Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hello Moz Friends,

So I wanted to ask for your friendly tips.

Im in Colorado and my competition has business names like Colorado SEO and then one company owns like 5 of the top 10 Google ranked sites under different names.

Im an honest guy, but how does someone compete in a crazy competitive industry?

How about you? Did you start at the very bottom and never got to the top?

Or did you outrank the leaders?

I know seo people are smart, but it's easy to wonder if there is any room left?

So just wondering your success or failure stories with competing in a competitive market online

Any tips are appreciated!

Chris

Thank you so much Brian!

So in your opinion, I live in a rural town of like 500 people, so would you suggest telling Google my service area is the biggest city near me? Or do a radius like 50 miles from my location?

Thank you so much for your expert advice

chris

Oh wonderful! Thank you so very much Thomas!

Hi Moz Friends,

I'm looking to try Facebook ads and I see online promo codes, but I'm not sure if they are real. I wrote to Facebook and they laughed at me.

So maybe someone has a great idea on where to get even a $25.00 code to try it out.

thank you all

Hello Moz Friends

So Google is nudging me to submit an AMP version of my website, but I'm no coder. In fact I'm a Wordpress Addict. So I'm just curious if you have created an AMP version, what do you use? Or did you have to recode an entire new website?

Thank you friends!

Chris

Hello Moz Friends

I just wanted to make sure I'm doing things correctly.

On google my business your given the option to list your service area. I serve the entire state of Colorado with my internet marketing services.

So I listed Colorado as my service area.

but Moz Friends, is this the wrong idea? Like should I list the major cities and call it good?

So instead of service area Colorado, I should put Denver, Colorado Springs, Pueblo etc

Thank you for your friendly help

Chris

Hello Moz Friends,

I wanted to ask about affiliate terms pages.

I'm assuming that if I have an affiliate banner where someone clicks on it, and I get a penny, that I need to have an affiliate disclosure or some sort of link saying that I make money.

I'm know is some legal ground here, but just curious if this is how the concept works?

Thank you so much!

Hello Moz Friends,

So I wanted to ask a quick question.

About 2 months ago I was on the phone with a Yext representative and they were doing a demo with me of their services.

I said that I did not have many clients ye and was offered a deal that wet like this:

Pay $300 now and then pay $50.00 per month per location.

Then all of the sudden the guy said his day was over and had to go. I never heard from him again.

So I wanted to ask if anyone sells Yext services? and if this special sounds right?

I am just starting my official seo consulting business and Yext is expensive for the startups like me. So maybe you know of some alternatives or cheaper solution for doing mass citations at one time?

Thank you ever and happy 4th!

Thank you! And yes I do agree on the quality links, I was shocked to see so many crappy back links.

Wow Marcus I hope to be at the level of knowledge that you are on day! Simply amazing answer.

So my client is local with one address for the main office where they ship the building materials anywhere in the U.S.

They have a network of contractors all across the same region who will in terms use the materials to build houses and garages etc. so most people will search for Garage Kits and then see my client also builds them.

So my fear is to limit the proper seo. But not sure if I add categories like website (Dot) com/garages/California would benefit a national level campaign, or if I keep the site/garages but add another silo of pages such as site/service-areas/California

of course I know that every page must be unique. It's not plug and play state and city names.

But I'm not sure which approach is better because do I need the specific modifiers like the item being sold, Garages, then the state. Or if the search engines are smart enough to know that we have products and our service area pages designate the areas?

but then look at craiglist, you have the city first then the categories.

I just don't want to mess anything up. I have complete freedom to do whatever I need to do.

I am here though as I know some of the best people in the world are in the Moz community!

Thank you again Marcus your awesome!

Hello Moz Friends

So I have always worked on local seo, websites, and digital brand management.

But one of my clients wants to go national. They sell building materials and the competition is pretty fierce.

So here is my question and I thank you in advance for any advice:

How do I not mess up a national seo strategy, based on local seo efforts?

So for an example, say I put the NAP in the footer, but my client sells to 49 states, will this hurt a national campaign?

And on the opposite, would getting local links from say construction websites in California, if my NAP is from Florida, hurt or help?

I understand that most of this is seo 101, but I am so used to local seo, that I don't want to cause national issues by doing something local.

Thank you again Moz Friends

"Have a Positive Day"

Chris

Hello Moz Friends,

So as I was researching some competitive backlinks and I noticed a lot of backlinks that a clients competitor has are on parked domains and they appear to be google ads from some point.

