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Personally I would select the 4-5 keywords that best describe the website, products or business and just stick with those. I don't think inserting a whole bunch of keywords is going to be beneficial, and honestly, the keywords probably don't matter at all. However, I understand that some directories will make keywords a required field so you may have to put something there. I would proceed with caution and just approach it with a "less is more" attitude.

Also, another word about directories, make sure you research them very carefully before you decide to submit. Answer these questions:

How long has the directory existed?

What is the directory's Alexa ranking?

What is its PageRank?

How many inbound links does the directory have?

How many of those inbound links are .edu and .gov links?

Is the directory even in Google's index any more?

Does the directory have real human editors? [try emailing them to see if you get a human answer0

Does the directory just include every site that pays them? If so, reconsider your submission.

Does the directory properly categorize the sites it lists?

If you answer those questions about each one, you'll get a better idea if a particular directory is worth pursuing or not.  Also, make sure that this is part of a much larger, broader link-earning strategy.

Dana

Hi Chris,

Are you currently using Google Analytics? If you connect Google Adwords to Google Analytics, you can track traffic from paid search keywords and organic keywords separately in the "Traffic Sources" reports. Hope that helps!

Dana

One of my favorites: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/indepth/  Maybe it's not so much the design that gets me (i'm not a very visual person...ironically...but their content is ridiculously good and they've got a ton of it).

I totally agree with Moosa....I am guessing you also have limited resources. Maintaining two separate sites, one desktop and one mobile requires a lot of major time that most small businesses and small website owners just don't have. One version of your site that's managed via one CMS that is a responsive design is the way to go if you are short on time and resources...and let's face it...even if you are an enterprise corporation, you are still short on  on resources.

Great suggestion Joel!

Tommy's advice is excellent. Just keep in mind that, while you might successfully rank your YouTube video in Google, that searchers who click through on the video will be taken to YouTube, not your website, to view the video. If the purpose of your videos is more for branding and exposure, then this might be fine. If the purpose of the videos is to bring more traffic to your site, this might not work so well. It all really depends on what your business goals are for your video content creation.

Cheers,

Dana

Oh and one more. I think they've actually won some awards. This site is an excellent example of how to make a boring product extremely fun and interesting:

http://www.newpig.com

This is also a great suggestion. Haven't yet made the leap for paid Majestic SEO tools, but I am oh so close!

Are you maxing out your budget every day? Both Jan and John have good points. There could simply be less search volume and more bidders in the pool right now too. I would suggest some definite bid-pruning. Check to see if any split-tested ads had higher CTR and lower CPC and perhaps shut down the ads that aren't performing as well.

Did they change any keywords? I'd check...but you've probably already thought of this.

The last thing I would definitely do, if you aren't already, is do some deep analysis of your Google Analytics to find out how and when people are converting. Take notes and set up dayparting. It's not that hard to do and it can save you a ton of money while not decreasing sales. If you need help setting it up let me know and I'm happy to point you in the right direction (but, like I said, you might already have this in place...still, never hurts to re-evaluate it now and again).

Hope that helps!

Hi Boodreaux,

There are numerous reasons this can happen. Remember that the linkscape index is only updated once a month, so the results you are looking at are not based on "real" time stats. That's the first thing to consider. Also, if you are an- e-commerce site or selling a product, did you have a promotion that was in place that recently ended? I've seen sites move up and down just from free shipping offers being turned on and off. So I would look at whether or not the offer or content on your homepage (or the page you are comparing) has changed at all.

Some other things to think about: What is your bounce rate and how has that changed over the period of time ranging from when you were #2 to when you moved to #5? I have seen sites move down when their bounce rates increase.

One last thing to consider: Were there any inbound links from new agencies, or high-profile, high-authority pages that have dropped off? I have seen a company get featured in a magazine like Wired.com and bump up because of news events, and then settle back into a lower spot after the news cycle passes.

