Welcome to the Q&A Forum

A really good seo gets more referals than they can handle!  So sick of low quality, unethical, high volume crappy seo scammers out there....AAARRRGGHHHHHH!!!!!

Ok, I feel much better now....

This is just my opinion, but the fact that someone would have to cold call to find SEO clients throws up all kinds of red flags.  A talented SEO NEVER needs to cold call. In fact the problem is not finding new clients, the problem is having to pick and choose who you take on. Isnt the point of seo to bring in leads and clients? If your own seo skills are so poor that you have to cold call, then...well I am go out on a limb here, but get the he k out of our industry and giving real seo's a bad reputation.

Keyword usage is highly important, how as the prior poster said keep it natural. I mean think about it, if your website is about Hotdog Manufacturing it would only make sense to have that phrase used frequently. The actual ratio of keyword vs total words does not have an exact formula, however if you just keep in mind natural You should be fine. If the phrase is scattered to heavily (keyword stuffing) then you could get penalized. Good luck!

When I ask this, I am not under the illusion that links do nothing.  I am more curious if from an SEO strategy perspective is executing a link building campaign a really unwise use of time and resources?  Currently my company literally has every single one of our SEO clients ranked on page 1 rank 1 for their most high value keyword and in the top 5 results for another 5 to 10 high value keywords.  we have almost done no link building for these clients. I mean we have established a handful of really good links, but thats it. I look at some competitors link profiles and they have hundreds yet our clients sites are outranking them.

I am almost at the point of not implementing link building initiatives. I mean we will still establish high quality links as they naturally present themselves, but as far as investing time and resources building links i am leaning towards not even doing that anymore or atleast for a while to see what the effect will be.

We seem to find better results when we spend our time building great additional pages and following all web best practices.

Just curious as to what other think?

Thanks SEOmoz Community!

I agree with alot of what has been said, but the two comments really ring true for are,

#1 All these low quality SEO's are creating a huge opportunity for high qualified SEO's

#2 Word of mouth. Word of mouth. Word of mouth.

Thanks for the posting. I do similar blog posts somewhat frequently myself..

Thank you!

Thanks!!

I recommend looking at www.servint.net I am customer of theirs and they are awesome. The support is the best i have ever dealt with and they have been around since the 90's.

Good morning SEOmoz community. I have a question which I am pretty sure I already know the answer to, however i thought I would reach out to my fellow experts to see if anyone had some great advice.

I would really like to give my website a makeover.  i have two thoughts on this, one is to scrap the site completely and start fresh, the other would be to only change it visually, but keep all the content and on-page optimization. I am terrified of losing my rankings. I am ranked position 1 and 2 for highly competitive terms and have another 15 - 20 keywords on page 1. Any advice would be tremendously appreciated!!!

I am looking to expand my hosting and i wanted to know who some of you my fellow Mozzers would suggest? I need it on the westcoast...i could do something in Mountain Standard Time zone too, but PST preferable...

Many, many thanks!!

Great input!  Thanks for taking the time to respond, I truly appreciate it!

Interesting... thank you for that insight.  I really had no idea the "Designed by" credit could be a negative thing.  I do want the credit there, but I am going to take under serious consideration your recommendation on "no-follow"

Thanks again, much appreciated!!!

Is there a benefit to diversifying your hosting providers?  I mean if there are 10 client sites on one shared hosting package and they all have links to my company because we give ourselves credit on all the sites we build. Will Google give the links to me less weight or even look at it as some link building scheme? Does private registration prevetn things like this. Would it help if i got my own IP's from different C blocks?  Thank you in advance Mozzer family!!

Well I am going to also go with your suggestion, I am going to pick up some hosti g from Pair next. Thanks for all your input!

