Intermediate & Advanced SEO

Need help/insights. Site SEO = OK, Authority BLs = OK, Rank page #1\. How to reach pos #1?

Hi there! Some doubts are confusing my head and need some assistence from you to get on the right track. I'll explain my situation and want to hear from you what do you really recommend for med/long term permanent results. 1 - I have a PR2 (.com.br) domain; 2 - I'm talking about little/med competition micro-niche keywords; 3 - I got all pages I want to, indexed (I have a well SEO constructed website with internal link building); 4 - If a keyword has average competition, I'll already start ranking in page #3 on the SERP's; For a few low competition keywords I start on page #1; 5 - I do a little whitehat link building, 1 or 2 backlinks on authority sites and then like 15 days later I came to page #1, generally on position 9/10; And then I got stucked 🙂 No more authority sites where I can get backlinks... I do some posts on the company twitter/facebook page's, but they are no follow, so I don't really now if this can help. (never see a SERP result). I did some "blackhat" stuff to see if it really work: I can say for sure the "profile backlinks" that we can buy from some sites doesn't work (maybe it's just for me). I can't see it on webmaster tool and neither my ranks changed since I bought a pack of 100 links (the links are working, I see it one by one) to test. Maybe the problem is about the domains, cause my site is .com.br and I'm buying .com profile links. I guess google understand backlinks from .com.br more valuable for my sites. Back to whitehat: I wrote some articles and posted it the right way, of course on .com.br articles sites, got it indexed and can see the backlink on webmaster tool, but no change on SERP's. (maybe this can be a long term result and I'm not seeing it yet). I'm really "scratching my hand" to do some blackhat stuff, but I don't want to lose what I already have done... I heard a lot about scrapebox but doesn't fell confortable to spam as hell a lot of blogs. I really want long term permanent results (my sites are totally whitehat/corporate sites). Can you expert guys give me some point to where I need to "walk" now to improve the SERP's? I never reached top #1 and want to try to rank at least one time to understand how this can be made... I'm thinking now to pay someone to rewrite 20 copies of an article and up it on some sites, to see if 20 can improve something. But still no confident, because it will cost like $100 for a good writer do it for me on my language. Maybe I can do better things with 100 bucks. I guess I did the path right: Internal SEO -> got indexed -> backlinking from authorities -> new articles backlinks to me (is it ok at this position or no?) -> (what next ?) I know SEO is a hard/never ending work, but what I'm trying to get cleaned on my head is the path of the work (if a right path really exists). Every word will be apreciated. What do you can suggest to me to try now? (please give me a hint to see SERP's results 🙂 if I feel that something worked, no matter how it can cost to me, but I'll pay for the work happily) Sorry if I'm a little confusing, english isnt' my first language. Thanks.

| azaiats2

0

What <h>Tag to Use For Global Navigation</h>

I've read several blogs discussing how including more than one H1 per page is a serious no no. However, what is the most effective <h>tag to use for your global navigation system. Or should it not be an <h>tag period?</h></h>

| calin_daniel

0

My ranking spiked then died in the butt? why? Please help!

Hi guys, I have been persevering with this ranking for some time now and thought you might be able to help. Or direct me to where I can get help. I am learning a lot through SEOmoz but I am still very green. Basically on the 20th of the 12th we jumped up to a 2nd place listing and then dropped back down on the 17th of the 1st 2011. The site is http://mlb.broomeaccommodation.com.au and the search term is 'Broome Accommodation' as you can see it is a considerable drop and really affecting our bookings and sales figures. I have attached a link to a screen capture of the problem - http://exitforward.com/kimberleyaccomm/seomoz.png Interested to hear your thoughts and get some help on this frustrating matter Kind regards Bodie Czeladka

| Bodie

0

Does Google penalize for having a bunch of Error 404s?

If a site removes thousands of pages in one day, without any redirects, is there reason to think Google will penalize the site for this? I have thousands of subcategory index pages. I've figured out a way to reduce the number, but it won't be easy to put in redirects for the ones I'm deleting. They will just disappear. There's no link juice issue. These pages are only linked internally, and indexed in Google. Nobody else links to them. Does anyone think it would be better to remove the pages gradually over time instead of all at once? Thanks!

| Interesting.com

0

Does Blocking ICMP Requests Affect SEO?

