Welcome to the Q&A Forum

As Takeshi has said, I think the design of the site could do with some attention - especially the header.

Backlinks as Takeshi has also said can be an issue are are for this domain, but the biggest issue is that this isn't site where people buy bins from.

You linked to: http://plastic-storage-bins.com, but when you get down to the buy links you get taken to another domain: http://monsterbins.com which actually from a design point of view looks better and is also better off with backlinks.

Essentially, you are never going to rank your plastic-storage-bins.com site very well because it's just acting as a gateway to monsterbins.com and as such it's also passing most of the link equity it will earn to monsterbins.com.

The backlink profile on monsterbins.com suggests you are running at least one other satellite site (akro-bins.com) to send links to monsterbins, so I would be cautious as it could be perceived to be a little spammy.

I hope that helps,
Peter

Hi Mark

I agree with both Chris & Ratan. Based on Rand's recent Whiteboard Friday there is also a case of saying Google+ is best for SEO - some interesting thoughts on there so worth watching.

Peter

There appears to be some sort of redirection loop happening, but I don't know what could be the cause. Possibly a faulty cookie?

If you paste moz.com/logout into your address bar and hit return, I find you can then login correctly.

I hope that helps,
Peter

Hi, I agree with David's comments. All I would add is that whilst Hummingbird will give more attention to long tail searcehs that does not mean stuffing the Title tag with more words.

Best current advice re Title tags is to keep the main words at the start of the Title and keep words focussed and to a minimum where possible on the basis that the more words you have the more diluted the title is.

In the example you have given I think the Title should definitely start with "Armani Jeans Coat". To differentiate it then from other Armani Jeans coats I would make it ""Armani Jeans Coat - Fur Hooded - Green". Some would say using hyphens is not good for SEO in a Title tag, but I think it is matching SEO with readability and Hummingbird may well fit with that too.

I hope that helps,
Peter

The issue Prince with adding nofollow tags to those links is that the search engines will then not follow them and if you have no other links to those pages then they will not be indexed.

Peter

Hi, fair comment, it is a legitimate tactic in the context of the example Matt gives in that video.

My concern - and that is where I should have taken more time to examine the backlink profile of monsterbins.com - was that I quickly saw those two sources of backlinks from the satellite sites and then (wrongly) thought you may have a bunch of others doing the same. So apologies for thinking that!

On the matter of your satellite sites, Takeshi is correct that domains with hyphens can be seen as spammy (see more info here: http://moz.com/learn/seo/domain). You purpose though is correct - to build quality content around the individual categories that make up the whole. But without a link profile to them, then you are likely to struggle. In this context and in my view, you are going to be better off growing content rich pages on the monsterbins.com site (e.g. a bins blog!) and promoting that site alone with valuable information that people will share and link to.

All the best to you with what you are doing.

Peter

Hi Danny

Yes the same. As Jesse said, it seems to be cookie related. It was happening earlier in the week too then there seemed to be a day when it was OK, now it's back.

I think it's caused when your login times out because of inactivity, but when you try to login again then the cookie thinks you are still logged in and so you never get taken to the login screen.

I have been clearing it by entering moz.com/logout into the address bar.

Peter

Hi Lara

This isn't a Hummingbird issue. From the sound of it, you may have been hit by Penguin 2.1.

To start with you may find it helpful to read this article: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/penguin-2-1-changed-since-2-0-recover/72977/

Peter

I have no experience of using Triond so please take my comments in that context.

Personally, it would worry me to uss a service like that to put my articles as guest blog posts around the Internet. It raises some questions & concerns for me.

They say they put your blog posts on the most relevant sites, but what is to stop you finding these sites and doing that? Who owns these sites?

If these blogging sites are legitimate blogging sites then why can you not post on them, or are you just paying to put blog posts on someone's site? If that is the case then in essence you are buying links which Google outlaws for SEO.

Penguin has slapped many sites for gathering backlinks from low quality sites. What is there to say that some of the sites your blog posts will be posted on will not also be low quality.

