Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Also check out http://www.seomoz.org/webinars/a-foolproof-process-for-scrubbing-your-local-footprint about making sure your addresses are consistent across directories.

Learn some basic salesmanship.  Do you realize that business owners are getting 3-4 phone calls and emails a day from other SEOs claiming to be the best?  Be polite, ask questions, and don't insult me or yourself through ignorance.  Ask questions.  You might just discover that we could work together.

When you tell me that I'm not ranking for "competitive keywords" it tells me that you don't know what I'm trying to rank for.  When you tell me you can get me to the top of Google in 3 months or less, you're still telling me that you don't know my business and what I want from my website.  Who said I wanted national ranking anyway?  Oh right, not me because you never asked.

And if I answer the question "Do you want more business/leads?" with "No." Then politely end the conversation and move on.

The rare time that I do get asked about my current efforts, don't insult me by calling me an amateur.  I may be one, but talking down to me, or trying to make SEO sound like you're turning lead into gold will get a quick hang up from me.

If you want a contract with me, learn to negotiate based on my needs, not your process that you feel married to.  There are a lot of business owners out there that would be willing to work with you if you treated you leads with respect rather than iteration 23 of your cold call script.

And in response to the person this morning that sent a "free report" of basic SEO fixes for my website, make sure you put that report together using **my website. ** I know you're working from a template, so it should be really easy to remove the info from the wedding company and the lawyer's webpages before you email it to me.

We have similar issues with our own keywords, and creativity is certainly key.  Think along the lines of "We've been operating for 20 years in Dallas.  Family dentistry is our specialty."   It does become very awkward.  Alt tags, titles, and captions are easier to fit key phrases like that into.  So I say aim for the best you can, then optimize for the shorter phrase like "Family Dentist."

I always assumed mine was "rounded off" as well.  If you download the CSV of your history you can see the additional digits.

Scott, that's a really good question.  No SEO efforts were started  before this January.  And I haven't done much (2 or 3) directory submissions.  Any other directory submissions would have happened years ago,and only if we found a competitor there.  Since none of the comparison sites were hit I don't think it was that.  We launched a new site design and url structure back in July, but my old site's content still exists and is accessible through old links.  My assumption is that those were natural links.

Two updates ago I had a "big" drop in DA from 36 to 32 because of a drop in Followed Linking Root Domains.  Me and my competitors have taken DA hits recently, but I'm the only one to have dropped faster than the others. (see capture below for full story.)  Of course this happens right after I start focusing my efforts on SEO.

I'd be awfully grateful if y'all had any insights for me on this one.  I was hoping after the initial drop off that I would see the rank climb after my link building efforts over the last couple of months; no such luck.  Now I'm feeling like I've shot myself in the foot somehow.

Also attached is an ahrefs report showing backlinks and referring domains over time.

So did I shoot my foot off or am I seeing something else at work?

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eyepac and EGOL,

Thanks again for the help.  I've just finished implementing the gallery and the "project spotlights."  Now to beef up the content with more spotlights (we've got about 30 old ones from our last webpage that should transfer well), scour our archive for more photos, and get a microphone in my installers' hands.

I've still got to figure out a good way to get the portfolio into a multipage format targeting more key phrases, and I think I've got a good idea for a hybrid article/gallery. Now to find the time to make it.

Reeves

Thanks, eyepaq.

It's good to know all of those factors go into marking something as spam or not.  I may follow EGOL's suggestion of breaking this up into multiple pages that will decrease the number of repetitions, as well as decrease page load time.

EGOL,

Thanks for the great suggestions.  I'm currently developing a "project spotlight" portion of the portfolio that has just the kind of content you're speaking of.

At the same time we're trying to fill in the lack of content (very much in the early stages) through the blog and a "learning annex."

I'll have to think about the multiple pages approach.  I want this to be usable, and I need to think about how to pull that off in our CMS.

Reeves

I'm updating our company portfolio.  All said and done I will have ~300 photos in the gallery on page load that are filtered depending on user clicks.  Because of the nature of our work my main keywords are going to get repeated a lot throughout the file names and alts.  The titles/captions will have wording more appropriate to the user, but I can't avoid a lot of these keyword combos.

Do you think I'll take a hit for something like this? Or will it work in my favor?

Reeves

portfolio-gallery

Thanks, Smarties.

It's the "Link Analysis">History that makes me want to check webmaster tools.  OSE does show a huge drop in links, but I can't figure out why.  I haven't gotten the latest numbers yet so I'm not sure if the drop is continuing to happen or if it's stabilized.

There was a Mozinar recently called A Foolproof Process for Scrubbing Your Local Footprint Squeaky Clean that can help you keep your listings up to date.  There is a list of free and paid tools in there that can help you out.

Topclass,

I would suggest creating some pages where content could live permanently. I don't think Google et al are going to give or take away extra points because of the word "blog" directly.  What may happen though is the people coming to your site will assume the blog only contains news or time sensitive information.  So when the engines are watching that all important "user engagement" experience, your users aren't sticking around because they can't find the information where they expect it to be.

