Welcome to the Q&A Forum

I would structure the site a little differently. First off each idiom should a single URL and just be included in categories. So instead of category1/idiom, category2/same idiom, category3/same idiom it should just be root folder/idiom then include the idiom in different categories that way you avoid duplicate content issues.

Nick,

First off its a tough call to throw in the towel on a site, but the bottom line is if its not making you any money it probably needs the axe. Especially if you've got another site that has conversion issues. Those are things that you have way more control over. My vote is cut the first site and focus on the second. As for the 301 I would do it if the two sites were similar enough to seen plausible. According to Matt Cutts a 301 passes as much juice as a link. That's my two cents.

Chris

Tom has the right of it. I would consider doing a few different things in addition to what he's talking about. Make sure you link from one to the other with something like "Check this out...." like Tom said.If it's an e-book or case study or something I would also consider either getting e-mails or using something like pay-with-a-tweet to make sure the person who comes to visit that content is going to get repeated exposure to your brand.

Silos do several things that make them valuable IMO:

First they allow you to control how pagerank(ranking potential) flows throughout your site.

They allow users to navigate your site much easily(imagine trying to navigate amazon if it wasn't in silos)

It makes internal linking easier because then you don't have to stretch to find  a legit way to link all the pages within a silo

You can focus on specific keywords or keyword categories

Those are a few of the benefits. So yes I think they are still really valuable.

P.S. the majority of updates have been punishing people who are trying to game the system through content farms, anchor, texts, and other linkbuilding tactics. Good information architecture is still good information architecture.

I agree with Mash. Free PR directories and link directories won't give your site much value. I would add the following:

-Guest Blogging

-Social Media

-Create one really good resource such as an e-book or e-mail course or something, and then tell people about it

Hi Mozzers,

I'm trying to build a google spreadsheet to import only bios of users followers on twitters (followerwonk generates a little too much for what I need). i have tried every different importXML i can think of. Anybody have any suggestions to get it out using importXML on Google Docs.

Thank in advance,

Chris

With response to adding Vogue UK to top 10 women's magazines, absolutely do that. Your other concerns have more to do with your site as a whole. I would crawl your site with screaming frog, and find out how many links you have pointing at the page. More important pages should have more. Also check external links, an italian subscription may be more rare, and there for receive more links.

yes. Your goal is to keep those pages from getting buried in the subdirectories. So based on your service areas, I would go /london, /brighton etc. etc.

I would have an umbrella page(homepage), then each location you want to service as a separate page beneath it. However each page has to be unique content. You can have clients you've helped in that area, or any sort of data specific to location. From there I would make sure the targeted location is in the URL, meta description, etc. then I would go after local links.

5,000 directories will more than likely hurt your rankings immediately. If they don't immediately, they will eventually. The best way to think about directories is to ask this question " If this listing passed on no rank juice, would I still want it?" In other words will it pass good traffic? or increase your reputation? If it won't do any of those things, it's probably not worth getting.

I would consider putting it an image with an alt attribute of"phone number for X" , then putting that in the header or somewhere very noticeable. Then still maintain the regular phone number in the footer or somewhere unnoticeable.People will most likely never notice the second phone number

Alright so let me start this off with the fact that I have taken the PPC, CRO, and SEO courses offered by MarketMotive. I think that the people teaching are brilliant. However, there is one draw back specifically with the SEO course, the industry moves so fast that the actual course itself is largely outdated information. They have sections regarding how to figure out how much you should pay for links etc. etc. While those strategies may still work for some, in the long run they aren't effective.

So my vote would be learn by doing, and instead of focusing on ranking for specific keywords, focus on the benefits you hope to get from those rankings(i.e. increased traffic, increased conversions, links, social presence etc.). If you do things that will make those things happen, then the rankings will come more easily with a lot more benefits. Additionally if you are planning on consulting, selling a potential customer on more traffic, better reputation, and more conversions is a lot easier sell than trying to get them to buy into ranking #1 for the term "hiking boots". Just my 2 cents. Good luck no matter what you decide to do.

Chris

Silos do several things that make them valuable IMO:

First they allow you to control how pagerank(ranking potential) flows throughout your site.

They allow users to navigate your site much easily(imagine trying to navigate amazon if it wasn't in silos)

It makes internal linking easier because then you don't have to stretch to find  a legit way to link all the pages within a silo

You can focus on specific keywords or keyword categories

Those are a few of the benefits. So yes I think they are still really valuable.

P.S. the majority of updates have been punishing people who are trying to game the system through content farms, anchor, texts, and other linkbuilding tactics. Good information architecture is still good information architecture.

I would have an umbrella page(homepage), then each location you want to service as a separate page beneath it. However each page has to be unique content. You can have clients you've helped in that area, or any sort of data specific to location. From there I would make sure the targeted location is in the URL, meta description, etc. then I would go after local links.

The second one "Disallow: /*view=send_friend" will prevent googlebot from crawling any url with that string in it. So that should take care of your problem.

I would also look into spyfu.com and wordstream.com for software regarding ppc management.

It's an interesting dilemma. I think that the gambling industry has a much less negative connotation than the porn industry does. After all they show poker on ESPN. I think that SEO for the space can be done well. Because he is selling information about gambling & not neccessarily promoting a site to go and lose all your money, I would treat him just like every other client & take advantage of the exposure. That's my 2 cents though, only work with clients you wouldn't be ashamed to tell others about.

Thanks,

Chris

1. Title Tags

2. Meta Description

3.Meta Data(rich snippets, open graph, etc.)

4.Images

5.Copy/Content

6.Alt Text

7.Navigation

8.Links

9. AJAX/ Iframes

10.URL Structure

Based on what I've seen on Google's guidelines & other research, I think the best strategy is to write them like you would write headline for an Ad. Obviously you get more characters than AdWords, but the principle is the same. Your goal is always to get someone to click. So a headline like "SEO Tools, SEO toolset, Internet Marketing tools" might get a few clicks just by virtue of it's ranking but a title tag like "SEO Tools that make your job easier" would probably receive a higher CTR which is a ranking factor in Google.

5,000 directories will more than likely hurt your rankings immediately. If they don't immediately, they will eventually. The best way to think about directories is to ask this question " If this listing passed on no rank juice, would I still want it?" In other words will it pass good traffic? or increase your reputation? If it won't do any of those things, it's probably not worth getting.