I agree with Adam.

In a recent Q & A session Rand had together with Dharmesh Shah over at Hubspot, Rand mentioned Screaming Frog as one of his favorite SEO tools. I'd heard of it, but never checked it out before. I downloaded it a couple of days ago and was pretty impressed. It seems to me that it gives a lot of the same data as GWT but in more actionable form (i.e. you can export everything into Excel).

I am curious to know others' opinions, how much they use it, unique applications, what it does that SEOMoz doesn't do, and whether or not you think the annual license fee is worth it.

Thanks!

First of all, let me say welcome to SEOMoz Q & A forum. THe best forum on or off the planet!

Okay, I understand you confusion. As SEOs we are all told "Multiple H1 tags...Bad!"

However, think about it this way:  Imagine you are a resource in a library referencing articles on a variety of topics. You are basically presenting a page of abstracts (short summaries) of the documents. You have no idea, based on how the user navigated to your (index card) Web page, which article or topic is going to be of interest to the use. Consequently, you present a list of headlines, all equally stressed, equally important. They are presented to you this way because not a single one of them is more important to the hosting document than another. Okay so each document has a major title, headline, whatever you want to call it. Because it's a listing of equally important topics served to searchers in a broad audience, the multiple

tags actually make perfect sense.

Now, one could argue that

The Daily SEO Blog

should be the lone

title, but it really doesn't express what's most important on the page. Also, with  a bunch of paginated pages it would be near impossible for a search engine to discern what is really important on the paginated pages if that same

tag was used on all of them. What really makes sense is that the individual headlines each gets and

tag. That signals to Google "Hey, Googlebot, this is a page with headlines and summaries that click through to the full articles."

You will notice that on the subsequent pages, the tag

The Daily SEO Blog

plus the

for the main article remain, but are the only

tags on the page.

In terms of <h>tags try to think like a librarian. This will help a lot in determining which ones to use where.</h>

Hope that helps!

Dana

# The Daily SEO Blog

  Now, one could argue that 

I think the best source I've come across about truly 'demystifying" structured data is Richard Baxter. He did a really great Mozinar a few months ago that had some great information and "how-to's" with real-life examples: http://www.seomoz.org/webinars/microformats-real-life-use-cases

He also wrote a great blog post: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/schemaorg-a-new-approach-to-structured-data-for-seo

and I think there's an even more recent blog post from Richard on the subject that I can't seem to find at the moment. Perhaps someone here can point us in the right direction?

I would paraphrase some of what Richard has to say, but I'm still mystified and struggling with how to markup my site content properly, so I'd better let Richard do the talking

Dana

Hi Kristopher,

I went and checked out your site. It's very pretty. I think the picture of you and your son is adorable! Okay, so here's my advice:

Right now, in your blog, there are lots of great photos. To me, your blog is looking more like a portfolio than a blog (not a criticism, just an observation). What if you started writing posts about photography that would appeal to other photographers? I know that you aren't necessarily wanting other photographers as "customers" but if your advice is valuable and unique, it would attract inbound links. Lots of inbound links from other photographers would set you up as an authority. The stronger your authority the higher you rank. The higer you rank, the more traffic you will get. That new traffic, once they see that you have an authoritative and active blog (even if they aren't photographers and don't understand a word), they will be more likely to choose you for their project.

Also, I'm guessing the photography world is pretty small. I bet if you asked someone influential to write a guest post for you, they'd probably do it.

I'm thinking you're pretty passionate about photography. The great thing about that is you will never run out of ideas to write about.

I hope this helps!

Dana

I think posting at eHow is entirely different, and probably not nearly as effective as quality guest blogging. Concerning the press releases, I have a question. You said "failed press releases." What constitutes a failed press release? Was it submitted and then rejected by a press release service? If so, did the service give you any editorial feedback as to why it was rejected? If it was considered "failed" because it didn't produce traffic, if it's still out there, then reposting somewhere else isn't going to accomplish anything because Google won't view it as original content.

I do have a suggestion regarding guest blogging. Have you thought of trying to work it the opposite way? So, instead of going out and pounding the pavement for guest blogging opportunities, have you considered asking a blogger who follows you or who you know to write a guest post for you? Sometimes the best way to start getting opportunities is to perhaps give someone else an opportunity. Just a thought. If you get someone with a fairly good following, think of all the attention your blog will get as their followers tune in?

The only way I would pursue eHow would be if you had something totally unique to offer there that no one else had already covered. That's hard.

Hope this is helpful. It's just my two cents and what I would do myself.

Dana

Hi Memoz, I think this completely depends on how it's done. Footers are a completely normal and expected part of Web design. For example, when you go to a new site you've never been to before, you almost expect to find "About Us" and "Contact Us" links in the footer. You also expect to find some redundant navigation, like "main products" or "clearance items."

Now, if you have a footer that does something like this:

Used Cars Seattle

Used Car West Seattle

Used Cars East Seattle

Used Cars Bellingham

Used cars northeast Seattle

Used Cars North Seattle

and so on....

