What about for link farms? If someone were to buy up a couple hundred websites and then use them to promote a select few websites you don't think that whois data is looked at?
Posts made by vforvinnie
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RE: What Parts Of Domain Registration Change Affect Rank
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RE: Do you link out to good content?
I link to quality content on other sites too. Most of the time it's to authority sites (for e-commerce I might find a good page on a manufacturers site that has a lot of useful information). I will also link to news outlets or blogs that have some relevant content that I simply don't have time to cover or can't do a better job of covering. The only exception to this is that I never really link to direct competition, but I feel like most people here will do the same thing.
I think some outbound links can help you in terms of SEO. It looks natural, and shows that you are offering more than just your own content to the readers. You are giving them other valuable resources outside of your own site.
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RE: PR Web or Marketwire which is better
Same. I use PR Web 2-3 times a year (usually during peak season for one of my sites, and then to announce new features). If I put the time and effort in to pick good outlets/regions I usually am happy (but not thrilled) with the results. I get some good links and occasionally contacted about doing a piece. I feel it's the same as creating quality content, as you still need to put in some time and effort to get it picked up at more outlets. I have never tried Marketwire though, but I might in the future.
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RE: What is the best way to make use of internal anchor text links without appearing to be a 'spammy' webpage?
I agree with Mark, that seems like a safe ratio. I also suggest mixing up your anchor texts with synonyms and reworded phrases if it still sounds logical. For instance "cat toys", "toys for cats" "toys made for cats" etc. While some people are concerned about the internal anchor texts and overdoing it, you need to think about the user. If clear and distinct anchor text is good for conversions and helps your visitors find what they are looking for, you should do it.
That should also give you an idea of how many links are good. 5+ links in each paragraph or content would be confusing for users, and bad for SEO.
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RE: Blog Commnets
I think if you choose carefully blog commenting can be worth your time. It might not do a ton with SEO (although I think a no-follow is better than no link at all), but it can certainly help you establish relationships with other members in your niche's community. What I would do is try to become a regular on some authority sites (and not post a link at first). Once you are comfortable you can occasionally post a link or two.
I would still say on an effective scale of 1-10, blog comments could be a 2-3 at best. Your time is probably better spent getting links from other sources or building good content. I'd be very pick with the blogs I went after.
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RE: Internal Link Counts in SEOMoz Report?
I asked this same question a few weeks back and the answer I got is that Google and other engines should only be counting the first link as far as number of links on a page goes. That makes me curious though about anchor text and which gets counted first. So you may link to a page 5 times on a single page but only the first link is looked at. Can anyone back this up? I couldn't find any official stance regarding it but it makes sense for the exact reason above. Lot's of sites are redundant with image linking and text linking, as well as side nav linking.
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RE: Convince me to stay! How should I best use SEOMoz tools.
I love the toolbar too, shows me quick link totals for any page I am on. OSE is awesome, and something I use regularly.
One of my favorite things to do with the SEO Moz tools is to check out my competition's backlinks, and then try to get them myself. That alone is worth 99/month to me. Plus you get the campaigns, and access to dozens of other tools that you might not use daily, but when you need them are there for you and work great.
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RE: Redirecting One Page of Content on Domain A to Domain B
I look forward to seeing more input on this issue too. I am having the same issue as we speak. One of my smaller (but older) network sites is outranking the bigger site for a particular (big) keyword that I want to rank for. I keep thinking about doing something with it, but I am hesitant. I am also a bit greedy, as I think I could get both sites on the first page with some more work.
For now I am going to go back and optimize the smaller site so that it will be more suited for monetization.
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RE: How am I supposed to get any work done?
It's time to install one of those Firefox plugins that will cap the time you can spend on certain domains! Then you will start using Chrome or Safari or your mobile. The madness will never end.
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RE: How cool is this Q&A Forum!
Same. It's a great way to stay sharp on certain areas of SEO that you might not deal with on a daily basis. I also like the Q and A section because it's a good way to begin networking with some other webmasters and SEO people.
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RE: How to target keywords on a new site?
