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Hi there, I happen to own a web design agency that does logo design, and if if it's not too late to chime in on this, I've recently compiled a checklist of what makes a logo great in a blog post you might enjoy. Essentially, the more items you can check off this list, the better, and while I can tell you "it looks pretty cool", without knowing more about your business and / or customers, I'm unable to determine whether these other criteria can be checked off or not. (Hope that made sense.) When convenient, please take a look and let me know what you think. Helpful? Or too much? http://giantjet.net/15-characteristics-great-logo-design/ Best, Zack

Hi Ben, Another good question. I want to preface what I'm saying here by saying I'm not an expert in linkbuilding and that I see what you're asking about as having some grey area. I'll do my best to describe what I'm talking about. In an organic SEO scenario with virtual businesses, I agree with Rand's explanation in this WB Friday https://moz.com/blog/backlinks-maximize-benefits-avoid-problems-whiteboard-friday. Please, watch the video and pay special attention to his explanation of linking from mysite.com to myothersite.com, where he's describing cross linking between two domains you control. So, his explanation is good on this and very educational and well-thought-out. Now, once you've watched that, we need to consider that your business scenario is not virtual - it's local, and you're having to take all of these extra steps to make sure your two websites don't get mixed up with one another in Google's "mind". Again, if you were able to get the client to consolidate, then you and I would be recommending a super internal linking strategy because that would be purely internal and would not look like the business is trying to manipulate anything. But, in the multi-site local business scenario, we're dealing with 3 possible outcomes from cross linking: It could potentially look to Google like the business is trying to artificially elevate the authority of that second site, though Rand's advice could help lessen the chances of that. You're taking all these steps to separate website A from website B (ensuring there is no shared NAP or shared content) to avoid citation confusion, but now, you could potentially be undoing all of that by overtly associating the two sites back together by crosslinking between them. If there's no matching NAP between the two sites, citations may not suffer and duplicate listings are unlikely to result, but you are definitely letting Google know that both sites are related. And, even if you think you're being pretty mild in your cross linking, it's important to know that there have been cases in which the industry has speculated that Google was applying the Possum filter in the local rankings based on a parent company controlling the two entities. See the #2 case in Joy' Hawkin's article about Possum: http://searchengineland.com/everything-need-know-googles-possum-algorithm-update-258900\. I mention this not because you'd be going after local rankings for the two entities (you're only pursuing then for the main business), but simply to illustrate that Google may well understand that the same business is controlling both websites based on something like the same parent company being listed on two business licenses. Google can dive pretty deep, it seems. Point of all of the above: there really may be little way to hide from Google that a single business owns both entities, so basing the SEO strategy of either on crosslinking between the two may not be that smart. To me, personally, it's a strategy that seems kind of manipulative at face value, and while I've described nuances that could make a gentle approach not too big of a deal, I'd be leery of making it into a "strategy", per se, for the business. That second website, if it must exist, needs to be good enough to earn links on its own and to be a candidate for selective external linkbuilding efforts. If it has to lean heavily on the main site, it's just another argument for why the multi-site approach isn't really recommended. Whew! Long answer, but this is a complex topic. Hopefully you can read up further on this topic to form your own opinion and help the business make a sound decision.

Hey There, Are you talking about the "people also search for section" that shows up when you see a knowledge panel? Please, let us know which specific data you are referring to in the knowledge panel. Thanks!

Hi There, Good question! Short answer here is: no, a Local SEO is seldom going to suggest a multi-site approach to represent different services a business offers. Here are some of the reasons why: You will only be able to build local business listings for the main business at the physical location, so there is no local pack ranking advantage to having two different websites, as you can't build additional listings for one of the services offered - this would violate Google's guidelines. Simultaneously, what you worry about with the multi-site approach isn't so much a duplicate penalty/filter (unless you duplicate content between the two sites) but, rather, the accidental creation of duplicate listings. If Google (or another local business index) gets confused by finding shared partial NAP (name, address, phone) on two different websites, it can confuse them and lead to the accidental duplicate listings being created, which can then sap the strength of the main listing for the main business. It can also confuse consumers. The way to reduce the likelihood of this would be to be sure that the physical address isn't on the second website and that you either have a) a unique phone number for the second website or b) put the phone number in image text. Even so, these things can get referenced off the website and pulled in that way, so it's not really foolproof, but it is a best-effort attempt. Finally, a major drawback of the multi-site approach is that, instead of every marketing effort you make adding to the strength of the brand, and therefore all aspects of what the brand offers, you are dividing this in half while doubling the management efforts that have to be expended trying to market two websites, instead of pouring all of that marketing goodness into a single entity. This really matters when it comes to your organic rankings. If you have an absolutely awesome website with high authority, you should be able to get your pages that surround the topic of this particular service the business offers to rank very well. With a second website, you'll be starting from scratch, trying to rank an unknown newcomer instead of simply building on the strength of the existing website by building great content and earning links to it, all under the umbrella of a single brand. So, hopefully these are points you can bring to the company to help them see why in both organic and local marketing, a single site approach is generally preferred. Particularly as we've moved into the era of RankBrain, the ability to become an authority in a certain topic has become a central marketing mindset. You might even show the client this website (Moz.com) as an illustration of how a brand can become associated with a topic (SEO) that then helps it to rank for a multitude of related facets (linkbuilding, on-page SEO, local SEO, content development, etc.). Rather than creating a website for each of these areas, there is just one Moz, and that has helped the brand to become known, overall, for all of these things. Please, let us know if you have any further questions!

