Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Joel,

When I was talking about G+ I was talking more from a personal point of view, not your company point of view. I.e. just as a way of learning more about SEO.

Go on G+ and start following all the top SEOs - start with http://www.seomoz.org/article/recommended and http://www.linchpinseo.com/best-seos-lego-infographic (yes it's silly but it's still a great list). Each of these people will post some great resources on G+ daily.

Interact with them. Comment, share with them, mention them in shares/comments.

Also, any social profiles you have, link to all your other social profiles. I went to your SEOmoz profile thinking I would be able to get to your G+ personal profile, but alas there was no link. You'll miss out on some easy opportunities there.

Thanks

Thumbs up for Ben. I agree wholeheartedly.

These forums are a fantastic place to learn SEO, I think I've learnt the most from interacting on here. Keep asking questions, respond to others and learn, learn, learn.

As for books, I would start with these if you haven't already:

1. http://www.amazon.com/Search-Engine-Optimization-SEO-Secrets/dp/0470554185/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1339725028&sr=8-7
2. http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-SEO-Eric-Enge/dp/1449304214/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1339725028&sr=8-11

Subscribe to all the best blogs/sites out there and read constantly. Some of my favourites include:

1. http://www.seomoz.org/blog
2. http://www.distilled.net/blog/
3. http://www.rosshudgens.com/
4. http://searchengineland.com/
5. http://mashable.com/follow/topics/SEO/
6. http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog

Also, if you don't already, get active on G+. Like Ben said, the best SEOs respond to queries, and I find that G+ is the best place to interact with the higher level SEOs.

Thanks,

Brad

Hi,

There's tonnes out there but these are the ones I use on a day to day basis:

1. http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/
2. http://www.google.com/analytics/
3. https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en
4. https://adwords.google.com/o/Targeting/Explorer

OK I'll gladly do it - would be good to get an Australian perspective too (I see you are based in Brisbane, myself in Perth).

Not sure why they would want that? It looks spammy. I've seen a few sites around with upper case and I tend to click on them less...

I would strongly suggest to them to not use all upper case.

Hi Duncan,

Am I going crazy or is there no link to your blog? I assume it's http://www.eacsoft.com/blog.aspx? (from your SEOmoz profile).

Got a few questions regarding this:

1. How experienced do we have to be?
2. When you say results, are you mainly talking SEO, or other mediums too?
3. How will the interviews be used/shared? On your blog or through other mediums?
4. You're conducting goto meeting type interviews, will they be published in spoken or written format?

Thanks,

Brad

As long as the targeted phrase is included in the page title and close to the beginning of the title, that's fine.

I would lean towards the 2nd page title, but that particular title looks a bit spammy/unreadable (remember, your page title isn't just for SEO, it's to influence people in the SERPs and get higher click throughs). Try something like:

Buy Silver Bullion & Silver Bars Securely | Company Name

Thanks Andrew. I definitely agree regarding the white text.

Was hoping for a few more answers

Here's what I had in mind, please let me know if you think I'm way off:

1. Having a blog on site and a blog excerpt on the homepage with a snippet of the latest post (cocktail recipes, hosting parties with the correct glasses, polycarbonate vs regular glass etc) (unfortunately can only create on a subdomain on bigcommerce)
2. Increase the content on the homepage and add cocktail of the week, glass of the week, links to individual glasses etc
3. Making the main homepage banners smaller in height to move more content up above the fold
4. Adding more content on the products page - it's very light on
5. Highlight the addition of their new online store more - ie have a link in the header in the empty black space that links directly to their store. Also highlight it in the text below the main banners
6. Change colour of add to cart button on individual product pages
7. Add trust/security logos to products/cart
8. Expand on FAQs and About Us pages - also include pages for shipping/returns
9. They have social media accounts - link to them in the header
10. Increase number of inbound links - any ideas on this?

Thanks

I've used the same basic tactics on some of my sites before. Sure it works, but you'll get caught out eventually. Half of these sites were hit by Panda/Penguin and now the rankings are way off in page 5+.

My advice - create a real SEO plan that is built with the future in mind. Don't go after short term gains. Try to predict where you want to be in 6-12 months and create a plan around that. Remember, content is king, so start developing some great content on your site and sharing it amongst your social profiles.

If you're unsure about the other more technical aspects of SEO, hire a reputable SEO firm. Have a look at their past clients, their site, their social profiles. Do they look spammy/too good to be true? If so, give them a miss and move along.

Hi All,

I've regularly helped others on this forum when they've asked for tips on how to improve a specific site's SEO. Now I'm asking for the favour in return

My friend has come to me with a site (http://www.swishplastic.com.au) and asked me to help with SEO and on-page optimisation. I've got a few of my own ideas but there may be a few key things I'm overlooking. If anyone could give a few pointers, it would be much appreciated!

