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As Matt mentioned above, this is very vague and would require a good amount of research. There are many tools and blogs available that help new and old sites begin the process of optimizing a website. I can give some advice on what I would do to get the initial setup going. Site audit - Run a site audit and find where issues may be. This means search for broken links, broken images, missing tags, duplicate content, etc. To begin ranking a site it's important to make sure the site is running on search engine's requirements. Review your link profile - Do you have spammy links to the site? Is the competition blowing you out of the water when it comes to links? Given your niche, there's going to be lots of competition, chances are you are far behind in the link area. Blog - In many cases this is a given, however, many people don't understand the importance of this step. Add new, compelling content people will want to link to. Research long tail terms people may be using to find products. This will give you a better chance of ranking rather than generic terms like 'guitar' which will have incredibly high competition levels. Syndicate your content - You've posted a blog, now what? Get it in front of people! Share it on social media and social bookmarking sites. Back link - I don't need to go over the importance of this step. Just remember, quality over quantity. I hope this will help you get started, there's lots to do, but stay vigilant. -Nick

Thanks for the tip, I'm currently studying SEO and at the same time a developer. Will try to read on the basics

LOL. And still not all have internet or blogs or social media profiles! Can't imagine how many will be if all planet knew to create blogs!

I just wanted to thank everyone again for their insight as well as send an update on the status of our page. We are now ranking #2 for our target keywords as well as other top10 rankings for similar keywords. Appreciate all your insight and feedback.

Thanks Peter, very helpful!

If it's related to your industry and most of your competitor sites have the same type of links, that may be what Google expects to see. I think site speed & backlinks are two places where every niche is unique to itself. In a site speed example, I've seen photography keywords where every page 1 result the site takes over 8 seconds to load. Now, in an informational, mostly-text niche like say "george bush biography" that would be really, really bad. I think Google would expect to see sites in that niche load very fast. But photographers all have these full screen images, large portfolios, they're showing off the work, etc. I think the algo rightly realizes that if MOST sites that return a keyword are slower than average, site speed probably counts for a bit less overall as the distinctions are smaller. Same with backlinks - if your competitors all have these borderline links and they have authority, and you remove yours, I would fully expect your site to drop rather than rise in the rankings. Disavow is good for removing authority but doesn't often give you a positive bonus. It just keeps you from negative problems. To beat a competitor you don't need to avoid the negative. You need to add positive. I would focus on that side of the equation to see the best results.

Assuming the links have been removed completely, then not really. It can take anywhere from hours to months before Google will "react" to those links having been removed. If you're still seeing those links as valid in something like Open Site Explorer then don't forget these tools use their own methods for producing this list so it doesn't necessarily mean Google is still seeing the links. About the only thing I can suggest is if subdomain a is still up and running without the redirect, submit it to index via Search Console; anecdotally, this really does seem to promote it being re-indexed faster so theoretically the removal of those 301s may be picked up faster if they haven't been already. This can be found under Crawl > Fetch as Google.

It's not necessarily bad for SEO, and in fact could be useful to the user. What you need to do is make sure you're marking them all up in schema.org markup to make sure the bots can understand the information a little easier. The best scenario is to create a landing page for each location - that way you can have a better shot at ranking for each market. Write unique copy, add a map (embed a Google Map), make sure you have complete contact information (name, address, phone, hours of operation, etc), and list unique products/services for each location.

A belated "thanks, Peter!"

Hi Jonas, If re-branding is not an option, then it sounds like you will continue to experience NAP inconsistency, of the type you've noticed and explained. Without settling on a single brand for all references across the web, inconsistency sounds unavoidable.

from Acorns to Oaks

Just to add, there's more info on the release here: https://moz.com/community/q/our-new-index-is-live-and-things-are-looking-great-for-the-new-year

Nope, you'll be perfectly fine. The only way you'd be in danger is if any of the following changed: Server latency/performance Server geo-location Server stability Your new package being too restrictive and throttling you somehow for reaching a cap Speed, stability and location are the only things that really matter with a host from a ranking perspective so you should be just fine with the change. Good luck!

Hi, Sure I'll give you an example, our menu has 6 main categories: Storage, Office Trucks & Trolleys, Shelving & Racking, Pallet trucks + More Categories. within more categories, we have 18 more category pages - one is Kitchen & Catering equipment, this has within it 10 subcategories, these don't appear in the menu. You get to these once you click through the kitchen and catering page I'm wondering if we should include these to the menu, so when you hover over the main category, the subcategories appear. Would having this many links in the menu however, cause more issues for SEO

Honestly I'd be surprised if you were penalised for this. At worst, you may be a little hindered algorithmically but even then, if you've got sufficient, quality content on your site, a solid structure, good page titles etc then this should just be a minor detail at the end of the day. Talking purely about rankings, SEO is really just about sending overall signals and patterns these days; just make sure this isn't one of many risky signals. Of course, if you can fix it (maybe with the help of a dev) then it would be wise. If it were my site, my biggest concern would be the impressive this gives to the user. Does it feel like they're having keywords blatantly shoved in their face? If so, the issue becomes a little more important. Search engines don't buy your products, users do!

Thank you for the update Kavit.

Hi Lauren, Also wanted to add a link to a related discussion here: https://moz.com/community/q/does-multiple-sites-that-relate-to-one-company-hurt-seo