Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Thanks Doug, thats exactly what I had in mind.

Hi, we have an old site hosted by company A. We rank for certain terms in google for certain brands and products.

Now we have developed a new website on a new domain hosted by Company B.

If we are 301'ing at brand/product/page level from old to new, who is it that should perform this job? Is it Company A or B, old or new?

And does the physical website need to remain hosted for the 301 to work and for our SEO ranks on the old site to not fall apart?

Company A think we can do an excel mapping doc for each link from old site to new. Hand file to Company A and they host this file (not the actual website) then we transfer old domain to Company A as well. Then the 301s will work fine.

Yet Company B think we should continue hosting with Company A, keep the old physical site live and put the 301s in place. They say if the 301 link has content behind it then it will help or not take the chance of having the SEO affected?

Who is right? Do you need the old website to remain live once 301s in place or can this 301 config file hosted on a domain be all we need to do?

Any other ideas welcomed.

Thanks

Anyone else got anything to add to this?

Thanks

Hi,

We are not using the same domain name as its not user friendly. It is brandname-online.com rather than brandnameonline.com or brandnameonline.co.uk. Its a pain in the arse for emails, telling people over the phone and general stuff regardless of the SEO side of it. Many people dont use the -

We own the domain name but we can not take the website. So my thinking was that if we cant take the website, then we cant take all the links we have out there that go to anything other than the root domain brandname-online.com.? Is this correct?

My problem is I dont think we can 301 all the individual products pages (some of which will have sold out anyways) to the new website? Rather we can just 301 the current domain to our new domain? Do I have that wrong?

In brief...

We have a website and a domain name
We can not take the website itself
We CAN take the domain name

We have bought a new domain name
We plan on 301'in the current domain to the new domain

Do we have any work around for individual pages on current domain to get them to the new domain ? Or will our 301 on the current domain send all traffic to current site to our new websites homepage?

THanks

Hi,

We have a domain with current e-commerce site on, about 5 years old.

We have a new website being built with a different company and a new domain name.

We are transferring our old domain over to new provider and 301'ing the domain to new domain.

However, we can not take the current website with us, so we lose all our links/pages etc..

How important would it be to take a wrap of our current website to keep all the pages alive?

Is there anything we can do so oldurl.com/brand/tshirt/ doesnt lose its rank? Can we 301 individual pages if we dont have the actual website? Just the domain name.

Any help be great.

Thanks

Yes that's the way I am working. Not committing to too many keywords and defining the project up front.

I'm just strugglin to understand the time involved in each area. I know what it takes me but not sure if I am under selling myself, over selling or not doing enough with the time and resourse I have.

Thanks

Thanks for response.

What I don't get is the time and effort involved in off site backlinking per keyword.

Sure I can make each page keyword dense with great content and images.

But what about the off site stuff? For a one man band I always think it involves too much work to target that many words off site?

Within an e-commerce setting how would you equate that?

Say I have hundreds of different products and want to target 50 of them?

If I have armani jeans, slim fit, straight fit, boot fit etc.. all different products. How do I target 7 for one product? Or would I target 1 for 1 product but then say 50 different products?

In your experience how many hours would you say you put into targeting a keyword?

Thanks

Hi,

I have a client asking if they can target 50-100 keywords.

Has anyone ever heard of this before? In my eyes, 1-7 keywords at any one time is more than enough.

So unless you had a team of 50 people doing the work, is this a reasonable request?

Any advice welcome.

Thanks

Thanks. It is a WooCommerce solution so they have a forum yes.

We do not do it with colours (the dropdown) because the cateloge of clothing can become quite thin when viewing. That and becuase the majority if not all major retailers do not do it this way.

If we have a developer doing the design, how would I go about doing the rel=canonical tags myself to save paying them to do it everytime we have new products?

Our new site is not live yet so just want to be up to speed for when it does go live.

Hi,

I need to find the best way to put my products on our e-commerce website. I have researched and researched but I thought I'd gather a range of ideas in here.

Basically I have the following fields:

Product Title
Product Description
Product Short Description

SEO Title
Focus Keyword(s) (this is a feature of our CMS)
Meta Description

The problem we have is we have a lot of duplicate content eg. 10 Armani Polos but then each one will be a different colour (but the model number is the same). I don't want to miss out on rankings because of this.

What would you say is the best way to do this?

