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I guess this is the most logical place to share this with you. I do SEO for many sites. I've recently been focusing on two in particular for the same client. We used Netfirms SEO services to get links--he insisted--which basically consists of writing articles in broken English and placing them all over blog networks with our desired anchor text.

On the other site, I simply refused to employ those services. This was the client's main site, and was way too important to mess around with. I built links myself, the legit way.

Long story short, for months I watched the shady, black hat site climb and climb in the SERPs, while the white hat one kept falling.

This morning, I checked my SEOmoz campaigns and my white hat site went from #8 to #2 and my black hat site went from page 2 to no longer being in the top 50.

Just another example of what's been happening with Google lately and how great it is. Interestingly, the black hat site never got a warning in GWT about buying links.

Now I just have to figure out a way to break the news to my boss and tell him I told him so without actually using those words.

Whether those companies actually deliver on that promise or not is moot. You'll have thousands of "fans" who couldn't care less about anything you post. And since Facebook apparently only shows your posts to a certain percentage of your followers, if you have a lot of fluff in there, you're decreasing the amount of real fans who will see your content. The best case scenario is that it will make you look bigger than you are and give you that "social proof" that may encourage more people to like your page. Worse case scenario is you get banned from Facebook. Seriously, I'd advise against it.

It's generally agreed that a best practice in this regard is to use target="_blank" any time you are linking out to a different website. You should keep your internal links within the same window or tab unless you are linking to a part of your site that's totally unrelated or if you really don't want the user to leave the page they're on.

Additionally, if you are not using target="_blank" make sure all of your pages have clear, easily-understandable navigation, especially when it comes to linking back to your main page.

The latest Whiteboard Friday should answer all of your questions.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-do-i-find-a-good-seo

I will leave you with one piece of advice. My number one rule for finding an SEO company is this: You find the good guys; the bad guys find you. In other words, do NOT respond to those solicitations from India. Go out and do some research.

Here's a really good post to check out as well: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-many-seo-consultants-actually-know-what-theyre-talking-about

It definitely depends on how you're doing it. Without seeing it, I can't say for sure, but usually this method only hides things from the user, not the search engines. I'd recommend running your page through a service that shows you what the spiders see.

Try: http://www.iwebtool.com/spider_view

If you see your text in the results, you're probably safe.

One of the sites I designed, customwovenlabels.com, uses this with javascript. If you go there and look at the copy on the homepage, you will see a link that says, "read more." Google sees all the text and doesn't distinguish the difference between what's initially seen vs. hidden.

So if you discover that your method isn't ideal, there are always other alternatives.

While the SEOmoz industry survey states that the majority of us are in-house, it seems that the individuals who work for agencies and the entrepreneurs are the most active in this community, especially as far as blog posts go. I was shocked to learn the real ratio.

I'm in-house, by the way.

I would strongly advise against this. I looked at your site, and those are all very important navigation links. It's rumored that Google only crawls the first 100 links on a page, so that's why SEOmoz returns that warning. It's not something you need to be overly worried about, especially if your site is user-friendly and logically laid out, and if your links are relevant, all of which seem to be the case on your site.

I used a very similar service that promised 25 edu backlinks for 25 dollars. It was a huge mistake, as all they did was place spam comments on dofollow edu blogs. We actually saw our ranking drop a couple of spaces because of this. I learned my lesson and will never do anything like this again. Hence, I do not recommend this. Any company that charges to get you links usually only acquires poor quality links.

That whole "If you build it, they will come" scenario only applies to well-established sites that have thousands of followers. You can create the best site in the world but what good does it do you if no one sees it? And how do you get found and well-established in the first place? Oh, right: SEO!

Could be. I don't see why they'd waste any effort trying to dominate a result they're irrelevant for and no one will click on, or if they do, will bounce.

If you're looking for a second opinion, I 100% agree with Thomas.

I'd say to stick with the standard rule here of designing for users first and foremost. If it doesn't make sense to update content, don't just do it for the search engine's sake. Or at least try to rack your brain for some type of content that is severely lacking from your site that it truly needs.

As mentioned in a recent SEOmoz blog post, the best way to keep your homepage fresh to the search engines (other than adding new content to it) is to link to it from fresh, new pages, such as blog posts.

