This is still an area where I feel that no tool can cover things in their entirety.
My core tools for this area:
- Google Searches - advanced queries, results filtered to past week or 24 hours
- Mention.net
- Moz Fresh Web Explorer
Welcome to the Q&A Forum
Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.
This is still an area where I feel that no tool can cover things in their entirety.
My core tools for this area:
A Swanson customer! Pleased to meet you, even if you are 'the masked man' for now. Again, I can't recommend that Yoast SEO plug-in linked above enough. It outlines all of the options above and all you need to do to block indexing is check a simple box.
Take a look at the Wordpress SEO guide, specifically at the section I just linked to.
I don't use any different tactics to optimize for Bing. Great targeted content that is easily accessible and has good quality signals (links and social) will rank well on both engines. Bing appears to be a bit more picky on use of the canonical tag and with how clean your sitemap is. Google appears to be a bit more lenient on these fronts, probably due to having a more sophisticated engine.
I think you are looking at your on-page optimization at too much of a granular level. Make the content as good as you can. Make it useful and make it a joy to read. If it is both of those, it won't matter if your KW density is 1% or 15%. If your post has a focused topic, it will naturally be optimized for the right words.
I'm not trying to say that KW research isn't important or that you shouldn't pick a few targeted KWs to work into the post. Just don't worry so much about ratios.
As for alt text, I would say that it is a positive ranking factor to have an image with alt text similar to the targeted KWs. I don't know how they would affect your tool's density percentage.
Hi Tim-
The first step I would recommend is trying to leverage all of your existing relationships.
Does your company work with a variety of other vendors, brand or manufacturers? The people you do business with are great prospects for acquiring a link.
Then- I would spend some time finding places online where your website or brand are mentioned but not linked to. Contact the website that mentioned you and kindly ask them to turn it into a link.
These are two great tactics that will get you started generating high-quality, natural links. Link building is tough and can often result in people stooping to risky tactics. Best of luck.
Tag your URLs with utm tags. Use a consistent naming convention like this.
First step: Create some really awesome content. Something that helps people understand your industry better.
Good content is naturally much easier to promote and will grow on its own in addition to your marketing efforts.
When there isn't a lot of KW volume for the local terms, you need to look beyond doing on-page optimization for one or two major KWs. It's not simply a 'target these words and watch the business flow-in' type of optimization.
Instead, your SEO efforts should be based around creating a content strategy. Content that will be interesting, useful and naturally contain a ton of relevant local long-tail phrases that have a tiny search volume of their own. You might not have a keyword that brings in 100 visitors in a month, but you might have 500 keywords that are bringing in 2 or 3 visitors per month. 1500 monthly visits!
Content FTW!
I'm guessing the companies on the Moz recommend list are going to be a bit above the project scale and budget for this (and most) similar inquiries.
I think this video about "How to Find a SEO Company" will be much more helpful.
There are a lot of great SEOs out there. There are also some bad ones. As with any industry, sometimes, you get what you pay for. Sometimes you pay for the brand/recognition...but I would avoid going really cheap, as you don't want to hire someone who will potentially cause harm to your website.
Watch the video above and best of luck.
I haven't had much experience with this problem, but here are some things I would try.
I would definitely create a new blog at gardenbeet.com/blog. This will drive traffic and links to your main site, which appears to be your ultimate goal.
Do not worry about linking out. If the link goes to a relevant site, linking out can actually be a good sign of credibility for you. Not to mention link karma.
What you do with the old blog is up to you. I would recommend moving the content and 301ing the URLs to the new domain. Here is a link to help you out. http://en.support.wordpress.com/site-redirect/ This would result in the current links pointing at the blog to pass juice to your main site.
Simply put, optimizing one site (gardenbeet.com) is easier than optimizing two (gardenbeet.com and your wordpress blog).
Yes. Google will stop indexing most of the duplicate pages since you added the canonical tag.
Figure out why there are so many duplicate pages and try to eliminate that problem. I'm guessing your comment about 'click more, it takes them to the category page' addressed this issue. It's best to stop a problem before it starts.
These pages may fall slowly out of Google's index. They will likely leave Webmaster Tools at an even slower rate. If this doesn't seem to work out for you, another option would be to 301 every page ending with growth/N* back to the canonical version.
I agree with Mat on this one. Also, building links to one page and making it stronger can lead to it ranking well for those same long-tail terms that are only in the on-page copy instead of in the page titles.
Also, I think the one page approach is a better experience for the users.
Hi-
This is a common problem for many websites, think Job Postings or Real Estate.
There are a few ways to handle it, and you have to decide what is best for your business. As of now, it sounds as if each flier is living on it's own unique URL on your site. Here are the scenarios for that set-up.
What I wonder is if you could just update the content and keep the URL the same.
website.com/store-name/weekly-flier
This would allow you to continuously build links to the same page and build it's authority and ranking ability over time. You could still choose to archive it if you wanted, but I wonder if that would have value for any of your users.
There are two factors you need to consider here:
SEOmoz updates Linkscape on about a monthly interval. You can see the next update is scheduled on November 5th. https://seomoz.zendesk.com/entries/345964-linkscape-update-schedule
Linkscape crawls a sample portion of the web. There is no guarantee your link is going to be found by Roger.
Here is what I would do for the client:
Open Site Explorer is a great tool for analyzing backlinks and for trends, but it is not perfect. No backlink analysis tool is. It may show a link you've built one month only to disappear the next month because Roger crawled a different set of pages. That doesn't mean your link has disappeared or has any less value to Google.
Use as much text on your page as is necessary to help the website visitors make an educated decision and convert. Try testing short copy/long copy.
Home page: You won't need a ton of copy on this page. Use this page to make a good first impression, establish that you are trustworthy a legit.
Category Pages: Use copy to help shoppers drill-down and find the specific items they are looking for. Help make their shopping process quicker and easier.
Product Pages: Most importantly, make sure you have unique copy here. Avoid manufacturer provided copy. Try to write it in a human voice. Get extra copy on the page by allowing product reviews.
You are correct, you should 301 redirect your old site to your new one. I wouldn't worry about ranking for TN keywords. If your new site is optimized for FL keywords and devoid of TN keywords it would be really hard to rank for the previous FL keywords.
At the very least, I would write a new unique set of copy for the product. Let them all share this new copy and compete against each other. Your original copy will be unique and likely keep you high in the rankings. Also, perhaps see if they will link their pages back to your site 'for more information.'
*small edit for clarification
A quick glance of your site passes the eye test.
If I had to take a guess after 5 minutes of research, I think you simply need to get a few more links to your site to get it ranking.
Link to any site that will provide benefit for your users.