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If your new articles are crawlable, indexable and well linked to internally they will do just fine from an SEO perspective.
The main advantages I see to using a blog is the built-in features the platform provides (content management, themes, plug-ins, rss feeds).
It sounds like the non-profit is already stretched thin and creating 'amazing content' is not ever going to happen. In that case, I would just encourage them to add a bit of their own unique content to each post.
If they embed a video, write a paragraph explaining why they like or dislike it.
Take a few different quotes from a few different sites to make it your own unique set of quotes about a particular theme.
A site that offers little for unique content may not ever rank well for those posts, but it can still be useful and enjoyable for the visitors, which may be the ultimate goal. The site may only have potential to rank really well with its home page.
One final suggestion: People like to volunteer for non-profits. Perhaps they can look for volunteer bloggers who could put a bit more time into content creation.
Hi Mike-
Not at all. Structure your categories to be the most useful for your shoppers. Then allow subcategories to target more specific keywords.
What you're describing is just like having a Men's Shoes category. Within the page, you'd have sections with Dress Shoes, Running Shoes, Casual Shoes, etc. Products from multiple categories will help your visitors realize what they are looking for.
When your shopper realizes what they want, they will drill down into the Running Shoes only section and see products that only fit that mold. Your page title and content on that page will be optimized for something like Men's Running Shoes.
Often times, your base categories, like 'Men's Shoes' will be too broad to rank for unless you are a well-established brand. It's still OK to have them though, as they are needed for user experience. You may find the traffic potential for your site lies in the smaller subcategories and the individual product pages.
Moz page grader is just a tool that makes recommendations on "best practices." You can ignore it's recommendations for things you think are fine for your users or not obvious red flags (missing title tag for example). I see no problem listing the full, official product names for each product. If that's what they are called, that's what they are called.
Also, I like when e-commerce sites show 20-30 products per page, as I find it showcases a good product mix and also isn't too much of a drag on overall site load time.
One thing I would strongly recommend if you have a bunch of nearly identical products is SKU grouping. People might search for "4 gig" or "8 gig" USBs, but perhaps they don't search for red, black, blue, etc. Consider putting all similar brand "4 gig" USBs on the same product page, then allow users to select the color. This could possibly have a major impact on the number of products in your product categories. I also think it's better for both the users and the search engines.
Hi Jim-
If there are any links in your control or from places you have a close relationship with, I would recommend updating those. However, you don't need to worry about updating the rest of the external links.
You simply need to set-up 301 redirects from the old website to the corresponding page on the new website.
oldsite.com/blue-widgets.html-> 301 to newsite.com/blue-widgets
Make sure a 301 redirect is used. Read more about redirects here: http://moz.com/learn/seo/redirection
After making the updates, you will usually see a slight loss in organic traffic that tends to recover after time. Changing websites, replacing old pages with new pages, etc are all common practices on the web. In general the search engines handle them really well when a 301 is in place.
Good luck!
No, this won't cause problems big problems, assuming your original content makes up a good chunk of the overall page content. Would it be better if you had your own descriptions and photos? Yes.
I know it's hard to scale writing unique descriptions or taking photos for products, so you should focus on a smaller chunk. Find a way to prioritize the products you want to boost. Maybe it's keyword volume, best sellers, high margin, or a combo of each. Write unique descriptions for 20-50 of them. See if it improves organic performance. If you see an ROI, move on to the next batch of products.
Hi-
I have a couple of recommendations for you.
For more Wordpress Optimization Tips, check out these two links.
If the pages don't convert at all, I would be OK with combining them into a new page to go with a new site structure. Traffic is nothing but a number. Make a new page and find a way to make it convert.
This is a very normal thing for Google to display a different Page Title for the home page of a website. If you do a search for a head term like "Vitamins" you sill see the page titles for a few of the listings automatically get switched to "Company Name: Rest of Title"
Simply put, you can set a Page Title but Google does not always honor it if they think they can pull in a more relevant title.
If you have a nice landing page that highlights the content and benefits of the White Paper, people will have no problem linking to the page with a form on it.
Be sure you are giving your outreach targets a copy of the Whitepaper without making them have to download it. Make it as easy as possible for them to check out your content and decide if it's something they want to recommend.
I would recommend you try to make them feel special. Tell them it's brand new and you want to give them a sneak peak. Ask them for feedback on your whitepaper. After you get their feedback, you've got them invested enough in your content that you can request that they share it or link to it.
As Dirk said, this is not a concern. A typical e-commerce site is going to have the same images on product pages, category pages, brand pages, etc. In general, I would recommend using fresh images across your site, but a bit of re-use when it makes sense is not a problem at all.
This happens quite regularly and I wouldn't worry about it too much. Some people might enjoy seeing that there are multiple products available that fit the description of what they are looking for.
All you can really do is put in a meta description and hope that Google chooses to honor it (which they often don't).
One other idea: If the text 'Products 1-40 of 93' is high on your page, perhaps you can move it to a different location. Google often uses some of the first text on the page as the meta description.
I see no reason to wait. As long as your new site is completed (finished design, checked for accessibility, usability), I'd make the move.
Best of luck!
I would avoid hyphens in the domain name if possible. It's easier for people to remember your domain name or type it in after hearing someone say it. Multiple hyphens can begin looking spammy.
The URL length in your example is just fine. Looks good.
If you are sending it "for SEO" it is probably a bad thing. If you are sending it because you have a legitimately Newsworthy story to share, I think it's a good thing.
Adwords is definitely an option and may help a bit.
Some other things I would try is to create a Facebook Page, Twitter Profile, G+ Page, Wikipedia Entry, YouTube Channel and Linked-In Company Profile. Official company pages on a strong domain like these, often has the ability to rank quite high and push down the other profiles.
Create these profiles and do a really good job filling them out. Full of information about your company. Then, link to them from your actual website. Build a few other easy links (comments, forums, whatever) to these social profiles. Get some link equity flowing their way.
Also, create your own YouTube video. Perhaps a newer video with a good title will push it out of that spot. Put the video on your website.
Good luck!
I can't look at your GWT data, so I'm not exactly sure what is going on there. I suspect if you give it a day that data will be back in there.
I can confirm that the link:domain.com query is 99% useless and is not an accurate measurement of anything.
Use ahrefs.com/majestic and opensiteexplorer to check your backlinks. I'm sure they are still there.
Data/Tools are not reliable 100% of the time. Focus on your referral and search engine traffic instead of overall link numbers.
Talk to the client about important metrics.
Sales, Conversions, Conversion %, average order value, captured leads, etc.
If they are focused on rankings you are fighting a battle that doesn't guarantee their/your success. Those appear to be very difficult KWs and if you aren't already an established brand, I'd say you have a long road ahead to safely sit on the first page for any of those terms. Upon first glance at the website, it appears to be a very new domain.
I don't think it is setting realistic expectations for your client if you tell them you can get them on the 1st page for those terms by February of 2013. If you can do it, I would question if the techniques used are safe for long-term success in the SERPs.
Figure out what the website's unique selling point is. Create content that emphasizes it and also focuses on high converting long-tail KWs. Continue to work your way up to the head.
Good luck.
Just try to work them both into the content, meta, etc. Example Title: Property Inspection Software: Free App (iOS, Android)
Put less focus on cramming your exact keywords across your page and more focus on writing natural & marketing.
When you say "link profiles" it leads me to believe that you are using Open Site Explorer or some other SEO Tool. No SEO tool can crawl every page on the web, which is why the link may not show up on some client's backlink reports.
See if it is reported in Google Webmaster Tools or if the page is indexed by Google. If the page is indexed, you know Google is aware of the link.