Four attempts to contact a salesperson at Liquid Web was a complete failure and aggravation.  They are a good host I am sure, but they didn't have it together enough to have a competent, friendly sales rep with a working headset available.  And when I did get a rep on the phone...which I could barely hear, they seemed annoyed that I dare ask what the benefits of hosting with Liquid Web are.  Really, I wanted to go with them, but I felt like I was already seeing red flags.  Pair, honestly...and perhaps this was a mistake, but I didn't like their website...it seemed very bare bones and antiquated....I mean was not looking for a host with the flashiest website by any means, but their site was concerning to me....too, basic...like not even minimalist, but just looked unsophisticated.  It made me concerned they may be very frugal, and I feared that frugality may also apply to purchasing infrastructure...and Orange....eh...I don't know..just wasn't feeling it.  With Media Temple I spoke with someone that sounded very professional, not salesy, was quite candid and knowledgeable....he was one of their engineers...site was nice....their market growth impressive....I just got a good feeling from them.  Perhaps I had the wrong mindset in my decision, but hey....it's $20 buck a month and I am going to be bringing on about 4 more hosting providers, so I am not too concerned. Honestly....liquid web REALLY irked me....

I just went with Media Temple....thanks!

I just tried Liquid Web...I was going to go with them, but twice I called and the voice connection was horrible and when I asked the sales rep to explain the benefits of going with liquid web as opposed to other providers, she almost acted annoyed...it was very uncomfortable...not a great way to enter into a business relationship....unfortunately they are scratched off the list of possibilities as a place to bring our rapidly growing web agencies client websites....

Trying Media Temple and your suggested Pair...thanks!

Good morning my fellow Mozzers! I am currently looking at adding some diversity to my current web hosting and I was hoping I could get some suggestions. I dont currently need a VPS or Dedicated Server, I just need some shared hosting, you know, packeges that are sub $20 a month...i mean i will pay more than that, but so far everything i look at that meets my needs(basic hosting, email, ect...). This is for client sites and they are growing in number somewhat rapidly. I currently host with GoDaddy and they are amazing in the support department, but I do question whether their servers are causing slow page loads ect...but all in all I am happy with them. I have used Netword Solutions in the past, but left them because i was not a big fan of talking to support people in india and malasia. I do think that their servers might have performed better than GoDaddy so i am not ruling them out at this point

i am looking for a provider that has excellent support and who has servers that are not so overloaded the can render pages and content slowly. Performance is very important to me. I am not looking for the cheapest, I am looking for the overall best.

Thanks in advance SEOmoz family!!!

No idea.  It states that they are improving it, adding features, ect...  For the amount of time it has been down it better be pretty amazing...

They are updating the Rankings tool so I believe we will not get reports until thw update is done. Its actually driving me nuts!  Its one of the main features I use....its been down for a while now...

Yeah I looked further into the URL removal, but I guess technically I did not meet the criteria....and honestly I am fearful other potential implications of removal....I guess I will just have to wait for the 301 to ick in.  I just cant believe there is not a simple .htaccess code to cause all URL's to show the .html extension.  I mean it is a simple thing to implement the reverse and have the extension dropped...I mean....good lord...

Thanks for all your help though Mike, I truly appreciate the efforts!

Nope. .....good lord....

Nope.

That caused the same "500 Internal Server Error" .......  

Oh, and my site auditor is seeing it as a directory with a file in it???  Ugghhh....

Nope.  Didn't work.  I am seriously about to lose my mind with this....

I get a server error when I do this?  Sooo confused...  Here is the htaccess changes I made.  FYI...I have removed the code you told me to put in there temporarily so the site's not down.  I attached the server error screenshot too...

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ! .html$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ! /$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.html

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^hanneganconstructionllc.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://hanneganremodeling.com/$1 [L,R=301]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.hanneganconstructionllc.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://hanneganremodeling.com/$1 [L,R=301]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^hremodeling.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://hanneganremodeling.com/$1 [L,R=301]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.hremodeling.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://hanneganremodeling.com/$1 [L,R=301]

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index.html\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^index.html$ http://www.hanneganremodeling.com/ [R=301,L]

RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^hanneganremodeling.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.hanneganremodeling.com/$1 [R=301,L]

m9Kq8yJ

Thanks Mike, you are awesome!  I actually was thinking to do that, but I was concerned that it might have some larger implications?

I also just resubmitted a sitemap so hopefully that "might" speed up the crawl process...

Thanks again!

Thank you so much!!!  The SEOmoz community rocks!!

