Welcome to the Q&A Forum

"Nofollows cannot be used for link sculpting anymore, and just result in link juice evaporation." This was what I thought too, just wanted to confirm, thanks

Thanks, Andie!

and while you're at it - consider diversifying the anchor text in your link building. Right now, more than 40% of all your links use the anchor text 'beautiful dress'.  While I'm sure that you have many beautiful dresses, this is way too high to look natural... My general rule of thumb is to never use any one phrase more than 15% of the time. https://ahrefs.com/site-explorer/anchors/subdomains/tulipbridal.com/phrases/sort-backlinks-desc

Hi, First of all Google dosen't have any penalties for duplicate content.  There are some filters that are touching duplicate content but there are no specific filters or penalties from Google for duplicate content. You won't rank with the duplicate content (one of the versions) but that dosen't mean you are under a penalty. In some cases you might also rank with two pages - 1 and 2 as position if the "space" is not very tough. So even if you will let this in the format you have it now - you won't get into troubles with both domains- again, with one you might not rank - that's about it. As far as solution, if the dot es is targeting Spain - you should't 301 redirect to dot com. You can use rel alternate or rel canonical cross domain in roder to provide the information that the content is the same. 301 redirects will also work if you choose one of the domain as the main content source - it's safer and faster but in my personal opinion you will need to assess the market, the content and take a decision based on that - don't rush into things as , again, you won't get any penalties or filters for this. Hope it helps.

Hi Maureen, I always get this upon setup of a new client. I think the main thing is to manage their expectations because many people outside of the digital industry are either unaware of the potential of SEO or think it can do more than it can! Find out what marketing objectives they have and then see where SEO can help. For example, if they are aiming to increase brand awareness (which most companies want) then look at increasing the number of keywords they rank for. You can set traffic targets if they have a history you can compare with, look at their rankings they had when they reached those targets, see where you think you will be able to get them and base your objectives on that. Totally agree with Jeremy on the "under sell, over achieve" thought though.

Very helpful info, thanks!

If your sitemap.xml file is uptodate and/or all your links can be accessed by Google it does not make sense to submit links manually.

Hi Kane Thanks alot for answering and your helpful reply We went with option 2 in the end.  The original wasn't an option since the urls were being changed to include kw in the first level category pages anyway. I was worried if keeping kw in sub-category landing page url too would be overdoing it. Option 1 would still be my preferred choice for my own sites/projects but this is for a client so didn't want to risk 'over optimisation' Yes the 2 kw/pages are targeted by 2 different pages of unique content. Many thanks Dan

What do you think about the new homepage layout? I know I still have a lot of work to do, I'm still working on the About and Disclosure pages, the old ones are still there in the meantime.

ok thanks

I'd recommend making at least some of your posts sticky to the homepage on the topic you are trying to rank as without some consistency you will be constantly changing the picture Google has of your website content wise. Other options would be to add an additional section below the top slider with text, in my profile you will see how we have stuck our front post to the homepage as we previously had blog snippets from new posts and it was making our rankings far more volatile.

Thanks for your reply. So I finally decided to do this. Now I get 404 errors, so I changed it back in WP. I really want 301 Redirect, some how every plugin I installed cant Automatically detect this. Someone knows if this is even possible?

Thanks again for the answers! Yeah, totally getting you on the Search within search issue.  Wish we had known about that a couple of years ago.  Did an analytics check and most of our non-home page traffic is coming from Search Results in serps.  According to inurl, we have about 200,000 indexed SearchResult pages and based on some data I pulled up, they are our highest traffic non-home page pages, but also the least converting. I think 301 re-directs on these would be rather tricky.  I mean, if someone does a search on our site, they should get the search results page showing them several options, not be shot directly to a single product which might not be the one they need. It would be rather confusing for our regular customers as well. But I agree we need to do something here, because conversely, our product pages, while getting the least traffic are the highest converters. My only thought is that we would need to: 1.  Find a list of all of the indexed Search Result pages, or at least the ones that have been hit over the last year or so.  What would be the best way to do that?  Screaming Frog?  Analytics? 2.  Create a script that analyzes these for the keywords used in them and find a suitable item to re-direct to based on the keyword extracted. 3.  301 re-direct them. 4.  Change our current search results urls to include something that would not be included in these original pages so separate them from the old pages that are now being re-directed so that current searchers don't get re-directed as well. 5.  Set the search results pages to no - index.  Is that the best way to handle that?  If we did robots.txt, then we would be breaking the link flow of the site wouldn't we?  Don't we need the bots to crawl the search pages to lead to the product pages, or is the sitemap all that is needed? Thanks for the time and answers! Craig

Hi Ecce, I agree with Takeshi that further information would be helpful here. By 'web agency', I am assuming that you mean your company is an SEO firm, web design firm or does some other type of online marketing. If so, then presumably you are talking about organic rankings rather than local ones as Google hasn't shown web design or SEO firms in their local results since 2010. If this is correct, I am not totally clear as to the role your physical location plays in your business model and I'm assuming your client transactions are virtual. Do you publish a physical address on your website? Do any clients come to that location? Did you previously serve only Bromley-based clients? Are you now going to serve only Sevenoaks-based clients? Please, provide as much information as you can about your business model, the role your address has played, your optimization and your goals.

Thanks! This was very helpful

A good place to start is identifying the search volume you are looking at targeting with the Google Adwords tool. From there you can identify the competition of the sites currently ranking and put together an optimisation strategy for your content. The point is you need to identify what you want to rank for first, then it is the age-old; good quality engaging content and building backlinks from authority sources.

The keywords you are trying to target are a bit competitive and you don’t have enough authority to get this page ranked in search engines. The idea is to get some high quality domains inlinking to this so that this page can rank for the desired keywords!

Yes, I believe google would give you a boost if you could acquire an influential writer in your field. Author rank is still new territory, so the only way to be certain is to test.

Hi OOMDO, I'd like to clarify - does the business actually have 4 physical offices (1 in each of those cities) or does it have a single office, or maybe two offices, serving 4 cities? If the business has 4 offices, then I think Dave's advice is quite good. However, if the business is more of an SAB (service area business) with only one or two physical offices, then the location cities should be what is in the title tag of, say, the homepage, while the location-less service cities could be excellent candidates for city landing pages.

These people are all correct. I'd just like to add that while it is important to use your keyword early in the title it is also important to make your page title readable. Remember, the page title is the first thing people will see and it is what they will click on to go to your site. In your case, the page title mentioned looks spammy and unreal to me. I simply would not click it no matter where it was ranked in Google. Think from an average user's perspective - You type in what you're searching for A list of websites come up on your screen Now you have to choose which one to click. Do you choose the top one just because it's first? Not necessarily. You will most likely quickly scan the area to see which one sounds reputable or the most relevant to what you want. If I was looking for a sci fi book and saw a title the said "SCI FI FANTASY FICTION BOOK NOVEL | CLICK FOR SCI FI" above one that said "Sci fi novels and fantasy fiction books: the Ultimate Resource" There's no question I'd click the second one. So keep that in mind too. Go search for something you want and click on the website you think looks best without thinking about it. Then go back and re-read the page title and determine what it was about that title that got your click. Voila.