Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Because your business and target market is varied, I recommend picking an area of focus while you develop a process, evolve personal best practices, and learn. You have some good suggestions above. Pick on or two areas you can learn the most from, develop a plan, implement it, measure success and progress, and evaluate what's working, what's not working and where there's room for improvement. Adapt and go from there.

In terms of where to start, consider focusing on the product/services and customers you know best. Look to an area that already has established competitors so you can review what they've done well and no so well and learn from them.

Here's a discussion from last year on the same topic. The advice given is sound and still applicable.

http://moz.com/community/q/what-is-a-good-affordable-link-building-service-tried-jason-acidre-s

Agree with what LindaLV has said, but want to be sure you're not talking about a domain name. Hyphens used when referencing a file or folder name is good. Hyphens in a domain name is less than ideal.

So, for example,

http://www.domainname.com/folder-name/file-name.html is good,

http://www.domain-name.com/foldername/filename.html is not so good.

Domain names should be short, memorable, preferably branded, and use no special characters.

I'm confused when you talk about a content strategy and your spreadsheet looks like it's addressing only a subset of what I would expect in a strategy - that what, when and where.

So maybe I'm just caught up in semantics, but I'm really wondering about your objectives, who your audience is, where they like to hang out, the information they want and need, and how you'll measure progress and/or know when adjustment is needed. I think those questions need to be asked and answered before you get to your spreadsheet.

• The content marketing institute has a very useful guide for developing a content marketing strategy that I look at from time-to-time.
• This mozinar provides some excellent tools and examples.
• I also like this 2012 Moz post by Stephanie Chang because of it's practical and manageable for most small business owners. I have no idea if you're a big or small business. Just say'in I find it easier to learn by starting small.

I agree with Michael Edwards, that you maybe don't need to post the same thing to all platforms. The one restriction we all face is time and ties back to my other questions. Do you really need to be in all those places? I'd start narrower and have a plan to spread after have met with some success. The plan would include how to reuse existing content. For example, bundling post charts and images into slideshare presentations or webinars.

I took the survey and gave you my feedback. I also want you to know that I appreciate your asking and valuing our feedback and opinions. I also hope you summarize and share what you learn.

Note: I didn't understand your comment that tags should be mutually exclusive. If I have an article about saving money on flowers, why would I not tag that with both "budgeting" and "flowers"?

You absolutely would want to tag the article with both "money" and "flowers". Mutually exclusive means there should be no overlap in the meaning of two tags, in this example, "money" and "flowers". Clearly these two tags reference different topics. An example of undifferentiated or non-mutually exclusive tags would be "money" and "cash", or "flower". "flowers" and "flowering".

All articles belong to one and only one category, as implied by their URL structure. This creates some challenges because some articles may have some relevance to more than one category but I think I can live with this

You could actually replicate the article in more than one category, but you'd have to pick one as the primary and tag the other as canonical. Hopefully this would the exception as opposed to the rule.

Am I making sense?

Absolutely. Good plan.

Hi Uzair,

1. Is my Keyword density too high and will Google look at this as keyword stuffing?

There is no magic number when it comes to keyword density. Rule of thumb is somewhere in the neighborhood of 2-6 times per post depending on it's length. Although 41 certainly sounds like a lot,the better question is "does it sound forced or stuffed"? I suggest you ask for a fresh, unbiased opinion. If feedback says it does, the quality of your post will suffer and readers will exit the page more frequently. Lessen the use of those terms if it does sound forced or unnatural. Try using a similar or related term like "fruit" from time-to-time instead.

2. Do I have to target each Singular and Plural keyword individually? Or will targeting 'Apple' will also automatically target 'Apples' for me and vice versa?

You should try to use each term at least once. Google will consider "apple" and "apples" close variations of one another, meaning it will consider them one in the same. A close variation includes misspellings, singular and plural forms, acronyms, stemmings (such as post and posting), abbreviations, and accents. You might gain a slight advantage by using one versus the other so I'd use your primary keyword phrase (containing apple or apples) in the title tag, meta description and headings.

Yes, your thinking is correct.

Don't rush it. (And I see you aren't.) Map out your information architecture carefully cause, as you know, it's difficult to change after-the-fact.

I'd use the big, broad terms as categories and the topics as tags (which should definitely be noindexed). Your categories seem to be related to where you are in the wedding process - engagement, wedding service, reception, honeymoon, follow-ups. Tags seem to be specific to products, vendors and services and tools e.g. hair, dress and makeup, photographers, officiants, and DJs, invitations, speeches, songs, and so on. Tags can span different stages in the process but are mutually exclusive.

I hate to share stuff I've written on Moz in case it gets interpreted as link planting, but in this case I really think this post might help (www.b-seenontop.com/seo-blog/how-to-pick-blog-categories-and-tags/). This one from WPBeginer is also quite good. (http://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/categories-vs-tags-seo-best-practices-which-one-is-better/).

Does that help? You're definitely on the right path.

I imagine they have a variety of ways. If they're like most social media channels, they'd probably look at things like:

• who and where the +1's came from
• are you connected with them on other social media channels
• do you hang in the same circles
• how active are the connected accounts
• what kinds of thing do they post and engage with
• are the accounts verifiable
• do they have a profile photo
• is it purchased or real
• who else they associate with online.

Hey Mark,

Yes, "flat" IS confusing. I'm very concrete. When I hear "flat" I picture a plank. Yet when it comes to SEO, you should really envision (and aim for) a short, wide, pyramid-shaped information architecture. You want to keep the most important (money) pages closest to the top of the structure as they tend to receive the most SEO equity and therefore have an advantage when it comes to ranking.

