Nov
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Feel free to ask any SEO or internet marketing related questions and I will try to answer them below.
I prefer to answer broader industry questions than site specific questions. It can take a day to do a strong site review, and I could miss a lot of things that are wrong if I give your site a 5 minute once over.
Questions like "I have a new site and want to know where to start with link building" are better than comments "please review everything about my site". Also I can't guarantee that I can do anything to get your site unpenalized by Google if you were recently penalized.
[Update: I just closed this thread after a few hundred comments, so I have time to write more new posts.]
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Hi Aaron,
I've been having loads of problems with Google properly ranking one of my older sites since it was basically created. The domain was put into use July of 2004 and has a thriving Blog and Forum on it. The forum is pretty big, 26k threads, 414k posts and active. The blog has had articles featured on Digg's main page (in fact have one on there right this second) and Propeller through it's life. All the content was highly related to the topic, Ford Mustangs. It seems like no matter what I do nothing improves my rankings. My Google webmaster area says I rank 380th for Mustang, 96 for Mustang Forums and doesn't even list many of the other popular keywords that a Mustang site should rank for.
I've filed for a reconsideration but honestly have no idea what to tell them. I don't use spam techniques and all the content is on target. Webmaster tools says I have 50k links to my main page and many blog posts with 200+ links from the Diggs. I've even been featured on popular blogs like Autoblog more times than I can account. It's very discouraging to see Google treat us the way they have.
You can see screen shots here: http://www.brent-wilson.com/archives/3/. I have also talked to others who have authority sites such as Kathy from Hystersisters.com who has been having lots of problems with Google lately.
I'm not sure what to do right now as I am losing lots of traffic because of this. It's very discouraging. I hope this doesn't break any of your rules and I have hesitated to try to ask personal questions but I've got to the point where it's just getting discouraging to know that nothing I am doing or will ever do, it seems, will help me improve in Google.
Hi Brent
If you want to move yourself up the value chain then a large part of that is perception, and AdSense top and to the left on the homepage is no good. Without even having any idea of your revenues I think AdSense top and to the left on the homepage scares off more users than it makes in revenues. And that ad placement might be hurting your ability for Google to consider your site a quality site. If you were ever hand penalized that penalty will likely stay as long as the site has that aggressive ad placement.
The homepage should be an advertisement for the site. Look at the SEO Book homepage. See how it guides people around the site? You want to do that. Sell the site.
After you get enough authority to rank you where you want to then you might want to get more aggressive with the ad placement, but not right now if you are trying to gain authority and rank for the shorter phrases.
There are only so many quality links you can buy / rent / get, and that nasty ad placement is probably costing you many of the in community links that you would need to compete better for the core shorter phrases.
Are you still ranking well for the longer keywords? Compete.com shows 51 keywords for your site, which seems low given that it is a large forum. And your site is not ranking for many of the terms it was ranking for on the last crawl by SEO Digger.
On internal pages I have to scroll an entire page before I get to any content, which to me seems like overkill with the ad placement. If you want ads top and to the left try some of the 160 by 600 adsense ads and float the forum right of them.
BTW...if you are a forum you need to compete against the other forums before you can beat out everyone for the broadest industry terms. My plan would require short term pain before getting rewards, but I would look at my Google traffic trends and crawling patterns and try to figure out if I was penalized or just lack authority. From there, if you were penalized I would...
Thanks for the feedback Aaron. I'll see what I can do to dig into whether I have been penalized or not. I'd really hate to give up my ad location for the chance that it was Google who hand penalized me for it as the ads perform really well. I get 12-20 google referrals a day so even the really long search terms aren't doing anything for me.
If you are only getting 20 referrals a day with a forum that old then they most likely penalized your site.
I think some of your competitors are probably getting 1,000+ Google referrals a day, so lowering CPM may not lower your revenues. Look here to see what I mean.
Looks like you been penalized by Google for SpeedLinking.
Now how to get out of the speed trap, is another question.
Maybe Aaron has some suggetions, but I would not be intentionally Digging for a while.
It is hard to say if the issue is just algorithmic or algorithmic plus editorial. My guess is that if this site got flagged for manual review it would not have passed.
Hello Aaron,
Would love to hear your thoughts on marketing a 300 Acre Tennessee Mountain Retreat - http://www.sugarhollowretreat.com is the link. The company targets large groups such as corporate retreats, church retreats, family reunions, weddings, etc...
We are redesigning the site, so any recommendations would be great to include in the redesign and later promotion of the site.
A natural mountain retreat does not pull me in. I think if you are a retreat you really have to stand for something. Like give me more about natural mountain or give me another angle.
The two column design confuses me. The link colors do not pop. In fact, it makes it look like there are no links in the content.
Pull up the section about who the retreats are for. Look at where most of your business comes from. Aim to depreciate some of the lower value ones while actively speaking to your top market or top few markets on your homepage. Compare how your homepage calls out to people to how well Dan Thies does it here. Your site should be more aesthetically pleasing than his (you are selling a getaway, etc.) but you should still call out to your core markets.
Also use some bulleted lists, subheaders, and other formatting elements to help break up your content.
Hi Aaron,
I'm just wondering if there is much SEO value in the Yahoo Directory (still recommended by Google I think?)and Business.com listings anymore? I get no traffic from them, although I do rank no. 1 on Yahoo for my main keyword - skiing holidays - although I get little traffic from Yahoo.
My site chalet1802.co.uk has around 6000 links mainly from directories with some press release, articles and social bookmarking thrown into the mix.
Are the Business.com and Yahoo Directory links worth it just for the trust/authority alone - ie. 2 trusted links enable me to acquire 1000/2000 weaker links - or would I be better off spending the money ($500 a year?) elsewhere?
I like to have a mix of links. So if you already have lots of weaker links then go for the Yahoo! Directory and Business.com links.
With Yahoo! make sure you pick a category that is relevant to you with a limited amount of competition such that you end up on the first page of your directory category page.
If my site does not make it to the first page of the category sometimes I even sponsor the category until my site's authority grows. I think the first page counts a bunch more, plus you might get some clickthroughs to help offset the additional sponsoring costs.
Hi Aaron
I'm glad you had an open session this morning. A subdomain on our site seems to have been hit by a Google penalty. About 3 weeks ago, Google referrals to the site dropped off almost completely where previously it had been the primary source of traffic for us.
I can't understand the reason for this. We've had no problems or penalties in the past, and I don't think we've violated any webmaster guidelines. The subdomain is music.unrealitytv.co.uk.
Any feedback gratefully received!!!
Aaron,
Since you've made the move to adding videos to your website as part of your long term marketing strategy I was wondering what Video software you use to create your videos and if you'd recommend using it.
I use Camtasia to create screen capture videos.
Hi GerryBot
Not sure if this is everything, but it is a start.
You have lots of duplicate content related issues with your site. Duplicate page titles, date based archives, author archives, tag archives, category archives, etc. getting indexed.
You should get category pages indexed, but you probably do not want to get all the date based archives indexed. Also, if you have a category page named concerts then you don't need a tags page by the same name...or the other way around...either way is fine, but pick one.
Amongst those issues, you also have a canonical URL issue with Google indexing some of the contents at www. yoursubdoman . yourdomain .com and yoursubodmain.yourdomainname.com.