I would say it would look fishy if a majority of your links had the same anchor text and it wasn't your site name. I'm not sure of the exact ratios but at least 50% of anchor text's should have your site name in them. That is the organic #, maybe even a little higher. The rest should be diverse too, if it's just 2-3 phrases it will look obvious. Getting links to your site with your name in the anchor text is still great. It helps branding, and still sends link juice to your site.
If you want to go after some competitive terms or rank higher safely in Google, I'd suggest diversifying your link portfolio.
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RE: Another Panda update?
Have you made any changes in response to the Panda updates? Have you removed some of the weaker content or bolstered it? Have you done extra link building?
It might be Google correcting themselves, or it could be a number of other things if you have made any of the aforementioned changes to your site. If you think your content really was quality from the start, it very well could be Google correcting themselves.
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RE: Google Keyword Tool
You can also check out Google Trends: http://www.google.com/trends
This will give you data from the past three years or so, but should be viewable in a monthly format. Insights should also work well (like Aran suggested).
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RE: My Domain Name - short vs relevant
That is what I was gonna suggest too. In general I favor short domains, even though bookmarking has come so far in the past 10 years. Everyone bookmarks everything these days, so you don't need to worry as much about spelling and remembering a long name. With that said I still like the short domains.
Branding will be a big part with the shorter, new domain name. You can make up for the lack of keywords in the domain name with some quality content and strong, local links.
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RE: Invisible Long Tail Keywords
I agree with you on both fronts. I never target any specific long tails, but I always build content to rank for long tails. The way to do this is with quality content with a large word count. I never write the content with any long tails in mind, but I know that with quality link building I will naturally rank for some long tails.
One of my sites gets thousands of visits from hundreds of keywords. I might get 5-10 visits a month from each phrase. It would have been silly to plan for any of these keywords.
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RE: Prevent link juice to flow on low-value pages
Great suggestions. I've recently combined some pages (login/register, about/contact/ToS/privacy, and a few others) and have been very happy with the results. I removed 8 links from every page.
I am also thinking about removing some more links from my product pages, to try and keep the most juice on those pages. Those pages don't need the same navigation as the homepage.
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RE: What's your favorite link building tactic?
It works better for my sites that offer a valuable services and aren't just shopping or ads. But if you get creative with some useful or helpful content, those outlets will be more likely to link to you.
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RE: What's your favorite link building tactic?
I am a big fan of guest blogging too. My favorite is a bit more traditional though. I just do some advanced Google searches and contact sites that have links pages or are relevant to my site. I make each email personalized. Not too exciting but pretty effective. Sometimes I will offer content or something else in exchange for a link or a mention.
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RE: Running Adwords Campaigns to show Improvement in Organic Traffic
Hi,
I can't think of it off the top of my head but one of the keyword spy websites has a tool that shows PPC history I believe. This could help you know the source of the old traffic. Does anyone know what site I am talking about? It might actually be keywordspy.
That is interested that in analytics you can disable PPC tracking. That could help scammers sell websites claiming organic traffic.
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RE: What is the best solution for printable product pages (duplicate content)?
If you don't want to do the canonical method (which is probably the best) you could always make a /print directory blocked by robots.txt and no follow the links and no-index the pages. That should work as well, but could possibly waste link juice if people ever link to the printable version.
Cheers,
Vinnie -
RE: Keyword use in meta description
Check this out: http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/meta-description
It doesn't mention specific placement but I tend to put them at the beginning, and possibly one at the end. The reason for this is that search words will be in bold, so I like to have them show up throughout, but with the most important stuff in the front.
Maybe someone else can chime in about placement for a higher click through, but I think at the start would be better.
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RE: What code do I need to remove Comments Rss from Wordpress?
Depending on the template, I think you can just go into the admin panel and edit sidebar.php or sidenav.php or whatever it's called in your particular theme. You should just need to comment out 2-3 lines of code. Without seeing the theme or the site itself I can only tell you that much. It should be an easy fix.
Just copy all of the code to your toolbar when you make changes, so that if you delete something or make a big mistake you can quickly revert to the old file.
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RE: How many members are on your team?
