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Utilikilts.com

Unless I was dealing with a LARGE network of sites that did not correlate with eachother all that much I would just stick with the folder/subfolder structure.

The biggest issue comes down to why anyone would want to divide content into a bunch of individual sites instead of having them mesh together.

The whole is definitely greater than the sum of its parts.

Hi Brant,

AS Donnie mentioned, The More About This Place area are not links per se, but are mentions of your site around the web.  This can include your current site and old site.  Your new site will more than likely be mention the next time Google updates its info for Google Places.  The more citations(mentions of your website the better.

The BEST thing you can do at this point is make sure the directories and review places have your proper NAP, also known as Name Address and Phone number.  Again, Donnie mentioned reading David Mihm's website to review the local factors for SEO.

Make sure your NAP and website match ACROSS the web, everywhere you can list it appropriately.  So there may be some major updating on your part, and that can help gel your info across the web together so your site becomes more powerful.

If they are not doing it now, they will be soon I am sure.  Why?  Since it would be great for business.

I have little doubt that discount travel companies utilize the offline data to signal what type of deal they may offer your or accept.

Depending on what Zip code you are in, or if you use a regular bank card or Platinum American Express to pay.

This will no doubt translate to individual user results via search engines.

This question also got me thinking about the potential of an "Online ID Card" or license to surf the web.  While I hate the idea, it would lessen the problems for anti-piracy groups and crime (tracing IP's and proving who did what etc), and would be a marketers dream know exactly who was doing what on the internet.

It would certainly ruin much of what makes the internet great, but it would bring some type order to it for government and corporations.

Sorry I mentioned it.

My suggestion would be to use the keyword tool Google provides to look at the organic and local numbers regarding those keywords and phrases.

Google Keyword Tool

I took a quick gander and saw a number o great keywords and phrases, but depending on your experience with SEO, budget, and understanding of the process, some phrases may be too competitive.

Keywords I would taget would include:

Airport Parking

Parking in Airport

Cheap Airport Parking

Cheap Airport Car Parking

Airport Parking Services

Car Park At Airport

Airport Park

Take a look at the list you can come up with, and rank them by number of Global or Local searches.

This is my opinion as well, but due to some of the minimal designs out there, it would be difficult to fit an appropriate

without disrupting the design.

I think time is the biggest element here, as there is a chance that the content has yet to be crawled or indexed.  While I have read that there is benefit to having links as close to the root page/domain as possible, I don't believe pages being a directory or two away matters all that much.

You would definitely want to do proper redirection if you are going to change your url structure site wide. If you are utilizing a platform like wordpress this is rather easy.

You might also want to consider keeping the current structure in tact, and creating links on the previous well ranked page.  I would most likely go with the 301 redirect, but have seen popular blogs/sites simply put a link on the previous page to the new page.  That way the popular page will still be seen but the new link will be easily crawled and indexed.

Hi...

I definitely can understand how frustrating it is to be in such a competitive market and industry, especially when people seem to be using blue/gray/blackhat type of strategies that seem to be pushing them ahead.

My best advice is to stay the course and know that these get to the top quick schemes will eventually be dealt with by the major search engines.

In the meantime, try to learn as much as you can about:

Organic SEO techniques

Local SEO techniques

Social Media Marketing

Genuine link building, which includes building relationships with local businesses, communities, and blogs.

Building relationships with your customer base

You have to start somewhere, and like I have said before, Rome was not built in a day.  So work on each strategy, and move on to the next.  By the time you are done many of the search engines will have caught up to your work and your rankings should improve.

SEOmoz is a fantastic place to start, from the beginner seo guides, to the forum posts.  If you think this will take too much time, consider becoming a client of one of the pros.

Best of luck

I can't see how you could beat MozCon.  While I am not in the business of SEO, I asked my wife if I could go to Mozcon for my birthday gift.  She laughed and said I have serious problems, but it would be a kick to listen to an meet the people who are so far ahead of the curve.

I am fairly confident that Google doesn't go around slapping websites with linkfarm status unless they are certain that they are up to no good.

I would recommend doing proper navigation with appropriate subdivisions.

If you did a website about Animals, which is obviously a huge subject, you would start with:

Animals - Homepage

Aardvark - Antelope - Bears - Birds and so on

You would then follow up with the proper subdivisions sorted by species of said animal, or by color, or whatever.  There is a chance that on each subpage you may choose to not have subdivisions in the main navigation, but actually in the body of the main text for that animal.