IMHO, if you have the ability to write blog posts sharing your expertise and represent your business, then it is too risky to entrust that into someone else's hands to publish without clear control of where they will be published.

I hope that helps and as I say, the above is just my opinion and not from someone who has used Triond.

Peter

Hi Prince

The local-based URL you have suggested is good, but the issue is not so much with the URL but how you can effectively target these searches without local offices - at least it would seem by the fact that you don't show any addresses of offices on your site that there are not any. Is that correct?

There is an excellent set of tips from Miriam Ellis on optimising for local searches on this post: https://moz.com/community/q/what-is-the-best-way-to-optimise-the-website-of-a-service-area-business-websites-for-local-search

The essential thing if you want to optimise for local searches is to show local citations of an office in that area. As Miriam says:

The most important thing for SABs (Service Area Businesses) to understand is that Google is heavily biased toward physical location. SABs must have at least one physical location in order to seek inclusion in Google's local index. This can be a home address - that's just fine! But it cannot be a virtual address, P.O. box, etc. And it should not be shared by any other business.

Is this site for a company who operate totally online or from just one phone number which could for anyone knows be offshore? If it is, you are not going to be successful with this strategy if you have no local offices that someone can walk into and buy the service. If it is an online only service being operated then your whole site should reflect that and you should market the site along those lines - with quality unique content being on the site answering the questions people may be searching for - based on the service you are offering.

The Title tag you suggest is OK for a home page yes although it's a little diluted and the "As low as 1%" would be of more value in the Description meta tag. No one will be searching for that key phrase. I don't think these days there is much difference with using pipe, hyphen or comma.

Sorry again to sound like I am being harsh on what you are trying to do. I think you are genuine guy trying to do their best, but with all the hard work you are putting in to this site you are better to direct it at making the site work well for you and your client.

Peter

You could split them up based on where they are needed but that would become complicated. The advantage of splitting CSS on a large site is really to better organise the functionality of the CSS, e.g. system.css.

Peter

Hi Miriam

Yes, it does seem to be cookie related, but if you put moz.com/logout into your address bar and hit enter that seems to clear the session cookie that is causing the issue.

It may be quicker to do that and less destructive to other cookies you have active which you may not want to be cleared.

Peter

Hi Vjay,

There's a bit more info here too from an earlier question on this back in June:

http://moz.com/community/q/how-can-you-leverage-google-s-knowledge-graph-to-gain-more-visibility-in-the-serps

Peter

Hi Rob,

I'm not sure any SEO tactic can be described as the best approach. It's really more about following through on a number of elements that all focus attention on a particular web page and your site as a whole being better optimised to be found and indexed by search engines for the customers you are targeting.

That said, it is true that building backlinks to your website is still an important ranking factor in SEO, but then before you do that you need to be sure you are targeting the correct keywords for the pages on your site.

Probably a good way to start doing that is to perform analysis on the websites of your competitors and look at what keywords they are targeting and where they are drawing backlinks from. You can do that using Moz's Open Site Explorer tool. By putting in each of your competitors' websites into that you will see where they are receiving links from (so with some location you can grow some too) and what anchor text they are using which is often an indicator of the keywords they are targeting.

But on all of the above, try to keep in mind that you are optimising your website for your target customers and not search engines. A search engine is just acting as a broker in your relationship with your customer. Try to understand the mind of your customer and what they will be searching for and then check to see how competitive some other keywords may be and what search volumes are available for them.

I hope that helps,
Peter

Hi Oren

You are right, YouTube can be tricky to optimise for and I think with its closer integration with Google+ for a time at least it may even get trickier whilst the dust settles.

There was a YouMoz blog post on this subject last year, but whilst it's a little while ago now (in terms of how fast moving online marketing can change), I think you might find it helpful:

Dominating Youtube Search and "Related Videos" Results (Case Study)

I hope that helps,
Peter

Hi, that's a lot of variables and answers may therefore vary from different people, but here's my best shot:

**1. If we don't offer the PDF option, people would have to visit our site to read the content (unless they bought a hard copy).  **If the goal is getting more readership and attention for these books then I think you should provide a PDF.

