Welcome to the Q&A Forum

I think reciprocal links to related industries can be perfectly natural. In some cases they can even be really helpful to your visitors. A perfect example is Pink Jeep Tours Sedona (I don't do SEO for them), they have a page for Local Area Info where they link to lots of different hotels, area attractions, etc. Almost ever one of those local attractions link right back to Pink Jeep Tours, and they are all followed links going both ways.

This all seems perfectly natural because they are helping their visitors find other fun things to do. In cases like these, I think the reciprocating links are very valuable because they are all closely related (by industry) and helping to increase each other's credibility.

Regarding your question about nofollow/no index. In my opinion, no that wouldn't be considered black hat at all. SEOMoz does it, for example, in Q & A profile pages for all the user's links, until they hit "Journeyman" level, when they remove one "no follow."

I think the no follow/no index is your own personal choice. Just keep in mind that Googlebot may decide to follow the links and/or index the page anyway. Search engines only view those as "suggestions."

Hope that's helpful and good luck.

Hi Brandon,

In your Ranking reports screen in the upper right there is a dropdown box with Export options. The very last one on the list is 'Export complete ranking history to CSV."  It take a little while if you have a lot of keywords, but once the report is generated you are automatically emailed with a link for the file download. Hope that helps!

Dana

P.S. If you then want to take that data and make it beautiful for your client(s), here are two rocking posts from two people who I admire greatly:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/guide-to-replicating-seomozs-graphs-in-excel

and

http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/new-ways-to-track-keyword-rank

Hi Tim,CRO is high on the "to do" list for us in 2013 and I recently had to put together a proposal for a budget. Here are some of the sources I used to help put my proposal together:http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/excellent-analytics-tip-7-the-adorable-site-abandonment-rate-metric/http://baymard.com/lists/cart-abandonment-rate http://www.houseofkaizen.com/resources/calculators/bounce-rate-impacthttp://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/10/17/the-back-story-for-the-300-million-button/http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/1691779/benchmarking-average-conversion-ratehttp://index.fireclick.com/fireindex.php?segment=6http://www.internetretailer.com/2011/09/13/conversion-boost-online-retailershttp://www.davechaffey.com/Internet-Marketing/C7-Service-Quality/Conversion-rates-E-commerce/http://www.thinkmetrics.com/benchmarks-for-websites.phphttp://www.marketingexperiments.com/blog/research-topics/ecommerce/e-commerce-landing-page-mistakes.html

http://uxdesign.smashingmagazine.com/2011/04/06/fundamental-guidelines-of-e-commerce-checkout-design/http://www.marketingexperiments.com/blog/marketing-insights/average-conversion-rates.htmlhttp://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/1695493/declining-conversion-rateshttp://www.baynote.com/2011/07/forrester%E2%80%99s-top-five-e-commerce-trends-still-hold-true/Some of these might be more helfpul than others. It's a long list. If you've never read "The $300 million button" I'd recommend starting there just because it's very inspiring.Cheers,Dana

Excellent answer Tom. I tuned in because I didn't know the answer to this one and yours was superb.

I currently have two Pro campaigns set up. They are both tracking the root domains of two different e-commerce sites. I also am tracking three competitors for each company, in each campaign. I have those set up by subdomains, like so www.Competitor.com.

So in my Historical link analysis I am getting MyRootDomain.com, compared to www.competitor1.com, www.competitor2.com and www.competitor3.com

Is this a problem?

Would it be better for me to switch my company campaigns to track subdomains too, or to switch my competitor tracking to root domains.

This is probably pretty rudimentary, but it never even occurred to me until just now.

I realize that if I switch to subdomains for my own company tracking this would necessitate setting up a completely new campaign. This would be a problem because I am maxed out on my 1,000 keywords.

Last but not least, does the fact that I have been tracking my own site root domains compared to competitors subdomains mean all of my competitive domain and link analysis is, well, garbage?...because I haven't really been comparing the same things?

Hi tagbiomed,

I want to help, but I first want to clarify something. In your post, you said  "it dropped from the page 1 top ranking it had for years on that primary keyword to page 13."

