Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Andy,

I would suggest running rel=next and rel=prev canonical tags with these.

Read more about it here http://yoast.com/rel-next-prev-paginated-archives/

Also although all-in-one seo is a good plugin I would suggest sticking with yoast. I would point out,  do not attempt to run both at the one time either.

Hope this helps.

Dan

Hi,

It seems like you are running this more like a chore than a beneficial blog.

I would suggest posting when the post is completed (not necessarily all at the one time). I would also create content without being to concerned on length.

A blog should be a naturally occurring organic site OR component to your site. Post as often as you like, there are no rules to how often as long as you post occasionally to ensure fresh content.

Remember SEO is not simply a set of rules, focus on generating content to excite and/or educate your visitors and the rest will follow.

Hope this helps!

Dan

Hi Chris,

Internal linking is an important but not over beneficial part of optimising your site.

Typically a good navigation, possibly a meaningful footer (with links) and breadcrumbs can be helpful for a users navigation. These approaches account for most of the internal linking on a site.

When running with these approaches, I would always recommend text links (avoid images where possible) and ensure above all it gives the user the best experience.

For your example above, writing Pink widgets | Blue widgets | Green widgets in the nav might take up to much real estate and look a little sloppy, try a drop down with the main category 'widgets' and run the colours as sub categories. Having a site structure www.example.com/widgets/blue will help to define widgets are an important concept on your site  while also highlighting that you have Pink widgets | Blue widgets | Green widgets. It will be assumed that for the product pages in this example, engaging unique content is available.

That said, if you see the need I would also encourage you to have internal link within your content, WHERE RELEVANT. I have seen to many sites, simply go through their content and pick out the popular keywords linking all over the place. If it helps the user (possibly by defining an unusual term OR refering to a service OR product described on a different page) it's worth doing.

One of my pet hates is finding a keyword on page that links to itself (same URL) because it is a keyword that is being targeted. As a user it's frustrating and personally I immediately leave sites running this practice.

You don't have to continually link to your desired page with the same keywords, in fact it's discouraged. Google are becoming increasingly better at understanding intent, therefore do what is best for your visitors and you will ensure that your site enjoys longevity in search rankings...

Best of success,

Dan

Hi,

I assuming you are talking about the keyword tool found incorporated in Google Adwords, https://adwords.google.com/o/KeywordTool 

This, although an estimate, is the most accurate source of data of keyword search volumes. I have compared these values to impressions given for consistently ranking keywords in webmasters and they match up.

Make sure when you run these searches in adwords, you have your desired country selected, and I would suggest selecting "exact match" instead of broad. The other thing to consider when examining this data is that the search results can be seasonal. The data provided is simply in the last month, so a trending topic (Oscar Pistorius) OR a seasonal one (Christmas Shopping) may not give the results you might think. Google Trends can help you realise this...

Dan

Hi Victoria,

I agree with Andy but would put it this way.

A well constructed site with a lot of great content and some well situated external links (on a variety of dominant and relevant sites in related industries) will out perform many site with little content all interlinking any day of the week.

The unknown here is, what are the group is going to blog or sell? If you can concept the site as the one entity and all the women are discussing/selling to a similar topic, fantastic. But, if the topics are a little abstract (say baby clothes, pets and mountain biking) I would not try running them as one, unless you can build the site to discuss all these topics in very fluid way (with the example I gave I very much doubt it would be possible, although I could be surprised).

The main takeaway is that I wouldn't simply run a directory of separate sites on the one domain without having a strong theme to seamlessly offer them as the one site with a variety of categories (for use of a better word). Also for usability I would also ensure they ran on the same theme.

If you can pull off the one site I commend you and think as a group you'll go far. Don't forget about Andy and I when you make your first million

Hope this helps.

Dan

Hi David,

Forget Exact Match Domains. Firstly, they no longer have the appeal (as they are not as easy to rank nowadays). More than one domain means that you need to work twice or multiple times as hard in order to get them to rank.

You are best investing the time in your site. Generate more content, run a news section or a blog. Guest post on like sites with engaging topics in your industry. Engage in forums, be known as the leader in your industry. One strong site is better than many small sites. You don't see apple run a site for tablets OR phones OR laptops.

Hope this helps,

Dan

Hi Laura,

I would suggest setting up Google webmasters and checking the crawl errors. Google will already be monitoring this so once you have set it up, the errors will already be listed. My feelings are that the urls may have changed in a subtle way eg. Www now non-www or html files now php... Webmasters will give clues.  Also while your there I recommend submitting a sitemap.