Hey, since you nailed this question....wanna take a shot at my other duplicate content issue

http://www.seomoz.org/q/duplicate-content-from-indexing-of-non-file-extension-page

In the HTML improvements section of Google Webmaster Tools, it is showing duplicate content and I have verified that the duplicate content they are listing does not exist.  I actually have another duplicate content issue I am baffled by, but that it already being discussed on another thread.  These are the pages they are saying have duplicate META descriptions,

http://www.hanneganremodeling.com/bathroom-remodeling.html

(META from bathroom remodeling page) <meta name="<a class="attribute-value">description</a>" content="<a class="attribute-value">Bathroom Remodeling Washington DC, Bathroom Renovation Washington DC, Bath Remodel, Northern Virginia,DC, VA, Washington, Fairfax, Arlington, Virginia</a>" />

http://www.hanneganremodeling.com/estimate-request.html

(META From estimate page) <meta name="<a class="attribute-value">description</a>" content="<a class="attribute-value">Free estimates basement remodeling, bathroom remodeling, home additions, renovations estimates, Washington DC area</a>" />

WlO9TLh

No it's not a wordpress, it was created with Dreamweaver.  I didn't make sample and sample.html same page, but google is treating it that way....  I have implemented the 301, so I guess I just have to wait for a crawl

Thank you very for your input!  When I implement into my .htacces what you suggested I get a "Internet 500 Server Error" ?   Maybe it would help if I list what I currently have in my .htaccess  I had to redirect some old domains and did canonical redirects and default non .index....I hope this help, I am at my wit's end...  I also attached a screenshot of the webmaster warning... THANKS!!!

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^hanneganconstructionllc.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://hanneganremodeling.com/$1 [L,R=301]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.hanneganconstructionllc.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://hanneganremodeling.com/$1 [L,R=301]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^hremodeling.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://hanneganremodeling.com/$1 [L,R=301]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.hremodeling.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://hanneganremodeling.com/$1 [L,R=301]

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index.html\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^index.html$ http://www.hanneganremodeling.com/ [R=301,L]

RewriteEngine On
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^hanneganremodeling.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.hanneganremodeling.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

u1YvXLR

I tried the canonical and when I enter the url without the .html, it doesn't resolve to the url with the .html extension.  I tried an .htaccess reirect...I am stumped, I can't get it to redirect automatically the the .html  I accidentally manually submitted the url to google and manually in submitted it to index and that when this issue began....

Google somehow has indexed a page of mine without the .html extension.  so they indexed  www.samplepage.com/page, so I am showing duplicate content because Google also see's  www.samplepage.com/page.html   How can I force google or bing or whoever to only index and see the page including the .html extension?  I know people are saying not to use the file extension on pages, but I want to, so please anybody...HELP!!!

I spoke with a potential client yesterday and for legitimate reasons they have multiple domain names, all very closely related in name to each other pointing to one site. His main site. So for example this is how things look,

mainsiteva.com, mainsitedc.com, mainsitepa.com, mainsiteca.com, mainsitega.com, mainsitela.com ALL forward to mainsite.com

This is being done because they used to have different sites for different geographies. Will google look at this as some form of manipulation?

the general consensus is that Google does make use of the Description, more specifically used in the brief description in results among other user experience related items. It is widely accepted that the description is not used as a metric for ranking though. I personally take exception to this line of thought, because I have definitly seen an effect on rankings when a description has been optimized. I am not going to say this happens 100% of the time, however i have seen a direct correlation.

The keywords tag is completly irrelevant and can cause a number of problems. Two are, Bing actually considers it a spam flag and by having the keywords tags it allows competitors to easily see what you are optimizing for....as someone already mentioned. I do find it interesting that some reputable sites are using it. So perhaps i am missing out on some good info....

In my experience keywords in the front are more powerful. Google algorytm takes into account the minute variances in a title. So for example if you sold cars in new york the titles "buy cars new york" "new york buy cars" "cars new york buy" would all have a different effect on rankings "typically"  . I know that was a severly rough example, but hopefully the general concept made sense...

