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That's a great study - thanks for sharing it with me.

Thanks Tom, yes it's Wordpress - I do manually edit the slug to take out stop words and irrelevant words but sometimes its just not enough.

If I use digital marketing as an example, I may end up having:

contentwhiz.com/content-marketing/keyword-optimisation/optimise-your-blog-posts-with-perfect-keywords

How long is too long? No idea!

I'll just Snapchat Rand and ask him...

p.s. (Sorry if contentwhiz is you!)

A client's site currently uses the URL structure:

www.website.com/�tegory%/%postname%

Which I think is optimised fairly well, as the categories are keywords being targeted.  However, as they are using a category hierarchy, often times the URL looks like this:

www.website.com/parent-category/child-category/some-post-titles-are-quite-long-as-they-are-long-tail-terms

Best practise often dictates (such as point 3 in this Moz article) that shorter URLs are better for several reasons.

So I'm left with a few options:

1. Remove the category from the URL
2. Flatten the category hierarchy
3. Shorten post titles two a word or two - which would hurt my long tail search term traffic.
4. Leave it as it is

What do we think is the best route to take? Thanks in advance!

Absolutely remove your links / disavow links from as many of them as possible.  You'll probably lose more ranking by keeping them, over the coming months.

Even if you have to work to replace them with quality links, it will definitely be worth doing!

So there's an obvious difference between a branded and non-branded search term, but I'm interested in the SERPs that are shown as a result.

Branded search only results in 7 listings on the first page - obviously because branded search is generally more navigational in nature and the lower results get minimal CT.

Are their any technical differences beyond this?

Also, how does google define a branded search term? Because a search for Vodafone or Dell show reduced results, but Coca Cola does not.

Thanks guys

Comprehensive... thanks!

If you're trying to create a site which is an information hub, obviously linking out to authoritative sites is a good idea.

However, does linking to a PDF have the same effect?

e.g Linking to Google's SEO starter guide PDF, as opposed to linking to a google article on SEO.

Thanks!

I asked a similar question recently, the response covers your question and offers some useful tips.

Good luck!

http://www.seomoz.org/q/quality-links-are-beneficial-but-are-neutral-links-detrimental

Provided the site isn't spammy and its content and link profile are of a decent quality, I can't forsee any problems.

Besides, what if a website was called freespeech.com? I cant imagine Google seeing that as spammy.

So obviously a link profile featuring quality / authoritative / relavant in-bound links is preferable, but here's my question:

If I'm starting work on a brand new domain, should I build links that one would consider neutral (i.e. from a non-spammy, but unrelated site) or should I not bother and only focus on quality links?

Thanks

If they are paid links, then it would almost certainly hurt your rankings to advertise on there. This is because they are not marked as sponsored links - Matt Cutts' article should shed some light:

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/why-did-my-pagerank-go-down/

However, we should note that those links aren't specifically paid links, but are automated links to pages with advertisements on there so there may be some ambiguity.

My advice would be to look elsewhere for quality, related linking domains.

Confirmed, my suspicions.

Thanks Philipp!

Just doing some research for a potential PPC campaign. For the search terms I'm looking to target, no paid results appear wither above or to the right of the organic SERPs.

Does anyone know the reason for this?

Search term "Cigar Merchants"

Is this because the search term is smoking related?

Thanks!

We're on the latest version and still use that plugin, working fine. But if you'd rather be safe in the knowledge that the plug in is being maintained, take a look at these

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/search.php?q=redirect

Wordpress site?

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/simple-301-redirects/

Very easy to use, highly recommended

I agree with Brad - However, you may find these links start to disappear. Lot's of these directories feature 'recent profiles' or 'new links' in the sidebar / footer etc, which causes your link to appear everywhere the template is repeated.

They may reduce down to 2 or 3 links from this site over the coming weeks

Definitely agree Matt - I find the description tag needs to be optimised to inform users about the site and to inspire click-throughs, as opposed to optimising keywords for Search engines.

good advice

Muchos gracias

I think everybody has made valid points. I would suggest what you need to take away from the discussion is this:

• Google is placing more and more focus on natural links - therefor there are some SEOs suggesting that anchor text 'Click here' or 'www.domain.com' holds more authority than 'PLUMBING PLUMBERS PLUMB'. Extreme example... but you see my point
• It's true that keywords in domains are getting less and less emphasis, partly to combat keyword stuffing in URLs but predominantly because there's no reason why www.chris.com should be any less of a plumbing authority than www.plumbing.com.

