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It can even take months to update, if you're looking at a page that has low authority.

or maybe this:

http://www.aleydasolis.com/en/search-engine-optimization/seo-dashboard-google-docs-seomoz-analytics/

Yiannis, I agree with you that anchor text has a lot to do with tripping the filter and that some industries are cesspools of spam.  But, as a replay to a new SEO practitioner's question, I'll stand by what what I said--it won't get anyone in trouble algorithmically.  Yes, I know I sound like Jill Whalen (and Matt Cutts) but the longer I'm in this business, the less I have a problem with that and the more I'm willing to leave the higher risk stuff to those who still have a few sites they're willing to churn and burn.

David, it can be hard to get away from a term that a site's homepage has traditionally ranked well for. It can come down to getting new links to the homepage that are able to re-position the page in the light of the new target search term (from the US, would be nice), eliminating or revising existing external links pointing to the homepage (I wouldn't disavow them though), and on linking out from the homepage (and other pages of the site) a new page optimized for that undesired term with a links containing the undesired term.

Without knowing anything more that what you've describe, I have to ask if you've done any work on the site in the mean time. Off hand, it sounds like you may have come back into the rankings at approximately where Google thinks you should and it is time to get to work with some solid content and social outreach to begin building your rankings.

Brooke,

There's nothing wrong with including place names in your title, in fact, it is a best practice in many instances.  Be strategic about doing so, though.  Adding the name of your city to every blog post will seem spammy (but won't get you penalized) and probably isn't necessary.  Typically, if your services are location specific, you should include your place name in the title, description, and body.  It will usually help with organic ranking  and click through on product/services pages when searchers are looking locally for your offerings.

Thomas,

I'd cut the followed links back to just a few, make sure the rest are nofollowed, and make sure that you've got your google authorship set up correctly to link back to your profile and that your profile shows you're an author at that domain.  Google's already made a decision about those links and how to count them  towards sites.  I don't think changing the anchor text is a good idea--even if you nofollow them afterwards.

Let them take a back burner. You may never need to get around to them but most platforms provide a field for them because a lot of people still believe they're an important part of SEO.

vuquanchien,

From your explanation, it sounds like those three pages list exactly the same products but in different orders. If that's the case, I think it would be worth while to canonicalize them to a single page. Keep in mind that just because your ecommerce platform allows you to do certain things, it doesn't necessarily mean that you should do all/any of them.  If you only have a page worth of products but you create three pages out of them in order to show different sorts, it may not be necessary.  Splitting up the page into alternative categories may be a better idea.

If you think it's low quality based on your standards and its not adding any value to the rest of your site or visitors, it's likely fair game for deletion.  From the sound of it, any PR those pages have isn't going toward helping any other pages, so again, I wouldn't put much weight on the PR factor as you make your decisions.

Yes, that's what you  should do for organic traffic but since it sounds like you don't have a physical presence there, I wouldn't expect to show up in the local results.  Before going after NJ traffic though, I would say to first be sure that you are already ranking well for your NY related searches--and converting that traffic efficiently.  For local businesses, it typically makes sense to maximize the potential of your closest, most likely customers before reaching out a broader audience.

Unless your category pages pull together a group of products that formulate some sort of unique point of view that benefits the sales process, then there's no real reason for your category pages to stand out, in which case, minimize their overall impact on search and focus on making your individual product pages stand out in search.

Do you actually get so many return visitors coming to the site looking for what's new since the last time they were there that you need a "new products" category? How about "hot products", are visitors indicating that they are at your site to find out what others are actively buying?  I wonder.

If you were able to come up with categories that actually add value to the visitor experience, I'd be willing to bet that you wouldn't have this canonicalization  issue or this pagination issue.  In the mean time, what you describe might be the best way of doing it.

ntcma,

No need to worry about that.  CMSs often construct pages like this by default and generally, I would call it a best practice.  Just be sure the content on your pages is substantial and that it differs substantially from content on each of your other pages.

You can use Google's adwords tool or keyword planner but they don't get granular enough to include "Jiyugaoka train station" keywords.  But what you do is organize several of your posts around the general "Jiyugaoka" topic and link to the general topic page from the train station, restaurants and maps pages (for example) with broad "Jiyugaoka"-type terms and from that category page, link out to the more specific pages with "Jiyugaoka train station" and "Jiyugaoka restaurants" anchor text.