Yes, I'd say Spam-A-Rama! Probably not a great idea.

Trust your instinct. If you stop at some point and think to yourself, "Self, this is looking mighty spammy," then, it's probably spammy and don't do it.

Can anyone say for sure what Google will see as spam and penalize and what it will leave alone? No. So I can't tell you what Google will or won't do and how Google will or won't view your content. I'm just sayin' trust your gut.

I hope that helps!

Dana

You asked: "Would the users come to my site just looking for information or would they actually think of me for the service?"

The answer is (hopefully) yes and yes. You see, as a business you need to attract people who are at different stages of the buying cycle. I prefer the AIDAS model that qualifies visitors this way:

Attention

Inverstigation

Decision

Action

Satisfaction

As an e-Commerce business you absolutely have to have messaging that addresses every stage in that process.

To address your other question about content: Great content is valuable as long as the right people are able to find it.

What does that mean?

Great, specific information about individual products is going to be very valuable on the product pages. Content that compares one model or one brand to another could be very useful  on a blog, to address visitors who are in the Investigation stage of buying.

Blogging content is going to be a great way to establish yourselves as anauthority.

Writing aritcles could mean press releases, new product reviews etc. Again these address people at Attention or Inverstigation stages of the buying process. In business, that's called the top of the funnel. It is every bit as important as the middle (decision) or bottom (Action and Satisfaction) part of the funnel.

Does this help a little? I hope so.

Dana

Good question!   I use a browser extension in Firefox called SEO for Firefox. It's free and one of the many things it will do is highlight "followed" and "no followed" links in different colors so you can quickly see which is which. I highly recommend it. It also will catch broken links. It's very handy!

I think in certain contexts this is perfectly appropriate. If you have a SMPR (social media press release) page, then this would be the perfect place to put press releases. This page would host snippets and links to all the various things the company is doing across the Web. You might have your latest YouTube videos, a Twitter feed, a Facebook feed, recent Instagram photos, reviews, and contact buttons for everything (email signups, blog RSS, Google+, LinkedIn etc.).

Here are some excellent examples of SMPRs:

http://www.blogsouthwest.com/news  (my all-time favorite!)

http://corporate.ford.com/news-center

http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2007/prod_090407c.html

There are definitely some similarities between these pages. But the opportunity for giving life to your brand makes them really fun I think.

Cheers,

Dana

I do no several sites that never take a page down for products that are no longer available. Here is an example:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/677584-REG/Yamaha_P_95S_PG_95_Digital_Stage_Piano.html

It's really kind of a brilliant approach, definitely one we are considering. Notice how there is a note on the page that says "This product is no longer available" and then there is a link that says "View Similar Items." So not only are they retaining the original page and its authority, they are making the most of their internal linking structure too.

Yes, well there are a couple of things to consider and test.

First and foremost, check your GWT code and make sure that nothing's change. Same with Google Analytics.

Have you changed platforms?

If not, I would say it's "Hoy Crap Batman" time and you need to start analyzing everything. What's your Pagespeed? Is your site online? If so, was it offline earlier in the week? (Maybe you weren't checking every minute) If your site is hosted by someone else, get on the phone and demand some answers.

If it's relevant and valuable I'd advise buying it only if there two conditions are met:

1. The original content stays intact
2. You are willing to devote time and resources to adding fresh new content, regularly

If those things are satisfied I'd say "go fot ir!" - Otherwise, it's a no go. IMHO

As always, I am interested to know what others have to say about it.

Hi Bob,

Try finding a few of the most influential people in your business who have a lot of followers. Analyze their followers in Followerwonk to determine their level of influence, who they follow, etc. This should give a whole bunch of influencers to follow. Also, checkout Twtter's auto-suggestions in the upper left. Sometimes they get it wrong or there's a promoted person there, But often, the third one on the list is someone very closely aligned to your interests.

Also, make sure to pay attention (you probably already do) to who is following you. If you have influential people in your industry following you, but you aren't already following them, it's an opportunity to do so (and often considered bad form not to follow someone tightly aligned with your interests back). Again, use Followerwonk to analyze your own followers to find opportunities.

Dana

Hi Radhey,

I honestly would take this report with a grain of salt. When you ask if the links here are included: sidebar/comments/related posts  without seeing directly, my initial answer is "yes" they are counted.  There are times when a large page with a lot of outbound links (more than 105) are good for the end user. You know, if it makes sense for your business and your customers, then I would take this report with a grain f salt.

Here's an example. We are a large e-commerce site. We are authorized resellers of numerous brands. We want our users to be able to see that and access their favorite brands easily, so we have this page: http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/category/shop-by-brand

That page has a ton of links, but it's the best way (right now) for our customers to see and find their favorite brands.

I wouldn't worry about this report too much, honestly, unless you've spammed a page with 100's of links, which it definitely sounds like you did not do. Hope that helps!

Dana

This is a great question and great example. The first thing I want to know is, what is your brand name? Do you have a brand name? I understand that "legal migration service in Cape Town" is what your business does, but is that the brand name as well? If not, and you do have a brand name, I'd go for the brand name, personally.