Thanks!

OK I understand. Similar to what I have done on http://www.cookwareblog.com.au/? the latest post is linking to my G+ profile, the 2nd newest post is from another author within our company.

I'll guess I will wait a while and see if they appear correctly in the SERPs.

Thanks for your help!

Thanks James - but what about if I have multiple authors on my blog (not likely for this blog but for other blogs I am setting up)?

Hi,

I am trying to set up author tags on my Wordpress blog (http://www.bradkrussell.com.au) so that my author profile shows in Google SERPs.

I'm following Yoast's article - http://yoast.com/wordpress-rel-author-rel-me/ - and I did everything up to the "How to allow authors to add rel="me" to links in their bio's" section. Basically, in Wordpress under Appearance -> Menus for the About Me page I set 'link relationship' = author. Then on my Google + page (https://plus.google.com/u/0/110649694696756559049/posts) under the 'Contributor To' section on the About tab I linked back to the About Me page on my blog.

Upon checking on Google Australia it appears that this was done correctly - https://www.google.com.au/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=site%3Abradkrussell.com.au.

My questions are:

1. Do I need to link back to my About Me page from every post I do? E.g. 'Written by Brad Russell' - linking to About Me. It appears I don't but does it help? Some of the results on Google Australia show 'By Brad Russell' but some don't. I'm just not sure if this is because the site hasn't been reindexed properly yet.
2. What happens if in the future I have multiple authors on my blog? I give them a new username in Wordpress but how do I specify that they are the author of the post? Do I need to create an 'Authors' section on my site? If I then specify an Authors page as link relationship = author, how do I link each post to the necessary author page?
3. I still don't really understand the rel=me tag and how I implement it on Wordpress. I'm not sure how to edit the functions.php and author.php files on Wordpress (ie the second half of Yoast's article).

Many thanks!

A warm fuzzy feeling when you get to the next level of points!

Hi All,

I've just taken over handling our company's blog at http://www.cookwareblog.com.au/. We have several writers for this blog so I want to set up separate author tags for each of them.

As you can see from the latest post - http://www.cookwareblog.com.au/2012/06/weird-and-wacky-ice-cream-recipes.html - I am the author/publisher.

However, I can't seem to link my blogger author profile - http://www.blogger.com/profile/05603194922729243157 - to my Google Plus profile because when you go to my Blogger Profile it automatically redirects to my G+ profile. Also, there is no link directly from my blogger post, it just says "Posted by Brad Russell" (unlike previous posts by the master login for our company, which link to a central author profile page).

What am I doing wrong? Today I successfully set up author tags on my Wordpress blog, I just can't seem to get it right on Blogger.

Thanks!

Hi Howard,

It is best to set up the blog as a subfolder (e.g. www.domain.com/blog).

This Q+A thread might help a bit - http://www.seomoz.org/q/subdomains-vs-subfolders. Rand himself (and many others in the industry) states that subfolders are the best for SEO purposes.

Thanks,

Brad

That's right Kenny - create unique content for each landing page (whether it's based on location, type of service offered etc).

Unless your brand name is 'California Personal Injury Attorney' (99.99% sure it wouldn't be) - then don't add the term to each and every one of your title tags. Add terms/keywords related to that page.

E.g. homepage might be 'California Personal Injury Attorney | ABC Lawyers'

A landing page based on injuries related to traffic accidents might be 'California Auto Accident Attorney | ABC Lawyers' or something similar.

Justin is correct. Your title tag is (in affect) targeting 'Windows on Mac" - whereas you are trying to get the on-page report for the term 'Mac Windows'. They are two separate terms according to Google + SEOmoz.

Hi Kenny,

You need to decide which terms you want to rank for which specific pages. E.g. if they are targeting 'Southern California general contractors' on the homepage, then you'll want to use that keyword a few times in the text on the page, title etc. The focus should be on that keyword, without making it look spammy.

However, you wouldn't want to try and target that term on every page on the site, it just doesn't make sense. E.g. you might have other landing pages that target 'welding', 'structural steel', 'maintenance and repairs' etc (I'm not exactly sure what you mean by 'general contractor' or what they do). On these pages, the focus should be on different keywords to 'Southern California general contractors'.

You could even break up the landing pages depending on locations. So have 1 for Los Angeles General Contractors, San Diego General Contractors and so on.

This might be a good start point - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/perfecting-keyword-targeting-on-page-optimization. Just don't try and over optimise in light of Google's recent algorithm changes. Create content that is useful to the consumer and you'll be fine.

Thanks,

Brad