I also agree there's little consistency when you're scanning blogs looking for examples. Blogging is still relatively new and I think you'll start to see more consistency as competition and player sophistication continues to grow.

I like your thought about using topic labels instead of a vanilla "blog" folder; it's the number of topics I'm not keen on. I think a good rule of thumb is to aim for no more than 5-9 pages at the top of your information architecture for the reasons you yourself have observed above. People do search for "wedding blog" and a bunch of other related but similar terms (perhaps one in your niche? "wedding planning blog") so that could work.

I also think your goal of having rich static + variable topic content pages is an excellent one  and agree that yes, once you get there, they should definitely be indexed.

Hmm.

Will you have a folder for your blog? Something like http://www.domain.ext/blog/<topic-or-category>/articles/<article-name>? I think I found your site (wednet) and it looks like you already have a blog and a few other important pages in the root directory.  </article-name></topic-or-category>

I would NOT park the articles themselves in the root domain. While you want a flat(ish) architecture, you don't want it to be completely level; you want your most important "money" pages in the root directory. If you have 15-20 categories and 3-15 articles per category, you'd have between 45 and 300 posts in the root directory and that's too flat.

If it were me, I'd go with http://www.domain.ext/blog/<article-name>. (Notice I removed "/<topic-or-category>/articles" from the example you provided.) You can use Wordpress to set up topic-or-category pages e.g. http://www.domain.ext/blog/<topic-or-category>/<article-name>, but these should be noindexed. They're there only to make it quick and easy for your audience to find what they're looking for. </article-name></topic-or-category></topic-or-category></article-name>

At some point you may want to start indexing your category pages. There has been lots of discussion about that on this Q&A. It's a personal choice and it can result in increased traffic and conversions BUT you should make an effort to customize category pages so they are absolutely unique before you decide to do that.

Here's the content of your robots.txt file.

User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /trackback/
Disallow: /xmlrpc.php
Disallow: ?wptheme=

Sitemap: http://www.lizlinkleter.com/sitemap_index.xml

Robots files are very very touchy. The duplicate inclusion of "Disallow: /wp-admin/" could be throwing you off. I'd clean that up first.

According to Matt Cutts, "... there are really only two viable options. You can either have unique metatag descriptions, or you can choose not to put any metatag description at all. Definitely don’t have duplicate metatag descriptions."

Often the best approach for e-commerce sites is to leave meta descriptions blank. Google will dynamically create them using text it derives from your page content, often highlighting the user's own search terms. I say that b/c: (a) it's a huge effort to come up with unique meta descriptions for thousands of products; (b) allowing Google to create them better ensures searchers will see their own search terms fed back to them in search results; and (c) thereby increases click thru rates.

I scanned your site and noticed some problems right away:

(1) You're temporary redirecting (302) ~150 pages. Those should be permanently redirected (301) otherwise you'll lose any built-up SEO equity.

(2) You have some redirect loops going on. For example, http://www.health4mom.org/consider-group-prenatal-care and http://www.health4mom.org/consider_group_prenatal_care, http://www.health4mom.org/how-to-overcome-infertility and http://www.health4mom.org/how_to_overcome_infertility.

(3) You have a bunch of pages redirected to the home page. Not sure if that was intentional or not. e.g. http://www.health4mom.org/testing_your_babys_hearing. If not, you're redirecting the SEO equity from those pages to the home page and diminishing their ranking ability.

(4) You shouldn't be indexing category and tag pages unless they've been customized for uniqueness.

(5) Just about every file on the site resides in the root directory. You're not consolidating your efforts (and SEO equity) onto some key "money" pages.

Perhaps the combination of these items is what's contributing to your traffic loss. I'm wondering if you switched URLs away from using underscores and to using hyphens with this relaunch.

Agree with Andy and Donford.

I've seen it take as long as 8 months. It really depends on how long it takes for Google to reindex your site and every other page that previously pointed (backlinked) to you. It also assumes, as Andy-Halliday has pointed out, you've done your redirects correctly.

Don't give up. Don't change it back. Be patient. The only thing you can do is earn more and better links and that's not really recovering faster, it's augmenting your existing authority.

You're specifically asking about impression data and, as far as I know, the only tools for that are google and bing webmaster tools. Take solace in knowing we're all in the same boat.

While the explanations offered make sense and I agree with them, you say it's happening "a lot". What's "a lot"? A couple of weeks? A month? More than that? I would think that the difference you're seeing should lessen if you're controlling for all the other influencing factors mentioned above. If not, it would seem as though there's something else at play.

Agree with Ryan Purkey's recommendation.

Domain names are treated differently than most text probably because of space constraints. You don't need to worry about separating words. You want  to keep your domain name short and memorable. As Ryan says, having to say "Gray DASH or Hyphen Digital) is not memorable.

Go with graydigital if it's available.

That's a tough one Heather. I've had a surprising number of people ask me that same question.

You have some good suggestions so far. I can think of one more. It's called Barnacle SEO. It's referencing an analogy where you make like a barnacle on a ship, attaching yourself to a higher authority site to outrank the one that's above you in search results.

Rand did a whiteboard Friday on it last summer. It's still not a quick or easy solution, but it could help.

I use screaming frog. I mention it because I don't see it being discussed in the helpful post Bryan referenced and because screaming frog has many other uses for SEO, not just sitemap generation. There is a free and paid version of the tool. The free version will allow you to scan (and generate a sitemap for) up to 500 pages. The paid version is a 12 month license costing 99 UK dollars per year.