Okay, maybe that wasn't the last thing. How new is your site? Did it launch within the last four months? While it may be an Internet myth, I do think that brand new sites discovered by Google and other search engines get a little "bump" in their rankings when they first come out. Then, there is some settling that occurs. This could also be a factor if your site is new.

I know this doesn't give you any hard answers, but I hopes it's encouraging and helpful.

Dana

Hi Paul,

You ask interesting questions, the answers of which are all subjective really. Yes, a wide variety of anchor text is a good thing. As your site gains history, it will also naturally gain a link profile. Every site's link profile is a little different. Some sites, like "Apple" for instance, probably have much heaviier percentage of branded anchor text than your local family-owned computer store. If you are chugging along and all of a sudden something drastically changes your link profile, this might or might not cause problems with rankings in the SERPs. Some wild fluctuations, even in smaller businesses, can be quite normal, particularly if there was a big news event surrounding their business (perhaps they were acquired by a much larger company) or something of that sort.

You are correct in how you are defining briand names (IMHO). Yes, it absolutely could end up being your name. In fact, I encourage everyone who works and writes online to consider themselves, personally, a "brand" in addition to whatever other businesses they are involved with. This is one thing that makes Google+ so perplexing to me because it totally confuses personal and professional brands (hopefully they'll sort that out soon).

Yes, you absolutely could turn your name into a brand name. It doesn't even take putting it on your site anywhere. I an an in-house SEO for several websites, and one of them, one I built, has "Dana Tan" as it's next most often used anchor text next to its brand "Celebrate Communion." The site is young and tiny, so I assume this will change over time. This came about as a results of my blog commenting where I actually sign with my real name instead of trying to stuff in keywords and be all spammy

That being said, when I'm analyzing reports, I do not consider "Dana Tan" to be a "branded search term" for the site "Celebrate Communion." I do however consider it a branded search term for my SEO blog.

All that being said, yes, it's a very good thing to have branded search. That traffic converts at a higher rate and a much lower cost per conversion (if you are using any paid campaigns) than other traffic because they are predisposed to you. In most cases, branded terms will be the majority of your anchor text, with, hopefully, a wide range of other terms filling in the rest.

Hope that helps, and I apologize for the spacing issues in my response. My Mac doesn't like to double space in SEOMoz.

Dana

If that's the case, if you feel that this fellow is not a good client, in other words, no amount of explaining seems to get through, I would do as EGOL recommends and refer him to a competitor. I hope that helps a little. Let us know what happens.

Hi BobGW,

Honestly, I wouldn't worry about it. Google's own tests have proved that users would rather scroll through large amounts of content than move from one page to another due to latency issues. I assume you are talking about a fairly large e-commerce site. This kind of scenario is common in  e-commerce Once you add the links in the header, footer, associated products, recommended products, etc. I honestly wouldn't worry about it. However, in the interests of always improving, and if it's possible, try changing one of your category pages to using pagination, preferably one with decent traffic but lower page authority. Make the change and determine if there is any impact, positive or negative.

IMHO, I think it's better that you've kept your products higher up in the structure.

I s the only thing prompting you to think about making a change a report from Google that there are too many links on a page? Or are you thinking about changing it based on real problems with the site?

Curious to know as I am very interested in pagination issues.

Dana

Hi Chris,

This is very unfortunate and I am sorry you are going through it. I would use Google's disavow tool and also forward them the correspondence that's taken place. Whether they do anything about it would be doubtful I think. But I do think they need to be made aware of what the ripple effect is from certain algorithm changes. Whatever you do, don't pay this guy to remove your links [IMHO] he is just trying to take you to the cleaners [literally] and I wouldn't trust him to get the job done. Google luck!

Dana

Awesome question and awesome thread. Thanks for asking the question Jesse. We are in the same position. However, for us money IS an object. Thanks to all who have contributed to this thread. We may take some of these suggestions for ourselves. Cheers!