Well, I use Open Site Explorer and similar tools, but with some of the results, just because a competitor had a link from a certain site, doesn't mean I'll be able to get one. A lot of the time, it is one of their clients mentioning they did business with them. A lot of the others are paid links and stupid, low quality directories. I am struggling with the fact that all my competitors are all employing black-hat, spammy link acquisition methods, and here I'm trying to do everything the right way, which takes forever with so little payoff. I could spend three hours for one guest blog backlink. Not to mention I keep dropping in the SERPs while they keep rising.

Having duplicate meta keywords will trigger red flags in the Moz tools and other site quality tools, but only because it's a potential user quality issue. Google doesn't officially use meta descriptions as a ranking factor, so as long as the meta descriptions are appropriate and as best as they can be for what's on the specific page, it doesn't matter how different they are from each other page-to-page. Just keep in mind that this is what shows up in the SERPS, so make them interesting enough to make a user want to click your page over the ones surrounding it.

I'm grappling with the same issue, and I just have to keep telling myself that with all the spam-attacking algorithm changes Google has been coming out with lately that those sites will be penalized soon.

You could always help Google along with it.

1. Is building one massive site better?

For SEO and for your own peace of mind, yes. You'll only have one site to keep track of and to do SEO on. That site will build up authority over time, thereby getting better traffic and rankings.

1. If so, how should I structure the blog area so that each article ranks well? Would it be better if they were well categorized pages in wordpress instead of blog posts?

The blog area should be a blog instead of Wordpress pages. Otherwise, why wouldn't you just make them regular pages the main part of your website? All you have to do is make a category for each niche.

1. By posting all the articles on a single site, does that mean it will be harder to rank for any single thing since the topic is so broad?

Not necessarily. Google likes to rank authority sites. If you are maintaining 50+ sites, it would be safe to assume they do not get a lot of traffic and don't have a lot of authority. But with one site, you are getting all the traffic of the 50+ sites on a single site. The more you put into a SINGLE site the more it will gain authority. An internal page of a site with a DA of say 60, could easily outrank the homepage of a DA20 site.

The most annoying thing is how Google is, in a way, controlling us like marionettes. Ever since they said that authority of a site is determined by how many links are pointing to it, we went out and built links like crazy. Next, they said to create awesome content that people will want to link to--we've since been bending over backward doing it (I'm not saying that creating good content is a baD thing, of course). Whatever they come out with next, we'll do too

I know it just comes down to the fact that it's necessary to rank, but when I really stop and dwell on it, it's like they have the entire population of Internet marketers under their thumb. We all like to say there are other sites out the besides Google and we don't have to do what they tell us, but are we just kidding ourselves? Would we be happy being #1 on Yahoo and Bing but nowhere on Google? Absolutely not! Would we be OK with being #1 on Google and nowhere on Yahoo and Bing? I'm sure we could think of worse things.

Over the past few months, through Google Alerts, I've been watching one of our competitors kick out crap press releases, and links to their site have been popping up all over blog networks with exact match anchor text.

They now outrank us for that anchor text. Why is this still happening? Three Penguin updates later and this still happens. I'm trying so hard to do #RCS and acquire links that will ensure our site's long-term health in the SERPs.

Is anyone else still struggling with this crap?

Here's the real question: if you acquire inbound links to blog.domain.com do those links add to the DA of domain.com or only blog.domain.com? Answer that and you've answered the question.

We have someone with a shady link profile ranking above us too. Don't worry; as was already said, it's only a matter of time before they're gone. Just keep working on your long-term #RCS strategies, and they will pay off in the long run--probably sooner rather than later.

Have you seen Jon Cooper's Complete List of Link Building Strategies?

You're bound to find something there; it's very inclusive.

If I correctly understand what you are saying, this seems like a bad idea all the way around. You shouldn't have two different domains linking back and forth looking like the same site. If you wanted to maintain good rankings, you'd have to be doing SEO work for two separate sites. And whatever SEO benefit you think you'll be getting by having a shorter domain will be lost with all the back and forth you'll have going on there. And if your main objective is to make the domain shorter for the customers' benefit, it seems like this would also cause confusion as they're navigating your site and see two separate domains in the address bar.

