012, if you have a lot of ads at the top of your page and it takes a while to scroll down to your content, then that will definitely affect your SEO and domain authority.

In the future, having a lot of ads "Might" affect your domain authority and SEO.  Just to be safe from future updates, I suggest having a balance between content and ads on your website.

http://www.mktdojo.com/another-google-seo-factor-page-layout-algorithm

http://www.entrepreneur.com/video/223486

Hi,

Instead of blocking it, you can 301 redirect the pages on your costumesupercenter.com site to the partysupercenter.com site once it is up.  You can start building up your links, traffic and get it index it first and once your site is up, 301 will transfer everything to the new site.

This may be a short answer, but hope it helps.  Please let me know if you want me to elaborate.

Hi Matt,

The correct way to do it is leave space between each keyword.

+wedding +photographer.

This article via Google Ads should answer your question: http://www.google.com/ads/innovations/bmm.html

Hi,

The answer is YES! All your meta description should be unique and to attract users to click on your website on the search engine result page.  Each meta description should be used to summarize each page and use CTA to attract searchers to click.  Furthermore, meta descriptions should include keywords related to that page so that it will be bold in the search engine result page when someone searches for that keyword.

Although meta keywords don't play a role in SEO for big search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Ask but they should be unique as well because there are a lot of smaller engines that are still using it and of course, there are some people using smaller engines as well.  SO you want to optimize your website for all engines out there.  Just a side note, baidu still uses keywords.

Hi Tim,

Since Disavow Link Tool is Google's Tool, it wouldn't look strange to them if you used it.  However, are you sure those links casued your ranking to drop or there are other reasons.  Many people always think that their ranks dropped is because of some bad links.  Sometimes there may be other reasons such as competitors doing better SEO, getting more quality backlinks, Google didn't find your contents helpful to search, you don't update frequently and etc.  Those are only examples.

Before using the Disavow Link Tool, you should make sure the links are the cause.  Furthermore, did you or the webmaster receive an unnatural link email from Google?  Did you get any notification from Webmasters Tool?  Note that if you removed the wrong links, it might further affect your ranking.  Disavow tool shouldn't be used lightly.

Hope this give you an idea whether you should use the disavow tool.  Maybe publish more useful contents targeting keywords or update more frequently?  Build more quality links?  These should get you back on the SERP.

Hope this helps.

Hi,

So you want to add all the items from Store B to A then redirect B pages to the A pages.  Then rebrand, create a new website and redirect A to the new site?  It works and Google willl follow those 301s.  But then things might get confusing in the future.  Furthermore, if you keep redirecting, there will be a certain point where Google will stop crawling as noted in the artcile linked above.  Furthermore, it will delay crawl time.

Instead of redirecting to A then redirect again.  Why don't you rebrand first, then redirect from Store A and B to the new site.  Then there will only be one redirection Google and other search engines need to follow.  Furthermore, you will have less 301s to manage.

Hope this helps.

Hi Mike,

Commenting is definitely a good way to build relationship and share your expertise.  As long as you are staying away from spammy sites and posting sales pitch on other people's blot, I believe everything should be fine.

When you comment or participate, you don't necessarily need to post informative content but it would be nice and useful for building relationship.  I would say just not to post sales pitches.

To answer your question, links in comments are usually nofollow so it won't give you any linkjuice.  However, with Commentluv, it is nice to help your blog get more exposure and possibly traffic IF your comment was informative and etc., people might be interseted and view your blog.

Hope this helps.

Hi William,

Yup, totally understand that what's best for user is best for search engine.  I also agree that having a simple and clean URL www.yoursite.com/category/keyword is definitely better and has more benefits than www.yoursite.com/category/keyword?id=1234%Keyword-_-......

Let's not compared them to the optimized URL but what do you effect does it have on SEO?  Does it harm the site in general with this type of URL?  Or no effect at all since it also included the keywords in the front and the parameters don't play a role.

Hi,

I would use 301 redirects from the old pages to the specific pages of the new domain.  Make sure you redirect a page about rome A from the old domain to a page about rome A on the new domain.  The page on the new domain should be something similar to the page you are redirecting so that when visitors visit the old domain and get redirected to the new domain, they will still find what they are looking for.

Although your new domain does'nt have much authority but with 301 redirects, it will redirects 99% of its link juice and authority to the new domain.  So 301 redirect will help a bit with the new domain's authority.

in conclusion, your first plan will work.

Hope this helps.

Hi Donatas,

The best practice will be use canonical tag pointing to one main product.  Whether you want everything to /product or /superbrand/product, so as long as you have the canonical in place, it will avoid the duplicate content issue.

I would suggest using a more simple url as the main canonical URL such as /superbrand/product instead of /superbrand/woman/product as keyword effectiveness in URL decreases as it gets longer.

Hope this answers your question.

Hi Jason,

What you have right now is a continous loop.  With the canonical tag you are telling Google that the old page is the preferred page you want to show; however, then you have 301 redirecting to the new site.  It will only confuse the Google bot and won't help you website at all.

Solution: Remove Canonical Tags from the new pages.

Hi Matei,

I believe both ways work as both tell Google that the tags should not be crawled/index.  I personally would go with making tags noindex/follow since it is a simple check box in Yoast where as canonical tags need to be placed in all your tag setting.