**2. If visitors were able to download a free PDF, they wouldn't need to return to our site to read it. **No, but the benefits of (1) above apply I think.

**3. If our corporate clients (nearly all of our clients are corporations) could download a PDF, they could then post it on an intranet instead of posting a link to our site. **I think you could put information in the PDF and on the page where it can be downloaded from to say that you do not give permission for the PDF to be hosted on another site. You cannot guarantee that they wouldn't but I think it is unlikely a corporate would want to be seen to be going against your wishes on that. Alternatively, you could say that the PDF can be hosted on other sites, providing they include a Follow link to your site attributing your site as the source.

**4. In general, do you think a visitor would be less likely to link to our site if he or she were able to download the PDF? Or would the appeal of the PDF option make it more likely that people would visit and link to the site? ** Yes - the second option

5. Also, if we offer the PDF option, are there any SEO issues related to duplicate content? Not really, if posting on other sites they include a link to the source of the PDF on your site

**6. Finally, if we did offer the free PDF download, would you recommend that we ask for an email address before giving the PDF? **It depends what your motivation for doing so is. If you want to build an email list that you can then send newsletters and special offer emails to, then yes - as long as you make it clear that is what you will do and you get the visitor to click a checkbox confirming they accept that condition - although of course you have to give them the option to unsubscribe at a later date when you send newsletters and offer emails.

I hope that helps,
Peter

To be honest Michael I have just been using the method I described above to logout before logging back in again.

I remember reading another Q&A thread where it was reported and someone from Moz responded but maybe they are not aware it is still an issue for some users.

So to hopefully get this resolved I have just sent a support ticket to Moz. It feels like there is a session cookie being stored that isn't being cleared properly and that maybe why moz.com/logout works, but hopefully they will get on to it and get it sorted.

Meantime use the moz.com/logout cure as that always works for me.

I hope that helps, Peter

Hi, I think without a dealer in San Francisco with a physical address then you need to optimise the page on your site for the dealer you have in Santa Rosa complete with citations for their location (Name, Address, Phone number).

The success of the Santa Rosa dealer's page for searches for San Francisco will largely depend on the competitiveness of other dealers listed on the Internet that are selling the same products with local citations closer to San Francisco. If there are limited dealers to be found for San Francisco then Google will spread it's net wider to find other relevant results. That said, your Google+ Local listing showing coverage should help your site page.

I hope that helps,
Peter

Hi, I don't think it is true to say that as a result of Hummingbird that Title tags are are the main selling point in SERPs, but certainly having lots of keywords in your Title will not be helpful to you.

The longer the Title tag, the less SEO value each word has, but that doesn't mean you should always aim for a very short Title tag either. The most important words need to be near the start of the Title and most of all - and this it true pre-Hummingbird as well - the Title should be a good summary of what the page is about.

Think about the Title tag as the title of a page or chapter in a book. It needs to be succinct but descriptive enough to be understood (by both a person and the search engine) and it needs to be unique.

The Title examples you have given look reasonable and well targeted I would say.

I hope that helps,
Peter

Sorry about that Oren. I've not ready anything more recent either which would tend to suggest, until now at least, that the game hasn't changed much.

My best guess going forward as to what might change would be that we will see the same principles that Google is applying to regular search applied into YouTube. So the steady progress to search being more query based than keyword based to seek to answer the intent of the searcher's question will apply.

The other related factor is the development of semantic search and the knowledge graph. It seems reasonable if these same developments are applied to YouTube that we will see related videos providing more of the background story and associated data related to the video just displayed. Whereas up until now related videos have been chosen, for example, based on keywords in the Title, tags etc, the next evolution will see videos more related on topic.

For example, a video about the soil types need to successfully grow roses, may then offer a related video on pruning roses or the history of roses, whereas now we may more likely see just further videos on the same subject..

So, the above is not answers as such, just my speculation trying to look through a not very clear crystal ball.

Peter