Thanks Aaron
On duplicate content, would you recommend removing the date based archives (for instance), or leaving them there and using robots.txt to do a noindex on those types of page?
Also, presumably a bit of .htaccess magic will sort out the canonical url issue?
On the duplicate content issue stuff I would recommend using robots.txt to block it from getting indexed or using link nofollows to not pass it much link equity. Caution: please do not accidentally just block all URLs with dates in them if you have dates as part of all of your blog URLs.
Also look at things where you have page# too. There is probably a workaround to that issue by like adding more posts to each page to create less of the urls that are like page/2/ page/3/ and whatnot.
Yup... .htaccess should work, but make sure you save your current file before editing it.
Hi Aaron,
I have been reading your blog for the past year or so and read your book (easily the best SEO resource i have come across) but have just registered on the site today.
Anyway, i have an Irish region based Alternative Health site www.alternative-health.ie which is up and running about 5 months now. The google.ie hits are slowly starting to increase, not too much competition in Ireland.
I read your first reply on this thread about not placing google adds too aggressivly on your homepage as google might penalize you. I dont make much off it at the moment and the only reason i put it up was because i thought google would push my site more when i had the adds on. Would you recommend removing them from the site completely until i get more established?
Any other feedback on the site would be great!!
Thanks
Hi Ronan
I don't think Google wants to penalize sites for user their ads. They want to penalize sites that look like they have no purpose other than Google ads.
Your ads are not placed very aggressively. The other site I reviewed literally required scrolling about an entire screen before getting to the content. That scroll a whole screen style turns off many users and that means many people who would have contributed content or linked at the site do not.
Your site does not suffer from that issue though.
I'm relatively new to AdWords, and I have one account. From that account, I am running campaigns for several clients.
If more than one client bids on the same keyword (columbus ohio new homes) then wouldn't the best approach to be to have an separate account for each of them?
Hi Rsquared
What you need to do is set up an account for each client and then connect them through your AdWords My Client Center.
This will also make your accounting far easier.
Hi Rsquared, Aaron,
Sorry, but the first thing you should do is to tell your newest client to look for another SEM Agency, based on the fact you don't think it's a good practice do keep two clients bidding on the same keyword. Isn't it odd to know how many those two competitors (they are, keep this in mind) are bidding, what they CTRs are, if they are using broad mach, exact, and what negative keywords they are using? What do you feel they would think if they knew you have all this information about their competitors?
Have you ever seen an offline Marketing Agency keeping accounts of two competitors? Like GM and Ford? No, once you have a car account, you're closed to another car account. That's known, in Brasil, as something like "conflict of interest" - I think you're are famliar with this concept in US too.
So, my advice as an SEM professional is to create a fair relationship with your clients, with no conflict of interests. No matter you loose a client now, you will find two new clients as soon as you deserve it.
Sorry about the poor English.
Regards,
apieve
Hi Apieve
In some cases that might be true, but some merchants do not have a budget large enough to buy exclusive service rights.
Also, in some cases an SEM might run geotargeted campaigns where are clients benefit from the efficiencies of the vertical knowledge gained by the marketer, but do not compete against each other even if they are bidding on the same keywords.
Hi Aaron,
I am trying my first attempt at a blog (Wordpress) and with SEO. I installed the SEO All in One plugin. Do you think it is a helpful plugin and how would you recommend to configure the titles? I have each title (post, page, category, archive, etc..) with the title | Blog name currently
I still need to do proper keyword research (your tools section is awesome BTW!) and initially I just took a stab in the dark at a few keywords. I've been doing keyword searches in google for the individual posts and I'm starting to see my posts in the top 100 for the main keywords (slowly making progress). I also want to focus on overall SEO and main keywords.
Also, when you write a post do you have specific keywords in mind that you are writing the post for? I'm trying to do that as well to reach a larger audience with some specific long tail keywords.
Thanks for the opportunity to ask questions! My blog is http://lastminutecaribbeandeals.com
John
Hi John
I have not used that plugin yet, but think it was created by a smart fellow, so I think it is probably pretty good stuff.
Many posts have keyword ideas in them when I post, but some of them are just focused on stuff I want to write about. As your blog gains in authority in a saturated market the game of optimization not only includes looking at keyword stuff, but also trying to ensure you have some unique content and a unique user experience that reflects your personality or the personality of your website.
You need the HeadSpace2 plugin from Urban Giraffe. It's been around for several years, is consistently updated, does Title element , Description Meta and a BUNCH of other stuff.
The Seo plugin is good but only does the title element.
Hey Aaron,
I am building alot of sites (100+) using the same site architecture and design. The sites target similar, but unrelated users (think one type of career compared to another - so like laywers, doctors, teachers, etc.) I didn't go with 1 site because of the value of the sites individual domains to brand the sites, and, in reality the users of 1 site will not care about content on any other sites.
The sites will not contain duplicate content except for the underlying page design and site architecture. And the sites will NOT link together (so they are not a link network).
What possible problems (if any) do you foresee with these in terms of how the search engines may rank the sites for their individual target keywords?
Thanks a bunch!
Two three issues I see Shawn
Hi Aaron,
I am creating a new site with randomly selected images for the home page. This means that the image names will be changing for each visitor. What are the SEO implications for do this.
Thank you.
S Benjamin
Hi Steven
If the image links to other pages and the image alt tag also rotates then it might matter, but most likely this will have minimal SEO implications.
Hi Araon,
Great website and blog contents!
Quick question: I found uncoverthenet.com is listed in your SEO book (the latest version) as a directory to submit websites. As far as I know, that site was "penalized" by Google recently. Can you comment on that as well as the "penalized directories" in general?
Thanks!
Hi Neotec
I think you are right, but I also think UTN spent a lot of money on advertising, so their submission price might be justified just for direct traffic and link equity from Yahoo! and MSN.
I would probably focus on submitting to some of the directories that were not penalized by Google first.
Hi Aaron,
I recently purchased a domain which is in 1st position in google for a fishing related phrase. It gets about 6000+ unique visitors each month. Although the website is in 1st position, its name is very low quality (a generic name which has already been closely copied by the competition) and the website construction itself is low quality.
I’ve therefore decided that the best idea is to buy a new domain and build a completely new website. But what should I do with the old domain?
Option 1) Leave the old website live. Put links on it to my new website/domain.
Option 2) Put the new website on the old domain for a few months and then do a 301 site wide redirect to the new site/domain.
Any advice or tips for me?
Thanks for this opportunity - I really appreciate it.
Sam
Hi Sam
301's typically work fine, but you don't want to risk something you can't afford losing.
If you have a high risk tolerance you might want to 301 the old domain to the new one... in the process of doing so, make sure you 301 all useful pages to equivalent pages on the new site.
If your risk tolerance is low maybe you can list your new site as the credit on the old site for a while and just use advertising to drive the traffic stream over to the new site.
If there is a reasonable chance that I can 301 the site and keep my number 1 position then I think I'll go for it and take the risk.
Thanks for your help!!
Sam
Hi Sam
I think there is a pretty good chance it will work. But keep in mind that you want to redirect all URLs that have decent link equity, don't just redirect the homepage.
Hi Aaron,
Thanks so much for bringing up the algorithmic value of the exact match domain. I have tried this twice and it worked well.