Did you mean that your page dropped from #1 to #13 spots in the SERPS, or from page 1 to page 13 in the SERPs? There's a big difference between those two things and I just wanted to clarify.

Thanks!

Dana

Hi Sasank,

There are occasionally issues. If you notice problems, or if your historical reports aren't updating properly, I suggest you do a couple of things:

1. Wait a day or two before trying to export your historical rankings reports. For some reason, the historical reports don't always update when the rankings reports do.
2. If #1 doesn't work, email SEOMoz's helpdesk, Every time I've face a similar issue they've been able to re-queue my reports and get them to run properly.

Hope this helps a little,

Dana

Rui has given two good answers below. Cheers!

Hi Bruce,

We are transitioning to Wistia and have about 20 Wistia videos up on our site already. To my knowledge, it is not necessary to do anything special in order to assure that the embed code any users might copy and paste into their own sites will link directly back to your site. This is one of the biggest advantages to switching to Wistia in the first place. Here's an example URL where we have a Wistia video embedded:

http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/product/allen-heath-me-1-personal-monitor-mixer

If you click the "Embed" icon just below the video you will see an iFrame code appear for people to copy and paste if they want to share the content on their own sites. This works just like a YouTube iFrame, in that it directs the visitor directly back to the site where the video originated...in this case it would divert people directly back to your site giving you full credit for the content.

I hope that's helpful. Did I understand you question correctly? Or are you seeking to do something different with anyone who wants to embed your content? Let me know, cheers!

Dana

P.S. Here's the embed code for the above video if you want to try it out:

<iframe class="wistia_embed" name="wistia_embed" src="http://fast.wistia.net/embed/iframe/fdnz3j82q4?version=v1&amp;videoWidth=560&amp;videoHeight=315&amp;volumeControl=true&amp;controlsVisibleOnLoad=true&amp;plugin[socialbar-v1][buttons]=embed-twitter-linkedIn-googlePlus-facebook&amp;plugin[socialbar-v1][logo]=true&amp;plugin[socialbar-v1][badgeUrl]=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ccisolutions.com&amp;plugin[socialbar-v1][badgeImage]=https%3A%2F%2Fwistia.sslcs.cdngc.net%2Fdeliveries%2F39051b62d0e4f252affe3b7fe5b95279dc143941.jpg%3Fimage_crop_resized%3D100x20&amp;plugin[captions-v1][onByDefault]=false&amp;canonicalUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ccisolutions.com%2FStoreFront%2Fproduct%2Fallen-heath-me-1-personal-monitor-mixer&amp;canonicalTitle=Allen %26 Heath ME-1 | Personal Monitor Mixer" allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="480" height="298"></iframe>

Hi Sergio. Yes, I think you are on the right track. I would make the keyword research, and any resulting changes to the Meta descriptions, target things specifically by category and then products.

I understand your frustration.   Perhaps you can convince him to try one small thing in addition to the meta descriptions (hopefully of your choice), so you can show him a positive impact from something that could have a bigger impact. Just a thought!

There are times when rel=publisher is more approrpiate than rel=author, a product page on an e-commerce site for example. Will a site be penalized for establishing authorship on every page? Absolutely not. In fact, I think that is what Google is intending for people to do.

The problem right now is there is such mass confusion over rel=author and rel=publisher andhow to use them properly, that right now, you see lots of sites that should be using rel=publisher using rel=author instead. Because Google has done such a poor job of articulating how and where to implement these things, I can't imagine them penalizing sites for using one when they should be using the other. Although, I suppose strange things have happened.

I do think that the intention with authorship and also structured data markup is that Webmaster implement all the appropriate tags and markup on every page of their site.

Hope that's helpful!

Dana

I think Wesley is right. "RDs" mean "linking root domaind" which means the number of root domains (not individiual pages) that are linking to your site (URL). I believe you are seeing this via the Mozbar in Firefox, is that correct?

Hi Steve,

I believe this discrepancy could be happening because in order for a "goal" to be completed, the analytics script must complete load on the "Thank You" page. Sometimes a user will "x" out of a page before the script can completly loading, so that lead doesn't get counted as a completed goal. Similar discrepancies happen when viewing conversion stats in Adwords versus Google Analytics.

