Welcome to the Q&A Forum

You can learn a lot.

But what you'll learn is probably a lot different from what you'll hear on SEOMoz.

I wouldn't want to say that one is right and one is wrong but right now I wouldn't pay for access to Warrior Forums.

I would definitely bring the content onto the main domain.

As far as how to structure the folders - it depends on the content. If it sits quite naturally as a stand alone section then a resources folder would make sense.

1. They cheat using automated methods of link building.

2. It's a loophole in Google's algorithm.

3. If it's as bad as you say then I would imagine they will be penalized for it however you can always give them a little help by filing a spam report

It is feasible however for your own sanity you might want to group some of those keywords onto a single page. So if two terms are similar - like [pink tinted UPVC double glazing] and [pink UPVC double glazing] you would put them both on the same page.

Personally I'd take all of those 100 keywords and do a card sorting exercise that splits them up into topics. You might find that it makes sense to group some of the terms together because a user would expect to find those topics covered together. Maybe targeting  [cleaning up after a UPVC installation] as your primary keywrod for a page but also including [products for cleaning up after a UPVC installation] on the page.

If after creating the pages you find that you're not ranking for one of the phrases you can always add an additional page that focuses on one of your supplemental terms. In the example above you would create a new page about the products.

Hope that helps.

There is an argument that linking out might increase your rankings by a tiny bit.

So long as it's a decent, none malware hosting, none spammy site it won't have  an adverse effect.

With regard to follow/no-follow - if you trust the site and think it's passing a benefit to users then why put the no-follow on it?

1. It could be natural link growth. Often when a webmaster links to you they will do so using your brand name or a URL.

2. All links to a domain increase the domain authority.  It could be that they have strong domains which outweigh the need to have exact match anchor text. This is especially true if they're big brands- think about how Amazon ranks for so many products without actually having links to those product pages.

3. That's a strategic decision that varies depending on your site's circumstances. New site with no links = build branded anchor text. Old site with lots of branded anchor text already = build some exact match anchor text (but not too much obviously).

4. Focus on branded anchor text BUT throw some love at your product pages occasionally as well. You'll probably be able to drive some long tail traffic just by virtue of having unique content on the page and as your domain authority grows this will not only increase long tail traffic but also rankings for those exact match term.

Your site is a subdomain of blogspot.com so Open Site Explorer and other tools will return Blogspot's domain level metrics.

If you look into the link data you should be able to see subdomain data - however in this example I think the site is too new for Linkscape/Open Site Explorer to have picked it up yet. Give it till the end of the month and if you've built some links you should see some change.

The keyword difficulty tool gives an indication of how hard it will be to rank for a certain term. So the lower the difficulty the easier it is to rank for.

A good rule of thumb is that you want to rank for terms with a low difficulty that drives a lot of users who are likely to achieve your goal. So for me he perfect term would -

• Have a low difficulty score
• Have a high volume of searchers
• Have a higher than average conversion rate when those searchers hit my site.

Hope that helps.

Hi Laura.

Well the obvious thing is to push for organizational change and get the whole company on board with SEO and moving in the same direction. That's the best solution as if you're all working together you can pool resources and work cohesively.

But you probably already know that.

To make the most out of your current situation I'd start by doing some onpage analysis - checking your pages are targeted at the right terms and that everything is set up correctly.

If possible I'd push to improve your page types - making sure that your product pages are as good as they can be and packed full of information. That way you might be able to do some linkbuilding to your pages based on the quality of the content.

If not possible then you've got to figure out how to linkbuild to your pages in their current format.

And that's pretty much it - do as much optimization as you can but if your company really wants to move the needle on SEO then you'll be wanting to work on a sitewide level.

Hope that helps.

Nope.

A 301 is something you have to actively implement.

You can change your title tags without it causing any technical issues UNLESS your CMS automatically rewrites URLs based on the title of the page. If this is is the case then you'll need to find a way to disable this in order to change your title tags.

Hi Steve,

I think it's possible for you to do both. Conduct your research as if you want to rank for both [IT support] and [Denver IT support] and group those terms onto the same page.

Then optimize the page to put emphasis on the generic term. So in this example your title tag would be something like "It Support in Denver - Steve Sequenzia". That way you're hitting both possible avenues.

My only concern with this would be CTR from the SERPs and whether people who type in [IT support] really want a local firm or a local branch of a national firm. I'd probably run a couple of short tests using geo-targeted PPC to see which types of ads get the most interest.

Hope that helps.

Having a presence on social media can be an enabler for other marketing methods. For example having followers on Twitter makes it a lot easier to get people to visit your blog which can drive links which in turn drives rankings and sales. Not to mention the potential for your client to set themselves up as a thought leader within the industry.

Even if you're just providing a curated source of industry specific information there's always something you can do on social media. Once I came across a maritime protection service who had a Twitter account that detailed all pirate activity off the coast of Somalia in almost real time. How cool is that?!

Last time I checked (last month) no body knew. There is a definite case for them being allowed as part of the functionality of a website but it looks like this is going to be decide the first time the ICO takes someone ot court over it.

Sorry I couldn't give you a straight answer but I don't think there is one yet.

Obvious one first - it could be an error in how you've implemented the canonical tag.

Or Google may have decided that it trusts/likes the duplicate page more than the original. As with anything if Google think you're wrong then they'll override your decision and do as they please.

You can use pagination markup that lets Google know it's one long list.

There's a whole video, from Google, about it here - http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/video-about-pagination-with-relnext-and.html

It's worth watching.

I don't know which other search engines support this markup.

You should use a 301 redirect on all pages on your old site to point them to the pages on the new site. This is the best option.

If this isn't possible, or if it is too time consuming, then I would recommend looking at your analytics and making sure that you 301 any page that has been an entry page from Google within the past 6 months. That way you're only spending time on pages that are actually driving traffic.

If you do this then you will also want to make sure that you 301 all pages that have external links pointing at them.

There are a multitude of reasons why your new domain may not be ranking above your retail stores.The age of the site is probably 1 factor amongst many.

If I were you I'd give it a month or so to settle down before panicking too much.

If it's mission critical that the new site rank #1 then I'd consider using PPC to get the visibility while you do some work on it.

I'd work at him from the angle that it is possible to be both professional and personable. If you pull out editorial from a high quality newspaper or even cite some influential blogs in a space he follows you should be able to put that point to him pretty convincingly.

Alternatively I think Will Critchlow recommends hiring people on Amazon Turk to answer a Panda-style questionnaire. You could compare the current text with that written in the first person and see which one real people prefer. Or pitch the two versions of the text head to head in an A/B test and see which has higher user engagement statistics.

If you're only doing the blog to generate links/shares etc. and he insists on using his own writing style then it sounds like it would just be a waste of his time.

If it's on that list then it's already live.

You'll have to wait for other changes although I probably should mention that Google might not see a problem with the SERPs you're looking at. For example if you're trying to compete on a competitor's brand name then you might be better off bidding on PPC rather than waiting for Google to decide that they don't belong at #1, #2 and #3.

Question 2 first - I don't think there's any need for the no-follow at all. In fact I'm pretty certain Google have gone on record saying that you'll never need to no-follow with internal links.

Question 1 - If you've got some unique content in the main body of the page I wouldn't foresee it being a problem. However you should probably be asking yourself if it's actually of any use to the user? Is the content you're sending them to relevant to what they're looking for and is it improving their overall experience on your site?