My idea is this:

Product Title: Armani Jeans Polo Shirt Blue
Product Description:

• Armani Jeans Polo Shirt in Blue
• Made from 100% cotton
• Armani Jeans Polo with Short Sleeves, Pique Collar and Button Up Collar.
• Designer Boutique Menswear are official stockists of Armani Jeans Polos.
  Short Description: Blue Armani Jeans Polo

SEO Title: Armani Jeans Polo Shirt Blue MA001 | Designer Boutique Menswear
Focus Keywords: Armani Jeans Polo Shirt
Meta Description: Blue Armani Jeans Polo Shirt. Made from 100% cotton. Designer Boutique Menswear are official stockists of Armani Polos.

What are peoples thoughts on this? I would then run the same format across each of the different colours.

Another question is on the product title and seo title, should these be exactly the same? And does it matter if I put the colour at the beginning or end of the title?

Any help would be great.

I think the idea they suggested was for pure SEO. Branded URL, unique brand focused content. With links going to the website.

So someone searches for Armani J31 Jeans, they find our armanij31jeans.co.uk site, unique content, pictures, style advice all focused to that brand and style of product. We update it weekly with new pics, new stock, new content.

I see the idea but I sort of think, is it better to just focus on building links direct to the website, rather than having this network of sites all linking back to the main website?

We are a menswear retailer, so we sell shoes, tees, trainers, jeans, shirts etc.. from about 15-20 different brands.

now i wouldnt want 20 micros sites but would concentrate on say 4-5 top brands? all unique content, all with their own external domain name.

I am not a fan, it doesn't seem right but then again I am new to it.

last thing i want to do is risk it for nothing.

I agree. Thats what  I thought when I was told.

I would rather have our retail site and build links direct to that from backlinking and our own blog, social etc..?

I thought the idea behind the micro sites was to take advantage of the brand being in the domain name and giving the micro site fresh content every few days dedicated to the brand in question (eg armani then another site would dedicate to Lyle & Scott). But it seems a lot of work when you can have 1 blog talking about all brands? But then you loose the url name, the brand keyword etc..?

Hi,

I have been speaking to seo firms regarding strategies and they mentioned setting up micro sites under domains that are relevant.

i.e setting up armanidoamin.co.uk and we use it as a blog type site to update all info, product reviews, news relating to armani.

Whats peoples thoughts on this? Does it work? Is it worth the effort?

Im not so sure but obviously looking for ideas.

Cheers

hi, i am about to reknew my sub with a sitemap host. they offer prices based on how many urls you have.

does anyone know where i can count how many my site has and it be accurate?

thanks

I might as well as we bank with them for business!

I thought that but as Dan Price mentions some sites are suspect on there.

Ah yeah. How have they done that?

Hi, I have entered a competitiors website www.my-wardrobe.com into Open Site to see who they get links from and to my surprise they have a load from Barclays Business Banking.

When I visit the page I can not see the links. But if I search the pages source code for my-wardrobe, there I have it, a link to my-wardrobe.com.

How have they done this? Surely Barclays haven't sold them it? And more so, why are they receiving link juice when you cant even see the link on the Barclays page in question - http://www.barclays.co.uk/BusinessBanking/P1242557952664

Thanks

| |
|   | <a <span="">href</a><a <span="">="</a>http://www.my-wardrobe.com" class="popup" title="Link opens in a new window" rel='' onmousedown="dcsMultiTrack('DCS.dcsuri','BusinessBankingfromBarclays/Footer/wwwmywardrobecom', 'WT.ti', '','WT.dl','1');"> |
|   | www.my-wardrobe.com |
|   |
|
|   | |

examplecasino.co.nz? You get your brand and keyword in one??

I would say it depends on where the text is found.

If you have 108 highly relevant, high ranking websites displaying that text you'd be fine. But if 100 of them come from spammy sites, blog comments and directories I'd be wary.

Same with all things, if its genuine backlinking you'll be ok but if there is 108 backlinks created in 1-2 days, then you'll look spammy.

Spread it out and try get those links on relevant websites.

More experienced SEO'ers may advise better though.

I would say it doesn't matter unless of course you are having a domain like www.this-is-my-colourful-nice-seo-friendly-website.com.

We use ours to say -online.com just to seperate it out. However our new domain doesn't have one in and we have two words together.

As long as you have something people can search on or recognise I think it will be ok.