Hi Paul,

I would prefer Sample A: Custom Car Parts - Personalized Wholesale Car Parts | Company Name over the other one.  However, if possible, instead of using car parts twice, is there any term for it in that industry?

To answer the question in your title, what do I consider as over-optimized title tag then it would be a title tag with tons of keywords.  For example, Traing a Dog | Dog Food | Dog Toy | Dog Apparel and etc.  Something like that I would consider over-optimize or irrelevant.  Doesn't tell Google or visitor what the page is exactly about.

Hi Donna,

What your client is doing will cause duplicate content issue.  Hopefully nothing happened to the ranking yet.  I would suggest you use cross-domain canonical tag to tell Google which version of the article you want to show up on the search results.

Instead of sharing the same article on three sites, your client can increase the exposure by sharing it on Social Media platforms or send the article to subscribers on that topic (if it applies).

There are many ways to increase exposure but sharing the same article on multiple site will only cause harm.

Hi Jim,

I may be wrong but by simply adding some HTML and CSS code to your website to make it responsive, it wouldn't lose any of the seo benefits.  Actually it has more benefit than not making the websie responsive.

To make it responsive to mobile and ipads, I would simply enter some CSS code to make the page look different based on what they are using, desktop, mobile or tablet.  By making it responsive, you don't lose any of the SEO benefits.

Hi Nikolas,

I wish seo is like 6th sense to me.  I believe you have more traffic from Google to your Squidoo page in the past and not your site is because Squidoo has higher authority than your new site.  Squidoo has more backlinks and content under Squidoo's domain and as you might know backlinks is an important factor in SEO.  Furthermore, your site is still new.  Squidoo has been around for a while and Google also look at the domain age as a ranking factor.  I don't think you can simply create a new site and hope to get as much traffic as Squidoo.  You will need more time, create more content and earn some links.

Hi Bob,

LIke what Ricky said, spending your time on building quality backlinks will be better and has more power over building backlinks to your backlinks. Building backlinks for backlinks will work since it gives the backlink pointing to your site more authority which will benefit you.  However, by doing so, it is the same as building backlinks for another site so why not spend the time building backlinks for your site?  Having more quality backlinks, even if it is 1, will have more power and authority than getting a lower quality link.

Hi Samuel,

If you want your image to show up on your guest posts, you just have to add the same code you added on your site on your guest post.  Most of the time you might have to contact the webmaster or owner of the site to add it for you.  Once they added to code, you will also have to log into your Google+ account and add those website/blog to the "Contributor" section like you did for your website.

Hope this answers your question.

Hi Diane,

If I understood your question correctly, the website ranking is dropping because there are no updates on the website and Google loves frequent updates; therefore, you are asking if there is any ways or methods to avoid the "Freshness" factor.

If that is true, as you have suggested, creating a blog and constantly writing useful articles will help you solve this dilemma.  A blog is part of your website and if you post frequently, then it is considered as your website being updated frequently.  So in conclusion, what you suggested in the last paragraph should work. (Make sure to include keywords in your articles)

Furthermore, as Keri and Logan had suggested in the answers, fixing up your page layout will also benefit your ranking.  It will reduce bounce rate and by breaking down the page to many different pages or sections, it will have more pages for google to crawl and easier to read.

Other than update frequently, there are many other factors and reason why your ranking drop.  Try building more qulaity backlinks and BLOG (have more pages to crawl).

Hope this answers your question.

Hi,

1. Yes, definitely have the blog under your domain.  It provides more benefits than not doing so.  You can either create a subdomain or a subfolder for your blog.  Blog.website.com or website.com/blog

2. Whether you have a blog outside or under same domain, you should have a link on the main website to drive taffic to the blog.

3. If you do not rewrite the article and simply post the same article to ezine, it is not beneficial.  Posting on ezine and article directories is an old tactic and doesn't work as well now.  However, these directoies can definitely give you more views but not good for SEO.

Create a blog under your domain and post frequently so your site will get the freshness update overall.  Keyword research before publishing and include them in your article.  Provide informative articles and make sure to share on Social Media sites.  Social Signal is slowly playing a part in SEO.

Hope this helps.  Please let me know if you have more questions.

Hi,

I don't think it is possible to crawl any password protectec pages.  Password protected pages are usually blocked and bots are unable access those pages.

And yes it is true that only sites that are publicly and live can be crawled.

1. If you don't want to share your link juice, then use the nofollow.  You should let your links link natually instead of manually adding nofollows to links.  The following 2 links can provide you with more information on the nofollow internal linking.

http://www.seomoz.org/q/no-follow-internal-links-2

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/questions-answers-with-googles-spam-guru

2. The more popular way to promote your website is to guest blog on other authority sites.  One, you get to spread your name and knowledge and two, you get a nice juicy nautral backlink from them.  I guess you can post on other sites with the same article to gain more visibility; however, you HAVE TO MAKE SURE that they use canonical tag pointing to your article so that Google will know that your article is the original article.  Well, Guest blog is the way to go.

Hi Steve,

Could it be that while you are cleaning up your website for SEO such as changing the Title Tag and H1 headers that you removed the keyword "purple bananas'?  Did you have these keywords on some of your on-page factors and recently removed it?