But now I am facing bit of a problem acquring the exact match .com domain. These days domainers are pretty aggressive about picking up every conceivable keyword domain. (For instance, try even a difficult one -
methicillinresistantstaphylococcusaureus -and you won't get this with .com)
1) Do you think .org might be a good idea if one can choose from .net and .org ?
2) Any problem with .org if you are not a bonafide organization? (Problems like a need for some proof in the future or domain taken away for lack of it)
Thanks.
Yes I still think you get the exact match benefit. And I am a big fan of .org.
Aaron,
How do I block all spiders not just Google from accessing my trackback pages on my WordPress blog?
Here is my current txt file on RentVine.com:
User-agent: ia_archiver
Disallow: /
User-agent: ia_archiver/1.6
Disallow: /
# Anc, WordPress, Admin, Map
User-agent: *
Disallow: /anc/privacy.cfm
Disallow: /vacancy/privacy.cfm
Disallow: /anc/termsofuse.cfm
Disallow: /blog/wp-admin/
Disallow: /blog/index.php/feed/
Disallow: /blog/index.php/page/
Disallow: /blog/index.php/2006/
Disallow: /blog/index.php/2007/
Disallow: /admincrud/
Disallow: /map/privacy.cfm
Disallow: /map/termsofuse.cfm
Disallow: /map/admincrud/
Disallow: /map/mapvine-core.cfm
Disallow: /map/mapvine-core-lg.cfm
# To validate leave blank line below
I think I use this stuff in my robots.txt files for Wordpress
User-agent: *
Disallow: /*?p=
Disallow: /*?q=
Disallow: /*trackback
Disallow: /*feed
Disallow: /*wp-login
The q stuff prevents your search query pages from getting indexed. The p stuff prevents alternate versions of your post URLs from getting indexed. Only use that P part if your main post URLs do not have p= in them.
Trackback, feed, and wp-login block the associated pages.
Hey Aaron
My site www.fotoviva.co.uk has slowly built a decent ranking with google uk for our keywords (can't seem to get on page 1 for our most competitive 'canvas art' yet tho!) - but we're getting no traffic from yahoo or msn.
Is there something we could focus on to help improve that without denting the google rankings?
The site is nearly a year old but has only been seo'd around 9 months. Maybe it will just take more time?
Thanks
Hi Bill
I think what you are seeing is
Hi Aaron
Thanks for this free for all session.
We've had a '.com' site for a number of years for a UK business. Do you think that a '.co.uk' would achieve any improvement in ranking on the UK version of Google?
Search engine's lust to provide local results, but might the '.com' create a small smokescreen as the country of origin?
Best wishes
Dave
Hi Dave
If the .com has a lot of history behind it and already ranks well then I would probably be more inclined to change the host country to the .uk than to change URLs.
If you don't think it ranks as well as it should you can try 301 redirecting. If you are afraid to risk the whole site you could move one folder first and see if it ranks, and if it does rank well perhaps move the rest of the site.
Thanks Aaron. I really appreciate your time.
Hope you and the Mrs have a great future ahead of you.
Best wishes
Dave
Hi Aaron
I've really enjoyed reading your SEOBook, and have linked back to it from my Blog.
I have a question with regard to duplicate content. I have several domain names that all point to one of my web hosting business sites. The domain names don't relate to the site itself, they're just parked on top of it where the domain owner just wants e-mail access and so I pick up any traffic to thier web address.
Is this bad duplicate content from Google's point of view? I'm concerned now that Google will see several identical sites just because I have a bunch of domain names all pointing at the same physical site. They're all currently in Google's index.
What do you suggest?
Kind regards,
Tim Skipper
Hi Tim
I probably would not do that. If you see the content getting indexed on multiple URLs then you have a problem. Until then you might not have one, but you never know when one can pop up.
Hi Aaron and blog friends,
My site is dedicated to raising money for children's charities using affiliate links and adwords as the source of revenue generation. Even though affiliate sites were pounded a while back, Google (seems) to not hate my site, as the rankings for keywords are improving, and traffic is improving.
My dilemna is that people are not "converting". As I work on the site at night as a volunteer (after putting my own children in bed!) I have limited time to make significant immediate improvements, but am lost as to how to make this model work. I know igive.com is working, and they take a nice cut for themselves. Why would the public not use a site that gives everything to charity? Is the alphabetical listing model (with the donation amounts for each purchase made) a terrible approach, or should I start from scratch with a page for each merchant, product, etc..like I've been reading to target the niches?
With the holiday season here, any advice, help, guidance, etc. from you, your collegues, and post members is truly apprecated.
You need to editorialize the merchants. Break them down by categories, not just alphabet organization.
Another option to help market it is to tie up with a strong charity and get them to market it.
Hi Aaron,
I'm a little confused with one of my sites I redesigned - www.nicerink.com - we used to rank #1 for "backyard ice rinks" and now we're somewhere buried on pg. 8. The home page still gets a PR of 6 from the Google Toolbar. Just wondering if you notice anything glaringly wrong with the page that would cause it to get dinged so bad.
Thanks in advance,
-Kevin
PS - Great books...I just got it last week and am starting to work my way through it! :)
Hi Kevin
PR6 should be plenty enough to rank for that query. My suggestion would be to look at your anchor text and see how mixed up it is. If you don't have any relevant anchor text consider adding some. If you have too much relevant anchor text try to build some non-optimized anchor text. for example
If you feel keyword focus is an issue you may also consider de-optimizing the homepage page title by putting filler words at the start or changing the word order of it. for example
Also, many of your product level pages start off with back yard ice rink. Try to mix those up too. There has to be a wide number of ways to say that without using that exact phrase.
Can you tell us what do you think about paid links? What about text-link-ads.com, reviewme.com, payperpost.com. Do you consider them as good value comparing to other time consuming and expensive ways of link building?
Is it too risky to rely on paid link building?
Thanks for answer.
I like links that I think can lead to indirect links. And I like brand exposure in widespread related channels. That is why I came up with the ReviewMe idea.
Generally with paid links I think it is best if they comprise a small portion of your link authority, and are offset with organic links and directory links and a bunch of other link sources. I also usually prefer independent link sources rather than links from link networks.
stronger more organic competitors can clone your strategy with less risk of getting caught up in a paid links algorithm or hand edit
Hi Aaron,
First off. I find your blog/book super helpful. Okay, so now my background and question.
I am a student at Purdue but I manage the online marketing for my Martial Arts school up in Minnesota. I will be re-doing the website once I graduate here in December since I actually made it in a night before I went to study abroad. The website is at Kuk Sool Won of St Paul, and I also write the Wordpress blog at Kuk Sool Blog. I actually did an Internship at TopRank with Lee Odden this last summer which got me really interested in this stuff. I actually rank really well for all the keywords I am targeting like "Martial Arts st paul" and "Martial arts twin cities" but I barely get any traffic. I just need a lot more local search traffic and what I am doing is not producing enough. I feel getting Local traffic is really tough.
So my two questions are:
1. What should I do Local SEO and SEM wise to get more local traffic to my site? Should I find new keywords to optimize for? I just need more traffic to our site from the Twin Cities Area in MN.
2. I will be redesigning the site here this coming January and December and what specifics should I keep in mind when designing the site SEO wise to rank higher and get more visitors. * The site looks pretty bad right now, it will look 200 times better as I did this site when I was a sophomore and now I am graduating. I have my portfolio here maxkpage.com
Thanks Aaron!
