Carlos, thanks for taking the time, appreciated.

Hey there, Would anyone be kind enough to share their experience of using keyword rich hyphenated domains. Are they as effective at tanking as non hyphenated domains?

i.e would it be better to get a lesser non-hyphenated TLD such as .org for example rather than a hyphenated co.uk?

Hey there, In the absence of getting a keyword rich .com or .co.uk domain am wondering how influential .info, .org, .net domains (or any others) are in comparison? Does anyone have any comparison info to share please?

Quick update - by amending the robots text file and switching sitemap plugin over to Yoast I finally got the sitemap to index without robots.txt warnings although the Home page of site was not indexed, 'oh dear'.  5 out of the 7 pages in the sitemap were indexed by Google so It's a start but some more investigating to be done on my side.

Dan,

Cant thank you enough! The sitemap request is still pending in Google - maybe I sent too many requests But it's time to sit back and wait for the good news hopefully. Thanks again.

Hi Dan,

I followed the above advice and switched to the Yoast generated sitemap but after testing on http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/validate-xml-sitemap.html I got the following result - no idea what it means but it looks nasty...

Schema validating with XSV 3.1-1 of 2007/12/11 16:20:05Schema validator crashed

The maintainers of XSV will be notified, you don't need to
send mail about this unless you have extra information to provide.
If there are Schema errors reported below, try correcting
them and re-running the validation.Target: http://containerforsale.co.uk
   (Real name: http://containerforsale.co.uk
    Server: Apache/2.2.22 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.22 OpenSSL/0.9.8e-fips-rhel5 mod_bwlimited/1.4)The target was not assessedLow-level XML well-formedness and/or validity processing output
Warning: Undefined entity raquo
 in unnamed entity at line 16 char 83 of http://containerforsale.co.uk
Warning: Undefined entity nbsp
 in unnamed entity at line 160 char 10 of http://containerforsale.co.uk
Error: Expected ; after entity name, but got =
 in unnamed entity at line 274 char 631 of http://containerforsale.co.u

Thanks Aran - very creative

Hi, I posted this question recently and the consensus was that it does still seem to have an impact. Also check out  this video with Matt Cutts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXt23AXlJJU

Indeed, thanks everyone - it's really appreciated!

I have updated the robots.txt as indicated and re submitted site map but looks like Google still has problems with my site since the error warning for robots is there after the processing is done.

Quick question - I am using a plugin called Google XML Sitemaps which has the following tick box option.

'Add sitemap URL to the virtual robots.txt file'.
The virtual robots.txt generated by WordPress is used. A real robots.txt file must NOT exist in the blog directory!'

Should this box be ticked or un-ticked please? Fyi I currently don't have the box ticked.

Ok thanks Brent, I changed to

User-agent: *

Disallow:

Sitemap: http://containerforsale.co.uk/sitemap.xml.gz

Guess I will just have to wait for Google to refresh now...

Keri,

Love it, I can see you are really getting into this container thing! Seriously, some really good ideas there..I actually cam across a guy on youtube who had made an underground bunker out of a used shipping container and got 1.3 million views and a ton of media coverage!

Good luck with the move!

Thanks for the heads up.

The warning just says 7 Url''s blocked by robots.txt. - have seen this issue posted on the WordPress boards by others but no real insight into solutions.

Perhaps I should try your idea of

Change the robots.txt file to this:

User-agent *

Disallow:

Sitemap: http://containerforsale.co.uk/sitemap.xml.gz

Its weird, the front page warning on Google webmaster for robots has disappeared now, but still got the warnings in the sitemap submission area. My host suggests I just wait a bit longer for Google to update because he said same as you - that there doesn't seem to be any robot.txt file.

Hi Aran, it's certainly on the list.

Great to see you are making progress with the hangers, I have the same kind of challenges with containers

Thanks!

the domain is http://containerforsale.co.uk ,My host told me to look in the Public HTML file folder for the robots.txt file and just delete it but can't see it in there?

Google webmaster tools is saying there the sitemap contains urls which are blocked by robots.txt. (all 7 of them)

This is the display I get from http://containerforsale.co.uk/robots.txt

User-agent *

Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/

Sitemap: http://containerforsale.co.uk/sitemap.xml.gz

Hi istvan,

Thanks, I submitted the sitemap but got some robot.txt warnings so not sure if it is going to go through ok. I have already removed the robots.txt file so wondering is Google is just slow in picking that up. Guess I will know for sure when/if the site gets indexed.