If things are done properly how could this even be considered a link farm?

You do mention 100 links per page, so if it is appropriate that is fine, but I do not know of many subjects that are worthy of 100 links or more per page.

You've asked quite a few questions in one post, but I will do my best to answer a few.

If you are focusing on local SEO, get into as many local directories as you can, and make sure you Name, Address, and Phone number are IDENTICAL in each directory as it is found in Google Places, Bing Local, and Local Yahoo.

When you are listing in the free directories that Google seems to appreciate, e.g. Yelp, Kudzu, Hotfrog, Merchant Circle the search engines will more than likely find them on their own.  However, if you are worried about them being crawled/indexed or not seen in a reasonable time frame you could always post the links to your profile to Twitter or Facebook, or in your blog which will also show up in your RSS feed.

While you shouldn't over do it, this can potentially help the process of being found.

Attempt to get into the powerful free directories before you start spending money on the paid, IMO.

It really comes down to the overall revenue and industry.  Mom and pops gasp.  The Target and Deloitte type companies do not.

In my opinion, as a small business owner who gets contacted by SEO folk on a weekly basis, I would hate to hire anyone who thinks I have deep pockets.  I am also of the opinion that chasing people/companies because you want the big score is the best way to ruin your SEO business.

The key is being able to explain the value of SEO and internet marketing in a way that makes sense.  Whether that is to a mom and pop business or a multinational company, they have to see the value.  If you are turned down often by these "stingy" folk, you may be doing or saying the wrong things.

I really enjoy topics like this, thanks for asking such a great question.

I think you might need the help of a professional SEO company since you have so many specific questions and theories.

Currently, you are cherry picking a few odd examples, when I believe your time could be better spent making sure you have registered at places that are relevant to your business, onsite SEO, offsite, SEO, linkbuilding, content building, following David Mihms guide...while this will take away from your investigation, it will put you a position to improve your SERP.

Dwelling on a competitor can be a huge waste of time and effort since you can only control what you do.  I very much doubt the paid positions are helping him at all.

I find this frustraing as well at times, but guess what?  I had to start somewhere too.  Hopefully many of the people who have found a quality source, such as this site, will be guided in a great direction.

At some point in the future it will be absolute common knowledge that the meta, title etc. will have to optimized well, and the SEO questions will revolve around schema.org, seo strategies for specific industries and networking etc.

I believe things will evolve rather quickly, but some will have to still start at the beginning, and some will have evolved into cutting edge industry leaders.  In any industry this is how it begins, and what you are asking is what will separate the best from the rest.

In such a fledgling industry, I would love to see more outside the box thinking and speculation on where SEO should be heading.  I've had responses about this from some leaders in this community, and many mention that Matt Cutts says SEOers should never be chasing Google.

While some might be chasing, it would be wonderful to see honest speculation to stay ahead of the search engines, where the value added by SEO experts is what Google and the like will start to consider as superior, and change their algos to have an affinity to the best webdev and SEO practices.

What are the perceived negative effects, if any, of doing a silo structure?

Hi Steven,

While I don't feel it's necessary to defend SEOmoz, or SEO for that matter, it is impossible to know exactly what do to implement perfect SEO techniques and rank in the top spot for each industry.

However, SEOmoz is one of the few places I have watched webinars that collect vertical data, and process the statistics to made heads and tails of it.  I do remember reading a Google Best Practices Guide from 2010 that did something similar, but not as well as SEOmoz.

The more I read and learn from this site, the more I realize that SEO is not abut tricking Google and other search engines.  It is about relying on the best practices to create high quality, relevant websites that Google will appreciate.  I continue to believe that if SEOers stay consistent in their practices, Google will end up changing their algorithms to suit SEOmoz's standards.  Search engines will be chasing our sites, and our clients sites based on the excellent product we are helping produce.

SEO can be an extremely frustrating if you are looking for black and white answers.  I find the best practices approach to be much less frustrating, and easier to manage in regards to expectations and results.

Edit

I also wanted to mention that I wish people would have more ideas to consider in reference to best practices and techniques.  This is how SEO will evolve, and rarely do people have a chance to be in on the ground floor with cool stuff like this.

Excellent job!  WHat a wonderful way to start the week.

Agreed.

I spent some time working on a hybrid silo structure in my blog, and proper cross linking on the main area of the site thanks to the discussion here.

Yes you would change it, but you would most likely do a 301 redirect from the old site to the new site so you do not lose pagerank.