Hi Max
I think if volume is low you can't just create volume unless you build a brand that people are talking about.
A few solutions I can think of
Thanks a lot Aaron. I know I need to do offline marketing to really jumpstart this thing. Thanks for the input. It really helps.
Just an FYI, I have been doing SEO localization work for a criminal defense law firm here in Minneapolis, MN for the past year with excellent results. It's not that hard..it's all in the MN modifiers and your CPC campaigns that make all the difference. Not to mention PR links and such.
scott@zoselandcompany.com
Hi Aaron
Thank you for starting this thread and giving your time to answering these questions. Here is mine.
We manage a country specific Hotel/Accommodation/Travel portal. There are 3 major players/websites in this market that have been going since 1999 and about 10 slightly smaller ones that have also been around for a number of years. Here's the thing... there are about 400 new sites that entered the market in the last 18 months, all of which are making inroads into the rankings with varying success.
My question is this: We are all advertising almost the same hotels/accommodation providers. (I estimate from what I am seeing online that 80% of the hotels are all trying out the bulk of these new sites, especialy the "free" ones i.e. free for the first x number of months!).
We are quite specific with our site on how we lay out the texts and details but 9 times out of 10, the hotels insist that the text they provide be displayed as they have given it to us (and are giving to hundreds of other sites!!). We have an advantage obviously in that we have been around for 8 years so have built up trust with the SE's and our domain is well aged. BUT ... how do Google etc view these texts that appear on 400 sites? And these sites are also going to "age" and develop trust, so in the long term, where will that leave us?
Just to mention that we do change things a bit, mix it up, add our own headings, do grammar and spell checks (yes they sumbit some awfully written texts!) and generally improve the texts so they "flow" better for the reader. So our texts do differ slightly from the rest, but the gist of it is the same.
What is your opinion on how the search engines deal with this and what would you do if you were faced with the same situation?
I think this question may apply to other industries and certainly does apply to hotel and travel sites world wide so I have left out website and country details to keep it as a general interest question.
PS: This "duplication" of texts does not appear to have hurt us as yet, but you never know when things will change, which is why I worry about it and why I am asking you now, so that I can start to take some precautionary action.
Thanks again for your time.
Hi Christine
Most likely the newer sites will not outrank you unless they are far more focused on one area or have a far better marketing strategy than you do. I would work to add TripAdvisor type elements to my site to make it rich in consumer reviews.
Aaron,
You answered me when I emailed about this. However since I had such a hard time finding the answer before I emailed you, I want to get this question indexed :)
I have a Yahoo store. When you have a yahoo store you have a bit of a problem because if you want to add a lot of content, or use a blog you have to use their hosting, which can only live on a sub-domain.
So the store lives on example.com, and the blog lives on site.example.com/blog.
I think that you can also make the store live on a sub-domain, and have the blog be the main page.
What would be the best approach when crating a yahoo store?
Options are:
a) Blog on site.example.com/blog and store on example.com
b) Blog on example.com and store on store.example.com
c) Both blog and store on sub-domains, with a page on example.com to link to both.
Thanks for the input!!
~NickB
Hi NickB
Deffinently not C, IMHO.
I generally do not like B either because it is easy to filter out the store subdomain if it is low authority and not well linked to from other sites outside of your site.
The two options I would consider are site.com/blog or making the homepage a blog. Which of these routes I chose would depend on how much effort I wanted to put into the blog, and if I thought I would do it well enough to compete with the leading competing editorial channels.
Since I bought/downloaded SEO Book a...LONG time ago. (Printed off the 100 or so pages I always use) Well wasn't sure where I stored it, and couldn't remember what I used for a user and password. I re-registered, and updated my profile. But the "new" password doesn't seem to work with the e-mail link to the "updates". Ideas?
Thanks
Denny
Hi Denny
Please email me at seobook[at]gmail.com and I will try to get this fixed for you.
Hi Aaron,
Are you going to fix the "Competition Finder" tool that retrieves the InTitle & InAhchor numbers?
If you do fix it or rebuild it, is it possible to export the results to Excel somehow?
If you have no plans on fixing the tool, can you post some links to other tools that do about the same thing?
Thanks,
Dave.
Hi Dave
I am actually surprised with how many people used this tool. Many have complained about it being broke and I am looking to get it fixed hopefully next week (or two at the latest). My programmer has been busy with a lot of stuff but I hope he has time to get around to this soon.
Your thoughts on Google penalties:
1) How can someone recover from the -950 a penalty
2) If a site ranks well for everything but pages in a specific /subdirectory/ of that site... what's the deal??? The pages in this specific /subfolder/ use to rank very well and are well written articles... no duplicate content. Is this a 30 day penalty for link building?? Something else??? Have you seen this???
3) Did the sandbox effect go away or I'm I getting better at the SEO game??? It seems like I can get some *new* sites to rank a lot faster than 2005 & 2006.
4) Your discussion with Matt C. was over a Google penalty... can you share any general information that might be helpful to others???
5) Does having too many adsense ads put up a red flag for Google??? Does it trip a spam filter??? If so what's a good number of adsense ads???
Thanks,
Stuart
1) I think getting in community links helps. Also some pages are filtered for being too optimized for the query at hand. Mixing up anchor text, page title, and on page SEO can help bypass that if that is the issue. Also in some cases pages get scraped and a scraper is ranking for your stuff. Rotating the page title can help you combat that sort of stuff.
2) I have one site where a section of it is just flat out banned in Google. You might be experiencing a different type of penalty, but have a number of options here though. First look for obvious issues with that folder like duplicate content or page titles being too similar and fix those. If those were not an issue then put the content in a different folder and see how it ranks is one idea worth trying, and you could do it on a single article basis or move everything in the folder at once. You can also try redirecting some of the damaged pages in and see if the penalty follows along or not.
3) It is a bit easier than it used to be to rank new sites. That was one of the things that Eli highlighted when I interviewed him.
4) I think it was more of us talking through our perspectives rather than creating general guidelines to follow.
5) I think a site can fail hand inspection if it looks and feels like a MFA site. Also sites that are too aggressive with ads are less likely to be linked to from other quality websites.
Hi Aaron,
How do you decide what goes in your SEO Book, and what should be blogged about to the public?
Hi Collin
As I write blog posts, read stuff, and gather algorithmic research from tracking search results I take notes of the most important stuff, and then when I do an update I pull out that list and try to include it all.
I blog about most everything related to web publishing and marketing that comes to mind, especially if I have a unique angle for it.
Some of the potential posts get saved as drafts and await me refining my thoughts or collecting more related references prior to publishing them.
Hey Aaron:
Thanks for the opportunity.
Where would you suggest a person market a blog or website for sale? I know of several reputable sites selling domain names but none for entire sites, etc. Also, where would you advise someone to look for site/blog valuation.
Thanks again,
Ed
I think you just have to look around in your niche and do lots of research of what people are paying. Because complete sites usually sell for a decent amount and the site transfers are so complex (CMS issues, server issues, domain transfer issues, etc.) there is no large marketplace for them. Sitepoint might be a decent part to start though.
Hello Aaron,
I read your site quite frequently as it has great information!
