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I'd agree with Keven, there is nothing wrong with directory submissions as long as they are relevant and manually reviewed by an editor. Also look into local and niche directories that suit your site business.

The problems with directory submissions for me begin with mass submissions where the work is outsourced or automated - I cant see you getting any value from this.

There is a great list of decent directories right here on moz, with a guide.

Often you can get a feel of the quality of a website from just looking at it.

Does it look professional? Would you be proud of hosting your content there?

Another thing to take into account is the user interaction that a website receives. A website may have a high DA but if the articles have no comments or social shares then it's unlikely the content is particularly credible. On the other hand, sites with lesser DA but interaction through comments and social shares is much more appealing to me.

Although I agree with the bulk of what you mention, and indeed it would seem there are some spam notes in the post, I would not go as far as to say 'it gives no ranking benefit'.

I say this as a few sites i've amended the h1 on, have seen very slight improvements, not this could also be down to the fact i'd also looked at the content on those sites at the same time, however, I would not discount the fact the h1 'might' of helped in some small way.

I also point to a video, a couple of years old I know, by Matt - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hgy3Oc9zfOw

Who suggests they may still help, again, the video may be outdated - but perhaps worth noting.

The jury is out on whether they add much benefit, however, I would not discount them altogether and categorically state they have no benefit. Based on the tests I've run, and a number of others have run, such as http://cbutterworth.com/do-h1-tags-still-help-seo/, then i'd say it could still help, even in a small way.

The more things you do correctly, the better?

Egol is correct. This doesn't sound like a company i'd want to be working for yet alone paying money to look after my online interests. One good point of this company is you, in that you are wise enough to instantly spot the flaws in what was asked by the manager and in what was promised by your head of dept - no doubt in a panic.

This not only puts unrealistic pressure on him/herself but also on the employees reporting to the manager. All in all i'd take Egols advice and bail.

It sounds like its all too desperate based on lack of knowledge. Things arn't going right, so they pluck a figure out of the air and promise to hit it - they should be asking the guys for a brainstorming session to pool ideas and generate some realistic goals to acheive.

Hitting 600+ could be possible, as mentioned if the search volume is there then why not? But how will it be achieved, where will the visits be from and will they add value to the business(s)?

This could be an opportunity for you within the company to demonstrate your understanding of the situation and current landscape and prove your worth. Or seriously consider moving on.

Id agree with Lynn.

To deliver not only rankings long term, but to develop traffic that counts, then you are much better off spending time researching and structuring a piece of content that is of actual value to your sites potential visitor.

It looks like you will be spending time churning out content because you have a timeline to fill, with the sole purpose of structuring a link profile - from sites that have been overdone with this type of strategy.

Think about what is useful to your visitor, what can you create that they can engage with and share naturally? What will add value to your site? What will drive people to visit your site and share your content?

Come up with a solid content strategy for your own site, if its good enough, you will start building links without even trying - and in doing so, ensure your site stays clear of any updates to algorithms that may target the very sites your trying to gain links from.

Hey guys,

One of the sites I'm looking after took a hit with their rankings (particularly for one keyword that went from 6/7 to 50+) post-Penguin in May. Although, after cleaning-up the link profile somewhat we started to see some slow and steady progression in positions.

The keyword that dropped to 50+ was moving upwards in advance of 20. However, a couple of weeks back, the keyword in question took another slide towards 35-40. I therefore wondered whether it would be best to submit a reconsideration request - even though the site did not receive a manual penalty.

The website has a DA of 40 which more than matches a lot of the competitor websites that are ranking on first page for the aforementioned keyword. At this stage, I would have expected the site to have returned to its original ranking - four-and-a-half months after Penguin - but it hasn't. So a reconsideration request seemed logical.

That said, when I came to go through the process on Webmaster Tools I was unable to find the option! Has it now been removed for sites that don't receive manual penalties?

Possibly this:

Hi,

Bob here from the ** * * and I wanted to drop an email to you and compliment your site. Nice layout, good info, good resources.