If the previous scenario is not the cause, it could be something in the setup of the goal that isn't attributing a goal properly. Is there anything "in common" about the visitors' paths for the ones that weren't counted? Perhaps investigate that to see if perhaps you've included some steps that maybe don't need to be there...or if your "required" step can somehow be bypassed but still lead to a conversion.

Hope that helps a little!

Dana

I just did this today. It was on a 3dcart store, so this may be over simplistic, but hopefully it gets you closer to implementing what you want (your will have to replace the URLs with your own of course):Immediately after your page tagshttp://www.yourdomainname.com/product-image-url.jpg"/> Then you will need to install the Facebook "Like" button javascript on your product pages. You can get detailed instruction on how to get and install this code by going to Facebook Developers area hereI am not a developer and it is pretty straightforward. You are able to define the size,, style etc. of your Like button on that page.Good luck. I hope this helps!

You are most welcome. Yes, you are so right. If you demonstrate your expertise, even if it's just something small, within his budget, you will gain his trust (one hopes). If not, and he tries to take advantage of your expertise (and generosity), then it might be time to move on to a more appreciative client.:-)

Hi Pedram,

Has it dropped out of it's position recently? I have seen occasional volatility like this. If you know your page is solid and your content is solid, the best thing you can do is be patient and wait. Many times I have seen a well ranked term plummet down and disappear for a few days or weeks and then pop right back up to where it was before. The other thing to evaluate is how many conversions and how much revenue was being generated by that keyword. The only reason I suggest this is because I am constantly getting emails from one stakeholder asking "why aren't we ranking for keyword x?" When, in fact, "keyword x" is not really a valuable term for us, but is more of a vanity term. If that's the case, you'll need solid data and your "educational hat" to go to your stakeholders and explain to them why they shouldn't get fixated on certain terms.

How are your rankings doing when viewed as a whole, across the board? If you haven't already, I would highly recommend building a ranking index. AJ Kohn wrote a great blog post that will walk you through how to do it. Since I built these about 6 months ago, I haven't had to respond to very many "Why aren't we ranking for Keyword X" emails. Hope this helps!

Dana

If you haven't seen it already, watch his full MozCon 2012 video here for free: http://moz.com/blog/2012-mozcon-videos-are-here  It's the second big image link on the page. It's priceless.

Hi all! Okay, here's the scoop. 33% of our site visitors use Safari. 18% of our visitors are on either an iPad or iPhone. According to Google Analytics, our average page load time for visitors using Safari is 411% higher than our site average of 3.8 second. So yes, average page load time pages loading in Safari is over 20 seconds...totally unacceptable, especially considering the large percentage of traffic using it.

While I understand that there are some parameters beyond our control, it is in our own best interest to try to optimize our site for Safari. We've got to do better than 20 seconds. As you might have guessed, it's also killing conversation rates on visits from that browser. While every other browser posted double-digit improvements in conversion rates over the last several months, the conversion rate for Safari visitors is down 36%...translating into 10's of thousands in lost revenue.

Question for anyone out there gifted in Web design and particular Web Dev....Do you think that it's possible/reasonable to attempt to "fix" our current site, which sits on an ancient platform with ancient code, or is this just not realistic? Would a complete redesign/replatform be the more realistic (and financially sound) way to go?

Any insights, experiences and recommendations would be greatly appreciated. If you're someone interested in spec'-ing out the project and giving us a cost estimate please private message me. Thanks so much!

I think adding a Webmaster Issues question category is a great idea polarking.

I agree completel with both Casey and Kevin. Go long tail. If you've done any PPC, mine through the keyword phrases that have triggered your ads. You'll find some long tail gems I'm sure. Also, Avinash Kaushik did a great post containing some custom reports for Google Analytics that allow you to see which long tail terms (based on number of words), and exactly what they are, that have produced any traffic and ROI. His post is here: http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/advanced-analytics-visitor-segments-engagement-social-media-search-long-tail/

Just go straight to the third part of the post to get the links to the long tail custom reports an how to use them. It's an awesome, awesome post.

Hope that helps!

Dana