Best of luck,

Dan

Hi Stew,

Firstly dynamic URL's are often used to assist with searching OR filtering on a site. The practice is an inevitable part of offering flexibility to the user.

The issue with overly dynamic URL is that, for example;

If you have three elements to your URL EG/ http://test.com/search?element1=a&element2=b&element3=c and each element has 10 options, google will eventually crawl 10x10x10 pages = 1000 pages. Overly Dynamic URL's can create thousands of combinations of a URL very quickly and each URL will be seen as a unique page by Google.

Most of these pages will have duplicated content (although different products in different orders) on it. Depending on the way this section works, you may want to block the crawling of this search section using robots.txt.

I would also go to webmasters->YOUR-SITE->configuration->URL Parameters From here you can advise Google what to do with each element.

Hope this helps!

Dan

Hi Edison,

Your question isn't very clear, but I will attempt to answer it the best I can.

You can target more the one keyword to a page OR multiple pages to a keyword. Generally I would only target one to three keywords per page depending on the similarity of the key phrases and the competitiveness. For best practice, generally one keyword per page is best.

On a first attempt I would only work with one page for any one key phrase. I have seen multiple pages from the one site rank on the first page for competitive keywords, but it is challenging.

Hope this helps,

Dan

Hi,

Using WordPress I would recommend WordFence. If the DDOS attack is simply an attempt to overload your server with bogus requests there is not a huge amount that can be done as it act sin a similar manner to gaining a lot of traffic from say a marketing exercise.

But if the DDOS is attempting to hack into your site, there are a number of preventative measures that the plugin does to ensure it is not an easy task.

Firstly ensure all your plugins are up to date along with the WordPress build. Disable any plugins that you are not 100% sure of.

Upon installation of the WordFence plugin, I would highly recommend going to options -> Login Security Options and changing

Lock out after how many login failures & Lock out after how many forgot password attempts TO 5 attempts max

AND

Amount of time a user is locked out TO 2hrs minimum

Also by adding your email at the top of the options you will be alerted when anything occurs on your site (including legitimate logins) so that you can make informed decisions.

Oh, and unless you are actually serving the site up from you Mac OR are concerned that the attacks you have experienced are coming from your machine (with a DDOS, I would find it unlikely), Malware software will not be helpful in this scenario.

Dan

Hey Juana,

First start with your company name, then any uniquely branded item OR service you sell

EG/ Apple would add Apple, iPad, iPhone, iPod etc

EG/ SEOMoz would add SEOMoz, Open Site Explorer, maybe PRO Dashboard (although this is getting to be too broad) etc

I would also add things like Models numbers if this is a defining part of you business (EG/ a TV OR car manufacturer) and home page URL's (EG/ www.apple.com) as it is part of your brand...

Hope this helps,

Dan

Hi,

Unless he is intending selling of sections of the business in future, run everything on the one site.

Dan

Hi Rob,

Absolutely. The key is, like Agents of Value suggest, an honest and valuable response on the right types of sites are the way to go.

I stick to the 50-50 rule when it comes to commenting on blogs. Firstly, I would never run more than 2 links per comment. I would respond to a blog with some prior knowledge (if you are working for a client, get them to offer an answer) and in the response, I would pick on one keyphrase to link from, maximum. Then at the end of the comment, sign off with your name and site/company... EG/ Dan from f4240.com (see what I did there, one no-follow link for me

Although the current understanding is targeted keywords should be less than 40% of your backlinking profile, this will head you in the right direction.

I think the way to approach it is a well worded comment will give you three things, the acknowledgement that you a vocal and experienced person in your field, it will also give you natural traffic to your site as the person reading will want to know more and finally, the SEO benefit. If you focus on nailing the first two benefits the SEO benefits is a bonus.

Best of success

Dan

Hi Mark,

I personally would run a clean 301 to the new site, then use something like $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'] (in PHP) to determine where the user came from.  If it's from the old site, run a small banner in the header (like Hello bar) to advise your users of the change. This would be a lot cleaner for search engines and very user friendly.

Don't forget to transfer the sites worth using webmasters...

Hope this helps.

Dan

Hi Dana,

Without knowing anything about the site or the keywords, I would deduce that the url_1 page has best link profile from external sources for KW1...

You will be able to see this by running the three URL's through open site explorer. This will help you understand your offsite optimisation.