My question is regarding traffic. I FEEL like I am doing a lot to try and generate traffic to both my site and my blog, but it doesn't seem to be getting me very far. Here are the links to my sites:
http://womensdietandfitness.com and http://womensdietandfitness.com/WDF
I don't seem to get any traffic from yahoo, but google seems to bring in some for me. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!
In a market that saturated it is hard to get in the game this late with an ebook salesletter type homepage. You probably want to feature the blog page on the homepage for at least 6 months if your goal is organic rankings in Google.
Right now on your site feedburner is only showing 1 RSS subscriber. It takes a while to build attention and authority. You probably want to participate in some of the more active blogs and forums in your community until your authority and mindshare increase. You might also want to consider advertising too.
After you get to a certain point it sorta becomes self-sustaining, but you have to put a lot of effort in to get there in such a competitive marketplace.
Hi Aaron,
This is a unique entry and generous offer. I hope you are not winded by now. :)
I make custom maps are have been had a site up for about 1 yr. I just started thinking about SEO and I believe I have done all of the major steps, but am frustrated at <30 hits a day, even though I spent ~$15 day on Google ads.
My holy-grail keyphrase is "custom mapping" and my site is www.geointel.com
Its unranked :(
Any tips? Thank you so much, Chris
Hi Christen
I did not look at your on page stuff much because backlinks were an obvious issue. You need a much more diverse set of backlinks and some focused anchor text.
Also consider brochure map printing, and other keywords like that. Maybe partner up with some brochure companies and allow them to white label your offering as a part of their stuff until you improve your brand.
BTW there are lots of cool linkbait type ideas you can create using maps or series of maps. ... events like natural disasters, changes in electoral voting, the spread of religions or other ideas, etc. You might not get paid to make some of these, but if you make them free and market them well it may get you well enough known to where people link to your site and people want to pay for other stuff.
All great points, thank you. I appreciate your insight and will implement your suggestions. Cheers!
Any chance you'd provide a list of domains that you feel have the strongest ability to rank for UGC profiles or pages. I'd love to hear which sites you think are valuable for reputation management.
Hi Rand
I see a lot of Digg profiles in the serp, and see Redit ranking too, though typically not quite as well.
Hi Aaron
Thanks for taking the time to share your valuable knowledge.
I'm in the process of building a new site and have a question regarding link building. How fast should I build inbound links? Should it be five a day, 100 a day, or even more? What is the threshold before I get put in the Google Sandbox?
I would like to simulate an organic growth curve, but have no idea about the numbers.
Thanks Again,
Dave
Hi Dave
The rate of change and the quality of the links probably matter more than just the sheer number. Ideally your link growth rate should be at least flat or have an upward slope to it. New sites rarely start off getting 100 links a day.
Always enjoy your posts... and gosh what a heck of an offer.
Background...
Over the last couple years I have been able to get my keywords to the front page of google. Typically I enjoy one of the top five spots for my targeted keywords.
I started with the approach of long tail words and then systematically built my site up to more industry and/or generic keywords. (I think I picked up from you.... :)
This approach has worked... but -
I am wondering how I can increase my traffic even more. Where do I go next and still stay in my niche? I know that my number one competitor is approximately 1.5 to 2 times bigger than me.
I just feel that I missing something big from a keyword standpoint in order for him to have that much more traffic than me.
So to make this more generic -
'How does one find the differentiator between two competing sites that would make a two fold difference in traffic? Any ideas? Wordtracker, yahoo search marketing, and your tools seem to point me to the same keywords that I am optimizing (or already optimized) for...
Thanks,
Michael
g r e e k f o r m e (dot) c o m
Hi Michael
A few things to look for
Hi Aaron,
do you have an idea where I could find SEO-friendly website templates? some that are not using frames or anything else that's bad for SEO purposes design-wise?
thanks
Hi Patrick
If you are using flat file HTML some of the stuff at OSWD should be able to help you. If you are using a content management system then search for "your CMS name" + words like templates, or themes, or etc.
Also with some CMS systems such as Wordpress there are SEO friendly plugins that you can find by searching for stuff like Wordpress SEO plugin.
thanks Ill try OSWD for now.
thanks Ill try OSWD for now.
Aaron,
I fear I may not have the time to go back through the book and search for the answer to this question.
I will search for the answer for myself, but I thought it would be nice to have some pointers on "emergency" SEO. If indeed this question is of the "emergency" kind.
Anyway, I tested my URL in your "Website Health Check". It says I have tons of duplicate links. Is this bad? If so where should I start in my research?
-DealerISM
Hi DealerISM
That tool shows the URLs that have the issues, so you just have to go to them and look at why you have duplicate content and work on fixing it...be it templating issues, content management issues, or anything else.
Aaron,
Loved the book and appreciate a chance to ask these questions.
I am having a blog based website built with Movable Type 4.0. The site will have a static home page and several other information pages. The blog will be located here www.domain.com/blog
1. What duplicate content issues should I be aware of when using Movable Type to serve up my blog pages? How do I fix them? There is not alot written about Movable Type 4.0 and SEO. I think the pages of Movable Type are actually created instead of served up as Wordpress does, but not sure.
2. I am trying to rank for two keywords of the same type (Cash Flows) but uniquely independent of each other,(ex. Annuities & Structured Settlements)(not the actually KW's). I plan to write about the 2 keywords on the home page as well as have one a static page further describing each of my buying propositions for the particular keyword. I will write blog entries on subjects related to these keywords. When I create my page titles and Meta Descriptions for the static pages where do I put the focus for each keyword? The home page or their individual static pages? And how do I tie in the blog posts I created for the keyword content?
Thanks in Advance!
Thanks Aaron for the opp to ask questions.
I have a client that is a criminal defense law firm. We have had excellent success generating leads through their website by optimizing for the keyphrases 'minnesota DUI attorney,' 'mn dwi attorney,' etc. My client can only market in MN and WI, so localization is key. We sometimes get leads from outsite MN and WI, and can do nothing with them.
When we originally did a wordtracker keyword search for those keyphrases, a number of localized terms surfaced ('minnesota DUI attorney,' 'mn dwi attorney,'. However, we are now expanding oour effots to optimize more pages for other practice areas. My wordtracker keyword research for terms like 'sex crimes' drug crimes, etc turned up many phrases but none of them localized with 'mn'.
Any suggestions? Will our localization setup in Google Webmaster tools help keep our searches limited to MN and WI? Or it here something else i can do.
Thanks you for your time. I'm a big fan..love your videos.
I think this is the type of service where it does not hurt to set up some PPC campaigns and track what terms are leaders. Set up a campaign with the local modifiers in it, and then set up a second campaign that includes the broader phrases but is targeted to the local market using Geotargeting.
Also, some portion of the broader generic phrases are also going to happen with the localized modifiers. Maybe just assume that like .5% or something like that will add local modifiers to the queries and 5% of the people searching for the broader queries are actually local people.
Hi Dave
I have not used MT4 so I can't tell you what duplicate content issues to look out for. One helpful tip would be to look for duplicate junk getting indexed by Google once your site starts getting indexed. My Website Health Check tool should help you do that.
Another tip is to place more emphasis on the category based archives than the date based archives.
I don't think it hurts you to target each phrase using one independent page and target them both on the homepage.
Aaron,
Quick reply!!! Great info!!