All in the title really. One of our clients came up with errors with a server header check, so I pinged them and it times out. The hosting company have told them that it's because they're blocking ICMP requests and this doesn't affect SEO at all... but I know that sometimes pinging posts, etc... can be beneficial so is this correct? Thanks, Steve.

| SteveOllington

0

Blogs with different focuses

Suppose I got a blog about cooking and another about computers. What's the best architecture for SEO ? mysite.com/cooking-blog mysite.com/computers-blog OR cooking-blog.mysite.com computers-blog.mysite.com ?

| marcelocustodio

0

Meta HTTP-EQUIV

Hi people! When you try to access http://www.ufam.edu.br you are redirected to http://portal.ufam.edu.br. Here's the code: <title>UFAM - Universidade Federal do Amazonas</title> What are the implications for SEO of this ? Won't the juice be passed? Isn't it better for passing juice using redirect 301?

| marcelocustodio

0

Stripping Parent Pages from Slugs

Hi Basically my wordpress site exists of 4 Parent Categories, each of them having + 50 subpages (or child pages) in them. Some of these child pages have other child pages in them. This creates URL's (or slugs) looking like this: mydomain.com/sunflower-seeds/exotic-sunflower-seeds/new-york-seed-shops I found a plugin that 301 redirects a page to any given url. This way i can make www.mydomain.com/sunflower-seeds/exotic-sunflower-seeds/new-york-seed-shops redirect to mydomain.com/new-york-seed-shops, only with the purpose to have shorter links and the keyword appearing 'earlier' in the url. Another option to shorten the url's is to shorten the parent pages slugs, something like this: mydomain.com/seeds/exotic/new-york. Only downside is that the keyword for the parent pages themselves won't appear in the slug anymore. The keywords will still be there in the Title, Description and H1 tag, but not in the url. so if my keyword is stunflower seeds, instead of having www.mydomain.com/sunflower-seeds i'll have www.mydomain.com/seeds What would you do? 1: Leave urls like this - really long urls, keywords don't come 'early' in url
mydomain.com/sunflower-seeds/exotic-sunflower-seeds/new-york-seed-shops 2: Make child pages 301 redirect - short urls, but url structure is lost (parent pages don't show in the url)mydomain.com/new-york-seed-shop3: User shorter slugs for Parent Pages - to me looks like the best option, but then i'll loose my keywords in the slugs for parent pages.mydomain.com/seeds/exotic/new-york4: Yes there's even a 4th option, again the example of how my slugs look now: mydomain.com/sunflower-seeds/exotic-sunflower-seeds/new-york-seed-shops I could use the plugin to redirect every child page (for example new-york-seed-shops) to this: mydomain.com/seeds/exotic/new-york-seed-shops. But i don't know if it's okay to redirect to different parent pages with wordpress...I'd also like to know if backlinks to 301 redirect pages count for the page they redirect to. And if they have the same impact/strength as links that link directly to the page.Thanks in advance

| ZeroGrav

1

Additional page listings under main listing in google

Hi, I'm working on the SEO for a site and I'd love to get the additional page links under our main site link in google, any ideas as to how we can achieve this ? Thanks,

| Prongo

0

Quick ranking boost

Hi, What is hte quickest way to get up the rankings for a particular not hugley competitive keyword ? Thanks,

| Prongo

0

What is the systematic what of doing keyword research?

What is the systematic what of doing keyword research? I have been optimizing some sites, keeping in mind the completion and relevance. But still I am not happy with the keywords selected. Can you tell me the international Standard why of selecting keywords for any site? A systematic way, which will work for any kind of website. Please give me some list of free tools also which I can use for it. Thanks

| ShashankGupta

0

Push for site-wide https, but all pages in index are http. Should I fight the tide?

Hi there, First Q&A question 🙂 So I understand the problems caused by having a few secure pages on a site. A few links to the https version a page and you have duplicate content issues. While there are several posts here at SEOmoz that talk about the different ways of dealing with this issue with respect to secure pages, the majority of this content assumes that the goal of the SEO is to make sure no duplicate https pages end up in the index. The posts also suggest that https should only used on log in pages, contact forms, shopping carts, etc." That's the root of my problem. I'm facing the prospect of switching to https across an entire site. In the light of other https related content I've read, this might seem unecessary or overkill, but there's a vaild reason behind it. I work for a certificate authority. A company that issues SSL certificates, the cryptographic files that make the https protocol work. So there's an obvious need our site to "appear" protected, even if no sensitive data is being moved through the pages. The stronger push, however, stems from our membership of the Online Trust Alliance. https://otalliance.org/ Essentially, in the parts of the internet that deal with SSL and security, there's a push for all sites to utilize HSTS Headers and force sitewide https. Paypal and Bank of America are leading the way in this intiative, and other large retailers/banks/etc. will no doubt follow suit. Regardless of what you feel about all that, the reality is that we're looking at future that involves more privacy protection, more SSL, and more https. The bottom line for me is; I have a site of ~800 pages that I will need to switch to https. I'm finding it difficult to map the tips and tricks for keeping the odd pesky https page out of the index, to what amounts to a sitewide migratiion. So, here are a few general questions. What are the major considerations for such a switch? Are there any less obvious pitfalls lurking? Should I even consider trying to maintain an index of http pages, or should I start work on replacing (or have googlebot replace) the old pages with https versions? Is that something that can be done with canonicalization? or would something at the server level be necessary? How is that going to affect my page authority in general? What obvious questions am I not asking? Sorry to be so longwinded, but this is a tricky one for me, and I want to be sure I'm giving as much pertinent information as possible. Any input will be very much appreciated. Thanks, Dennis

| dennis.globalsign

0

New sites what is the first things to do?