Oh, I just saw what you added. Yes, that's the page in question. Maybe I should do both--expand that page and write a blog post--with DIFFERENT content.

I have a few competitors outranking me using black hat SEO. I reported them to Google, and I'm just wondering if Google will even look at it. What has been your experience with this? Has anyone ever gotten results?

I am currently in the research stage of finding more sites that I will be able to do things such as submit infographics, guest post, or get easy backlinks that are legit. I feel out of options, as I have already built links with a lot of sites but feel like I need more. Has anyone ever seen someone actually sharing all of their hard work by providing a list of all the sites that worked for them? Or does there come a point when really your only option left is to guest post or be a HARO source? I have been doing those things all along--I'm not just looking for easy, lazy links!  Is there anyone who's gotten a site up to a high PR score who's felt out of options, like they've already done all they know how to do? I'd like your opinions. I know it seems like an outrageous question to ask, but I thought I'd throw it out there. I'd be willing to share sources too; I'm not just trying to mooch off people!

Many months ago, a fellow marketer at my company introduced me to Pintrest, claiming that it would be good for our business. Pintrest was very much unknown by many just a few short months ago. Since then, I have seen it take off like wildfire, with excessive media coverage, registrations, and people putting the button on their sites. It must have thousands more backlinks now than it did six months ago--high quality ones too, as it's had coverage in virtually every major new media outlet.

I want your opinion as to why it has remained a PR6 site this entire time. It was a PR6 site then and it still is now. I know the increase in PR is algorithmic, but come on! Can people share their experiences they've had link building for those higher PR sites? How much harder does it get?

I want to go in-depth about different customizations for custom caps, which is one of the products we offer. I just don't know whether it would be better--from an SEO perspective--to expand the caps sales page we already have or to write a blog post to give the site another valuable indexed page. From a user standpoint, I don't think it's as important, because if I do it the blog way, I can't just put a link on the page saying, Want more customizations? Visit our blog post.

Any opinions?

A few weeks ago, Rand did a great Whiteboard Friday about negative SEO: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/negative-seo-myths-realities-and-precautions-whiteboard-friday

There was recently a blog post on SEOmoz that actually shows the value out outbound linking in blog posts.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/5-reasons-you-should-link-out-to-others-from-your-website

But contrary to what some may say, it is a good thing. Especially if you are linking to high-quality sites such as Wikipedia, it shows Google that your blog posts are informative and helpful.

It's the sheer volume of them that is the main problem. Is there a way (that makes sense) to not have them all listed on the same page?

I can answer the first part of your question at least. It is definitely best to have site.com/blog because blog.site.com and site.com are two different sites, and you'd have to do SEO for both. With site.com/blog, you can have pagerank flow right from your homepage to your blog. I don't know how to switch it in Blogger, though, sorry. Once you figure that out, if you do a 301 redirect, your past posts will keep their inbound links, but your social counters will be reset.

Our site has about 1000 pages indexed, and the vast majority of them are not useful, and/or contain little content. Some of these are:

-Galleries
-Pages of images with no text except for navigation
-Popup windows that contain further information about something but contain no navigation, and sometimes only a couple sentences

My question is whether or not I should put a noindex in the meta tags.

I think it would be good because the ratio of quality to low quality pages right now is not good at all.

I am apprehensive because if I'm blocking more than half my site from Google, won't Google see that as a suspicious or bad practice?

Post-Penguin it's supposed to be a bit of a concern. On the other hand, we have 12,900 links from a single site, yet we have moved to the #1 position as a result of Penguin and a lot of white hat SEO, of course. I know 12,900 is nowhere near 3.1 million, but the site that links to ours is nowhere near a DA of 93 so I guess you could say it balances out?

Yes, it's fine and a good thing to do that.

1. This is the best way to do it to preserve your rankings. There's never a guarantee, but doing it this way is your best bet.

2. Once you've combined them into one, take the old page out of your sitemap.

I think that's a wonderful idea! I've been trying to market this company for six years; It's nice to have a fresh perspective! Thanks!

It sounded like you were describing us word for word. A couple weeks ago, I started a topic about this. http://www.seomoz.org/q/interesting-serp-trend-i-m-observing

I don't have advice either. Just know you're not alone and other people are feeling your frustration.

