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Hi Will,

Personally, I approach this from two perspectives: Usability and SEO.

Usability: I don't think I've ever clicked on a footer sitemap myself when looking for things on a website. If organic search does not take me to what I want, I do a bit more browsing with a last ditch effort using the keyword search box. If that doesn't work, I bounce back to my organic search results and try another site or refine my search.

Therefore, I removed the footer sitemap from our ecommerce site and created a left nav link to additional categories. The link is above the fold and I call it "Additional Categories." I am shocked at the volume of visitors who go to that page - far more than every visited our footer sitemap.

SEO: In my opinion, a sitemap moves links up to the second tier click level because they are buried too deep and don't get the juice. These pages need to be moved up perhaps because the link structure and hierarchy are not sound or maybe it is just too big of a challenge to flatten out all portions of a site.

Therefore, I flatten out and improve the link structure (or as sound as you can get). If there are categories that warrant indexing, but are not best sellers, I put them on the additional categories page. If some of the categories are 3 clicks (sometimes 4) and difficult to flatten out or fix, I put them in the additional categories page so people can see them and spiders can crawl them. Our site currently does not have the authority to force the juice to deeper penetration.

Nobody said it would tank a site nor was it asked if it would tank a site. Until the H1 goes by way of meta keywords, the use of it will have some relevance and in my opinion should be used properly.

Of 200 plus algorithm elements, there are undoubtedly plenty of others that are "not a big deal" but that doesn't mean we shouldn't use them correctly.

Whew, there sure has been a lot of time spent on something that's "not a big deal."

No, Google just beat the value out of the H1 to the point its on life support.

Sorry Egol, but if the innocents had no regard for SEO they wouldn't be putting a tag on it.

Hi Luke,

As you can tell, it touched a nerve. I was looking for the moz link to a thread regarding this same issue and Alan (one of the Gurus) said multiple H1's can affect engines differently and if I remember correctly he made reference to a negative response from Bing.

Until H1's achieve the lofty status of meta keywords, I will continue to treat them with some importance and approach them with best practice.

I'll listen for the rumbling coming from your direction.

Good luck.

Hi Bryan,

When keywords look similar as you indicate, use phrase and exact match with specific attention given to exact match.

I use broad match when I'm having trouble drumming up keywords.

Once I get a semblance of keywords as you've indicated, I resort to exact match to tell me what specific phrases generate the traffic.

A quick look at local exact matches tells me [piano movers atlanta] generates the most at 140 searches, followed by [atlanta piano movers] at 58 and [piano movers in atlanta] generating 0. However, [piano movers atlanta ga] brings back 22 results.

Ditto those who say use it. In addition, if you're a local retailer with some name recognition, you'll benefit from having your name back-branded in the title.

Remember world famous brands were not always world famous.

Hi Jennifer, If you're going to weigh in, you've got to bring more substance than a regurgitation of Rand's posts on the value of H1 and how SEO time is best spent. When my staff runs an SEOmoz on page optimization report and gets flagged for having 2 H1's on the page (which happened several times today), I didn't say, "Worrying about the H1's on the page is not that big of a deal." Nor did I say, "Make sure the site is crawlable and all those other high priority things." I described a bit of history of the H1, its purpose and best practice considering its value in optimization which is to say 1 is best, 2 is acceptable and more than 2 is not necessary nor is is best practice. I also added that if it wasn't of some importance, Rand certainly wouldn't have it as an element in his research tools. Having 18 H1's on a page doesn't seem excessive. It is what it is, which is asinine. That rumbling coming from down the hall is not thunder from above, but me having a visit with a developer and anyone else who thinks 18 H1's is acceptable or seemingly excessive.

I was doing real well until I read this: "Ive noticed the developer's used about 18 per page" Multiple H1's are one thing, but excessive, spammy, abusive, irrelevant H1's are another.

Why in the world is he even bothering with an H1 tag if he's got 18 of them? Ask him, "What are you telling the bots with your H1's - 18 different things or the same thing 18 different times?" No wonder the value of the tag has declined so much since its inception. That volume of H1's is what Cutt's is referring to in his 2009 video.

Our CMS site auto-generates a header H1 tag when enabling optimization for mCommerce. So, when I put an H1 on the page for categories and products, the page has multiple H1's. I'd like to have one but will live with 2.

Hi Josh,

Keeping in mind I don't know anything about wood counters and kitchen islands, I would make this observation about your title:

<title>walnut kitchen island with undermount sink and tung-oil wood seal(65)er | J. Aaron</title>

1. Too long. You've only got about 65 spaces for a title, then Google clips off the rest. I limit titles to 60 spaces or less.

2. You've got what appears to be 2 related keywords (which you could probably rank for on one page) and a 3rd unrelated keyword in "tung oil wood seal."

3. "Walnut Kitchen Island" looks like a good long tail keyword to me (kitchen island would be short while adding the walnut is a longer tail qualifier).

4. The longer the tail, the more you qualify the buyer.

5. I tighter title would be: "Walnut Kitchen Island with Undermount Sink by J. Aaron"

6. Depending on your site structure you might have a page with a variety of Walnut Kitchen Islands on it with a link to a separate page with an undermount sink (which is what this revised title would suggest).

6. "Tongue Oil Wood Seal" seems like it should be on a page about how to protect and maintain your countertops.

