Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Does it matter that this site has a DA of 72 with 5K plus domains linking in, and the majority of advertisers have big advertising budgets?  We're much smaller than most advertisers on the site, but all the advertisers are real sites that sell real products with healthy volume.

That said, I understand the purpose of the Google policy.  It's just a shame in cases like this, because we are linked from their home page and that link juice just vanishes into the ether.

Best,
Christopher

What is the SEO Toolkit that runs on Windows?

Best,
Christopher

I use DMX Zone sitemap generator in Dreamweaver.  When generating the sitemap, it includes both http://www.domain.com and http://www.domain.com/index.htm.  Should the /index.htm be deleted from the sitemap, or will the 301 redirect take care of that?

Best,
Christopher

I just recently realized Google was indexing both www and non-www.  I changed the settings in Google WM Tools and put in the 301 redirect to www.  That was a couple weeks ago.  Google is still showing non-www even though www has a higher PR.  About how long will it take for Google to switch over to www, or is there something else I may need to correct?

Best,
Christopher

Thanks!

Best,
Christopher

"Well, you have to know these things when you're a king, you know." -- King Arthur

A site with a high PA/DA links to all of their advertisers on their home page using nofollow.  The advertisers generally have high quality sites and none of them are spammy.  Having read this forum for the past couple months, it is my understanding that nofollow should be used to control spam links, and is commonly used in the forum section where site owners can not control or vouch for the outgoing links.  However, as I understand the topic, there is no benefit to using nofollow for high value sites for which you can recommend, and in particular, when the site is receiving money from the advertisers.  The link juice is divided by all the links on the page, both follow and nofollow, and the juice for the nofollow is discarded.

I ask this question because we are one of the advertisers on the site.  I want to contact them about this issue, and request that they remove the nofollow from the advertiser links.

Comments?

Best,
Christopher

Add a redirect to the .htaccess file, as in:

Redirect 301 /index.htm http://www.manandhisvan.com.au

Best,
Christopher

Regarding the first link on the page carrying the most weight, are you referring to external links, or both internal and external links?  Does Google know how to separate all the links in the menu from the rest of the page?

Best,
Christopher

If nofollow keeps link juice from leaking from a site, why not use nofollow on all external links? What would be the benefit of an external link that does not use nofollow? Best, Christopher

I tried a sweepstakes. The prize was a $620 electronic device for athletes. The majority of entries were either fake people or couch potatos who spent countless hours entering sweepstakes and would never consider using the device. Lesson learned.

Thanks! This was causing a major problem. All my pages except my home page had a good page rank. Now I know why. Best, Christopher

When building menus and other internal links, should the link to the home page be http://www.domain.com/ or http://www.domain.com/index.html or does it matter?

Best,
Christopher

Thanks for the quick responses.  I will add the redirect of index.php to domain.com/, but I don't know where the 301 of domain.com/ to index.php is coming from.  It's not in .htaccess.  Is that just a generic rule somewhere in the Apache server so that doman.com/ will default to an actual page?

Best,
Christopher

EDIT: I think I found the problem. The site was originally created using .html pages and later converted to .php pages.  There was a 301 for index.html to index.php.  I changed to to

Redirect 301 /index.html http://www.domain.com/

and also added

Redirect 301 /index.php http://www.domain.com/

I recently changed the settings in Google Webmaster Tools so that domain.com and www.domain.com are the same.  Several quick questions.

• About how long will it take for Google to list www.domain.com and stop listing domain.com?

• The .htaccess file uses a 301 to redirect all domain.com paths.to www.domain.com paths.  Now that Google has been informed these two are the same, are the 301 rules to add www necessary?

• The default page is index.php. so domain.com gets 301 to www.domain.com gets 301 to www.domain.com/index.php.  Is this the correct way to do things?

• Are there SEO consultants who will help on small projects such assist on issues like this?

Best,
Christopher

Yes, it was OnlineSuperSeller for us too.  I sent a notice to Sears at seller_support@searshc.com requesting removal of our products.  They responded within an hour.  OnlineSuperSeller responded soon after that.

A related problem is all the YoutTube spam.  Spammers are using our product images to make the most hideous slide show videos with a link to our products on Amazon.  I'm beginning to think Amazon Merchant is far more branding and SEO headache than it is worth.

Best,
Christopher

Today I discovered a new type of ranking competition.  I'm still investigating, so I don't know all the details, but I think it's like this.  In addition to our online store, we also sell our products via Amazon Merchant.  We are the only distributor in the US, so I was surprised to see our products offered at a modest number of other sites, often with very elevated prices (not linking to Amazon, but actually selling our product on their site).  I shot the product images and the images are mine.  Now Sears is selling our product on Sears.com through one of their merchant sellers.  The prices are grossly inflated, and the Sears Google ranking are pushing us out of places we used to be.  I'm guessing that if someone actually purchases our product via Sears.com, the order will be forwarded to our Amazon listing for fulfillment, and the reseller will pocket the price difference minus a percentage for Sears.

I will follow up with both Amazon and Sears, but regarding the competition with your own Amazon merchant product listings, is this a known problem?

Best,
Christopher

"... and following one of your links, which isn't a bad thing."

Thanks, I did not know that.  So, if they visit one page and return to Google, that's a bounce, but if they visit one page and click through, that's not a bounce, right?  How far does that go?  Does Google know if I sent someone to a useful site vs a spammy site?  Is it partly a timing issue?  In other words, if they visit my site and then don't return to Google for a while vs returning immediately, is that one of their metrics?

Best,
Christopher

Many directories on the net are just spammy annoyances, but some are quite useful, particularly when someone has really put some effort into a niche market.  But how can Google look at that favorably?  I would be willing to invest the time to put together a directory for our niche market, but if someone uses our directory, they would come to it, find the link they are searching for, then click and leave our site.  They would visit one page on our site, and not stay very long.  Is it possible to create and maintain a compelling directory and get credit for doing so?  Of course, we would not have any spammy ads cluttering the directory, so that may help.  Anything else?

Best,
Christopher

Suppose a website is devoted to a selling a modest number of products that are sold under one brand name. For example, the site might have product pages for Chevy Camaro, Chevy Suburban, and Chevy Volt, and many other pages related to Chevy.  Chevy is in the domain name and on virtually every page.  Competitors are also selling Chevy's and you want to rank well on the keyword "Chevy".

One SEO rule is limit a keyword to one optimized page, and if it appears on other pages, minimize the use of the keyword on other pages, and pass links to the optimized page.  However, it can be really challenging to write prose without using the brand name, particularly if the brand name is of the form "brand training method" or "brand learning center".  The other pages can't say "training method" or "learning center".  They need to say "brand training method", etc.

What are the tactics to rank for a brand name when it appears on virtually every page?

Best,
Christopher

A national newspaper wrote an article about our product and included a link to our site.  I'm sure that's a good thing, but what exactly are the benefits to our site when they use a no follow?

Best,
Christopher