When you say place emphasis on the category based archives how am I doing this? Does this involve using no follows on the date base archives or some other technique? Still reading Seobook for the 2nd time trying to understand it all.
Do I link my keyword related blog entries to those static pages to reemphasize their site authority for those keywords? Given that I would have many blog entries on this two keywords I worry that some of the authority of the two pages would be lessened.
Thanks!
P.S. Will you every do an SEO advanced book?
Hi Dave
So your categories or tags should mirror some of your core keyword phrases, and the date based archives should be linked to with nofollow or linked to less prominently on your site.
The fact that you are reading my book a second time to get more of it hints at the limited value of creating any book that is more advanced. I think what is needed to improve the transfer of value is better formatting, using more interactive elements, grouped in smaller logical chunks.
Just about any information I could sell that was at a higher level than my current book should not be sold as a book, but would need to be sold as a service.
Aaron first of all I wanted to thank you again, I initially had some trouble getting to download your book, I sent you a quick note, and was quite impressed with your turn-around in addressing my concern.Thanks..
I have two questions:
1) I am looking at building a site using Joomla. Is there any problems in applying SEO methods to this type of site (the entire site will be developed using Joomla.)
2) Looking to develop a marketing mix that will incorporate the use of affiliates. (Tickets to a family related exhibition promoting outdoor recreation Ticket price will be priced @ 10.00 per adult and kids will be less). What software source do you recommend, and is their a definitive source of information on the subject and who might that be? I would have loved to enclose the site but not built yet. Thanks I appreciate your candor and honesty. R_Northerner
Hi R_northerner
1) I have not used Joomla much so I can't claim to be an expert on any issues associated with it.
2) I am a big fan of Idevaffiliate because it gives you a direct relationship with affiliates, and after you install it there are no recurring affiliate management fees. Idevaffiliate also has a package specifically made for Joomla.
Hi Aaron,
Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions. I appreciate it and your blog.
Question 1:
Most of my sites rank very well in Google and MSN/Live, but they do very poorly in Yahoo!. What is the trick to ranking well in Yahoo!?
Question 2:
You've written many times about how Google likes old web sites and old links. Will it benefit me to buy a domain name that had a site on it for a few years earlier this decade but hasn't had a site on it in for at least the last two years? There are also no known back links pointing to the domain.
Thanks so much.
Hi Kinoli
Many of the things that work on Google work on Yahoo with four big deviations
Question 2 is hard to answer because it is really a "it depends" sort of question. If the page has some text on it look to see how well it ranks for text variations on it to get an estimate for the base level of trust.
Hi Aaron,
Thanks for your reply to my earlier question. I hope I am not putting undue load on your time resources by placing another question. So I will try to make it precise.
One of my site ranked well in Google for an exact match domain within 4 days. It's a single page site and still ranking well for its core keywords.
My question is -
1) Is it OK to have a single page site with good quality content instead of making another 10-20 pages stuffed with low quality junk just for the heck of adding them?
2) Or having a single page site may itself be be taken as a sign of low quality by Google?
3) If it is really necessary that you have certain minimum number of pages in a site, what that number possibly could be?
Aaron, Thanks again for this great resource.
Hi SEO Nirvana
Different sites have different purposes. XE does not need a lot of pages to do well as their currency converter is a sweet resource.
They could hang a ton of extra content off it to leverage their authority or to thicken up the site, but it may not be required (and make money from related categories). In the xe.com case, they added a few thousand pages to leech off of the core authority of the main page. And I bet that was a profitable decision for them.
SearchEngineHistory.com is a one page site, but is of high quality, IMHO. I could probably recommend books and other resources on one page, conferences on another, etc. There are always logical ways to extend sites and make them more profitable if monetization is the goal, but if you are not worried about profit you do not need to make a big site.
Hi
My question is about similar content on sites that provide state by state directories. I'm pursuing a private pilot license and started a flight school directory when I had a hard time finding testimonials about specific flight schools.
Am I getting penalized by Google because most of the pages on my site are so similar? Would it be better to use robots.txt to avoid having these pages indexed?
Also, my hope for the site is that pilots would start leaving feedback about specific flight schools so that prospective students could have some candid info when selecting a flight school (an expensive endeavor). But I'm finding that very few visitors to the site actually leave comments.
I know this is coming at the end of a long day - thanks so much if you still can get to this!!
Hi Locomo
I think it is hard to set it up and just hope for the data to come in.
A more effective solution might be to go to the schools directly and ask them for information about their schools, and then try to get people to add info from there.
You may not be penalized...your site just might not rank as well as you would like it to due to it being somewhat new and having limited link authority.
Hi aaron,
I have been a regular reader of your blog(although I was not a member & I thought to become a member this time only because I thought none can be better than you to solve my problem)
My site is www.thereliableinfo.com .It was set up around 2years back.I used to update it frequently in the begining but then I stopped updating it.My SERP fell down drastically.So I decided to update it automatically with new pages created from rss feeds.The rankings went up for sometime but then again started falling back.All the new pages were being in the supplemental results.So I thought that I should create new content rich pages so that google does not supplement them and removed those bad pages filled with rss feeds.But this time too all my new original pages were also put in the supplemental results.I have a good in-site linking to those new pages(even from the homepage) but they are still in the supplemental results.Even some pages which were having a pr3 were put into supplemental.My link campaign is quite good in comparision to others and I have a bit of good links from related sites also.The primary keyword is "hyip" and I am in the 4th page whereas other sites who are have less seo and backlinks rank higher.I think that my site is being targeted by google as a bad site and hence even original content is sent to the supplemental & am not able to rank higher.What do I do?I am desperate and am thinking to start up a new website.Can you please comment on this situation and help me how not to get my original content as supplement.
Hi Piyush
Well perception becomes reality, and with your ad placement being so aggressive, I think that makes your site a likely candidate for doing poorly if it came under editorial review. And I also think the ad placement being so aggressive prevents you from getting some of the organic links you might have been able to get in the past.
Once you put ads above the content (top and to the left in the content area) on the homepage it is a quick race downward toward irrelevancy.
Thanx for the fast reply.I will definitely think about replacing my ads.But do you think that I should do something else also or just reducing my ads.
If you think your site is penalized get it reviewed by Google after you clean it up. It also helps to have marketing strategy, brand strategy, and public relations take your website where it needs to go. But I can't tell you how to do all that stuff. I don't know what your personal strengths and weaknesses are.
Thanx for the immense help.You are a great preson I feel!
Hi Aaron,
First thanks for opening the forum for questions!
My site, www.palaestratraining.com has been up for about 8 months or so now, and our biggest challenge is knowing if what we're doing is right (from an SEO perspective) and building links. Based on our industry, IT Certification and Training videos, it's challenging to identify places to get links from, since it seems the majority of sites within this vertical would be competitors and not interested in linking to us.
We make use of video (that's what we do) but we have free videos on the site, some of our YouTube videos have gotten over 20,000 views in that 6 months, etc., so we're generating some definite interest but I know we can be doing things a lot better.
We're definitely up for some outside of the box thinking, and would really like to get a fresh opinion on things. Thanks again, I've been reading your blog (and posting occasionally) for quite some time.. keep up the great work!
Christopher Rees
www.palaestratraining.com
Hi Christopher
The Youtube angle sounds great. How about working with specific people to create information products with them, and a free video with each of them.
