Same thing happening for me. Interested in this as well.

I may have answered my own question. Since the redirecting https site is a subdomain, it would show up under "/" for the referral path, correct? There are no links to the new page from the actual home page, so I'm thinking "/" is what I'd need to track for the redirect.

We recently replaced a high traffic online service with a new one that now resides at a new URL. We redirect the old site (https://subdomain.mysite.org) to a static page announcing the change (http://www.mysite.org/announcement.html) that links out to the new online service.

The SSL cert on the old site is valid for two more months and then would cost $1K to renew. We'd like to measure traffic from the old link over the next two months to see if it's worth renewing the SSL cert to keep a redirect going.

If I go into GA, filter the "announcement.html" page and set the secondary dimension to "referral path" I'm not seeing any traffic from https://subdomain.mysite.org. Guessing this is part of the "(not set)" group. First thought was to have that go to a unique intermediary page to log the referral, which then redirects out to the announcement page. Is this considered spammy or is there another way to track referrals from the https site that I'm not considering?

Thanks.

I'm using Moz Local for a few clients right now with good results. Was talking to a friend about using it for one of her web clients and a new scenario came up.

The client does waste management and has a dozen locations in/outside of a metro area. She's been "trying to get their listing on Google Maps" without luck. After some probing, it turns out their main address for operations is in the metro area they are targeting, but they don't have waste facilities there and wanted to prevent customers from coming there. They actually use a PO Box for their contact information on their website and make no mention of the main address.

Looking to see if anyone agrees with my proposed solution:

• Claim Google My Business listing for the main address in the metro area they're trying to optimize for.

• Use Moz Local to clean up their main listing (after a quick check, it's a mess) for the operations address.

• Update website contact info to include the main operations address, and make specific mention of which other addresses customers should/shouldn't go to for dumping/picking up equipment.

So, the recommendation would be one Moz Local account. I figure no need to do listing for all of their other locations since they're just waste facilities controlled by the main listing. Does this seem like a plan?

I have a client who targets a particular city, and up until now has had his physical location in the suburbs of that city. This April 1, his office will have the city address he has been targeting.

I have spent a lot of time over the past year claiming ownership of all local directory listings and consolidating addresses as he has moved several times in the past 5 years. Looking at this as an opportunity to get the official USPS address he will be using and use the exact same address for everything. So many different variations out there right now for him.

Wondering if it would be ok to start promoting the new address before the April 1 move and also when to start with the directory listings. Also, have held off on purchasing the yahoo directory link because of the suburban address but reconsidering this as of April 1 as well.

I work for a non-profit who has always had the luxury of being a monopoly when it comes to the service we provide. Without getting into the boring details, we have an international audience that needs to get certified through us to continue their educational pursuits in the US. Easy as it gets in terms of SEO.

Now, we have a for-profit venture based on our existing verification services where we offer those same services for international organizations. After a lot of research, we haven't been able to find someone else out there similar enough to be considered a direct competitor - at least to the point where I could look at what they're optimizing for.

My question is this: without a clear-cut competitor to identify and analyze, where should we start for keyword research?  We think we know how people would find us, but analytics data for the better part of a year shows all traffic as brand-related. Fortunately, we have many long-standing relationships with international organizations, so obtaining links has come naturally after linking to the new venture from our home page, news, SM, etc. But as far as providing our editorial staff - who, up until now, had never been concerned with keywords - a place to start for keyword research so they can then employ a basic SEO checklist... where would you start?

Hi,

Old thread, but wondering if you're able to generate an XML sitemap through Yoast with your Avada theme. There's an open thread on the Theme Fusion forum about the Yoast sitemap returning a 404 error. Just tried and I'm getting the same thing. Wondering if you came up with a workaround.

Thanks

Thanks for sharing. I've always built using pages as well, and the pages as posts idea was presented to me as, I guess, just a way to keep the webmaster in one place when in the dashboard. By webmaster, I mean basically a word processor. It actually sounds more confusing now, especially the idea of them forgetting to tag something as a page and having to search through hundreds of posts a few years from now.

Good reasoning, and I think I'll stick to the traditional architecture.

Starting a redesign for an attorney who is currently using WordPress with an old framework that is no longer being supported, so I'm going to install a new WP and start from scratch.

The site consists of about 30 static pages (practice areas, attorney profiles, etc.) and they write about 5 blog posts per month.

I've always differentiated between posts and pages for WP sites I've done in the past, but this time around I thought it might be more clean (less files, and easier for their webmaster to make routine edits) if I just brought over the static pages as posts. However, the recent webinar on the Yoast SEO plugin mentioned using the month/day in the permalink structure for posts to avoid duplicate content issues. That would go against how I was thinking of setting it up, because I would have just generated the URL off the page title and make a separate category for "pages".

