Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Jason,

I think the video is very nice. It's straightforward, easy to understand, and well produced. The voice-overs are also well-paced and sound authoritative.

I just have two quick suggestions that could be easily implemented to potentially generate more business and traffic from off-site sources where you may have the video hosted or published.

1. The call to action at the end is a little weak, but that could be intentional. You're basically asking viewers to email questions to a specific email address so that they can be answered in future videos. It may be more effective to set up a landing page i.e. http://optiopublishing.com/questions where viewers can submit questions via a contact form, but also have quick access to the rest of your web content and services. This would also increase traffic to your site, rather than your email server.  I'm pretty sure you're sales people will be soft-selling your paid services to those who ask questions, but I think having them visit your site to ask the question will "pre-sell" them a little bit. This really only applies to viewers who watch the video on YouTube, Vimeo, etc, rather than watching it on your site.

2. Add a simple graphic to the end of the video as well with your URL and a description of the service. It could be the exact graphic that the video begins with. I had to restart the video to find (remember) your URL, so a reminder at the end wouldn't hurt. There's about 9 seconds of dead time at the end, so that would be a perfect place to put it.

Other than those two small things, I think you've got a winner. It's informative, but not too informative, and detailed enough to leave the viewer with a desire to learn more. Good strategy and good luck!

Thanks,

Anthony

I have to agree with Kevin on this one...

Items 2,3,and 4 are days away.

Does it suck that OSE's Linkscape Index hasn't been updated since the end of February? YEP!

Will it be worth the wait next week when it is updated and contains three times the data as the previous crawls? YEP!

I consider SEOMoz a community, and though Linkscape's stagnant data is causing some issues, I realize that once those issues are resolved that I'll be getting more bang for my buck than I did before, and I'm totally willing to struggle for a month in order to have better tools at my disposal for many months to come.

Rand and SEOMoz are drastically improving the volume of data that we will have at our disposal. That takes time and resources. They aren't raising prices or making excuses, they're working out bugs and improving the service. I'll take it.

Anthony

If you use Firefox for you everyday browsing and you're logged in to a Google Account related to your site, that's probably the problem.

For example when I'm logged in to Google (Analytics, Webmaster, Google+, whatever) my site ranks #1 for one of my targeted keywords. If I'm not logged in, I'm #9.

It could also be your cookies, cache, location setting etc. that's causing Google to serve a site they think you prefer higher in the rankings.

Try clearing your cache and cookies in Firefox and logging out of any accounts, then check again.

Hope this helps.

Thanks,

Anthony

I'll try to find a clip of it online somewhere and post a link to it here... I laughed so hard I almost crashed into the median the first time I heard it. But on a serious note, I think an advertisement like that sheds a lot of light on how the general public perceives Google+.

I agree with Mcarle and EGOL,

You'd be better off hiring an** SEO Consultant** that can provide you with useful insights and develop strategies for your specific demographic rather than trying to hammer out some sort of long term agreement, which in my experience can lead to some definite conflicts of interest... I've got a story or two to tell, believe me.

For me, and this is just an honest reflection of my personality, I would rather spend a few days doing competitive and keyword research and then developing a plan that my client can implement himself, as opposed to actually investing the many hours that it takes to implement the developed strategies. It's a win-win in my opinion. I provide the strategy and direction, you provide the initiative, resources, and time to develop your own business. At the end of the day the client saves a massive amount of money, and doesn't sacrifice long term potential earnings, and I concentrate on analysis and suggestions based on experience rather than building links and so-forth.

You can actually hire some very educated and attractive Romanian women (or men) to handle some of the tediousness that true SEO requires for right around a buck an hour. Why pay me a percentage for life? Hire a pro to develop a plan, and reap the rewards of your own work.

That being said, I'm a lifelong professional musician, web designer, and digital marketing kind of guy, so if you need somebody to help you out, I'd be glad to give you the old "Fellow Mozzer/Musician Discount" and put something together for you that's really affordable. I agree that musicianship can improve the lives of kids... I started playing bass at the age of 8 and it led to a life-long passion/career, so it would be almost pro bono

Hope this helps, and great discussion you guys.

Anthony

Very strange indeed...