Hi Guys, If you have a baby of a domain which is only a few months old what should be the priorty for getting establish once all the on site stuff has been done? I know the directories are not as important as they use to be but is there a top list that should be worked through steadly to get the new site setup on? Kind regards

| ao.com

0

Do you think video syndication is a good link building tactic?

I am creating a process & strategy for publishing videos and would like some feedback on if it is worth syndicating the videos on multiple third party sites either manually or via TubeMogul. Currently the plan is to put the video on our main site, create a video sitemap, submit to webmaster tools so that hopefully the videos on our site show up in the SERPs. Then wait a week and syndicate on third party sites such as youtube, vimeo, viddler, etc. Are there any negative side affects? My thinking is that some people may only see the video if it is on youtube and the other niche sites because they may search those sites for videos rather than Google/Bing. Your thoughts?

| elephantseo

0

Migrating a site with new URL structure

I recently redesigned a website that is now in WordPress. It was previously in some odd, custom platform that didn't work very well. The URL's for all the pages are now more search engine friendly and more concise. The problem is, now Google has all of the old pages and all of the new pages in its index. This is a duplicate problem since content is the same. I have set up a 301 redirect for every old URL to it's new counterpart. I was going to do a remove URL request in Webmaster Tools but it seems I need to have a 404 code and not a 301 on those pages to do that. Which is better to do to get the old URL's out of the index? 404 them and do a removal request or 301 them to the new URL? How long will it take Google to find these 301 redirects and keep just the new pages in the index?

| DanDeceuster

0

Targeting combination of keywords

Hi, On our website Vliegtickets.nl we are now targeting one combination of keywords " flights + destination". We are working on a new website and we are rewriting texts for the launch. Our idea is to target again on the combination " flights + destination", but also target other combinations. Our intention is to have a first introduction text targeted on " flights + destination" and have lower parts of texts (descriptions) targeted on the long tail, with use of keywords like flight / fly to / cheap tickets to etc. Our page will be divided like this: 1. introduction text max 150 words (h1 + h2) targeted on " flights + destination"
2. box 2 Cityguide snippets / content in context of destination - targeted on city name
3. box 3. Question: target on new generic keywords + combination of destination What is your point of view on box 3? Is it the right way to target a broader range of keywords? Should we use these long tail keywords (fly to / flights / cheap flights...) also in meta title / meta description / strong kwds, etc? Or will it be sufficient if we target on one combination and use those synonyms in a lower density? Or is it best to keep the focus on one main combination and other pages on other keyword combinations? Best regards, Vliegtickets.nl

| vliegticketsnl

0

Detailed Revisions of Articles coexisting with Automated Description Articles

Hello all, think per instance in a comparator of cars, motorbikes, etc, where you have dozens of brands, types of cars and motorbikes like diesel or oil, 4x4 vs sport, etc So, in one part of your site you are reviewing them in detail, explaining everything. You also have a database with hundreds of models with several specs like top speed, length, engine, etc so you can automatically create an info page for these hundreds of models. How would you make both of them live together in your website? If you add the review to the automatted articles, then you would have an unconsistency as you cannot manually review all the products. On the other hand, doing it separetly will lead to a very, very similar title posts and urls (revision vs automated versions). In my particular case, I just had the revisions until now and my site is developed in Wordpress. I had all the url posts below the home (mysite.com/review-of-car-x-of-brand-y) and now I am going to add the automatted ones and am thinking on place the automatted ones like WP Custom Posts and the url would be mysite.com/cars/description-of-car-x-of-brand-y. But still have the problem with categories, tags, etc, etc Well, it is long question but what do you think about this?

| antorome

1

Geo-Targeting Content

I'm to get some ideas on restructuring existing content for geo-targeting. Example: Botox Page Tis is a hypothetical situation -- laser cosmetics clinic in Atlanta trying to rank for Atlanta Botox. The existing content is general information about botox procedures. The problem is editing the content to add Atlanta to the H1 tag and page copy. I'm wondering if there are some techniques to make the edits flow better? My idea is to add a geo-page for each procedure, but I'm wondering if this might interrupt or confuse users in the navigation funnel. Your thoughts? Thanks!