Just wondering if anyone's used posts as pages before. While this seems like it would make things easier for the webmaster, I'm not sure it maximizes potential for SEO.

Thanks.

Thanks for your help. Not sure I understand what you mean by the URL rewrite. I'd either be rewriting the page to display as html with the slash or with the same exact name as the php file but with a html extension. If I rewrite using the slash, it will be the same URL, so no need for a 301. Not sure I follow you.

I agree with everything you said about using subfolders, and ultimately that's what I'm going to do. The long URLs do look spammy to me, but after doing SEO in the legal field for a couple of years, I don't think I've seen a law firm site that isn't spammy altogether - but that's beside the point.

As for relative vs. absolute paths - yes, your example is what I'm referring to. I've never understood using absolute in the code because how would I make edits in test? I do use it for home page links to help avoid the ".com" vs. "com/index.html" issue but I always find myself going out to the live site while clicking around in test without realizing it. Was wondering how people test that use absolute links.

Yeah, seems like either of these options would work. Yours seems like the safe route.

For my method, it's easy to see how someone could use it just to stuff the actual H1 with keywords that have nothing to do with the image and then move them off-screen. My content people's argument was that if we do it and our text in the image matches exactly what we're pushing off-screen, then we should have nothing to worry about.

My only fear would be that some algorithm sees a margin-left set to some large negative number and assumes it's black hat.

Working with content folks on a new section of our website. Developed a new logo for this section of the site, and they want to incorporate the style of it into all of the page headings. The only way to pull this off is to use images for H1's. (Without getting into unnecessary detail, they have to be images - too precise to try text over background images.)

I made everyone aware of the importance of H1 text for SEO purposes, but they really want these images.

When I first attempted SEO back in 2003, I recall doing a site using CSS image replacement along these lines:

Widget Page

#example {
    background: url(../images/example.gif) no-repeat;
    text-indent: -5000px;
     }

That was nearly 10 years ago, and they definitely ranked for the H1s at the time which led me to believe it worked.

Anyone know if this is considered an acceptable practice today? I read some other threads about enclosing the image in

tags and relying on the ALT text, but that doesn't seem to be a good option.

Yes, separate location and phone #.

While the firm I currently work with is 2hrs away, there's some overlap with the local directories that the new one is listed under. Found all the current ones using OSE, and for the most part, I usually get a login within a few days of claiming the listing. Claimed the firm I work with's manta and avvo profiles, made the profiles as complete as possible (including soliciting client and peer reviews), and I've seen some traffic start to trickle in. For other local directories, I've found thought-through emails to the webmasters to generate equally thought-out responses. Since this is a new firm and the site was built from scratch, I warned that it would take a while to get traffic without spending money on ads and directory links, but I'm hoping the "submit to respected relevant/local directories" approach pays off in the long run.

Working with a law firm with a well-established website that wants to build a separate website for their affiliate title insurance company. Currently, they only mention this company (and list a phone number) on their Real Estate page under Practice Areas.

Although the affiliate company doesn't have a website, their location and phone number are listed in tons of local business directories. I'm currently working on a law firm site that was just built, and the process of getting that one listed in all the directories has been time consuming, so I'm guessing this new site will be much easier, since all I'll have to do is claim ownership of the current listings so I can add a link to the new website (and add additional info to make the profile complete). Would I be correct in assuming this will be a much easier link campaign?

As for new site setup questions, they will obviously get some strong links coming from the existing law firm site. Should they host this new site on a different server so the SE's give more power to the law firm links? Is there really a value to reserving the new domain for 3+ years right off the bat?

Any other suggestions welcome. Thanks.

If I went the shallow, generic route, the best category would seem to be:

Business and Economy > Shopping and Services > Law > Firms

but there are 7 pages and 123 listings in this category, most of which are all large, multi-city, if not international, law firms.

The firm I'm looking to list has only one office with a handfull of employees. While they would certainly like to get new clients throughout the state of PA, for me (and I'm still a rookie at this), the most realistic SEO approach is to target the local metro area, which already has hundreds of law firms to compete with.

That said, which would you recommend? The deep category in the small pond, or the shallow category for a small fish swimming with the sharks? I can see the value in both instances, but I just have no experience with this to make a confident decision.

I'm submitting a law firm's site to the Yahoo paid directory. The location of the firm is in a suburb of the large city for that region, and that suburb is so small that there is no option for it under Cities. Obviously, the client wants to target the large city, not the suburb they're located in. Wondering if it's OK to submit the site to Yahoo under the category of the large city if the business is not technically located in that city. The address is clearly listed in the footer and on the contact page. Might Yahoo reject the submission for that, or will their editors realize there's no listing for the suburb and allow it?