I'd submit a ticket to SEOMoz tech support or shoot a quick email to help@seomoz.org. They usually get back to you and resolve issues very quickly. I haven't personally experienced this, so I've got nothing.

Blessing in disguise though...

I did notice you haven't set up your Facebook page username yet, and you've got waaay more than the 25 fans you need to set one up.

Just click Edit Page under the Manage menu at the top right of your FB page, and then click Basic Information in the left menu. You should see Username near the top. I'm sure you can take it from there.

You'll be able to link to facebook.com/MariahCarlePhotography rather than www.facebook.com/pages/Mariah-Carle-Photography/162925300446877

... so at least the garbled up URLs will be shorter

-Anthony

Hi sftravel,

Good question.

There has to be some kind of keyword cannibalization happening if your custom 404 page is really ranking higher than the page you've optimized for those keywords.

In short... Yes. No-Index your 404 page. Users seeing a 404 error page as a search result doesn't really do anything but harm your site's reputation, as it more than likely makes them think that the site is ill-maintained.

The more important question is this:

**Is the 404 page itself ranking and receiving the traffic or is there a page on your site that has moved and is now yielding the 404 error? **

I'd suggest using the Queries and Landing Pages sections in the Traffic Sources (Search Engine Optimization) menu in Google Analytics  to track down what search queries are leading to your 404 page. Webmaster tools will work too. Im almost positive that it's simply a page that was ranking and has since moved that's causing the problem. If so, a simple 301 redirect to the correct URL should solve the problem without harming the ranking of the page or decreasing organic traffic. It may actually improve, as I'm sure the bounce rate for the clicks from that specific query will decrease.

Hope this helps.

Anthony

I think there's a very good chance that adding the Meta Robot instructions will resolve the problem. It's a pretty easy fix so I'd definitely try it out, and if it doesn't work, continue to troubleshoot.

Notice the last few lines of the report:

<dt>Recommendation</dt>

<dt>Ensure the URL returns the HTTP code 200 and is not blocked with robots.txt, meta robots or x-robots protocol (and does not meta refresh to another URL)</dt>

Though you're not technically "blocking" the meta robots, there's no instruction for them to index or follow the page. Also if the meta refresh is to another URL, that is an issue. well.

Hi Pete,

If you are referring to Meta Keywords and Meta Descriptions, the answer is mixed. Most major search engines have ignored Keyword Meta Information for some time now, so it's best to leave those fields blank. There's no benefit in adding them, and in one respect it can actually be detrimental...

Why share the hard work you've put into keyword analysis with your competitors by advertising your targeted keywords to the world??

As far as the Meta Description, that's a different story. While there's a no inherent boost in ranking provided by keywords in Meta Descriptions, this area can have a huge effect on your page's CTR (Click Through Rate) which can indirectly effect rankings. Remember this description is displayed directly below the Meta Title in SERPs. You should use the Meta Description to accurately describe the page, and to entice the potential visitor to click the link. Some keywords will surely help, as Google will make any words in the Meta Description that match the search query bold, which can draw attention to your page, but it's probably more effective to use this area as a call to action...

Why should I click on your link rather than the other links? Do you offer free shipping? Is your customer service excellent? Are you offering a special promotion? The Meta Description is the place to let your potential visitors know about these things. Be concise, as Google only displays the first 156 characters, and avoid using the same description for every page.

Meta Description - Make 'em count.

Meta Keywords - Leave 'em blank.

Hope this helps.

Thanks,

Anthony

Hi Tom,

It looks like Google is serving a default or script produced version of your Meta Description in result pages which is this:

Music Degree and Performing Art Degree from Authentic University. Several Dozen Majors to choose from Bachelor, Master and PHD levels.

However, the meta description for _http://www.registereddegree.com/music-degree_ is indeed "Registered Degree" as the On-Page tool reported.

Below is the Meta data pulled from the raw HTML on the page you mentioned:

name="description" content="Registered Degree" />

name="keywords" content="music degree" />

Looks like you're using Wordpress as a CMS (could be mistaken) but there is likely a setting on the page itself to enter a unique Meta Description, and depending on what SEO plugins / configuration you're using, there should also be a "Default Meta Description" setting. It's possible the you have two plugins that are conflicting, and causing duplicate Meta Descriptions to be be served.