There are different types of keywords that have different intent. I'm working with bestcoffeemaker2021.us and I'm using buying intent keywords.

Hi there! Sorry for the trouble. Moz Local's validation system still uses Google Places, not GMB directly. Each location must be verified in Google Places (most easily checked on Google Maps) for Moz Local validate the NAP details. GMB locations are not public-facing, they have details that only you as the owner/manager can see. So until any new changes are verified on Google Maps, they aren't detectable by Moz Local's validation system. If you're still not sure why your location is not detectable as a validation source, check out the requirements as listed on this page: https://moz.com/help/guides/local/listing#frequently-asked-questions If you're still unsure, feel free to reach out to us at help@moz.com and we can take a look!

So happy to hear that, Cieron. Good luck!

I agree, our main page ranks for our #1 term and we have /products/ pages that do as well.

Thanks guys. Yes open site explorer does not register any backlinks.  According to google webmasters tools we have 49 links in from 7 domains. I'll work through the points you raised. I'm disappointed about the backlinks as we have, in the past, paid for blogger outreach with programmes like fatjoe and the hoth.  I take it, you would not recommend these?

Hi Mirko, I think you'll find that Google (almost) always re-writes titles with the brand name at the front when it's the homepage. For that reason, I always write homepage title tags with the brand name at the front. Are you seeing other pages on your site having the title re-written in SERPs? Cheers, David

The Moz Q&A right above yours titled "Wrong Title Tag" expressed the same concern, since yours had been consistently the same until recently, it makes me think that this is maybe something Google is manually or algorithmically updating recently.

I don't think that's the correct use of these tags. See here. Possible negative side effects are only the blog post considered as "page 1" would be indexed. Pagination is for paginated content where one blog post or article is split up into several pages. In this case you'd want to send readers to page 1 usually. I would remove the tags. You can have links to the previous and next article for the user though.

I would improve the main domain.  Building a subdomain will divide your power. We redirected all of our subdomains into folders a few years ago and the results have been kickass.

I agree with the suggestion to make the page be a helpful reference, with sales being almost a side aspect of the page. My current favorite website for examples is https://www.webstaurantstore.com/guide/541/types-of-table-tops-and-bases.html. This page gives a lot of helpful information when selecting a table top and base for a restaurant (which bases are easy to clean around, but might take up more space, and so on). They do have links to product pages at the end, but the selling is not the main focus (yet I imagine it's still fairly effective). That's something other sites can link to that has good information, and you can get links from good sites.

Hi Alick, I should explain that we're a landing page platform so the /clkn/ tracking links that are getting indexed are getting indexed on our customer domains, not ours. Therefore we'd have no access to Google Search Console to make any tweaks. i.e.  http://customerdomain.com/clkn/http/destination-url.com Secondly, this URL ^ does not contain any parameters, so the fix you mentioned above doesn't apply. Any other ideas?

Ha, I feel silly. I do use ahrefs, but somehow the broken backlinks tool escaped me. This is perfect, thank you!

Hey Cocoonfxmedia! Are you referencing a specific keyword that you are currently bidding on (AdWords, Bing Ads, etc.), or are you asking in regards to keywords that you are not advertising on currently? If you're asking about a keyword that you're bidding on, you can pull that data through the relevant report. You can see your own average cost per click on a keyword level, but not any one else's. If you're not bidding on a keyword, you cannot see the data for that keyword. The top of page bid estimates will give you a bit of insights on the average click cost. It's not perfect, but using it relative to other keywords bid estimate data can provide some insights. (i.e. Keyword A is 2x Keyword B) Let me know and I'll help you out further! Thanks! Trenton