I am a one (boyish) man team. I have one medium sized client but mostly only do SEO for my own sites. The one client I had sort of fell into my lap, but I was glad to take them on. I probably spend 4-5x more time on my sites than on my clients site. I do work with a partner on one site though. Based on the members that I've spoken with here, I'd say I'm not the typical member at SEOMoz.
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RE: Is old domain better even if it was just parked?
I would say the first two are about even, unless you want exact match results. Then whichever one is more lucrative might be better, although Google seems to be trending away from rewarding exact matches (although they still do). Age is only really a benefit if it's been indexed and has built links and trust over time.
The third one seems good, but how is the content? Is it relevant? None of the three are going to give you a huge boost, but the third one might give you a slight head start.
I feel like you could spend the money you saved on not buying the old domain on good content or marketing efforts on the new domain.
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RE: How effective is leaving comment links?
I think comment links are more valuable for building relationships with other sites and for branding with targeted audiences. I think the links themselves are diluted as far as SEO value goes.
Google knows when links are comment links, and might even disregard them all together on certain sites. If the blog has an editorial policy (needs approval for comments, or deletes spammy ones) they might offer more value. Plus the links are generally at the bottom of the page, and may send less value. It really comes down to a case by case basis. I would use the same criteria for blog posts as I do for links in general:
-Page rank or moz rank?
-Regularly cached pages from the blog in the index?
-Good content? Is it related to your site?
I would say if it's good related blogs it's not a waste of time, but don't expect to climb up the rankings just because of those links. I also wouldn't differentiate too much between no follow and do follow links. Google still tracks the no follows and having some will look organic and would still give you some of the networking and branding benefits mentioned above.
Vinnie
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RE: Webmaster tools Site speed?
Agreed. Speed is only one of possibly hundreds of factors, and it's a minor one at that.
Speed should be more of a concern from a user standpoint. It can impact bounce rates significantly, and can really hinder the user experience. 2.8 is not very bad, so I wouldn't worry too much.
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RE: Linkbuilding: Checklist for quality of a link
Some stuff I look for in a quality link:
Pagerank/MozRank
Other links on page - are there any pill/viagra or gambling/porn links? Anything else fishy? Skip it if so. Are there more than 50-100 outbound links on the page? That's a lot.
Google cache date - has it been cached within the last couple of weeks? The more recent the better.
Is the site relevant to your niche? What about the domain? Does it look like a dropped site? If so skip it.
How easy is it to get a link? Do they automatically take reciprocals?
And like Adam said, how is the content?
All of these factors can help, but really it also comes down to your gut feeling.
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RE: Yahoo Link
I would say it depends on your specific category. If your category is broken into dozens of subcategories and then has multiple pages, probably not. If your category page is only page one, or has some pagerank or a good MozRank, then yes. There are some subpages in Yahoo that aren't even indexed in Google, which is absurd for 300/year.
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RE: Which domain name should i choose for a air ticket search engine?
I agree, this type of site will benefit from brandability.
It's definitely nice to get keywords in your domain. This will give some sort of an SEO boost, but also tell your users right off the bat something about your site. I think for a site like this you are gonna need to do more than just strict SEO (social media, facebook, etc) and a branded domain will be very beneficial in that sense.
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RE: Seomoz staff help needed
Same for me. The toolbar shows zero links and no MozRank.
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RE: Removed listings: 404, internal links or redirect?
Hi,
I think from both a user and SEO perspective something along the lines of option A and B would be the best.
What if you redirected all inactive listings to a page that shows other listings from that category or related listings? From a user perspective, if they were looking for that specific listing, showing similar or related ones could be beneficial and would lower your bounce rate.
From an SEO perspective, if any of the expired/inactive listings received any sort of links or ranked for anything you would be wasting link juice.
As I type this I am debating myself on another option, so I am going to share that too. What if you still showed the listing (like an archive) but removed any contact information or anything else that could benefit the original poster? This way you would still have the content page up, and wouldn't lose any link juice or pages on your site?
I think I still like the idea of a smart 404 or a redirect to a page with related listings, perhaps with a message at the top saying "listing not found, but here are some related listings".
Good luck deciding what to do,
Vinnie
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RE: Should I follow a key competitor onto business.com?
I agree, they are a very strong directory that I'm sure Google respects. At 300/yr you may want to consider a few different directory options.