I have noticed majority of my keywords have not been tracked and I need to wait until next update. However some keywords have.

I was tracking about 40-50 keywords yet only 18 are currently showing as tracked.??

Thanks.

We are in the process of getting a new site and new domains so that will fix it.

Thanks. Unfortunately the website does not have the capability to select colours. So we need to list each product as a separate one.

H1, I highlight the top line in the product description and set it to Heading 1. That top line usually mimics the Item Title.

Any ideas?

Hi,

What I want to know is, if listing multiple items of the same product, but they are available in different colours, should I name them the same but just change the colour at the end eg Lyle & Scott Polo Shirt White, Lyle & Scott Polo Shirt Blue

Or should I vary it, to get the different page titles that cover different terms?

eg Lyle & Scott Polo Shirt White and then Lyle & Scott Polo Blue and then Lyle & Scott Long Sleeve Polo Red?

And finally,

If my page has a item Title which is a clickable link in the store, then a Short Description which is also a clickable link on the store, so each give out some sort of keyword internal anchor text line? Then should I base my SEO Title and H1 title on the Item Title name exactly? Or mix it up again?

Thanks

The google+ image that you click to +1 something is a recommendation of your website not your Google+ account. So having that +1 image to click is better in my eyes.

Your +1 profile you handle like a facebook account. Sharing stories, posting links etc...

Image its facebook. You want your LIKE button on your website for people to Like and also maybe a link in footers for direct links to your profile.

So in other words have both, but make the +1 image or Like buttons more visible for people to click and recommend the page they are placed on.

I would say it would be pretty important to include that word London on the page content. It will help regionalise your page with Google, more SEO'ers might be able to say if this is true.

But I would defo have your targeted jeyword phrase within the page info, why wouldn't you want to?

2. Are you talking about your own blog or using different peoples blogs?

If you mean your own blog, link value will get worse the more links you put on it, but I use my own blog to give my customers something interesting to read, something they will share with others and the links on page are used to navigate to my website, rather than gain some juice from them.

If you mean other peoples blogs, then all depends on the content and their domain value. Sure 2 blogs a week is great but you'd be better getting 1 blog a month on a high ranking, content relative blog than getting 2 blogs a week on low ranking, totally irrelevant content blog.

So my advice would be to do 3 things.

1. Put London in your page content.
2. Create your own blog
3. Use other, relevant, high ranking blogs to gain backlinks from, using unique content on every blog, with maybe no more than 1-2 links within a blog piece.

There is more to SEO than blog articles in my eyes. Social media is taking over the world, Twitter and Facebook provide huge audience potential for very little effort. Maximise that social gateway first is my view. What do others think?

Sounds good mate. Thanks.

Thanks for your replies.

We need a new website first and foremost. Current one too old, not good enough etc...

Then we are changing our business name to fit in with new stores etc...

We want to move away from our current brand name, hence the new name. The current URL structure is poor, so a short, more SEO friendly one is being devised into the new site.

I think the 301 is best option, as we need to get away from our current site, current name and current website provider.

The company we are using are e-commerce experts so no doubt they have best solution but was just looking to see what options are out there.

Thanks

Hi,

We are in the process of having a new website developed by a web agency. New domain, new business name etc...

What is the best process to transfer from old domain to the new one?

What happens to all my ranked URLs?

What can re-directs do to help me?

Will I loose all my link juice on highly ranked keyword domains? I ranked 1st for a brand now, wil lthis go?

Any advice, help or hints would be great.

Thanks

Will

Yeah I will be moving onto other brands eg. armani jeans, vivienna westwood shirts etc... but what do I do about the creative recreation trainers phrase? Leave it, top it up now and again, continue to market it along with other brands?

As a one man team, too many brands and I find it impossible. So taking 1-2 brands and trying to do well on them.

Yeah I will be moving onto other brands eg. armani jeans, vivienna westwood shirts etc... but what do I do about the creative recreation trainers phrase? Leave it, top it up now and again, continue to market it along with other brands?

As a one man team, too many brands and I find it impossible. So taking 1-2 brands and trying to do well on them.

Thanks Mat and Anthony.

When you say expand my keyword list, should I expand around the main brand eg creative recreation kaplan trainers or black creative recreation trainers?

Or should I move onto another brand completely? And just top up my Creative Recreation Trainers occassionally?