Having a permanent page for some content to live may lead to more natural linking patterns which will ultimately lead to better rankings.

Your content is an ecosystem, you need to have something living in each niche (articles, pages, blog posts) for it to be healthy.

Mike,

Super thank you for the tools.  The editorial calendar is a great way to help me keep organized.  I especially like the "Content Type" selection; what a great way to keep focus on a particular piece.

Do you typically have specific channels for content types?  Such as: "Light hearted" always goes on a particular blog or to certain social media?  Or is it just what you feel is appropriate at the time?

John, I'm sorry.  I totally misunderstood your question.  No, I don't set up different campaigns in SEOMoz (I was thinking PPC Campaigns.)  I only have one campaign setup for our webpage.

In the "On-page" section of your reports, click on one of the keywords that is currently graded as "F."  Make sure that at the top that the URL being graded is the right one for the keyword.  For instance, I want to make sure that my brand keyword "A&R Solar" is pointing to my homepage not to our FAQ.html page.  For a "Solar Panels" keyword I want to make sure that the URL is our "Products" page.

I hope that clears things up.

You can check how often Google is crawling your site through Webmaster Tools > Health > Crawl Stats

I'm also a newbie, but the tactic you describe is how I'm tackling our pages.  We're a contractor that needs to rank for nearby cities.  So my alternative campaigns (and landing pages) are for these locations.

My homepage is optimized for usability and branded key words.  I also need to optimize for specific products that have their own landing pages that are integrated (or will be) integrated into the site in other ways.

The key to me is that when someone is arriving at the site because they searched for "Product X" I don't need them to land at a page that showcases company culture.

This also focuses my efforts so I'm not trying to hit product and informational and branded keywords all on one page.

I would create a totally new campaigns just for brands.  From an organizational stand point you separate general from specific.  And it'll let you test different ad copy that speaks directly to a product.

Is there a way to see a history of the "links to your site"?  I've seen a lot of posts here from people say "I just saw a big drop in my numbers."  I don't look at this number enough to be that familiar with it.  Is there a way to see if Google has suddenly chopped our numbers?  I've poked around a little, but not found a method yet.

Thanks,

Reeves

Thanks for the insight and especially the tools.  Anything to keep myself organized is appreciated.

Dana, thanks for the lead on the book.  I'll take a look at it.

Luckily I do have a long list of questions customers have asked us over the years that I'm using as a guide to start to develop the content.  I also set up a survey to our site users to see why they're visiting us (60-70% reply that they're looking for more information about solar, and the rest to contact us directly).

One of the things I'm struggling with is how to best store this information on our page.  That video is great because Zipcar had a very clear funnel on their front page "4 Easy Steps to Car Freedom"  I should probably develop something similar.

As for the rest of the content, it will be going into a mix of pages and blog posts.  I think the usability tests will be great help to make sure people are able to actually find this information.

Reeves

Mike, Thanks for the quick reply and generosity.  I'm afraid I'm so bamboozled I don't even know where to start with my questions.

My goal is to generate quality leads for my business.  I figure that the best way to do that is to develop a beautiful, and engaging website with lots of accessible information to help educate clients before the reach out to us.  A long term goal would be to develop the reputation as thought leaders in our local market.

So maybe a couple of kick off questions:

1. How do we know that the content we're writing isn't getting lost in the noise of our own webpage, and the world at large?

2. How do we know if the content is actually relevant to our goals (ie clients)?

My story:

• recently "promoted" to creating our marketing department and efforts despite lack of expertise;
• new to SEO as a daily/weekly task;
• focusing a lot of effort polishing current webpage (redesigned last year);
• Hit most of the low hanging fruit in "Beginners Guide";
• asked enough questions to know that now I need to focus on content at this point.

My conundrum:  There is **so **much information out there about SEO, that keeping focus on the tasks at hand is incredibly difficult.  KPIs, Trends, Research everything I read serves to derail me from what might be my most critical tasks (content creation?)  SEO is like my business (solar), you need to be as site specific in your design and install as possible, but only generalized information is available to the novice.

My questions for you experienced SEOs: how do you keep focus?  How do know that the project you're focusing on is the right one?

Do y'all know of a resource for consultation/advising to look at my initial efforts so someone can help me navigate and gain perspective?  I'm not looking for someone to solve my problems (although that would be nice), but more of a "grade" (ie-less of this, more of that, nice work here, try again over there)

Thanks folks, any and all help is appreciated.

Thanks for the great responses.  I'm certainly working on the content, and it looks like I need to start thinking more creatively about these phrases.

For instance,

We have a phase "solar panels for home" that sends decent traffic to our site, but I'm sure we could be capturing more if any of our content was optimized better for it.  But how do you optimize for a phrase that makes you sound like a robot if you use it verbatim?