Yes, you can get Google to crawl your site starting from an interior page  using "Fetch as Googlebot" which is available as an item in the left hand navigation menu is Google Webmaster tools. After entering the URL of the page click on "Submit to Index" and then a box will open that gives the choice of submitting just that URL or submitting the URL plus all linking pages. Choose that second option. You can only do this a limited number of times a month so be judicious about which ones you submit this way.

As far as cache date, convention wisdom is that the more recent your cache date, the better. What this means is that Google is actually crawling your site more often. A cache date of 3 weeks or more happens when Google has come to your site or page many times but rarely finds any new content. WHen that's the case, google bot visits less frequently. Because Google values fresh content, it's better to have a newer cache date and to have google bot visiting more frequently.

I would be a little bit concerned that you have 15K pages and only 4.5K indexed. That ratio seems low to me. This might be an indication that google bot is having trouble crawling your entire site. Also, how new is your site? Is it a few months old or a few years old? Google bot crawls new sites more frequently, simply because they are new content. Over time, depending on how often your content is edited, updated or new content is posted, the crawl schedule will change.

I know this is only a partial answer to your question. But hopefully it provides a little insight.

Dana

Hi Bob,

I'm going to take your questions one by one:

1. (1) Do charity websites or company websites with link pages ( about5-10 other links) or links / logo's on the front page offer value even on unrelated sites?  - YES, definitely. This is a great way to get .edu links. find out what universities are selling sponsorships for their websites, or contribute enough to make a good scholarship fund and then ask to have your company logo and link on every page of the site. THere is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Several e-commerce sites have done a good job of doing this.

2. What happens if 80% of the link building I am doing comes from blogs? - FABULOUS - I don't see any problem with this unless you are out there planting blog comments that are spam.

3. I have links that are clearly spam - GET RID OF THEM (I'm sorry, Did I shout????)

4. The "key" here is genuine....c'mon, your next door neighboor  kcan tell if that page is keyword stuffed or not. If you read a page and think to yourself "Gee, hmm, I wonder if that's keyword stuffed..." - It probably us. Rewrite it.

I hope this helps a little!

Dana

Ditto on Wordstream. I am an in-house SEO but also have PPC responsibilities. We just started using Wordstream...LOVE IT! Sure, you can use Excel and Adwords Editor, but I just don't have time for that. Wordstream makes it fast and easy, and no, I'm not an affiliate nor was I compensated in any way to become their walking billboard, LOL. It's just a slicker than snot tool.

P.S. It's also affordable to smaller businesses, which most other tools and/or agencies are not.

Hi Rachel,

I thought this was a great question. I do SEO for a niche site that runs into this all of the time. The site sells religious products. Ss you might imagine, there are Catholic church products, Protestant church products and non-denominational church products and everything in between. Each of these may have a completely different name for exactly the same item. For example, a mainline Protestant church will call a communion wafer a "wafer" while the Catholic church often refers to them as "hosts." In America we refer to the part of a church service where people break bread together and share wine or juice, Communion, but it's also referred to as the Eucharist in Catholica, Episcopal and Lutheran churches.

You can see this opens up a huge number of possibilities. Some searched more than other. I think it's a matter of having such intimate knowledge of your customers and product lines that you know exactly when to use which variations of the keywords. In certain situations they make perfect sense, but use the wrong combination of keywords with the wrong product, and you might succeed in getting search but could end up severely alienating your potential customers once they get to your site.

Great question!

Dana

I think blog commenting can still certainly be effective for SEO when it's done right. I think you're on the right track. I read your first comment and I have a suggestion that hopefully will make your comments more authentic, and hopefully then, get them read and noticed a little bit more.

If I were you I would completely disclose who you are and that you are in the business of selling furnace filters. Do this above and beyond just putting it in your link. Be authentic and conversational. The beginning of your comment started out good, because I felt like I was getting some good information and advice. But the end (particularly when you asked me to Google a specific term), struck me as a pitch, and that was a bit of a turn off.

Can commenting work? Yes. Just remember to be real, write conversationally (no marketing-speak) and above all, give more than you get.

Good luck Jean, I hope this helps!

Dana