How is the Yahoo directory category compared to the business.com one? Less links on page? Higher mozRank? You might also consider Best of the Web and then a few other smaller (but trusted directories) that maybe your competitor isn't listed in. You could also look for quality niche directories. If you could get 3-4 strong links that your competitor lacks compared to one very strong link that your competitor has you may be in good shape. Some of the other directories may offer lifetime links too, to get the most bang for your buck.
Cheers,
Vinnie
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RE: Do you split your personalities up? Do you have a private, personal Twitter acccount in addition to your professional Twitter account?
My suggestion would be to probably make different pseudonyms. Something you could look into is whether the aforementioned people have personal accounts. I'm sure they have friends and family that they might not want to address as The Oatmeal and NotSleepy, so they probably have private accounts for personal sharing.
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RE: Preserving Link Value
If you do permanent redirects to the new site all the link juice shouldn't be lost, just a fraction.
http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection
http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/301-redirect-test-how-much-link-juice-are-you-losing/2010/04/09/
SEOmoz says around 90-99 percent of the juice will be passed.
Another idea is to contact some of the websites that site B got their links from. You could introduce yourself and say that site A now owns site B, and you could politely ask them to change the links, or post an update in the blog post/content page that links to site B. This could also help you get some new links for site A by establishing a relationship with these outlets that you know give quality links to good sites.
Good luck with the transition.
Vinnie
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RE: Do you split your personalities up? Do you have a private, personal Twitter acccount in addition to your professional Twitter account?
I like to split my accounts, mostly for the reason you mentioned above. I share dumb things with my friends, and do not want my clients or even people I network with to see them.
Sometimes I will post personal things on my professional account, but only when I think it is appropriate for everyone to see.
I also like to keep them separate due to the fact that my business/networking accounts usually get followers that are a little spammy or simply tweet 15+ things a day. While sometimes I want to see this stuff, I hate sorting between the bulk stuff and what my friends are tweeting. I find having two accounts very convenient.
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RE: Is it smart to reveal your clients and projects in the Q&A forum? What about on your own SEO blog?
Hey Louis,
I can understand both sides of the argument, but land on the side of don't post them. Like David said, you would never want to post clients sites without their permission. Even with their permission I would be hesitant to post specific phrases or results. I don't even want to tell other clients who my other clients are most of the time. Protecting niches is very important in this industry. If you want to discuss past successes you have had I suggest speaking in generalities and give broader examples of marketing or link building ideas without pointing out specific sites.
Personally I don't even post my own sites on any SEO or webmaster forums if I can avoid it.
As far as your Google concerns go, as long as you aren't cheating or link farming or anything that would take away from Google's reputation I doubt they would penalize you or your clients sites for posting SEO case studies.
I look forward to seeing other opinions on this issue.
Cheers,
Vinnie
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RE: Why sudden change in rankings?
I think Andy explained it pretty well.
New sites do tend to get a temporal boost, as well as new links (I believe Rand did a great post on SEOMoz about temporal links but I can't seem to find it). The issue may be that you didn't keep up the link pace, so it went back down to where it should be for the time being.
If it is a fairly competitive term that you are talking about I wouldn't be that surprised, as 2-3 months usually won't be enough for a brand new site/domain to rank for the bigger phrases. Give it a few more months of steady link/content building and you should see some positive results.
I'm sure most SEO people here can share a story where they had the temporary boost and crossed their fingers hoping that maybe it isn't temporary only to see it go down a few pages.
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RE: Does anyone know if certain DMOZ categories are blocked/never get indexed on google?
Hey Dave,
Just a quick followup. It looks like the page is in Google, but in a different language:
I still suggest getting a few links to that directory page.
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RE: Does anyone know if certain DMOZ categories are blocked/never get indexed on google?
Hey Dave,
One idea that comes to mind is building a few links to that directory page. The nice thing is they don't have to be very targeted since you don't really need to worry about penalties or anything like that. That category seems to be pretty deep which could explain your problem; it probably doesn't get very much link juice at all from the categories above it in the directory.
Get a few links to it and it may be crawled/cached/indexed more often and start showing up in Google.
Cheers,
Vinnie