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Thank you!

Really great video, thank you!

Also, is it okay to use both organization and localbusiness schema?  Or is that not advised?

Thank you both, I figured this was the way to do it.  I have a couple of specific questions though.

1.  Can I get google to display a star ranking when my home page appears in search results?  I thought I had read somewhere no?

2. Can I make a star rating using my Google reviews so that it automatically updates?  Or do I just hard code it and have to update it all the time?  Or do I literally have to have a review database of my own?

Is it possible for me to take my Google reviews and show them under my homepage as stars when my page is shown in search results.  I provide a service, so I don't have separate product reviews.  My homepage is what ranks most in the searches I target.  If this is possible, what is the best way to do it technically? I have a wordpress site.  Thank you in advance!

Thank you... is the disavow tool still controversial?  It used to be that SEOs didn't recommend using it because it told Google that you did indeed have spammy links and needed them gone.  Is that different now?  Here is a link to the weird image farm I was talking about.

http://seafoodnet.info/

I have dropped in rankings 3-5 points over the past 6 months and have been trying to figure out why.  One thing I found was a ton of my pictures on a image net ring.  I obviously didn't put those photos there or give permission to use them.  It looks like an offshore website.  How do we deal with these type of bad links?

Hi, I am looking through my site structure and I have a lot of pages left over from the days of article keywords.  Probably 7 or 8 years ago, someone sold my husband on article key word pages.  I have slowly gotten rid of a lot of them as they have fallen out out of the ranks.  I would like to get rid of the rest, probably 5 or 6 pages.  Will it hurt my rankings to delete pages and redirect them?  My customers really like the simplicity of our site and I want to keep it that way, plus clean up flags that Moz is telling me is a problem. I think its easier to keep less pages top notch than have to worry with a lot of them.  Especially since my customers aren't viewing them.

Thanks in advance!

How would I know if I have suspicious links?  I don't see any penalties or anything in Google Webmaster tools.

Miriam,

Yes, we talked about this at length before!  I just looked at your article and it is a really good article.  I will do the audit, but my first thoughts looking at it, is that the other fishing charters around me don't really do anything for SEO, so they will likely score low.  Also, who shows up as first depending on the search term I use seems almost completely random.  So for instance, when I us an incognito window and do a search for "fishing charter cape canaveral", this should be the one that I should show up in the top.  It is my city, and the word fishing charter is in my name.  Along with everything else I do.  But the top 3 spots are puzzling.

1. A private fishing charter (close competitor) with 18 reviews with a 5 star rating and not fully utilizing all of the available options.  The website is average.

2. A party boat with 212 reviews and a 4 star rating.  This is the only fishing business out there that seems to have a good handle on SEO, So I would expect this.

3. The REAL KICKER.... a party boat that has been CLOSED FOR over 3 YEARS!!!!  They have 29 reviews with a 2.2 star rating!!!!!!!  The last review being 4 years ago. I even reported them as closed a couple of years ago.

I use ALL of the google features and do the best I can on SEO given I am a small business and cannot afford professional SEO.  But neither can the other fishing charters, except maybe the party boats.  Also, I have 86 reviews with a 5 star rating.  I recently updated my website, but I am sure it could be better. I have also been using Google+ to post.  And I have been doing more youtube videos.

I do appreciate the tip on the posts and the q&a, and I will be doing that for sure!

I am bringing this topic up again.  Last year, I suddenly stopped ranking for Google Local search results.  I tried backing away and hoping it would correct itself, but it has not.  When I do a search for myself, I rarely show up in the results anymore, and this image shows AFTER I've zoomed WAY in just to find myself.  I think it has something to do with many fishing charters having the same address.  I read the Moz article about which signals are most important, but to be quite honest, I don't think any of these competitors really bother with SEO or even have filled out their Google My Business in its entirety.  They all have way less reviews than I do as well.  I really try to do everything right, but it doesn't seem to help.  Is there something small ad obvious that I am missing.  Any ideas on what to do?

Thank you!  I do plan to keep the internal linking the same, except the URL will change of course.  The site structure is staying the same, except the blog will be moving to the root directory instead of being in a sub directory.

Thanks for the advice on the XML sitemap!

Good to know!  Most of my searches are very specific, so I would say they are long-tail keywords.

Thank you, this is also very helpful!  I've never used Screaming Frog SEO Spider, so I will look into this!  As for scheduling, that's why I am doing this in January.  We are a tourism business, so we will peak in Feb / Mar.  I'm hoping that 4-6 weeks will be enough to bounce back if we drop any.  I do run Google PPC as well, so if it does drop, I'll have to up my PPC campaign.  How long does it usually take to settle back out?

Thank you!  That is very helpful.  I will test the 301s!  And thanks for letting me know to expect a 15% loss.  Will that come back over time?  I don't even want to lose one spot!  Haha!

I am in the process of having a wordpress site developed to replace my current HTML site. (I currently have my website in html and a blog in wordpress in a sub directory).  I am doing this in phases to try and preserve as much of my good rankings as possible.  My first phase is to replicate my site with the exact same pages, meta data, and site structure.  I'm hoping that google will see this as not much change and not change my rankings for the worse.  I also made it a goal that my site speed tests be at least equal to what they are now. We will have to 301 all of the URLs however since it will be going from /example.html to /example.  I believe my blog will also need to move into the root directory as well, so I need to 301 all of those pages.

I plan to wait a couple months for Phase 2.  Phase 2 involves replacing old content (photo galleries), and introducing new content (virtual tours, videos, new pages, etc.) One of my reasons for moving to wordpress is to keep up with current trends a little easier since I have very little time.  (I am owner, website maintainer, SEO - all on my own).

My question here is three parts.  1. Do you think this strategy will work to preserve my current rankings? 2. Do you have any lessons learned or advice to share with me to make this as smooth as possible? 3. Do I really need to wait to add new content?  I might get antsy and want to do it sooner!  

Thank you in advance!

I have two businesses, one is my main bread and butter and the other is an invest and try to grow type of business. This second business is a nature / education related business, so I would like to have a repository of informative nature articles with some splashes of our experience with that particular plant or animal.

I spend a lot of time on SEO and article writing on my main business, but I am running out of myself to go around. I would like to outsource article / blog writing on my second businesses, but I'm not sure where to start. If I use one of those work for hire sites in the Moz outsourced content article, can I get them to format the blog with photos as well.  I need to have a complete as possible final product.  Ideally, I'm thinking of this process:

1. Give the outsourced writer the subject matter (i.e. article about right whales)

2. I provide my own photography or photos I have purchased

3. Writer researches subject matter and writes an informative article

4. Writer logs into my blog and formats the article with interesting fonts and the photos I have provide

5. I edit the article to add my own experience with the subject matter

6. I publish the article

I'm thinking I would do this twice a month.  Is this a reasonable thing to outsource?  Could it work this way?  Any idea what an article like this might cost me?  I'm doing some marketing budget planning. Thanks in advance!

This is an interesting experiment.  I am also hesitant to do this because NAP has been the best practice for so long.  It would be impossible to change all of the citations as well.  I am really interested to see how this plays out, however.

I wanted to give an update of what I am seeing for our Google My Business page.  I am seeing that there are 2-3 fishing charters listed at each marina now, which is good.  I am only seeing my business in about 25% of them.  The good thing is that my adwords account is working and I am showing up for most of my tracked terms in adwords.

Miriam,

I think the "filter" is still there, its just that we have bubbled back up to the 3 pack on a few of our search terms.  When I look at each of my key search terms, however, there is still only 1 fishing charter from each address displaying.  I am really happy, however, to see us getting back to the top!  Thanks for checking in on me!