It takes balancing to create your category pages at a high enough level that you don't end up with way too many categories that they become overwhelming to the user and not so many that they become too broad to rank for.  That's the tough part about keyword research.  Do broad research early on and map out your site's keyword direction to give yourself a strategic direction for your site.

Dan,

I think that you've got to watch out for that. Over optimization, excessive exact match anchor text, exact match keywords, and exact match domain names were the downfall of many online businesses since 2012.  You'll probably be fine on-page, so long as you remain conservative with keyword use. Off page, steer clear of getting links from low quality sites.

Take a few 10-word samples of the duplicated content and do a search for them in quotation marks.  If your client's site shows up as the first result, you're in good shape.  If it doesn't , strongly consider re-writing.  Google does it's best to determine and rank the original source of content but, often, it gets it wrong and when that's the case, there isn't too much you can do about it other than building the authority/pagerank of the page from which the content was duplicated.

Even with the right name, you may not be able to reproduce what you did with mosquito, due to algorithm changes pertaining to exact match keywords--that is, unless you happen to accidentally stumble on the perfect combo of name/keyword (I suppose that's what you're hoping for).  Today however, if you're coming out with a hot new product, focus your SEO and social networking on the brand/name.  While you may not be able to take advantage of the keyword helping the product achieve viral status, you can still take advantage of social media to build and capitalize on engagement around content you create for the product.  Focus on brand awareness over keyword today.

Of course, it's hard to say for sure.  If your threshold to avoid a filter were somewhat lower than others', I doubt it would be significantly lower.  So long as you keep things above board, I'd bet you'll be fine.

Jeremy,

I'm going to answer "yes", but only because I tweaked your question a bit to "Can SEO help explainer videos reach more people?" As Moosa pointed out, (explainer) videos are just another form of content that search engines and other sites can make readily available to people at a moment when they might be most likely to consume it. As an obvious example, if Google determines that a certain video is among the best answers to a searcher's query, it will list that video more highly in their results and the searcher can click through to experience it.

A difference between video and other content, especially web page content, is that video has places in addition to traditional search engines like Google and Bing, where a searcher may go to find it--places such as youtube, vimeo, facebook, etc. As mentioned in the article you referred to, people spend a lot of time at these sites and spend substantial amounts of time watching videos.

But videos do take some amount of written content and meta data associated with them in order for search engines to associate their message with particular searches. And for even broader reach, videos need to have a reason for people to share them with others.  These are the SEO-type factors that many webmasters overlook and the factors that sources such as your article seem to take for granted.will happen.  The truth is that (understandably) most webmasters don't have a clue of how to associate their video with proper content/meta data and most explainer videos have little to no "share it others" value--either because tools provided by the video creation platform don't make it possible or because the creator just isn't very good at making sharable videos.

As there are now many, many companies that make explainer videos easily available today, a differentiator between those companies would be if they also promoted a service that maximizes the video's visibility for the client.  Such a service would delve into the heart and soul of the question that the video is meant to answer to ensure that it is, in fact, answering the right question for the right audience; it would ensure that the right vocabulary is utilized in associated copy and meta data; it would ensure that it is uploaded to theme-appropriate location on the web; and might even provide outreach to webmasters who might be willing to repost or link to the video--all the the SEO-type things that actually make it possible for a video to reach an audience beyond those who might otherwise just have come across it by accident.

EJD,

Maybe you've read it already but if not, be sure to absorb the info available here: How To Do Keyword Research - The Beginners Guide to SEO - Moz

In answer to your question,  generally, the more words in your target key phrase, the fewer other websites you'll be competing with in the search results, as most marketers tend to focus on the top tier words. By definition though, the further out you are on the "tail", the fewer searches there are being performed for that phrase.  Less  competitors means it's easier to rank highly but less searches means there's less traffic for you, even if you are on the top of the results.

You'll find that your list of keywords will vary in their competitiveness and as there aren't any good/easy keyword tools out there for doing long tail keyword research for terms with very small amounts of traffic, some amount of your traffic is going to be acquired by experimentation.  As a learning experience, I'd recommend that you go ahead and optimize a page for the "online dyslexia test for children" phrase and build your pages and your knowledge from there.  While you're in between optimization tasks on that first page, take time to become very familiar with the rest of the optimization guide, as all of that info will be helpful in coming to terms with your keyword research.