When you say run tests, what tools are there to check these? Are the grade reports in SEOMoz any good?

Thanks

Thanks Mat and Anthony.

When you say expand my keyword list, should I expand around the main brand eg creative recreation kaplan trainers or black creative recreation trainers?

Or should I move onto another brand completely? And just top up my Creative Recreation Trainers occassionally?

When you say run tests, what tools are there to check these? Are the grade reports in SEOMoz any good?

Thanks

Thanks Mat and Anthony.

When you say expand my keyword list, should I expand around the main brand eg creative recreation kaplan trainers or black creative recreation trainers?

Or should I move onto another brand completely? And just top up my Creative Recreation Trainers occassionally?

When you say run tests, what tools are there to check these? Are the grade reports in SEOMoz any good?

Thanks

Hi,

After months of targeting, promoting etc... I have now reached Google.co.uk rank position 1 for my phrase "creative recreation trainers" and I stand at rank 3 on Google.com.

I am happy with these results as this is the phrase I targeted and this is the brand I wanted to rank first for.

But were do I go from here?

I am thinking I change brand and try work some magic on that, but still continuing to add backlinks etc... to the Creative keyword phrase?

What would people advise?

Also can anyone do an analysis of any sort on that keyword phrase and/or the url http://www.designerboutique-online.com/all-clothing/creative-recreation/ and tell me some good points, bad points, what to do next and so on?

Any help would be great.

Thanks

I run e-commerce site. You shouldn't worry as all e-commerce the same. Just be careful not to have spammy links and only have links that are relevant to your website.

The second link for me shows over 200 items correct? Each items I can see 3 links attacted. 1 on the image, 1 on the View button and 1 on the item Title. So there is close if not over 600 links in iteself. Then factor in your head and footer links, plus your filter links. You close to 700.

I have been using it the past 2 days without any problems.

Maybe its just because once you have read that page, the user doesn't feel the need to go any further and clicks off?

Hi,

Our competitors are bigger and have more money than us. Not to mention the site before I joined was just left to rot, so its well behind.

I have built up a strong social network and I am currently trying to increase the number of back links we have. Was around 9 root domains when I joined, now up to 55. But our competitors have something silly for there numbers.

So I feel if I can use these links to at least get us something, then it must help a bit. I am being picky and I am using other means of getting links such as twitter, facebook, blog articles published and writing my own unique content.

Really just need to get more links pointing to us, the more from relevant fields the better.

Is there anything within SEOMoz Tools that can look for blogs in your industry (ie. Designer Menswear?) or is that a case of looking, looking and looking some more?

Cheers

Hi, I ran a competitive link analysis report today and back came quite a few domains that 2 or more of my 5 main competitors link from.

Is it worth me submitting links to these sites? And would i be best served submitting my homepage URL or submitting a brand page such as Creative Recreation Trainers? I want to target that brand but don't want to do it if my main URL is better?

Any ideas? See below my report.

| Subdomain | Subdomain mR | Subdomain mT | # Competitors | # Linking Pages | Link Acquired |
| t.co/ | 8.05 | 8.04 | 2 | <a>2</a> |   |
| ww2.cox.com/ | 5.99 | 6.50 | 2 | <a>3</a> |   |
| www.littlewebdirectory.com/ | 5.90 | 5.59 | 2 | <a>2</a> |   |
| www.amazines.com/ | 5.69 | 5.66 | 2 | <a>3</a> |   |
| svpply.com/ | 5.66 | 5.53 | 3 | <a>20</a> |   |
| www.jayde.com/ | 5.64 | 5.68 | 3 | <a>4</a> |   |
| www.pearltrees.com/ | 5.58 | 5.81 | 2 | <a>2</a> |   |
| www.businessseek.biz/ | 5.52 | 5.51 | 2 | <a>3</a> |   |
| www.a1articles.com/ | 5.50 | 5.22 | 3 | <a>9</a> |   |
| www.linksilo.de/ | 5.48 | 5.23 | 2 | <a>15</a> | |
| www.alistsites.com/ | 5.46 | 5.24 | 2 | <a>38</a> |   |
| www.the-free-directory.co.uk/ | 5.37 | 5.07 | 2 | <a>20</a> |   |
| www.walhello.com/ | 5.30 | 4.97 | 2 | <a>2</a> |   |
| www.quarkbase.com/ | 5.14 | 5.12 | 2 | <a>2</a> |   |
| snipsly.com/ | 5.13 | 5.20 | 2 | <a>21</a> |   |
| www.counterdeal.com/ | 5.12 | 5.07 | 2 | <a>2</a> |   |
| www.01webdirectory.com/ | 5.03 | 5.03 | 2 | <a>2</a> |   |
| www.2addlink.info/ | 4.92 | 4.58 | 3 | <a>4</a> |   |
| www.fuk.co.uk/ | 4.64 | 5.00 | 3 | <a>20</a> |   |
| www.final-fantasy.us/ | 4.63 | 4.77 | 2 | <a>2</a> |   |
| oyax.com/ | 4.42 | 4.61 | 2 | <a>4</a> |   |
| www.touchretail.co.uk/ | 4.33 | 4.21 | 2 | <a>4</a> |   |
| tptbtv.cold10.com/ | 4.27 | 4.86 | 3 | <a>1</a> |   |
| www.mastbusiness.com/ | 4.23 | 4.34 | 2 | <a>2</a> |   |
| www.competitionhunter.com/ | 4.16 | 4.21 | 2 | <a>6</a> |   |