You know the pages that this page no longer exists, or hey do you want to buy this domain? and it has like 6 google ads on it? Yep those pages.

My clients industry is construction and their competitor has links from zombie websites, foreign, websites and more. But the links are no longer on the page. Like when it was crawled, their ad was showing.

Does this make any sense and is it usually temporary?

Thank you for your thoughts friends!

Thank you for all of the help.

I feel like a fish in the ocean sometimes.

The sharks are swimming all around, yet I am trying to get from point A to point B the correct way.

I consider Moz the authority on seo practices, yet I see so many sites that go against these different principles and out rank almost everyone in their industry, that I am like - well do you go with the pack and hope for the best, or do you stand your ground and do what's right,? kind of like that whole "If your friends were jumping off a bridge would you?" type of thing.

Thank you for pulling me back off the ledge.

Chris

Hi to all,

Ok so I have been beating myself up trying to figure out how to create a good ranking title for my websites homepage.

My competition uses commas in its title tags

But these are 100% against what Rand and many posts say here. I watched his whiteboard where he says don't use commas. There are posts that say, don't use commas.

The biggest one is mortonbuildings(dot)com - followed by - lesterbuildings(dot)com

They basically have the same title tags with commas.

So what's the catch here? What am I missing? of course these sites have Great Domain Authority, but I swear what they are doing is going against what Rand and many other seo professional's are preaching.

I thought it should read better for visitors? But to me it looks like keyword stuffing with a brand name?

Any help is greatly appreciated to let me know if these commas and strategies are good to do? or bad news?

Again thank you for your time to help a small business.

Chris

So this may be an odd question.

So a competing company went out of business.

Their domain name is now available.

So just for research purposes, would you ever or would it be unethical for a person to buy an expired competing domain name, and point it to another site to collect their link juice?

The site was only a DA of 10, but not sure if one - its bad to buy a competing companies expired domain - and two - even though in the same industry, this would be bad to point it to another site or create a site from it.

Just curious your thoughts.

Hello,

I am trying to zone in on a link building strategy for a non-linkable site.

What I mean by non-linkable is I have a construction site. It's a family owned and operated small business.

Our clients are farmers and older people usually.

We go do a job, do it right the first time, and leave.

Basically even if a couple of people who link to me for some weird reason, this is no way in the realm of 6,000 that my main competition has.

I have tried to get as many quality citation resources as possible by using get listed, and white spark.

My domain authority is only 16 though, so I must be able to increase this somehow.

I have listed with Google +, Bing, Yahoo and every other major citation I could find.

So now with trying too increase links with other ideas.

I read somewhere to donate to charitable organizations, but if they link back to me as a donor, in an unrelated field, isn't that spammy like?

So a construction site donating to a disease website, and then getting a backlink in return, does that look weird.

It just seems like there are so many rules that I do not want to mess something up.

I do not want get spammy links, but not sure if citations count as links so I am doing a win-win thing?

Thanks for any tips

Chris

Hi so I am curious if a homepage may carry the most link juice, then if you service an entire state, do you include the state name as a keyword in your homepage title to get noticed, or the company brand, resulting in adding service area pages to cater to unique each city that you service?

I am just not sure if Google is smart enough to know you service a state? I have my local page with a service area, but is this all I need? So I would not need to add a state name.

Like I build horse barns, pole barns, metal buildings, and indoor riding arenas.

So I am curious if you would do a title tag like

Colorado Builders - Barns, Buildings, and Arenas

Or maybe Colorado at the end?

Or not at all

Thanks for any tips.

It seems fine to me in IE, but in Firefox it is one line. I am my own webmaster and it's just wordpress.

AMAZING HELP!!! This is good stuff here. I am in the same boat, and already started taking these steps before I even read this. I will say this is all working for me.

Ok so a crazy title, but please hear me out.

I have a construction website. It's a small business.

It serves people one time, we get the job done right the first time, and usually never go back.

A lot of our clients are older, some who have a rotary phone still.

So for the sake of social seo, how do you get people to like a company on facebook, when its a local business who basically gets in and gets out.

I read somewhere to place ads with poll type pictures. For an example say, Like us if you like a clean bath tube. It sounds weird, but it seems to help some. It gives you a like, and they all add up.

So for a business who is trying to get likes, without buying them, how do you approach it?

Thank you

Chris