My belief is that they are not the same at all. With /blog, Domain Authority and Page Rank are being passed on. With blog. you're starting from scratch.

I don't know if this is what you're looking for, but I'm thinking from the standpoint of how you can make the most money rather than how you can increase your traffic and rankings of your current site. But make the recently acquired site a division of your current site and do business as both. Rather than ingratiating the business into yours, have two phone lines, two sets of letterhead, ect. I realize there's A LOT to doing this and you'd probably have to hire a couple more people, and it may be a bit of investment, but the long term payoff could be astronomical. I've seen clients do this right before my eyes and I have assisted them. Unless this is a known company in it's going out of business is extremely well-known. Then scrap everything I just said.

Yes, it matters. It could mean that Google is detecting it that way too, and may view them as two different sites with duplicate content. This could be hurting your rankings. Do you have access to your .htaccess file? You should add this code:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.domainhere.com$
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.domainhere.com/$1 [R=301,L]

This will redirect the non-www version to the www version and tell the crawlers this is how you'd prefer your site to display.

I've noticed it happening with the site s you mentioned and then some. I started a discussion about it awhile back. http://moz.com/community/q/interesting-serp-trend-i-m-observing

We've been outranked by ebay, amazon, wikipedia, and etsy.

Also, if your site is brand new, it won't show any links. Usually, by the time SEOmoz comes out with a new index update, it already at least a month old.

In an effort to update more often, SEOmoz/OSE are crawling fewer URLs. Likely, it's not that something happened to your domain; it's the fact that fewer of your backlinks have actually been detected by Open Site Explorer.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/july-mozscape-update

FYI: My DA used to be 45 and now it's 41. I noticed that was because OSE wasn't detecting some of my backlinks that I know are still there. My advice would be not to worry too much, especially if your rankings haven't be affected.

I'm not sure by looking at it if it's wrong since I'm not really an Apache coder. But I'm just guessing it's probably wrong since the bots are still detecting both versions of your site. I have it the way I showed you in my .htaccess file and I don't have any problems with bots detecting multiple versions. Maybe try it this way. You can always make a backup of your current file and switch back if it doesn't make a difference.

I'd suggest a combination of B and C. If you have to compromise, don't compromise B for the sake of C. C could be compromised for the sake of B a little bit, but better to find the perfect balance of the two, of course.

As far as tags go, two basic things to remember is to only give something a certain tag if your post is about that tag/word or mentions it in great detail. If it only mentions it once in passing, maybe don't give it that tag.

Another practice that a lot of people use with tags is to keep them at one word each unless they're proper names or brands. For example, if you post is about truck brakes, add the tags "truck" and "brakes" rather than "truck breaks." Most people say don't go over 10 tags per post. I don't know how much that actually matters, but I usually abide by that and it works for me.

Side point: I'd strongly recommend installing a plugin like Yoast and noindexing all tag pages.

Look at the following discussion. It should answer your question completely.

http://www.seomoz.org/q/is-mozrank-still-working

That's a good idea. 10,000 Is still a lot. You could even test fewer than 10,000 pages. Why not try 1,000?

This could turn into merely a debate of opinion. For example, in my opinion, multiple pages are more user-friendly. My advice would be to find some research data that indicates which format is more preferred by the majority of users and do it that way. User experience before search engines always.

My favorite is modified broad match and my least favorite is regular broad match. Modified broad allows for the most variety in searches without returning results that are irrelevant the way regular board match does.

Our main keyword is "embroidered patches" so here is an example

[embroidered patches] - returns only "embroidered patches"
"embroidered patches" - could return "embroidered patches for uniforms"
+embroidered +patches - could return "patches embroidered onto hats"
embroidered patches - could return nicotine patches (useless)

The bottom line is that broad match will get you the most traffic, but a large amount will be irrelevant.
Exact match won't get you as much traffic, but most of it will be high quality.
I personally think modified broad and phrase are the best balance.

Go to Conversion > Goals > Overview, and then click on Source/Medium.

I've included a screenshot that should be helpful.

http://i.imgur.com/ghEDLTW.jpg

Yikes, I didn't know the site was that big. Still, if you're afraid of how Google would "react" to those orphaned pages, I'd still test small, regardless of how large your overall site is.