Hope this helps!

Anthony

I agree with both Moosa and Aran. I don't think constantly changing your page titles on a site-wide basis is going to help your rankings. It may actually have the opposite effect, depending on how you interpret Google's mysterious and upcoming "Over-Optimization" penalty.

However if you're page title's need improving and doing so will help you increase impressions, I wouldn't avoid it. I just wouldn't make a habit of tweaking them and changing them too often.

Like Aran said, if you've running a special promotion, have a major announcement, incredible new content, etc... I absolutely think changing the titles on relevant pages to reflect those things is a great idea for increasing CTR and conversions.

Moderation is the key on this I believe.

Hope this helps.

Anthony

Hi Sebastian,

What eCommerce platform are you using?

To be honest, I think the best solution would be to allow users to checkout without being logged in. Most eCommerce stores allow Guest Checkout because a lot of customers don't want to be forced to create a permanent account in order to make a purchase. I'm pretty positive you'd see an increase in Conversion Rate if you enable users to make purchases as guests.

If that's not an option for some reason, you might try letting the user create the account during the checkout process rather than redirecting them to the normal account creation page.

I'm pretty sure there's a way to redirect users to a page without using a 302 via php, but I'm far from being an expert in that language. On my eCommerce site if a customer clicks a link like "Order Tracking" or "Order History" without being logged in they're first taken to the login page, and then after logging in they're redirected to the original page that was requested. I'm not showing any 302 warnings from these links though. I'm using Magento, and while I'm very well versed in that CMS, I've got very little experience with other eCommerce platforms and can't really help you out with anything technical.

Again, I definitely think the best course of action would be to allow non-registered users to make purchases, which would eliminate the problem entirely and increase conversions.

Hope this helps and good luck!

-Anthony

Hear hear. Thumbs up.

I've been reading about and helping a lot of people who were hit by the Penguin update over the last couple of days, and the update seems to be accomplishing what Google intended it to accomplish... it's scaring people straight.

I've picked up two new clients this week who now only want to practice "Good SEO" and "Do it the right way." This is a good thing for me and for the quality of the net, don't get me wrong. It does make me a little nervous though that the SEO industry is going to be tarnished a bit. Google is making a pretty clear statement with Penguin, which I think boils down to "Don't do anything other than create good content, provide accurate descriptions, and establish good connections to SEO your site... or beware ." (other than technical stuff - 301/ canonical / crawler management / etc).

So riddle me this Batman...

As a proud Journeyman, how is the followed backlink on my SEOMoz profile page going to appear to Google? This is an SEO site with SEO content and SEO tools and SEO in the URL. The site listed below the first followed URL on my profile is an SEO site that's in development. So there's a link to my site and every bit of context around it screams SEO.

But... it is a very nice link indeed, I really do like it, and this is a white-hat kind of place. Do you think Google will start penalizing sites with inbound links from pages that are related to SEO, even if the page promotes respectable tactics?

If so, I'll be having nightmares about a very round Danny DeVito with a pointy nose and creepy hands chasing me through the sewers for weeks to come...

Hey Sebastian,

I took a look at your site and I see what you're saying about guest checkout. Very nice by the way. I'm definitely going to keep your contact info handy so I'll have it the next time I need a custom modules built.

I do think adding the login form to the basket.html page would be the best way to go in this case. The only problem with that is if the user clicks on the Checkout button and bypasses the View Basket page...

Again, my php skills are horrible but I guess the general idea for the rule would be something like this:

For basket.html - if userisnotloggedin then echo HTML for the login form above the current basket.html content.

For checkout.html - if userisnotloggedin then echo HTML for login form above the current checkout.html content.

The problem with this scenario is that if the user isn't registered, you'd aslo need to dynamically display the HTML from register.html on the basket or checkout page when a user clicks "Register Now", instead of redirecting to a new page.

Could get a little complicated but it should eliminate the 302 warning.

Also, when I created an account I noticed I had to confirm it, so unless you've had problems with fake accounts, I'd  remove that step from the conversion process.

