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I always send outreach under my own name. I use either my private e-mail address or an own e-mail address from the clients domain. I just send out 10 emails and I did get 6 replays which 4 of them started about my SEO background . The response rate was great, but my SEO background isn’t in this case.

How do you guys handle this situation?

I have always used my own name because it feels right. It’s also handy in case I pick up the phone or visit an link prospect in person.

The disadvantage is that people directly doubt my sincerity or they want to sell me a paid placement.

Love to hear your take on this.

Hi Gianluca,

Thanks for taking the time to respond. Clear answer, will keep the distribution into mind!

Hi Wouter,

Thanks for your reply. Since you're from Holland as well, do you insert international linkbuilding in your offers to Dutch clients? Or do you only go for these links if you happen to stumble upon a good opportunity?

HI J.P.,

When chancing URL’s always keep the redirecting (301) in mind.

About the URL structure:

From this example I can’t tell you if you’re right or wrong about your approach. In general I think about the following things while I format URL structures:

1. If I would read this URL in the SERP’s, is it clear on what section of the website I enter?
2. Does it contain any keywords?
3. Doesn’t it repeat  any words?
4. Isn’t the URL too long / hard to read?

Depending on those criteria I decide on the amount of folders in an website. For example, I own an review website which has an URL structure of /industry/city/company. Three layers, but the make sense to me.

I hope this helps!

Hi guys,

Just wondering, what’s you take on doing international linkbuilding for an national company?

In Holland there are very few websites / blogs / information platforms about certain niches. Let’s take SEO for example. There are a few marketing websites, a few SEO related websites but at an certain point my attention goes to what’s happening in America (on Moz for example).

I think writing an YouMoz post is a great way to add something to the community. If that would reward an backlink, I’m all motivated to start writing! But does this help our rankings for Dutch query’s?

I can see a lot of examples in which “the place to be” isn’t a Dutch website, but some big ass international forum / website etc.

I would love to hear all of your opinions!

Hi guys,

Just went through the same process as Alligator. Found this old webmaster video in which Matt Cutts states it's ok, but still recommends to use newer tactics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hb4LYWxXESY

Hope this helps other people!

Whaha that's the goal actually Thanks for you responses!

Yeah it will probably take 6-12 months to recover (or to get near the previous traffic). Redirects are on the road map and a lot of other stuff as well. Actually I wrote an whole report about the problems some time ago, but a lot of points haven’t been implemented by the developer. So that’s why we’re taking on the project again since the current situation clearly doesn’t resolve itself.

The address situation is just an point I stumbled upon just now. At the time I wrote the report both brands had their own unit number within the same complex.

Hi Christopher,

Thanks for your response!

I totally agree with you. Local is a chance an webshop should take. In this situation however local is a small issue, my main concern is recovering the 80% traffic loss in the last year during to a double failed site migration and bad user metrics. In this case I want to keep both shops separated since historically they both performed great.

Merging both now would mean we take the traffic loss as it is. I believe it’s possible to recover at least to a certain point in this situation since these problems aren’t spam / thin content related.

Hi Dan,

Thanks for your answer! Our situation is exactly the same. Different brands, social channels, unique content etc. it's like coca cola and pepsi on the same adress. Both selling the same, but different.

Good to hear your story. In this case I will just start cleaning up all the other mess of the site migration first and will see what happens.

Thanks a lot!

Hi Guys,

A client of mine took over an competitors site 12 months ago. They sell almost the same products and both websites now list the same address on their contact page. Local search isn’t really important to them (webshops). They aren’t really active with Google plus reviews.  but I’m still wondering.

Could this cause any ranking problems? A lot of online citations still mention the old competitors address and two almost identical company’s with the same address sounds like an bad idea. Any suggestions about this topic?

Just as a side note: the competitors site lost a lot of traffic, which is caused by a lot of different problems (double site migration were they didn’t think about SEO). So I would love the hear your thoughts about this specific ranking problem.

Thanks a lot!

You're right to set your priority on keeping them under the limits. I normally use the keyword preview tool from Moz to check this since Google started using pixels instead of characters.

https://moz.com/blog/new-title-tag-guidelines-preview-tool

In your case, I would use one of your longer product names and make a good title with that so the majority of your pages won't cross the line. At least, that's what we do in this situation.

I don't know if a longer title will dilute the effectiveness of each keyword. Interesting question, sounds logical (especially if the title gets cut off) but I never read anything about it. Would love to hear someone else his view on this.

Hi Marvellous,

Patrick provided you with a great answer. Notice he mentions the sitemap as well, if you’re using an automatically generated sitemap (from Yoast for example) these pages will be included and that way they will get indexed. Besides the option that Patrick mentioned you can exclude them from your sitemap with the advanced settings of the Yoast SEO plugin (assuming you’re using it).

If you want to be sure they aren’t indexed, you can use a site:yourwebsite.com command to view your indexed pages. You can add a text from the pages you don’t want to be ranked for ass well to narrow down the results.

Best regards,

Bob

Hi Graphbyte,

This might provide an interesting read:

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121551/bot-bubble-click-farms-have-inflated-social-media-currency

I hope this gives you an insight in the world of buying and selling social signals!

Best regards,

Bob

_PS. You lucky bastard, you just got answered by Rand himself  _

Really cool! In Holland we don’t really look at Bing a lot so this is more a guess from my side:

1. I think a ton of authority helps them
2. Any verified listings sound like a logic factor

Looking forward to see more comments on this subject!

Hi,

About point one:

Links in comments can be a great addition to your posts if they are legit and an extent of your post. Typically this is not the case with most comment links. Make sure you clean up any spammy (promotional) links or work with a trusted user system. This way you can promote legit user that are actively participating on your blog to post (do)follow links. I know Yoast.com works that way on their blog.

About point two:

This discussion on Moz should provide you with an answer:

https://moz.com/community/q/do-pingbacks-in-wordpress-help-or-harm-seo-or-neither

I hope this helps!

Best regards,

Bob

Hi Benjamin,

Since you’re conducting this experiment with care I think you might see my answer coming. It depends on the amount of confidence you want the results to have. In the little experience I have with A/B testing this normally depends on the amount of traffic and conversions you have. If you’re really big the more important reliable data is to your company. If you’re smaller you might not have the time / traffic / budget to get the most trustworthy data so you’ll (kind of automatically) settle for less.

In my case, we based most of our decisions with early prototypes of services on data that wasn’t flawless. But at the end, it’s up to you what is and isn’t acceptable for your company.

I hope this helps, although I think you would have come to this point without my comment

Best regards,

Bob

Hi Chris,

I think limiting your title tag to 50 characters is a waste of visibility in the SERP’s. A good meta title (in my eyes) combines the essence of the page, keywords and a clear call to action. In this case I wouldn’t use your company name in the meta title unless you’re an well-known brand or advertising your way to it at the moment.

I think the meta title of your competitor is pretty ok, if you remove “cheap” it would be a good sentence in my eyes and it gives the searcher extra conformation that this cartridge fits it’s printer.

A few things I would keep in mind:

1. What makes your websites stand out? That might be a good addition to the title.
2. What is it people are looking for? Sometimes people want to see a price very quickly, if so, and you’re not the most expansive one you could add this.

I hope this helps!

Best regards,

Bob

Not sure, but I don't see this either. even CTR + F doesn't find me anything. I got the $99 plan, might that be a reason? If you can provide a other screenshot that would be great!

Thanks a lot

This question made me wonder the same thing, but with both explanations I still can't find it. Any screenshots?