I was looking around at a few different sites for product/service information and I thought your's was one of the best.

That being said, I also noticed you guys have some great content related to product/service.  I currently work for a company that maintains a website that offers product/service, www.domainname.com.

We are a nationally recognized, reliable source for product/service on the web and I was wondering if you'd be interested in exchanging/advertising via links between your site and mine?

If not, thanks for the time and keep up the good work!

Thanks,
Bob

Might be a silly answer from me here, but have you logged into your Yahoo account to see if the listing is live?

I took some PA/DA metrics and rank date for my target keywords before signing up to the directories. I re-checked a couple months later and noticed decent increases in PA/DA and steady rank improvements, so i'll say signing up to both was a good move - but hard to say which directory contributed to the improvementes, whether it was one of or both.

But yes, I liked BOTW, much easier than Yahoo to get the listing approved and live, and cheaper to boot.

er, contrary to some posts on here i'd say that yes, it still does play a (small) part in the overall mix.

Getting a listing in Dmoz no longer has the impact it once had, and getting listed can take an age, so submit to it and forget about it.

Most of the manually edited directories can still play a part, and more than anything getting listed in directories is a natural process for any website.

If you have already visited the moz list and submitted your site to them then good work, as long as you worked towards getting listed in directories that are specific to your industry then a job well done.

Keep moving along with your day to day seo efforts and submit to directories as and when you find a good, relevant one.

Further more, as you have probably already seen on the moz list and by reading other Q&A posts there are some paid directories such as Yahoo and BOTW (others are available) that for me have proved worthwhile when submitting to, and I did see a ranking increase as others have in the weeks after I submitted to them.

Moosa is right, again, if using wordpress install the yoast SEOplugin: http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/

As well as enabling you to handle your on page seo, you can also handle your redirects and robots.txt files through the plugin.

Hi,

There was actually a great post on this subject a few days ago, worth taking a look. I think based on this, you could improve the structure of your email. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-write-email-to-get-a-better-response-rate

Hi,

We had a vaguely similar thing happen where we took over the running over a site and the old dev added a robots.txt disallowing the site from being indexed, which wasn't pick up for a while as dev work was on-going. Basically the sites rankings panned out.

We fixed the issue an re-submitted the site through webmaster tools. Site was reindexed within a week or so and rankings came back over the next 6 weeks.

How old is the site?

Have you been building back-links with the aim of manipulating Google rankings?

What is the URL of the site?

What keywords/pages rank in what engine?

Were you previously ranking well in Google/Yahoo for that search term but not anymore?

Bing and Google are different search engines and there is a lot of difference between two. These search engines use different algorithms, and so look at different factors. There could be lots of reasons,l but without knowing the above it might become tricky for the community to help / provide reasons why.

**Be carefull if amending the htaccess file. **

Make a back-up of it before you change anything. Test one redirect to make sure its working before you go ahead and add multiple redirects to the file.

No, I definitely wouldn't say that. If I wanted a kitchen and I wanted it cheap then I'd say there's a good chance I'd be searching "cheap kitchens".

Hey Jonathan,

It's still showing for me.

Under "About" and then the blue-trimmed "Links" section.

Hi Sylvana,

I watched this Webinar a while back by SEO Moz: http://www.seomoz.org/webinars/pinteresting-marketing-and-content

It'll explain all you need to know about how to get the best out of Pinterest, with proven results! I'd recommend it

I don't think it is that simple.

They are a known scam out fit, operating under multiple names and ripping customers off. There are countless cases online of customers being scammed by using these sites. However, seemingly they create a new domain, and get ranked.

Thats fair enough, if they are able to do that they should be SEOs, however, its a clear scam, with replicated sites. Sites with no links, poor content and new domains - great SEO

And is that in-line with what is perceived to deliver rankings? Egol, I read many of your posts on here, and if I was to ask you if I should do what they a have done with a site, I would guess you would say no - you need to create great content, lots of really great content and post it directly to your own site etc etc - right?