| 190west

0

Domain Authority / Page Authority

I manage a site that has home page authority of 69, and overall domain authority of 63. To improve domain authority, would it help to remove some of the pages that have 0 page authority? There are over 1,000 pages to this site, and I always thought that the more pages you have, the better (generally). But, does it actually hurt the site to have pages that Google perceives as having 0 page authority, or does this have no bearing? Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

| DiscoverBoating

0

H1 tag proper uses

Ok I see this happening all of the time. I get my hands on a new website and there are one of four header tag issues: 1. There are no H1 tags at all 2. There are multiple H1 tags on the same page 3. Every page has an identical H1 tag 4. Header tags are used all out of order Do any of these have a negative impact on rankings? I've always tried to get one H1 tag on each page, have it be the first header tag, and make it unique to each page. Is this a waste of itme? Could improper header tag use hurt a website?

| DanDeceuster

1

Does Google Use Security Seals As A Trust/Ranking Signal

There are quite a few secuirty seals/site safety tools by some big antivirus/trust companies Mcaffe site secuirty, verisign etc. Does Google, or any other big search engines use these as a trust/ranking signal?

| rhysmaster

0

How do you rank in the "brands for:" section in Google's search results ?

There's a "brands for:" section that appears above the first organic listing for certain search queries. For example, if you search for "dedicated servers" in Google, you will see that a "brands for:" appears. How do you get listed there? Thanks, Brian

| InMotionHosting

0

Optimising a website for multiple keywords and multiple towns

Hello, We have a clients site who we are trying to rank for 10 keywords accross 20 towns so a combination of 200. What would be the best way to tackle this. Their url is www.abbottclarkeifa.co.uk. Thanks Shehzad

| Gareth_Cartman

0

In looking at my latest seomoz crawl, I see that I have a bunch of pages being reported as duplicate content. Turns out a number of my blog tags share the same <title>as pages on my site. I added a couple of images to illustrate my point. Blog: http://imgur.com/YlxrI Page: http://imgur.com/H2zyc Any recommendations on what I should add to my Tag titles? My pages need to rank ahead of my tags. Should I go w/something as simple as Name of Post I Boarding School Blog Tags? Any help is much appreciated! Thanks, Peter </title>

| peterdbaron

0

DCMI and Google's rich snippets

I haven't seen any consistent information regarding DCMI tags for organic SEO in a couple of years. Webmaster Tools obviously has a rich set of instructions for microdata. Has there been any updated testing on DCMI or information above the whisper/rumor stage on whether engines will be using Dublin? As a final point, would it be worth going back to static pages that haven't been touched in a couple of years and updating them with microdata? It seems a natural for retail sites and maybe some others, but what about content heavy pages?

| jimmyseo

0

New domain name for existing site

Hi all, Our business has aquired a new domain name because there are several organisations closely related to ours that use similar domain names to target a niche group of users. We would like to use this new domain name to link to an existing website with content targeted at this user group as we feel that they will be more comfortable getting to the content via this new URL. After a useful search in these forums the majority of SEOMOZ gurus suggest that the new URL should be redirected to our current site using a 301 and we are happy to do this. However do we have to link the URL to our homepage or is it acceptable to link to a subfolder within the domain and then targeting content on this page to the user niche? Thanks for any input. Kind regards. Edit 11:38 The old url is oldcommunity.charity.com (we know having a subdomain is bad) this is where we manage all community engagement. The new url is www.newparticularcommunity.com and we would redirect this to oldcommunity.charity.com. The reason we have bought www.oldparticularcommunity.com is because the url is used by other charities for community engagement and is recognised by the community we are targeting. We are redirecting to our old site because we do not want to engage with them on this new url as our old site oldcommunity.charity.com already does this and can cater for the new community and perhaps they haven't realised that we can.

| tgraham

0

Is article writing and submission for link building a good idea in all circumstances?

I'm attempting to build links for a seafood market / restaurant and I'm finding my creativity and knowledge of SEO being stretched, which is a good thing of course. Can you help me grow here? I have the client interested in writing articles but he has little time for this. I want to make sure it is worth it. Is article writing and submission worth the time and effort for a business like this? How would I go about link building though articles for a small business like this?

| iSenseWebSolutions

0

Multiple domains, which does Google like better?

From a business perspective It seems a better idea to have one site and multiple domains pointing to that one site. Is there any benefit as far as ranking well in Google to having a site set up on each domain with links to the main site? Does you have any success from a business point of view in using this strategy? P.S. This is my 4th question in Beta testing, just want to make sure I'm not taking advantage of your generosity and if it is fine to keep asking questions here.