Personally, I use the robots.txt file to disallow robot access to all of my cart, checkout, and account pages (login, register, or after login). The only drawback is you don't have the "Register" page indexed, but I don't think it's very likely that a user would land on a Registration page from a search engine result and proceed to register for a site without viewing any other content first.

Removing those pages from the index, combined with adding a no-follow tag to the View Basket and Checkout buttons links should get rid of the 302 error and any duplicate content issues without having to change your conversion flow, which seems to be very straightforward and user-friendly as it is.

It seems like you've got the skills to make it happen either way though, and keeping a user on the checkout page instead of redirecting them somewhere else never hurts.

I don't think the 302 warning will be affect your rankings much as it is, but to wrap it up... I'd either add the necessary Login and Registration forms to both the basket and checkout pages (only if the user isn't logged in) or disallow indexing of those pages and no-follow any links pointing to them, so the 302 isn't an issue.

-Anthony

Hi Michael,

I'm not talking about the product pages that make up the site, just the actual cart and checkout pages.

I'm not sure what eCommerce platform you're running, but basically whatever page is displayed when a customer clicks "My Cart" and "Checkout" or whatever it happens to be on your site... the pages that are dynamically generated when user's add products and purchase items. There's no need to have a My Cart or a Checkout page ranking in Google that shows an empty cart or an error when somebody clicks the search result. Same thing for customer account pages like order tracking or order history... anything that's dynamically generated and requires a user to be logged in or have an active session on the site.

Hi Mozter,

I tend to agree with Cyrus on this issue, and both answers have already provided a great deal of insight.

But.. I'll throw my own two cents in as well, just in case you're still torn. There are Pros and Cons to each approach, as already mentioned. This dilemma most commonly arises when optimizing eCommerce based sites with multiple categories and subcategories, and a lot of times the best approach depends on the industry in question.

A little bit of keyword research is always important and will likely shed a lot of light on how users search for products in a particular niche. Google's Keyword Tool and SEOMoz's Keyword Difficulty Tool are both great resources.

Cyrus already noted several benefits of a shorter URL structure, and I'll expand on that as it relates to commerce driven platforms.

Like over-optimization, keyword cannibalization can be a major issue when optimizing products within the same category. For example, the URL you mentioned will likely have several similar URLs:

Mybrand.com/software/tablets/ipad/supertrader.html

Mybrand.com/software/tablets/ipad/product2.html

Mybrand.com/software/tablets/ipad/product3.html

and so on...

The result of this structure is that you have multiple URLs that are competing to rank for the same keywords (software, tablets, and ipad) and 9 times out of 10, all of the URLs will rank lower in Google, rather than a single URL ranking higher in the results.

If you were a potential customer, what would you search for? "SuperTrader Software for Ipad Tablet" or "SuperTrader for Ipad"? My guess would be the 2nd.

Assuming a more short-tail keyword search i.e. "Ipad Software", again you'll have multiple URLs containing those keywords, and likely a lower ranking for each.

Also remember, the shorter the URL, the more relevance that is placed on each keyword in that URL.

My suggestion is to use a flat structure that contains more descriptive keywords such as:

Mybrand.com/tablet-software/ (Category Page w/subcategories for each OS)

Mybrand.com/ipad-software/ (Category w/ software products for Ipad)

**Mybrand.com/supertrader-ipad/ **(Product - SuperTrader for iPad)

Mybrand.com/android-sofware/ (Category w/ software products for Android)

Mybrand.com/supertrader-android/ (Product - SuperTrader for Android)

This should allow better optimization for long-tail and short-tail keywords and help to avoid multiple URLs competing for the same keywords. It will be much easier to process for the user as well.

Also "Apps" may be a better choice than "Software" but I'm sure the competition is much fiercer.

Finally, on a side note, if you're using Magento as your CMS, I'd suggest removing the ".html" URL suffix from the URLs and Categories and replacing it with a trailing slash by going to System --> Configuration --> Catalog --> Search Engine Optimization. I'd be glad to help you with enabling the shorter URLs and Rel Canonical Meta Tags to best optimize this structure in Magento as well. If you're running another eCommerce Platform, I got nothin' for ya.

Hope this helps and good luck.

Anthony

SEOmoz updates it's Linkscape index approximately every thirty days. The last update was finalized on May 31, so if you made changes since then, you won't see that data in any SEOmoz tools/reports that pull from the the index.