I think a blended approach would be best. I think a dispersion of 50% exact keyword and 50% variations, but when choosing the specific variations I would verify through any keyword tool that the variations you use have decent traffic.

As for the most important areas to place the anchor text I would say main nav, onpage sitemap and body of content in that order respectively.

Of course this is just my view...good luck with your project!

I think the best strategy would to achieve visibility in both Places listing and traditional organic. One without the other would simply be 50% less effective, atleast based on how Google is currently dispalying search results. Perhaps in the future there will be significantly more weight given to traditional organic results, or maybe places aill dominate...or some other form of search result placements will emerge. I think to have an all inclusive approach at this point would be a safe approach. Good luck with everything!

I have had no issues whatsoever with them. I actually have found them to provide the best customer service out of all the toolsI have used. Early on when i was trying different tools i cancelled with them after my next month billing started by about a week. They pleasantly cancelled my account and refunded the entire amount i was charged for the current month even though i was a week into it. I also had some technical questions that truly were beyond what support should be obligated to answer...really the questions were the type you typically would need to pay an seo consultant to answer, but they thoroughly answered them. Because of how they handled my cancellation, as well as overall service and i actually get a human on the phone, I am now a long term customer. I do agree that their data is not always 100% accurate, but I have tried all the well know tools out there and no ones data is 100%. On their site they list the specific times you can reach them. Anytime i have called it during the time window listed on the site i get a human...based in the US too BTW...

Thanks everybody for all the great feedback. You guys rock!

I am very frustrated. I have achieved page one rankings on Google, Bing and Yahoo for highly relevant keywords and phrases. The keywords I am ranking on page one for are the same ones competitors are targeting and working well for them. I am interested in any feedback as to what could possibly be the cause for not receiving much traffic? I mean I am getting page 1, everyone I talk to says the sites are beautiful....Very confused. Now in the various keyword tools the do show that the various keywords receive anywhere from 25-250 searches per month, but those tools i find highly innacurate when performing a local campaign...oh yeah, these are all local campaigns i am talking about. Do I need to pursue paid marketing, PPC, or something. I always thought organic rankings were the way to go. Also, unfortunatly i am not able to divulge the URLs or concern due to client confidentiality issues. Thank you very much in advance for any insight:) I will send the URL's privately to anyone that is willing to take a look at things

Thank you Cyrus!  To answer the question of why I changed their domain name in the first place,

1. Original domain name had no relevance to the services they provide
2. The domain name was 23 characters long, which I feel is way too long and allows for 23 opportunities for a client to misspell the name when writing emails, accessing the website, ect....
3. The domain name was 7 syllables....by the time you told someone the address you where exhausted and the prospect was confused
4. They had virtually no web presence, so the switch was simple enough.  They had literally one link.  The site was under 10 pages, so again, not a huge undertaking.

Again, thank you so much for the feedback.  SEOmoz really has a great community!

Thank you very much for your response. I actually changed their domain name again just to avoid potential issues. I find myself frequently these days having to base domain and website development decisions on the fact that i am afraid google will penalize my sites. I mean there are legitimate whitehat methods that are in my clients best interests, but because an unethical person may use a method that is similiar for black hat purposes. Google is penalizing the good guys for the sake of restricting some bad guuys. For example i guess some people trying to trick the engines by putting a single character variable in a popular keyword name, but my clients case they wanted their companies first initial plus industry. They or i am not trying to "trick" the engines, it just made sense for them , but now i have to select an inferior domain name....

I have recently changed a clients domain name from a long (23 characters) to a shorter domain name that has a keyword plus a single character variation. For example and without revealing the clients real domain name, let say they are in housing. Ithe first letter in the company name is "p" so i created the doamin name as www.phousing.com It has only been two days since i submitted the new domain name and did a 301 redirect to the new page. When i do a google search i get back the result: housing.com and "did you mean housing.com Will this domain name cause me problems? Any input is greatly appreciated!

I usually am terrified to make any changes to "errors" on pages that are already performing well. As i think anyone will agree, no one, even G themselves fully 100% understand search results, ect.... Sometimes what an application may percieve as an "error" could actually be an unintended asset. Just my two cents after getting burned by correcting "errors"