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As far as I'm aware it doesn't make any difference when it comes to appearing more frequently for local based searches - we've picked one or the other with dozens of clients and seen no noticeable difference.

Just pick whichever one is most applicable to the business you're creating the page for.

Hi there,

We always recommend our clients place their blog on a sub-folder, rather than sub-domain - so practo.com/blog rather than blog.practo.com. This way any links gained to your blog posts pass more power to your domain.

In terms of the URL it's up to you whether or not to include the category, but we generally don't on ours and client blogs. Practo.com/blog/article-name would be a good way to go (assuming you're talking about blog posts). If you're using Wordpress, change your permalink structure to %postname% and that will do it for you. To do that write a new post and hit 'edit' next to the URL under the title in Wordpress, then select 'custom permalinks' and enter it in there. I'd also recommend installing the Yoast Wordpress SEO plugin, which will really help you nail down the SEO elements of your blog posts and attack long-tail keyphrases.

For tracking and comparing month on month / year on year Google Analytics is excellent (and free).

For getting your content indexed, make sure you have a sitemap (a segmented XML sitemap will work well) and submit to GWT. Try and build some links to your content - or better yet, produce good content and promote it via social media and the links will come naturally, which will help with indexation. You could also consider submitting your site to Google News if the content is good enough and your site meets their requirements.

Hope that helps! : )

Great response from Ryan (thumbed up!)

I'd also add Majestic SEO, the backlink tool there is excellent and I regularly use it in conjuction with OSE.

I'm not sure what you mean here, backlinking isn't a no-no, you just need to be more careful about where you're getting your links from and the anchor text you use. Personally I'd stay away from paid links, but there are a huge number of trusted sites out there.

Aim for high quality links from sites that are in your industry or niche, use Domain Authority to gauge the power and trust of a site and make sure you're varying your anchor text (in fact, just use your brand name as the anchor text). Use content to get your links too wherever possible - get an infographic designed, produce a useful tool, or write an in-depth, well researched article to try and gain links. You can either use your content to guest blog on high quality, relevant sites, or publish it on your own site and promote via social media and other avenues to encourage natural linking to your site.

Here's a post I wrote on creating content that might help:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/indepth-guide-to-content-creation-with-infographic

and this is an excellent article on link-building for those new to it:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-noob-guide-to-link-building

Hope that helps!

Hi David,

No, I don't think AdSense links would be counted towards rankings and I seriously doubt that AdSense links would hurt your rankings.

It sounds far more likely that they're paid text links (nothing to do with Google), most likely purchased by the former SEO agency. These certainly could damage your rankings, particularly if they're sitewide.

Hope that helps!

Hi Chris,

Google AdWords Keyword Tool, Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery are the three tools I most regularly use for finding search volumes for local search terms. If you can afford it Hitwise will give you the most accurate information, but this is out of most people's budget so not usually an option (I only include it to be thorough).

Here's a reasonably useful post for finding local search terms, that might give you a couple of ideas and help you figure out the best terms for your client:

http://www.smallbusinesssem.com/local-keyword-research/1787/

Hope that helps : )

Hi Charles,

No problem at all - really pleased it helped!

I will drop you an email tomorrow and see how we can help out with things (it's nearly midnight here in the UK!), hopefully we'll be able to help you put a strong strategy in place to deal with this and get things back on track for you.

Thanks Charles

Thanks Nicola, glad I could help : )

It is scary to avoid using anchor text links - but bear in mind you can always include your keyphrase around a brand name link, I think there's some merit to this as Google will use surrounding text in the absence of anchor text.

It depends on your industry / niche - for example if you're in the web design industry, a site like sixrevisions or designfloat would be ideal.

To help you with your linkbuilding, here's a phenomenal post by Jon Cooper:

http://pointblankseo.com/link-building-strategies

That should give you more than enough tactics to start getting some decent, trusted links.

Hope that helps you Cesar

No worries at all - we're all here to help!

Haven't seen the other questions, but the list of recommended companies on the SEOMoz site is a good place to start : )

Not really a simple answer to this I'm afraid, as it depends on a host of other factors. With that said however a huge spike in your backlinks would certainly be cause for suspicion from Google's point of view. However, natural spikes do happen (such as a particularly popular piece of content for example), and don't always result in a penalty.

If I were you I'd aim for a steady stream of links that gradually increase over time, rather than hammering it from the outset.

You should also be aware of the types of links you're getting - aim for relevancy and quality in your link-building and you can't go too far wrong. If you're aiming for 'quick wins' of low quality and relevancy then you're essentially building your house on sand, when you should be aiming for solid foundations. I'd choose fewer high quality links over a higher number of low quality links every time.

Lastly, if you are starting link-building for the first time I'd be careful of over-use of exact match anchor text - you want to keep your backlink profile looking as natural as possible, so aim for a minimum of 50% brand name links.

Good luck with your new SEO firm - good testimonials are always a positive sign and a good place to start : )

Hope that's of some help to you!

Hi Tony,

In my personal opinion, no. The benefit gained from article marketing directories are minimal anyway, and they just put you on potentially dodgy ground for the future. Instead of investing time and effort producing fairly low quality content for these kind of platforms, spend your time producing high quality, unique content and promoting it, and allow that to do the link-building for you.

The content marketing strategy will not only ensure that you have something of real value on your site, but it is a much more viable long-term strategy and far more secured against future algorithm updates.

I understand the temptation to opt for the easier link-building routes, but honestly you're far better served putting in the effort and producing something of real value and quality and using that as a conduit for link acquisition. I would always rather gain one strong, relevant and valuable link than gain a hundred low quality links with questionable relevancy.

If you need a hand getting started with content production, link-building and content promotion, I'd give these posts a read:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/indepth-guide-to-content-creation-with-infographic

http://pointblankseo.com/link-building-strategies

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-noob-guide-to-link-building

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/getting-the-maximum-number-of-links-from-your-infographic

Hope that helps answer your question Tony - of course it's just my opinion, but it's the approach we use for our clients and we consistently see good results, so hopefully you can do the same for your website.

I would recommend a content-based approach to link-building, as it has a much better ROI than chasing down one link at a time.

I've written a couple of SEOMoz posts that might be useful to you, the first on creating good content:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/indepth-guide-to-content-creation-with-infographic

and the second on using infographics to build backlinks:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/getting-the-maximum-number-of-links-from-your-infographic

I'd also highly recommend you read the post Keri linked to, some great stuff in there, particularly if you're new to link-building.

Hope that's of some use to you! Good luck with your link-building campaign.