Could anyone let me know how long it takes for a NEW site to be indexed in Google please? Am having some robots.txt issues and am keen to see if it got indexed. Thanks!

Hey Guys,

Thanks for your replies...the domain is http://containerforsale.co.uk ,My host told me to look in the Public HTML file folder for the robots.txt file and just delete it but can't see it in there?

My host said he found a tester site and it doesn't report any issues:

http://www.searchenginepromotionhelp.com/m/robots-text-tester/robots-checker.php

This is the display I get from http://containerforsale.co.uk/robots.txt

User-agent *

Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/

Sitemap: http://containerforsale.co.uk/sitemap.xml.gz

Hi..am a little confused since I ticked the box in WordPress to allow search engines to now crawl my site (previously asked for them not to) but Google webmaster tools is telling me I still have robots.txt blocking them so am unable to submit the sitemap.

Checked source code and the robots instruction has gone so a little lost. Any ideas please?

Ok thanks Adam - that would indicate that the Yoast/Linkdex plugin is not working too well...but if title tags are not too important..who cares

Hey Ben,

Thanks. Am using a Wootheme called Simplicity. I have just left the minify box unchecked in W3 Total Cache since this was causing the problem. The site speed seems to be ok though even with this disabled.

Hey there. I am building a site and am confused by the whole H1 tag thing in  WordPress, perhaps someone could clarify please?

When I generate a new page or post I of course enter the page or 'post title' which generates following HTML  code

class="title">Used Containers

So I was thinking, ok great now I have a H1 tag! Great...But no, according to the Yoast plugin (which uses a company called Linkdex for it's on page analysis) I don't have my keyword 'Used Containers' in any of my headings.

I then experimented by adding another H1 heading of 'Used Containers' in my WordPress page copy area and saw that it shows up written in my page source as

Used Containers

(so without the class="title"> bit in my first H1).

Could anyone be kind enough to explain:

1. The difference between the two and any known impact on SEO.

2. What is the proper way of optimizing H1 tags in WordPress?

Thanks so much!

Ben, thanks for the useful follow up. I will certainly check out spitecow. Have found W3 total cache speeds up my site quite a bit, only problem is its breaks the image slider for some reason so have some looking into to do.

Fiverr offers services like 1000 likes for $5!!! (and they seem to deliver) Sounds great but what is the catch? Has anyone tried out these type of services and more importantly what are the potential penalties?

Hi Marissa, I see its been a while since you bought the $27 link building source, I would love to get an update on whether you think it was worth the money. Did you get any higher rankings as a result of any of those links at all?

I have seen the latest news about Google penalizing blog networks and as a newbie starting out am wondering if my multi-site plans would constitute as a blog network.

My question is, is having a couple of external blogs on keyword rich domains pointing back at my primary domain name considered to be a blog network of the kind that Google is penalizing?

Thanks Anthony...

In the interests of making my site faster I have recently come across the suggestion of removing unwanted PHP from my WooThemes WordPress theme. The suggestion is to hard code the choices I have made in the WordPress template to reduce on database calls.

Has anyone actually done this to their WordPress theme before and seen any measurable results?

Hello...I have written a bunch of content for my site using a useful tool called Scribe SEO which recommends keyword density at 5% if I remember correctly. So all my my newly written content is below this level but I am left wondering if by adding alt tags with my chosen keywords I will be considered to be over the limit and cause a red flag? Can anyone clarify this for me please?

Thanks to both of you for your answers! appreciate it.

Hi, I am about to purchase hosting for my WordPress site which is primarily targeting the UK and wondered if server location still has an impact on SEO?

Also can anyone recommend a reliable hosting provider with CPanel?

Thanks very much for taking the time to explain all this..appreciated!

Thanks to both of you for your responses!

Quick question. I have just changed my post name after the page has been created since I want to have a different H1 tag but the permalink keeps the original post name. Does this cause any technical or SEO problems as far as you know?

Thanks again

Hi,

Does anyone have practical knowledge of the best permalink structure to use in WordPress? I have seen recommendations for just the post name or category and post name and then some who suggest having 3 digits as part of the structure for pick up in Google news.

I am left a little confused - does anyone have practical experience of the best structure please?

Hello,

I have heard about SEO's and PR types riding off the back of latest news items that can be tied to the products or services they are trying to promote.

Recently I read about how an SEO had distastefully written an article using the name of a famous singer who had sadly passed away and used this event as an opportunity to write about a small business models

Can anyone provide any useful AND ethical insights on how they use latest news items to help with SEO?