Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Snowflake74,

If your website is about snowboarding then there are going to be multiple URLs that have the word snowboard in them outside the domain name. Your first example is perfectly acceptable. You should be designing your url structure for the best user experience not to manipulate Google or any other search engine. Do keywords in urls help. Yes they certainly do but are not as big of a ranking factor as your on page content.

I would stay away from blatantly stuffing your pages with the work Snowboard or versions there of. This is where spammy keyword selection can kill you. Not so much on the URLs. You do however, want to make sure your urls are short. The only problem I can see with your new structures is that the urls have a chance to be way to long.

Thanks,

Don

I think a good start would be to reach out to interior decorations/decorators blogs and websites. Maybe home improvement bloggers. Look at your competitors... where are their backlinks coming from? Open Site Explorer can help. Just insert the competitors url.

This basically means your website has been hacked in someway. You must remove all malware or malicious code. Many times hackers will setup skimming pages. Its a page that looks like for example a bank login but in reality its a scam trying to get access to someones info. After you remove this content then you have to tell google that you removed it in search console. Once they see it is gone they will lift the warning.

Thanks,

I agree with Nigel on this. It is easier then creating different content for each variation.

I am doing a site audit for a potential new client. The previous web design company used very long titles like this

(Case Management | Client Advocacy | Expert Witness | Legal Support | Medical Consultation | Pennsylvania and Michigan)

117 characters.

This is the title for  a services page. What is best practice here. To me this is key word stuffing but it is relevant to the clients page. Is it alright to grossly overdo the title character limit for the sake of keyword optimization?

I would probably do something more like (Medical consultancy services | company name with location)

What do you all think? Looking for a quick response!!!

Is the search phrase brand specific? I have seen in numerous instances that brand specific phrases will produce more results for a particular brand. Some of these results will include facebook and other listings that are not directly tied into a url but mention the brand.

Hi MrDeeBee,

I think you answered your own question. "Also out right deleting the content would go against our openness and transparency of past selections advised."

So you could no index the older posts or if they bring in any traffic leave them as is.

Also you could start 301 redirecting old posts to newer posts within the same categories or events. This could be useful if the content is about the same sports team or player.

This way you still get the traffic but it is directed to newer more relevant content.

Thanks,

Don Silvernail

Hi AnnabelH

You could use Open Site Explorer OSE

Just insert your domain or url and see what links come up that are pointed back at your site. You could also use it on the suspected domain as well.

You could also utilize SEMRush

Thanks,

Don

I have a client who is a general practice Lawyer. This particular client refuses to acquire free profiles from legal sites such as AVVO, Super Lawyers, and Justia. I have been working with this client for a year and have had a tough time getting him to rank in an ultra competitive marketplace. The other law clients I handle have all secured these backlinks and traffic is produced, domain and page authority is much higher.

My client say that he has heard from other lawyers that sites like AVVO produce bad or little results, so he wants no part of them. I feel these lawyers are giving him bad advice. They are competitors and each of them have their profiles on these sites.

I thought I would get some thoughts from the community to maybe help back my thoughts on these particular back links.

Thanks

Hi vtmoz,

If people are searching directly for a brand it means that this brand is on front of their mind when they are searching for the products and service supplied by this brand.

How to brands gain exposure and increase searches for their brands directly. I think this is probably more of an out reach campaign. Social media, tv ads, radio ads, literature such as rack cards and circulars sent through mail.

Maybe there social media strategy is directly engaging with the client base and their message is sinking in.

If competitors brands are increasing monthly search and yours is not, it is time to increase your brands exposure.

Thanks,

Don

H1 tags are usually reserved for the title of the page, or important stand out headings. It is possible for this heading to be halfway down the page but very unusual. The h tags do not necessarily need to be in order. They are used to organize headings by their importance. For instance you could have an h2 heading and have an h3 and an h4 heading in the same copy block and then start a new topic paragraph with another h2 heading and once again use the h3 and h4 headings within the next block of copy.

So no they do not need to go in order but their contents, relevance or organization is dictated by the heading used.

So, I agree, but that does not really answer my question. Are links like AVVO and Super lawyers actually helpful to lawyer websites? They seem to produce for my other clients. What say you?

Hi Ali,

It is considered bad practice to have followed links in a clients footer. Google considers this span since it will essentially be a link on every page of a clients site. Also many of these sites may not have anything to do with your company making them not as relevant to begin with.

I have read some articles in which tests were done trying to confirm that a site could not rank by doing this. However they found out that in the early game these links indeed helped a new site rank quickly. But they still highly advised against this form of link building because it was against googles link building policy.

Thanks,

Don Silvernail

No one is going to give you a blueprint for such a large project. Much of what you are trying to do will be based upon data and research. To get the basics of where you should start, I recommend reading this https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo. The basics is where every good campaign begins. You will find much information on link building and technical seo through the learn SEO tab above.

FenixBazaar,

When you are searching for your website on google, are you logged in to google? If you are logged in google will show you personally results you want to see. Like rich snippets for your articles. When you log out and do the same searches you rankings will all disappear.

Try using a private web browser when testing search results.

A search for your domain at SEMrush shows very healthy traffic since Novemeber. How are you testing your articles rank?

You are best to set the link as no follow

Wozniak65,

I believe your ultimate goal is to drive sales of these dresses. Maybe reach out to high profile fashion bloggers. Possible give some samples of your goods to get a review and post on their websites. If they are influencers this could drive extra traffic to your pages. You will have to partner up and build some relationships to be able to get these category links on relevant sites.

Thanks,

Don

I use list items for footer links in a menu. h tags are better used when organizing information on a page.

This one is for the WordPress optimization crowd!

Portfolios are used to display work. I have a question about best seo optimization techniques.

1. Portfolios can be used to display many different types of work, for me it either original web designs from scratch, WordPress redesigns, or importing a current website into WordPress. What is the best practice for keywords for  multiple portfolios that are in one category. for instance WordPress Redesign. If I have 5 WordPress redesign portfolio posts is it good practice to use WordPress redesign for all 5 portfolios or should they use variations? Yoast gets angry when the same focus keyword is used multiple times.

2. Should portfolios even be indexed? Since this is how I attract new customers I would think yes but am I giving too much exposure to my client and not enough to my business. I guess this will depend on titles and meta descriptions.

A discussion on best practices here is what I am really looking for. What is your advice and opinion on the matter.

I just checked out many of the branches for your business doing some google searches. some things of notice are titles being to long, breadcrumbs not showing destination page in search results ex(its says "back to tools" not the branch page you are on) Try using long tail keywords, most of your keywords in title tags are broad such (access platform hire) try adding more local or region based to start with. You may just have competition issues with your keywords, being the optimizations are so young. The page you have posted using the  open site explorer tool is showing a page authority of 1 with no links pointed to it. The page is very young. You may just need time for your strategy to develop. Keep building links to your branch pages not just the main domain. In time things will turn around. Make sure you use google web master tools and check the queries under search analytic s for keyword opportunities.