I would imagine the url_1 has more links than the other two AND/OR the sources of these links are more relevant (or sites with higher Page / Domain Authority) AND the ratio of keywords in the anchor text vs generic anchor text is better (would aim for 1 keyword back link to 3-4 generics).

At the end of the day, the reason SEO is such a busy and exciting industry is that there are many signals that help a page rank. If there was an exact answer to your question the industry wouldn't exist.

Hope this helps,

Dan

Hi Steve,

I think you should rephrase the question...

How can a responsive design harm SEO?

Typically a responsive design is driven by either USER AGENT or screen size... Both of these, if implemented correctly will not affect the way the Google Bot crawls the site. I would doubt there will be issues with 404's as the URL will be the same regardless of the device.

I would suggest it is poor implementation of the design.

Hope this helps!

Dan

Hi Guys,

I think the sentiments that is being passed here is the difference between link building and link earning... Submitting to directories is a link building activity that can be achieved with little friction, and therefore is often subcontracted to other people. But what are the directories? Will the ever be used to find a business like yours OR are they simply directory spam... My guess is the later.

There are a few directories out there that are worthwhile, but I would recommend making these submissions yourself. Set aside say 2hrs on a Saturday morning (OR Monday morning if it is simply the company you work for NOT own) to find the next one and make your submissions. I would take a top down approach to directory listings. Pick on the most beneficial and work your way down, continually asking yourself the question "Would I use a site like this to find a business like mine?"

If you are in the States, Canada OR UK I would suggest looking into getListed.org (Please getListed/SEOMoz team, do Australia next for directories worth chasing. Also SEOMoz have a list of directories that they feel are worthwhile that you can access as a PRO user... Some are genre directories.

Think about it this way, What happens if your company was to move? Running directory listings on 100, 500, 1000 poor quality directories, would you bother to update the address on all of them. If you got someone else to do it, would you have all the login details they used to generate all these links... Probably not... If you do it yourself, you have all the details, you have only approached the directories worth targeting and the task is a lot more manageable...

Running low quality backlinks (directory listings included) puts you at greater risk of the Penguin update. Once you have sit below the threshold, you are at risk of being penalised either manually or by the next Penguin update. Mpst SEO will tell you, the recovery tasks involved in breaking the Penguin penalty are 2 to 5 times the amount of work that building the poor links in the first place. Don't risk it!

On a final note, link earning is about chasing after those links that have the friction associate to them to acquire... EG/ Google Maps with there postcards approval process etc. You should always approach any form of backlink by believing the link will be more valuable from the organic traffic that it will bring your site from the source site than the backlink is towards your backlinking profile.

Thus ends my novel, congrats if you made it this far

Hope this helps,

Dan

Hey Brian,

If you tear everything away what are you left with?  A company that would like to rank better and a search engine that wants people to do the right thing and naturally build their online business. Therefore, who is the best person to write content for Blogs and other backlinks? The Client.

The simply reality is they almost never have the time to. This is where your skills as an SEO really get tested. Work out which backlinks require an experts response. Directories you can do yourself. Feed a constant stream of blogs (already posted on the Web) for the client to comment, if their time poor, get them to voice record an answer (most OS have a voice recorder). Writting blogs... If you have to write a blog for your client, I can tell already, your looking to post it on the wrong site. FACT. Any site willing to publish an article by someone completely outside their skill set, is the wrong site.

I think about it this way, you should always aim to get more value out of the interest of an article or blog post via natural traffic than the value of the backlink itself. If it's the other way round, generally it's not worth it.

Dan

Hi Alan,

This is a two part question. For the search results I would add

Disallow http://www.practicerange.com/Search.aspx?m=*

To your robots.txt file. I would probably increase to the entirety of search (by removing the ?m= from the line above), but as I don't completely comprehend how your search section works start with the above. It very rare that search pages offer new content,  generally they dilute other pages by duplication.

With your second issue I imagine there are clues in the aspxerrorpath variable. Although I couldn't get any combination of this string to render the below url didn't return to the 404 page like the rest did. Its the tilda (~) in the error string that I think offers the biggest clue.

http://www.practicerange.com/Golf-Training-Aids/Golf-Nets/

Hope this helps,

Dan

Hi,

Scrap Link Building... Treat it as Link Earning, period!

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=site%3Aseomoz.org+link+earning

Best Software? No software is best software!

Hope this helps,

Dan