For example, what if you paid Eric Myer $20,000 to create 5 one hour CSS videos for your site and two or three 5 minute examples for YouTube and for free trials on your site?
And then what if you did the same with Zeldman on web design? Pretty soon your stuff is the most credible stuff on the market, especially if those people do any self promotion and link to it from their own sites.
Also some of these inner pages have non-optimized titles. Like why not have words like training, videos, and courses somewhere in the page title here?
Hi Aaron,
I used to be pulling in a good amount of traffic with my sites about a month ago. At that time I decided to merge the user database from some of my sites (5 or 6 sites). Everything from this appeared to create no problems. I then added a module onto these sites (I'm using Drupal) that enabled users to log in from any one of my domains and stay logged in no matter what site they visit. Now here's the problem:
Unfortunately, a few days ago I found out that this module was 302ing every page to my master domain that held all the user data. So I had about 5 sites all redirecting every page (about 2k - 5k pages per site) to my main master site. For the past month Google (as well as Yahoo and MSN) have been dropping pages and I highly suspect this is why.
I have since nuked this module completely. Now that my pages are returning the correct 200 response my site should be good for Google again, but it hasn't started crawling my site again (according to G webmaster tools). I've given it about a week or so and was wondering what your advice would be. Most of these sites are around 6 months old and have around 1k - 4k links. Before this 302 problem happened all of them were doing extremely well Google-wise.
Thanks Aaron,
Quinton
Hi Quinton
I would probably do little to shock those sites any further with drastic onsite changes. I might try building a few authoritative links for each site, but I would probably check where they were in a month after another Google deep crawl to see if the indexing trends have picked up again. If the sites were clean and after another deep crawl they still seem hosed I would probably try contacting Google.
Appreciate the reply Aaron :)!
Hi Aaron --
I have a question regarding a competitor in a very competitive market real estate. Over the last 6 months they have begun to be in the top key words in this market. They have a number of domains on different Class C IPs. On their main domain they have 1,000s of back links (none ranking high). These links are basically reciprocal links, but they link to these sites and others via a sub domain that is on another Class C ip.
To the uninitiated (the reciprocal linkers) this 'looks' like just part of their main web. This sub domain is broken down by geographical locations and then further by regions. Each of these pages has census data about the areas.
Complete.com says they get low five figures of visitors to the main site. My question to you is that being that this 'network' consist of no more than five domains and in a specific region in a competitive industry would google or other se consider this spam? How would you compete with this besides providing better content -- they did spend a lot of money developing their web sites? If it is spam, would you wait until our site has been upgraded before filling out a spam report?
Thanks for your info and expertise. (Oh yes, these sites and ours are not blogs per se).
I enjoyed reading your book.
Hi Runner2009
I don't think you beat what you consider to be spam by cloning them. If you consider their techniques shady then maybe try it away from your main domain, but don't do it to your main domain.
As far as "how would you compete besides providing better content" that really is not a way I approach any project. If I want to pick up marketshare and momentum from current leaders I try to beat them every way I possibly can, starting with as many of the following advantages I can
You can't predict which one will help you, but if you beat them 3 or 4 different ways eventually the search relevancy algorithms notice.
Good points, I do like your ideas about building social relationships it does take some creative thinking in trying to 'sell' this to old schoolers and if I do recall you did mention the Paris Hilton analogy in your book as a way of building relationships.
When I first saw this reciprocal link set up, I thought it was creative and as I checked further as to who developed the web site(s) -- done by a well known vertical web development company that also advertises SEO services. How I determine if it is spam or not is by asking whether or not if I was one of the reciprocal linkers and I understood what was happening would I feel ripped or not.
MY question is at what point do the SEs look at this type of gaming? Is it based on volume/value of the key words used in the site and or number of sites in a network?
Hey Aaron, do you ever sleep?
thanks again...
Hi Runner2009
I think the search engines are ALWAYS looking at this type of gaming, but they don't catch everything. This will work for a while then search engineers will see it is getting out of control, then a new algorithm will wipe most of it out. When will that happen? It is anybody's guess.
At any given time there is a lot of spam in the search indexes. Every hole they close has some unintended consequences - closing some holes opens up new ones, while closing others kills a bunch of innocent sites.
I understand about the law of 'unintended consequences'. It is my experience that many things that we believe or label as intended actions are really unintended consequences. Thinking about factorials (n!) shaped my thinking on this especially when dealing with variables and the different possible out comes when arraigning these variable 5! is 120 just adding 5 more variables to 10! makes 3,628,800 permutations. At least for me it is easy to see how things can get out of control. Whether we like it or not we are all under this numerical control when dealing with lots of variables and it has been helpful for me to see how quickly things can get muddled.
Late here got to stop rambling... Just a note, I've gone through a lot of the post and it really seems like you put a lot of thought into many of them.... Thank you for your TIME!!
Hi Aaron
:( everybody after me got replies, except me. What did I do wrong?
Here you go
http://www.seobook.com/q-open-thread#comment-26148
Hi Aaron,
Thanks for the opportunity to ask you questions. I have several:
1. What are the effects of changing some links (in my case - example searches) on the front page for every request? Does Google see that as a frequently updated site or a spam site?
2. Is there a benefit in splitting up content into subdomains? For example, having subdomains for every state eg NY.example.com, assuming the subdomain keyword is often what users are looking for. Or does it cause individual subdomains to be ranked lower than if they were on example.com/NY (assuming they only have links from example.com)
3. I own a site that Google now considers to be a misspelling. My traffic dropped significantly since, and I'm on the verge of switching to another domain. Can anything else be done?
Thanks!
Hi AK102
1. As long as the pages are unique that should be fine. It gets dicier if that change is sitewide, the site is brand new, and the site has few authoritative inbound links.
2. If you set content out on a subdomain and try to make it remarkable that makes it appear more memorable and marketable to some. For example, some people might be more willing to link to tools.seobook.com than to link at seobook.com/tools/
Some search engines allow multiple subdomains from the same site to rank in the search results for some queries, but if you were breaking it up state by state most likely you wouldn't have enough authority to rank both state subdomains against each other (plus most of the target queries would be geospecific oriented and only relevant for one subdomain).
3. If you do some advertising, brand building, and link building then perhaps if enough people visit your site Google will be less likely to consider it as a misspelling. Google, after all, was a misspelling. In some instances you can teach Google that misspellings are real words - which they become if you develop a brand based on a misspelling - like Google did.
Hi Aaron,
First, thanks for taking the time out to help everyone and second your book was worth every penny. It helped me a a lot.
I've put a lot of time into my site in regards to making sure I have relevant content, my meta tags, description and text all contain my main key words. I've also paid for some listings in certain directories you recommended (yahoo, business.com, botw, gimpsy) as well as a few other high pr directories.
For my main key words (reggae cds, reggae dvds, jamaican dvds) I used to fall on the second page of google rankings and would flirt with the last two spots of the first page. I'm always in the top spots on yahoo and msn. Google was my week point (most orders came from yahoo organic clicks).
Recently I decided to go the route of paying for links and submitting my site to 1000 directories. That seemed to make my page rank 3 with google and now has me on the first page for my keywords on a regular basis. Even top 5 for one of them.
What can I do to move to the top three spots on google. My competitors sites look like terrible and really have no content, but they are always in the top 3, some with multiple links.