You're in luck though, the next index update is scheduled for Wednesday (June 27), so you should have a clearer picture of your site's inbound links then.

FYI:

The SEOmoz API / Linkscape Schedule

Google can take quite a while to update it's index, and sometimes four months or more to reassess penalties for violation of their policies (spam / paid links). You might consider filling out this form, which could possibly give you a "fresh start" by devaluing the numerous inbound links w/ identical anchor text. I haven't had any experience with the results, but I've read it can expedite a return to Pre-Penguin organic rankings and traffic. It's just an option, I'm not suggesting that you submit the feedback form without further research.

Hope this helps and good luck!

Anthony

Hey,

I agree that the best option, as Francisco mentioned is to <nofollow>the outbound links in order to retain the pages authority and not send any fishy signals to Google. </nofollow>

As far as the content issue goes, it could use a little bit better "text to code" ratio, but content doesn't always mean text. I'm also in branding and graphic design and found the post to be relevant and exactly as you described it..

80 Creative Logos for your Inspiration

There's 80 logos, and they inspired quite a few ideas as I scrolled down the page. So congratulations on pleasing your target demographic, which is exactly what you should be concentrating on.

A couple of extra paragraphs below the images wouldn't hurt, and definitely nofollow the outbound links, but the first eight words of the post say it all...

They say a picture speaks a thousand words...

A little bit different version of the saying I'm familiar with but the post's content isn't an issue, just get the technical stuff right and you've got a winner. Now if you'll please excuse me while I check out a few more of those logos...

Thanks,

Anthony

From: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/complete-guide-to-rel-canonical-how-to-and-why-not

There is usually a better solution

The canonical tag is not a replacement for a solid site architecture that doesn’t create duplicate content in the first place. There is almost always a superior solution to the canonical tag from a pure SEO best practice perspective.

Lets go through some of the URL examples I provided above, this time we'll talk about how to fix themwithout the canonical tag.

Example 1: http://www.example.com/quality-wrenches.htm

This is a duplicate version because our example website resolves with both the www version and the non-www version. If the canonical tag was used to pull the www version out of the index (keeping the non-www version as the canonical one) both versions would still resolve in the browser. With both versions still resolving, both versions can still continue to generate links.

A canonical tag, as with a 301 redirect, does not pass all of the link value from one page to another. It passes most of it, but not all. We estimate that the link value loss with either of these solutions is 1-10%. In this way, a 301 redirect and a canonical tag are the same.

I'd recommend a 301 redirect instead of a canonical tag.

Why, you ask? A 301 redirect takes the link value loss hit once. Once a 301 is in place, a user never lands on the duplicate URL version. They are redirected to the canonical version. If they decide to link to the page, they are going to provide that link to the canonical version. No link love lost. Compare that to the canonical tag solution which keeps both URLs resolving and perpetuates the link value loss.

From Rand's Article: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/canonical-url-tag-the-most-important-advancement-in-seo-practices-since-sitemaps

• Whereas a 301 redirect re-points all traffic (bots and human visitors), the Canonical URL tag is just for engines, meaning you can still separately track visitors to the unique URL versions.
• A 301 is a much stronger signal that multiple pages have a single, canonical source. While the engines are certainly planning to support this new tag and trust the intent of site owners, there will be limitations. Content analysis and other algorithmic metrics will be applied to ensure that a site owner hasn't mistakenly or manipulatively applied the tag, and we certainly expect to see mistaken use of the tag, resulting in the engines maintaining those separate URLs in their indices (meaning site owners would experience the same problems noted below).
• 301s carry cross-domain functionality, meaning you can redirect a page at domain1.com to domain2.com and carry over those search engine metrics. This is NOT THE CASE with the Canonical URL tag, which operates exclusively on a single root domain (it will carry over across subfolders and subdomains).

Rel Canonical is a great tool, but I have to disagree here. www.mysite.com is a sub-domain of mysite.com. Adding rel canonical tags to every page on the site would only send a signal to search engines specifying the preferred content, but adding a 301 redirect to the root domain one time will send all traffic, robots, and link juice to the preferred domain on a permanent basis.