So, how can a site, or rather multiple sites like this, with zero content, zero links (some have anchor text rich links from forums) and new registered domains, mostly on the same server, beat long established, big name companies in the UK (and no, not sites I have worked on) within days of registering a new domain, and then, not only stay there, but move up the rankings?

Its not that simple.

I agree with Irving, "It's just a matter of time until they get penalized." - lots hope its not that long.

I think you have a good approach to this, and so, all things being the same, a refresh of the site should not hurt.

You mention that "content, url structure, internal linking structure" will all remain the same - if this is true and you keep everything in this bracket 'as-is' then you should be fine.

The most common reason rankings are lost when implementing a new site is re-directs, or the lack a redirect strategy to be more clear.

As your site structure / url structure is going to remain in-tack, then you wont really need to consider mass redirects.

However, here is what I would do just in case:

Before Launch:

Create a report of top linked to pages using Open Site Explore

Create a report of top content from the last few months from Google Analytics

Map all the URLs from the current site, use screaming from or something

After Launch:

Submit XML sitemap to webmaster tool

Review and improve on-page content

Monitor traffic in Google analytics, view top content for the period after launch and compare to the report you created prior to launch

Monitor and fix crawl errors in webmaster tools if any

Attract new links

Submit new XML sitemap (two weeks post launch)

Keep developing great content

"Therefore what weighs more - a domain name with a lot of years behind it or a domain name with the no. 1 keyword included in the domain name."

I'd go for the domain name with lots of years behind it every time. Put your site under this.

_ "writing thousands of unique product descriptions, and I was actually wondering if it is really worth the effort?"_

How many other companies are selling the same product, using the stock description? IMO it's worth spending time creating unique product descriptions along with your other SEO activities - the more ways you differentiate yourself, your site and your products the better. There are no short cuts, all areas need attention however long it takes.

Sorry, I am the one that misunderstood your question, read it too fast.

I don't believe there is one single tool that can be used to 'discover' all the keywords any single site ranks for. There are a number of tools you can use collectively that may give a bigger picture.

I dug out an old moz post that might be of interest - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/what-keywords-do-i-rank-for.

Other than that I've not been able to locate a programme in the past that will do what you need on its own.

Page load speed was a factor Google mentioned they take into consideration a couple of years ago, so as standard you should look into this - not just for Googles sake and the sake of your ranking, but to make the site a pleasant experiance for your users.

As I mentioned, back this up with decent content.

Hi Bob,

Yep - I used this, oh must be 8 years ago now!  Its a company named IBP (Internet Business Promoter - www.ibusinesspromotor dot com).Its not a great reporting tool TBH, I found it just pointed out a load of things it calculates are incorrect. But a lot of the things it thinks are incorrect are incorrect, if that makes sense.

It tries to get you to do all the things it believes are in-line with the search engines, until your page is "100% optimised".

IMHO, your best getting to grips with excel pivot tables and creating your own measurable reporting technique. Tailor the report to the important metrics - i.e. what is delivering ROI for the client site?

DA - Domain Authority

PA - Page Authority

This is a great whiteboard Friday that will help you understand more on this: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-domain-authority-page-authority-metrics

Hi Jesse,

Now your talking! I'd say I agree with you know on this - it may not have much value in terms of aiding a sites rank, but then again it may have some slight advantage in terms of rankings - as long as its played by the book, is relevant, not stuffed and is in line with all the other on-page 'best practices'.

It certainly wont hurt.

I was thinking more on the lines of improving CTR, as opposed to focusing blindly on a keyword stuffed title purely for the rank, like all the others in the top 5 in this niche.

Now the sites ranking, a more prominent way of attracting / making the listing stand out is required, so looking for valid options.

Yep, this would work within the travel sector - The UKs No1 Destination etc etc.

I think it would only benefit the CTR, if the offering is indeed the best, or the client is happy to claim they are the best at what they do.

Thanks Guys

Ahh, good man. That's spot on.