I'm not sure if they are ranked so high from the age of their domain or if I'm missing something here. Or they are doing something shady.
Is it a bad idea to pay go the route of submitting your site to endless directories or paying for permanent links?
I don't like being shady so I'm trying to figure out what else I can do. I think my site is pretty user friendly. However, there are some things I want to do change in the future (menu and check out process).
Sorry for the long post would appreciate any advice or suggestions.
Thank you.
http://www.reggaeplanet.com
I think Patrick's reply is better than mine would have been. You are so close that there is no need for shady stuff...just get well integrated into your community.
There are many artist sites, many of interview options, many music aggregator sites, many fan sites, many giveaway and contest ideas, tons of opportunity.
Thank you very much guys for your help and feedback. I appreciate you taking the time out to reply. I will definitely follow your advice!
Thanks again.. I look forward to more articles and books from you.
@Dexterity:
I would advise you completely against using shady techniques. Normally I wouldnt say this, because I dont think its all that bad, but youve obviously put a lot of work in your site and it's your business..so taking the risk of having your site banned over using shady techniques isnt a good idea.
Plus if you're already in the top10 on doing mostly directory submissions (which hardly have any value anymore), I think it should be perfectly possible to move up the SERPs by getting natural links from other reggae & music sites.
I might be wrong, but I think in your niche that could be easier than in most niches, because people who listen to reggae music (and have websites about it) are usually fairly nice people who are probably not as opposed to linking out to a valuable site as people in other fields.
There are a few reggae artists I listen to every now and then and I remember once contacting kashief lindo on myspace who gave me a quick reply. What I'd do is try to get some reggae artists (who are not *that* popular, yet but have a fanbase already) to do an interview with me. If you place it on your homepage (for a while..maybe sort of like a blog) they shouldn't mind doing it b/c it'd might help them sell more records/increase their mindshare (among your site's visitors)...and you could tell people who have websites on those artists about the interview you recently did with them (hoping some of them will link to that interview).
Not sure, if this would work well in your average field, but i think it could work out well in the niche of reggae, b/c many of the people are rather nice and helpful.
What do you think of that idea, Aaron?
Hi Aaron,
Nice initiative to answer all your readers questions! This is so helpful for me today as I have an important question for which i can't find an answer
ITerating.com (http://iterating.com) has a page rank of seven and pages across the website have rankings from 2 to 6. For software tools the URL is ../product/product_name and for software classes /productclass/class_name. Do you think it's worth the effort to change all the URLs into ../product_name and ../product_class? For sure we'll loose page rank across the pages but will we loose the page rank for home page as well?
I'll surely appreciate an advice,
Alina
Hi Alina
Your two potential wins with this would be
The word product is not that long of a word though, and I don't think the potential upside is worth the risk of having issues with how search engines may or may not follow the 301 redirects if you move your files.
Hi Aaron
I've been reading your posts for a while now. I really aught to invest in your book and lock myself into a room and then read and understand your advice, as to be honest I struggle with a lot of the SEO stuff.
My main question is this:
Our company has a number of websites, but I have been concentrating on one website over the last six months http://www.conservatorytv.com
We invested in Membergate software to build the website. We've also invested in two members of staff to develop the website - one to create the content, and another to film, edit and produce videos about the products we sell (windows, doors and conservatories in the UK) to add to the website. They're all hosted on YouTube.
I believe the website is now starting to have better content than competing websites, but we are still only getting about 50 unique visitors per day. We started the website about 6 months ago.
I would appreciate your advice on how we progress with getting the right kind of customers to our website. Do we:
1. Just keep adding good content and eventually Google will notice us.
2. Pay an SEO company to optimise and build links.
3. Use Pay Per Click
4. Or, lock myself in a room and read your book!
I really would appreciate your advice on how we should proceed.
Thanks
Hi Matthew
This is going to sound self promotional, but I think #4 is the spot to start.
My book is not just about SEO, but is more a book on marketing with a focus on online marketing and SEO. Your site needs a lot more than SEO, and some of those tips you should be able to get from my book.
Here are some examples of non-SEO marketing issues that could be improved
Hi Aaron
I've been considering ordering it for some time, so I will invest now.
Thank you.
Matthew
Hi Aaron,
If I was to 301 redirect a site that has been previoulsy banned or heavily penalized by Google to another site, is it possible the penalty could hit the new domain?
Thanks
Hi Philip
In the past under most cases I would have said no, but in some cases I think the answer might be yes. I have not done enough spammy stuff to have a sample set large enough to give any sort of definitive answer on that. I also think that why and how a site got penalized might play into it to (ie: how certain are they that the site is spam? and how certain are they that the sites are somehow affiliated?).
Aaron,
I will try to make this as broad of a question as possible even though I would like to be able to consider your suggestions with regard to a couple of specific sites.
I wonder Aaron, do you often get approached for consulting by the large e-commerce websites for major corporations? And if you do, is there a trend of mistakes that they may make in common? Or a single most overlooked mistake?
I have an interview soon with a big company hiring in-house seo and while I have done my due-diligence and know what I'm going to recomend (site architecture audit, social media - positive user generated content, corporate blog, articles and educational newsletters, target long tail key phrases, deep linking to optimized landing pages) I am constantly wondering if the master might have suggestions that I have overlooked. Or perhaps a more appropriate question would be what resources or methodology would you use in performing a strong site review?
I almost would even say that I wish you had a $200 charity case consulting package for broke seo's who have been working for SEO Tyrants making peanuts for the last few years but who now have a better opportunity in front of them. My check would be in the mail!
Thanks for all you do Aaron,
Eric
Hi Eric
Yes. We work on many large corporate sites. The most common flaws I have seen are:
I think using the website health check tool is a good spot to start looking for noise in Google's index.
Hi Aaron -
a) Thanks for the tools and the book - much appreciated by us all.
The thing that worries me most is too much reliance on Google for our traffic - be it organic or paid and willingness to bend to their sometimes out of whack rules (paid linking, quality score, etc). Besides concentrating on MSN and Yahoo what other places would you suggest using for targeted traffic (I'm thinking domaining, social marketing)?
Cheers
Ari
Hi Ari
I think the issue with the other networks is that they are still networks...meaning they exhibit many of the same problems that one has with being too reliant on Google. So diversifying into the other networks probably isn't a longterm solution. Plus the social media channels are dominated by clickers instead of buyers.
I think the solution to the problem is to become a network - turn a site into a community of sorts to build a brand that people actively search for. It is a lot of work to do all that, but it lets you sleep better at night if you have thousands of RSS subscribers and/or many customers paying you on a recurring basis.
Sometimes you have to spend a lot on content and a lot on advertising to get the brand awareness where you need it to be. On some ad spends I consider myself ahead if I break even because there are still intangible and untracked values in getting more exposure. Exposure leads to more exposure.
And if your brand is strong enough you can also get additional exposure via affiliate programs.
Hi Aaron:
Sorry to jump in late. I hope it is not too late.
I have been doing some part-time web work for a friend in the professionals.
I have been approached by a directory that claims to have a way to generate improved SERP through links.
The difference is that the links they are offering - at a substantial cost - are accessed by visitors to the directory page only by going to the bottom of the page and clicking on a mouse-type "web marketing" link. The