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If I publish and page and then later add authorship, it can take a long time before Google adds the author image to the SERP.  However, if I publish a page with the author markup and then Google indexes the page, the author image is included in the SERP when the page appears in the SERP.  So, the lesson I have learned going forward is to make sure the author markup is correct for all newly published pages, because if you get it wrong or add it later after publishing the page, it can take many weeks for Google to use it.

Best,
Christopher

Vadim, have you tested the performance of these buttons with and without counts?  My testing suggests there is a performance hit.

Best,
Christopher

I think the way these social plugins work is they pull the +1 and Like counts from the social media sites.  That's why these plugins can be slow as they get the information from the other sites.  So, if you change plugins, the counts should remain the same.  At least, that is my understanding.

As an aside, I post the buttons on my pages but not the counts.  My limited testing suggests that my pages load faster without the counts.  I'd be interested in any other comments on this aspect as well.

Best,
Christopher

Thanks for the follow up.  It was apparently just a glitch.  It's working now.

Best,
Christopher

Do href links that leave a site and use target="_blank" to open a new tab impact SEO?

EGOL, What about PLA?  What about Remarketing/Retargeting?  Are you able to make money on either of those?

Yes, your question makes sense.

You can put the schema.org properties in any order, but spitting the description like that is going to be problematic.  I would also suggest that your example is tedious to read and lacks a product description heading.  A more realistic example would be:

h1 Widget /h1
The widget comes in blue, green, ...

Hiding the price in the middle of the description is also difficult for humans to read.  Putting aside the schema syntax, the example IMO is a poor user experience.

I have a job site for a tiny niche.  It's a free service that is related to a software app that I license.  I decided early on to leave all the job postings because even after the jobs close, it gives job seekers valuable data on the companies that hire in that niche.  If this was a large generic job site I think the stale job listings would not be that useful for job seekers and I'd probably use a 301.  In other words, my decision would be based on what I thought was most useful for the users.

Best,
Christopher

I read a number of articles and reviews on various sites for locating writers and although I have not used them yet, my current thinking is that ProBlogger is one of the better sites to find quality writers.  They have a job board that is only $50 a month.

manual action ... that was spurred on by a PRWeb press release where publishers took it upon themselves to remove the embedded "nofollow" tags on links.

Seriously?  I've been thinking about trying PRWeb for product announcements but this makes me rethink that strategy.

Great question.  Audio quality is much more important than video quality.  I prefer using a wireless lav.  I use and highly recommend the Sennheisser wireless lav shown here at B&H http://tinyurl.com/24yw234

Most video cameras today, including the cheap ones in the $250 range, include a mic input.  Be sure to check before purchase, but odds are it does.  If the camera has a hot shoe, the Sennheiser receiver will mount on top of the camera and then run the very short wire from the receiver to the camera mic input; otherwise, Velcro tape strips will work fine.

One final important tip.  Get a foam windscreen similar to http://tinyurl.com/lc963pc  If you ever shoot outdoors, it will significantly reduce that annoying wind noise.

Happy shooting,
Christopher

It's quite all right to link the pages you author to your bio page using rel=author, but then your bio page needs to link to your G+ account using a rel=me.  This is the way I do it and it works fine.

The other way to do it is to link your pages directly to your G+ account using rel=author, but since you have a bio page, I think you should use the scheme above.

Best,
Christopher

Just a quick follow up, I isolated the problem.  WordPress was stripping the rel=author that I had included in the link.  I have since upgraded to WP 3.6.1 and I don't know if it was that or something else, but WP is no longer stripping the rel=author.

To date my site does not get a lot of user engagement via G+, but I am helping those who write for our site with their G+ accounts.  Our writers are experts and practitioners in our niche and they are not (nor do I expect them to be) SEO experts.  I explain to them the potential benefits of G+ and help them set up rel=author to get credit for both the articles they write for our site and also the articles they write for other sites.  I also encourage them to increase their circle.  I'm confident our readers would prefer to read articles by experts in our field rather than ghost written articles.  I also compensate them better than ghost writers.  I think it's a win/win if these experts' photos are in the SERP and they get the recognition they deserve and it should improve the CTR as well.

This looks like an interesting idea from Wistia.  Anyone have comments or experience with this?

http://wistia.com/blog/video-backlinks

Best,
Christopher

I have a niche site with modest organic search traffic so perhaps this is the exception rather than the rule, but since I've made an effort to engage using social, the social traffic now outperforms the organic.  The organic is up a bit, no doubt because of the surge in social, but the social seems to be paying off as an end to itself rather than a way to increase organic search.

About 90% of organic traffic is new visitors.

Are you using Retargeting?  A significant fraction of the visitors to your site may be interested in a purchase but surfing is easily distracted.  Retargeting can be a cost-effective way to get their attention again.

Best,
Christopher

I used to spend a lot of time identifying high value sites in our niche and create relationships with the site owners to get back links.  In hindsight I think that was time that could have been better spent.  Now, I spend my time researching and writing articles that I think my users would find interesting, useful, engaging, compelling.  As these articles are published on our site, I post a link to our pages/accounts on Facebook and Twitter to create some buzz, and I may add a few marketing dollars to promote the post as well.  If the content of an article was well-researched and well-written, the shares, retweets, and links will come.  Some of the links are high value, others not, but they are all natural.

Best,
Christopher

Understood.  I read EGOL for months before I really grokked what he was saying about how to optimize a site for search engines.

Best,
Christopher

Hi Karen, it depends.  Are all the links spammy or are there some good links as well?  Given that the site continues to rank well and without additional information, I'd be inclined to try and clean it up and create some new compelling content.  If it does get hit then you can reassess, but again, it depends in part on the value of the good links.

Best,
Christopher