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Often brands are seperated from the title message via one of the following characters:   |   -   > It should be noted that the maximum number of characters that will be displayed on search results pages is capped at 70 (and in some cases resolves to less than that) so pay attention to how much info you are stuffing in those title tags. This doesn't mean you cannot go past 70 characters, but the title tag will be truncated in the search results. This can be unavoidable once in a while, but we always try to stay below 70 characters. From a marketing / branding perspective, I'm also a big fan of title tags that 'read' properly. The example you provided doesn't really 'read' well. Of course, there is a trade off here. Are you writing your title tags for users or for search engines? Ideally, you want to walk the line between the two. For example, have you considered the following alternatives? Alternative 1 Use the | to seperate the title tag into two short statements followed by your branding. Wyoming Guest Ranch & Dude Ranch | Jackson Hole Activities | RANCH NAME Alternative 2 Rather than attempt to target 'Guest Ranch, Dude Ranch, and Jackson Hole Activities' all on the same page, why not create a second page as follows? Guest Ranch & Dude Ranch in Wyoming | RANCH NAME (or Wyoming Guest Ranch & Dude Ranch | RANCH NAME) Jackson Hole Activities | RANCH NAME One final note, be sure you are targeting the correct keywords here. For example, do you have data that shows which of the following is the best choice (there are probably even more options, but this gets the point across)? Wyoming Guest Ranch Wyoming Dude Ranch Guest Ranch in Wyoming Dude Ranch in Wyoming Jackson Hole Dude Ranch Jackson Hole Guest Ranch Guest Ranch in Jackson Hole Dude Ranch in Jackson Hole There may or may not be a lot of data available for these searches, but I would at least take a moment to check Google Trends and Google Keyword Tool. Furthermore, as you have a Pro account, you can use SEOmoz's Keyword Difficulty Tool.

I agree with not repeating company name, unless it's a different company than in the base url. Try only making those deep links if you absolutely have to! Good luck!

Google really doesn't pay attention to footer links much anymore. Because of that exact reason: they know they're commonly used for spam and keyword stuffing. Write for humans; not for robots. Good luck!

Yes that sounds better to me. What do you use for the co logo - a tag with a bg image or just a straight image?

Thanks Nemek and Alan, I actually have some issues with between the mobile version of our site and the absolute links, so yes Alfredo is right about being the best practice, but there is a big technical issue for our dev department.

Google won't use the keyword anchor text in those links so much, but will follow them. They're also very user friendly, and are pretty much expected now a days.

I dont think that vanity URLs matter that much (if at all). I think that building authority and posting relevanta and useful information is more important than the handle name. I would get some reputation on the social media accounts 1st rather than worry about the username or twitter handle for the social media handles.

I can not see a average sized image being a load time problem. but as joe said make sure you use the alt tag

They sure can, try searching in Google for: ~SEO You'll notice that even the phrase "search engine optimization" is emboldened, as Google knows it is a synonym. Alan makes some good points, and I agree 100% about not making the text read clearly; websites are for people first. However, sometimes making it read clearly means using synonyms or secondary target keyword phrases. I'd say if you are targeting a single keyword then maybe it isn't so important, but with phrases of 3 words or so then the secondary phrases or phrase synonyms it does become more important if you want to target those search terms also.

I think you are right.  If there's any benefit for being a secure site, the search engines should be able to pick up on that from the search results.  Both Verisign and Mcafee do indicate a secure site in the search results.  I'm just now switching from Mcafee to Verisign, and I guess there's no reason to pass link juice to them.  Thanks for answering my question.

This is a forum type of Q and A. You can still send your questions to the SEO MOz staff but using a diffrent flow / channel.

As far as I know link sculpting is obsolete. Personally I've stop using it since Matt C anounce the no follow new count back in the days. Using iframes and javascripts or even flash is not, in my opinion, a viable solution.

Yes, when you link to a page that is not indexed from a page that is indexed it will help. The tricky part is getting the currently indexed page re-crawled so it picks up the link to the non indexed page. A good tactic for getting the page recrawled is RSS such as linking to a page from a new blog post. Or tweet the URL to the page.

Meta Descriptions are not used for rankings, so you would be fine by just changing out the state. However, I feel it's a great strategy and best practice to handwrite every meta description to insure the best conversion rate and CTR possible.