Alas, I'm rambling... the keywords in that particular anchor text wont do a great deal assuming modern theories are correct, but using the URL as the anchor text appears natural and will have positive influence.

Like all SEO, these are just opinions though! good luck

If you have no physical premises (i.e. operate online) but you only serve clients in a specific area, what is best practice for targeting a local area?

I know G. Places can be used if you have a premises, and that .co.uk / hosting server location make a difference, but beyond that... ?

Thanks!

My first piece of advice would be to appeal to their human side - state your case that it's your hard work they're stealing and that duplicate content may actually hurt both of your rankings.

If that doesn't work which I expect it wont, dend a strongly worded Cease and Desist letter, you'll find some templates here:

http://minnesotaattorney.com/cease-desist-letter-template-example-sample-forms/

Ensure all of your content has a clear copyright mark.

Use the letter to make the point that legal action may be taken if they do not stop.

good luck!

Do you use cPanel? There's a nice redirect feature in there - most control panels offer something similar.

If not, you may need to get your hands dirty. I'm not that techie but I think it's the htaccess file.

cPanel Redirect

htaccess redirect

Good luck!

All absolutely valid responses - we currently just write copy for our users and optimise HTML for the search engines, seems to be working well thus far

Thanks guys!

Useless metric?

Good as an indicator, but not of any real value?

Best way to judge how well content is optimised?

I've heard all kinds of opinions, what's yours?

Thanks!

Interesting point Simon!

Often times, search engines which aren't Google are overlooked. Perhaps for good reasons, but certainly worth thinking about.

Thanks!

So it's safe to assume keywords are no longer used by SEs in the old fashioned sense to rank sites, but should be keep them as indicators of site content?

It's been suggested by some that they're detrimental for two reasons:

1. Your competitors can snoop the keywords you're targeting

but mainly...

2. Over-optimisation is the enemy these days!

Thanks for your input

Thanks, that's actually very close to my current practise!

Should be focussing on consistent anchor text (for internal links) across my site to focus on specific keywords, or would it be more beneficial to variations of keywords?

Just food for thought

Assuming I'm not cloaking any content, how would the Search Engines know it's for them rather than users? Essentially I'd be adding relevant content which, as far as users are concerned, is superfluous.

I guess my point is, should I create content for users who are never going to read it, for the purposes of SEO?

Thanks

Shifts are definitely towards content marketing for SEO - i.e place more emphasis on useful and relavant content as opposed to in-bound link building.

That being said, incoming links are still a measure of authority. The argument for quality content is that this will organically increase links through shares and trackbacks etc.

To get the process started (and to start building links) comment on other peoples articles where relavant, share on social media and generally join / add to the conversation

Good luck!

Traditional thinking suggests sub-domains are treated as separate sites and so don't pass on link juice, but I've heard mixed opinions.

I'm very much a believer in sub-folders but I'm interested to hear some other opinions.

Thoughts?

Less that 500 words on average on each page; fairly well optimised in terms of internal links, key word density etc confirming to most best practices.

However, almost all of the content is static - so I'm concerned that we're not getting much in the way of fresh content, hence my question about creating content just for the SE.

Totally see your point and I agree. However, what if I'm looking to be pro-active and improve my rankings?

Competition is quite high and the site in question receives decent volumes of traffic but not necessarily for some of the search terms I want to target.

Thanks!

So we all know the importance of quality content for SEO; providing content for the user as opposed to the search engines. It used to be that copyrighting for SEO was treading the line between readability and keyword density, which is obviously no longer the case.

So, my question is this, for a website which doesn't require a great deal of content to be successful and to fullfil the needs of the user, should we still be creating relavent content for the sake of SEO?

For example, should I be creating content which is crawlable but may not actually be needed / accessed by the user, to help improve rankings?

Food for thought

Thanks guys - I appreciate the question is vague but I'm afraid I can't give away too much at the clients' request

I have taken over the SEO campaign for one of our largest clients. They already receive over a million visits a year due to the brand itself.

However, I'd like to start targeting some new search terms to diversify the incoming visitors.

Any advice on this type of situation, beyond traditional SEO best practices?

Thanks in advance!