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Can anyone recommend a hosted eCommerce solution that makes blog/article creation very easy and seamlessly integrates the content into the storefront?

If the solution also offered great social media tools, also, that would be great.

I would use the meta description tag synergistically with the intent of the page.

if the audience I was trying to reach was local the keyword phrase I'm optimizing for might be "Acupuncture for pregnancy in Chester" or if I wanted traffic from all over it might be "Benefits of Acupuncture during preganancy".

Let's assume local. In that case my title tag might be...

<title>Acupuncture for Pregnancy Chester | Company Name</title>

Of course, I'd include the relevant terms in my H1 tag, again in my content (bolded) with great, relevant copy.

(PS - I didn't count my characters for the title or meta description - remember to stay within the character limit recommendations)

Basically the content of the title tag, meta description, H1, bold and content should flow from your keyword research and intended audience.

That's my take on it,

Mark

How do you folks approach adding some SEO value to the standard "every site has them" pages like "About Us", "Contact Us" and such?

I struggle trying to find some relevant non-branded content. We normally cover all the customers relevant services and product offerings in pages specfiically tailored to that content, but don't want to waste pages if they could have some value in drawing traffic.

Any great ideas, Mozworld?

Thanks,

Mark

I'll second EGOL's recommendation on several fronts.

Even if you decide to turn it over to a PPC pro in the future I'd recommend managing your PPC campaigns at the beginning. If you decide to turn the management of the campaign over to an agency later, you will be much better equipped to make that decision.

Definitely read Brian Gedde's Advanced Google Adwords. Brian Geddes provides tremendous insights and very clear instructions and methodologies. I had been managing my own campaigns for years and changed everything after reading this book.

The only caveat is time. It can be time consuming to manage, especially at first, or if you aren't seeing the results you expect. Honing in on your best results may include trying different ads, A/B testing, geo-targeting and as you already mentioned, a good bit of data analysis. If you have a handful of pages or products that may not take too long. And you're going to burn through some Adwords dollars during this phase.

Good luck - it's a great tool and it's brought plenty of business my way.

Definitely have it go to your own site. Having spent 10 years in the newspaper industry (IT/Web) I'd be shocked if they know SEO.

I've used a hosted solution which I've found to be very SEO friendly - www.instantestore.com - however, it's a hosted solution.

Instantestore offers the ability to create your preferred URL, static pages, Meta description and title, for example.

Answering my own question - eventually found another tool - it's amazing how many tools just piggyback off SEMoz OSE - and also discovered that I could find the site if I dropped the www.

Thanks,

Mark

SEOMoz Link Analysis tool apparently doesn't have any info on my clients site - www.tricitymech.com according to the response from Open Site Explorer.

Is there a free tool available that doesn't use OSE that you could recommend?

What would the effect of no-following the footer links? Would it have any impact on the followed links at the top of the page?

Sorry - logged in with my agency account! The links are identical in the drop down menu and at the bottom of the page. I'm inclined to ask the designer to remove the footer links.

Our developers typically have a CSS driven html menu at the top of the page with links to inside pages. They then have the same links in the footer.

Does this double navigation cause any SEO issues or does Google disregard the second set of links?

Thanks,

Mark

If Thomas is no following their links you'd have to decide if the traffic Thomas would drive is worth the cost, I do think that a 2k cost for a link should provide some juice.

Great call, EGOL. Second page of Google images.

Thanks,

Mark

I'm working with a local kitchen remodeler. In reviewing the organic keyword searches for the last month I notice the word "kitchens" appearing in the top 10 keyword searches.

Since I know we aren't ranking for the term "kitchens" I dug deeper. A handful of the searches are from the local area but most are one occurence of searches from cities across the US and the world.

My surmise is that because there are 2.2 million searches for kitchens every month we just happen to be scraping enough of these searches, irrelevant as they are to our client, to make it look like an important keyword. Most of the visitors using this keyword are gone in seconds.

Just wanted some folks to confirm what I'm thinking - that "kitchens" showing up in our top 10 keywords list is a bit of a red herring - and we should focus on more localized keyword searches.

You definitely want to avoid "dry cleaners Birmingham". Just write to the folks. "Looking for a dry cleaner in Birmingham?" or something similar. Your content should be a blended to serve both humans and bots.

I've met with a potential client who has a site with 1,000's of very specific part #'s which don't show in the SERP's on Google. They definitely have the issue of dynamic URL's - but the URL for the part # searches is an IP address rather than their domain name - example:

188.888.888.888/partssearch.php?pnum='1233445'

I've not seen the IP address used like this for an external website - is this acceptable for SEO purposes?

Thanks,

Mark

After watching today's excellent WBF by Brian on Adwords, I still have a question. At one point do you believe a PPC keyword or adgroup has enough data to make a decision. Brian mentioned 30,000 impressions. I've heard 200 clicks.

Is there a concensus or set of rules anyone could recommend as a guideline. I do PPC but it's not a daily focus, and find myself vacillating, and frankly, probably wasting time and money by not having a more defined approach to PPC.

Or check Odesk.com. You can filter providers by skill, cost, customer ratings and can find some decent authors if you check their portfolio.

Jon,

Here's a couple of ideas for you - none of which will actually save you the hard work that is link building.

Is all your content visible or is some of it hidden behind a subscribers firewall? If all your content is visible make check to see if your CMS has SEO functions and that your editors or "online content" folks know how to handle the on page aspects of the news story - good title tag, SEO relevant headline, etc.

Your best stories to generate links are going to be positive pieces on local business or organizations. You'll have to request these links - contact the business and offer to provide them with the html link. Organizations will be glad to have been featured and it will raise their credibility to link to a story in the local newspaper.

Your newspaper probably puts out some guides - like the Spring Wedding Guide or Annual Guide on Senior Citizens. Be sure you aggregate this content online and request links from advertisers and anyone who may have been featured in the product that has a website.

List your site on local directories pointing to specific sections - classifieds, for example.

Your newspaper no doubt ranks very high for "news" and "newspaper" on all local searches - but maybe not for Real Estate, or Weddings or Pets. Find sites that compliment this content and request links with the right anchor text.

You've got an awesome problem - every site should have so much new, quality content developed everyday!\