Hi thanks.

Interaction is good I think. I am having decent chatter with customer base and also receiving followers, tweets, retweets and recommendations from football players, dj's, musicians, local celebs, actors, tv/media personalities etc.. so i feel I am getting our name out there.

I will continue what I am doing and take a look at your link, looks useful.

Thanks again.

Thanks.

When I say small budget, we have a smaller one than competitors but if needed we could spend approx £500 p/m on doing a SEO Backlink campaign. But would need to know if this is the main thing we should target.

Also when you say PR, often when gaining links, the root domain is high PR but the page your article ends up on is low PR.

Does this matter? And how do you get a high PR article/link on the main domain that will last?

Often blog posts stay on the main domain front page for a week then they ae archived are they not?

Thanks. Thats the one.

If I want to target a keyword/brand of Creative Recreation Trainers, is it best to submit that brand page or submit my main domain?

Whats the best way to target a specific brand product?

Hi,

My theory is yes I do. But the problem I have is a small budget and competitors who have a big one.

My problem is we have a small number of external links and linking root domains.

My profile from a domain analysis read like this in March and then May...

External Followed Links - Mar 103 | May 257
Total External Links ------- Mar 114 | May 276

Total Links ------------------- Mar 5,577 | May 24,425

Followed Linking Root Domains - Mar 24 | May 47
Total Linking Root Domains ------- Mar 30 | May 55

As you can see, progrss is being made considering I do this part time for a family website. But what I need is a big bump in these numbers as my 3 compeitors are pulling in silly numbers such as 308, 7000 and 45000 external followed links.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to compete with this realisticy without spending a fortune? I am putting the time and effort in so anything you guys can do to help the better.

I am using twitter and facebook quite a bit, and seen growth on Twitter go from 40 to 1,350 followers over 7 months. Visits to the site over 7 months have gone up 50% as well.

However sales are still looking about 10-15% up on previous year.

I need more links coming into the site don't I? And what is the most important part of the Domain Analysis, what shoudl I want to increase first and foremost?

Any ideas?

Cheers

Will

Hi,

I am sure I read it on here. But is there a link to a resource whereby I can search Google for sites that accept things like guest bloggers, offer do follow links, do not no follow comments etc...

It used things like "search term" blogs, eg "guest bloggers" websute

Anyone help me out?

Cheers

Will

I think point 3 is the biggest one. instead of searching facebook for you or remembering your facebook page url, they will be remembering your main domain url which is good for future business.

You can follow as many people as you like daily. Tweet wise, I think after 250 tweets or so, you get asked to come back later. Wait an hour or so and everything should be ok again.

Remember, you want an audience that are interested in you and your service. No point having 50,000, 95 year olds following you if you sell Club 18-30 holidays.

Pick your audience to follow, then try engage and interact with people who you think are good for you. Usually if you follow a celeb and reply to their post, their followers could see that reply and may follow you, so you get people interested in the same stuff.

Get retweets from anyone is good, so maybe be cheeky, ask for a follow so you can DM them, then DM them some sales speech on how you can work together or whatever.

It takes time, over 7 months I have grew our twitter from 40 to 1,350 followers. Which I think is great progress. All natural followers from interacting with my audience and others.