7. Putting your store's name or your name on the page title is fine and standard practice when brand building. Some put it on the back as you do, some on the front and some not at all. If there is room, I put our store's name on the title, if not I leave it off.

8. If you're optimizing for local business, its fine to put your city, state or combination in the title.

9. I've got our store name and street address in the footer so it shows on every page. For pages I really want to kick butt locally on, I put the city, state in the title, otherwise I leave it off and let the footer do the work.

Hi Joshua,

I would second the preceding replies and offer this: before you implement your page titles I would recommend three things:

1. Develop a better understanding of keyword research and the difference between broad, phrase and exact match as they relate to long vs short tail keywords.

2. Develop a better understanding of structuring your title with keywords. For example,"<title>Wood Countertops - Butcher Block Counters | by J. Aaron</title>" looks to me more like a breadcrumb than a homepage title. At face value, I would think that title would link to a page about Butcher Block Counters (which is a specific type of wood counter that would have its own page).

3. Wood countertops is a very broad short-tail term - probably very early in the buying cycle and very difficult to hit page 1. If you're a local wood countertop shop, I would optimize locally for immediate results while you build your domain authority so you can rank for these shorter tail terms.

Hi Guy. In terms of no-follow for page rank sculpting purposes, I've read the pros and cons of both and for me I've concluded I'd rather direct the juice where I want it to go rather than to block or prevent it from flowing where I don't want it to flow. No-follow can have unintended results, so I prefer the alternative.

Volume of categories and how to structure them is a challenge for a lot of ecommerce folks (me included). I've recently started flattening my site. While development of useful and intuitive sub-categories helps people find what they want on the 3rd or 4th click, crawl penetration suffers due to the depth. By flattening my site I mean reducing the number of sub-categories that can only be reached by other sub-categories - which is basically moving 3rd or 4th level categories up to the second level or top level (left nav).

A large and top ranking Toy Store I visit often to see how they structure their links has a top nav with categories, a left nav with categories and a sitemap in the footer. Each navigation entry has either different links in it or some different anchor text linking to the same pages. After much reading and apparent consensus among veteran users in this forum, I nixed the sitemap as unnecessary if I use good linking practice throughout the site. One Guru even suggested a sitemap can hurt your rankings if every page is linked to every other page with juice diminishing returns.

In my case, I created a left nav link to additional categories and put categories or sub-categories in them that were either: 1. Removed from the left nav because they were not important enough to be on the left nav 2. Removed from the left nav because on-page analytics suggested they didn't warrant being on the homepage. 3. Were a 3rd or 4th level category that on-page analytics showed there was enough demand to move its link to a second level or top level.

I hope this works for me and could of some help to you. Good luck.

Thanks Clint. I suppose subscribe was a poor word choice. We don't feed the products ourselves, we have a 3rd party handle it for us. We're currently feeding to Google and Bing. Even though we don't pay for those leads I don't want a bump in bounce rate. You confirmed my thoughts. I appreciate the input.

We subscribe to a product feed and have been very pleased with the results.

However, one of the unanticipated results is a trending increase in our site bounce rate. Should we be concerned about this 3-10% increase in bounce rate trend. It may go higher.

Of all the factors that can contribute to bounce rate, one of the factors is that we have a lot of products on the site that cannot be shipped out of state or shipped at all. These products can only be delivered in-state or picked up at our store.

The Analytics data suggests that feed products typically have a higher bounce rate, lower ctr, lower time on page, lower time on site etc. than products found by other means. However, the product feed generates sales.

Should I take these products off the feed that have a high bounce rate and are not "shipable"? Although they may land on feed product, they may click through to a shipable product.

Our feed provider says of the bounce rate is typically not something a lot of other merchants worry about. I'm not certain, but I'm inclined to disagree. What are your thoughts and experiences with this?

Thanks for the help.

Are your keywords not high volume because they are not necessarily optimum keywords for your site or are they long tail keywords that are more specific and therefore do not generate as much traffic as short tail keywords?

I don't mind generating less traffic if I'm getting good conversion rates.

Also, are you missing out on traffic because you've not optimized for local search?

If there's only 1,000 searches a month because your keywords suck, then you need to do better keyword research.

However, if your keywords are longer tail relevant keywords, then stick with them, just generate more of them.

I'd also consider the purpose of analyzing links. When I look at a competitors links, I look at the volume of linking domains, then I look at the kind and quality of the domains.

If I'm wondering why a competitor is kicking my butt, I don't care about the quantity of links as much as the quality of links.  I'll look through the links in the profile and pick out the links I think I can benefit from and pursue a link acquisition.

If you're only interested in face value information, the number of linking domains is most important.

If you're a manufacturer that sells products, I'm not going to link to you no matter how good your content and how many bells and whistles you've got for promotions. However, if you don't sell products and you've got better content than I can provide on my site, I will link to you. I link to manufacturer sites when they have authoritative information that is beyond the scope of information I provide. For example, flame resistant clothing or fire rating information. If I want to cover my bases (ass) and make sure the customer has access to deep level information that is beyond the scope of what is necessary for a purchase I will link to it on a case by case basis.

Hi Cody. I just got in on the tail end of this. I'd also put keywords in the file name. Check out a previous thread on this.

Sure. Here's a great link.

For local and some national products I like to back brand on the title tag:

Best Green Widgets - Widget Company XYZ

Greatness is in the eye of the beholder, but I'd start with an SEOmoz site search with the term branding.