If you don't have a brand name yet, I would consider making "LMSCT" the brand name, and brand the hell out of it. Yes, and make it the URL too.

I wouldn't go for the EMD. That brings with it too much potential risk (IMHO) in terms of potential algortihm updates that are hurting EMDs and rewarding brands. Besides, the EMD is extremely long and hard to remember. Another thing to keep in mind is when and if you do paid advertising, that EMD is so long that it's most likely going to tap out the character limitations of a lot of ads, and take away room that you could have used for your marketing purposes.

That's my two cents. Interested to know what other people think!

Dana

Hi Hardley,

OSE updates only about once a month. The last update happened a few days ago and the next one is scheduled for December 6th. Here's a link to the update calendat: https://seomoz.zendesk.com/entries/345964-linkscape-update-schedule

I'd check again after the next update to see if your backlinks are showing up at that point. If not then it's possible that the directories with which you've submitted may no longer be indexed by Google. This has become a more and more common issue as Google is trying to clear its index of directories that have no editorial discretion and just include links to any site that pays them for a link.

Hope that's helpful!

Dana

Hi Luke,

I am an in-house SEO but I also manage Adwords campaigns for one of my company's niche sites. I just wanted to chime in a word of caution regarding broad match keywords. Unless you have a fortune to spend, I'd completely stay away from broad match and use only exact and phrase match. For exact matches put your keywords in [brackets] and for phrase match put them in "quotes"

But, here's one important caveat that anyone doing Adwords needs to know and this is something that changed within the last 6-9 months. This is a setting that you can control under Campaign Settings - scroll to the bottom and click on "Keyword matching options" - here you need to select either "Include plurlals, misspellings and other close variants" or "Do not include close variants." If you want to maintain more control over your keywords and ad spend I would suggest selecting the latter. Here is additional info (the following quote is cut-and-pasted directly from Google):

"Exact and phrase match

How it works: Your ads can show for close variants of your exact match and phrase match keywords. Close variants include misspellings, singular and plural forms, acronyms, stemmings (such as floor and flooring), abbreviations, and accents. We won't show your ads for synonyms of your exact match and phrase match keywords.

Example: If you have the exact match keyword designer wedding dress, we might show your ad when customers search for designer wedding dresses.

Good to know: You can edit your exact match and phrase match options only for "Search Network only - All features" and "Search & Display Networks - All features" campaign types. Keep in mind that keyword matching options are available for ads and keywords that target the Search Network."

In other words, if you opt for the Keyword matching option to "Include plurals, misspellings and other close variants" your [exact match] keywords, in essence, are not necessarily exact match at all and Google will decide what actually triggers your ad or not. In my experience, it is costly to allow Google this much control over your campaigns.

Just a word to the wise!

Dana

Hi RealW,

Well, as an in-house SEO I am very familiar with this scenario. I might have more questions (meant to be provocative) for you than answers. I guess we'll call it "the Socratic method of SEO"

Okay, so here we go:

Why do you want to target the term "clark forklift?"  Do you sell Clark forklifts, or just Clark forklift parts?

If you don't sell Clark forklifts, and that's what people are looking to shop for, what are they going to find at your site that gives them what they searched for?

Are you just plain after more traffic (and not necessarily conversions)?"

When you are targeting keywords for your SEO, you have to (I stress HAVE to) check your ego at the door. This isn't necessarily hard for SEOs but it can be next to impossible for business owners and CEOs who feel like they should rank for every keyword under the sun.

Here's an example straight from my work today. I got a message from the CEO (I am the in-house SEO) stating his dissatisfaction that we weren't ranking for this term: "mackie th-12a/" I researched the term and discovered that nearly every competitor outranking us had higher page authority, domain authority, more links and a more recent cache date. Not only that but the niche the product seems to appeal to is the DJ market, while we primarily sell to churches. I sent him all the data comparing domains, together with my evaluation that it was the wrong niche and said point blank "we don't rank for this term because we aren't very relevant for this term."

Given that your current site structure and keyword choices are converting well, I wouldn't mess with that. If you go broader at terms that you aren't particularly relevant for then all you are doing is getting traffic, throwing it at the wall and hoping something sticks. That takes a heck of a lot of work and effort for precious little return.

Make a list of productive, relevant keywords and stick to them like glue. If you find you can't make a business out of that because the niche you created was to tight, then you need to broaden your business model before you broaden your keyword list. Going at it the other way around is...well "===" backwards.

Just my two cents! I wish you good luck and hope something here helps!

Dana

I agree with Jesse for the most part. I think the key is: what kind of content we are talking about? Adding tons of low-value, thin content pages to a site all at once (or even gradually) is probably going to diminish the authority of existing content. I do think that adding thousands of pages that have no page authority to a site that contains pages with a decent amount of authority could, theoretically, dilute the authority of the existing pages depending on site architecture, internal linking and the ratio of existing pages versus new pages. However, I would expect this to be only temporary, and if the new content is great quality, should be nothing to worry about long term.