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It's probably a bit of a balancing act. The advantage of using web fonts is that it makes the text that you would have "hidden" in images accessible - goof thing for SEO if the text includes keywords and/or describes the content.

As you say, the downside is the additional load time. This depends on the particular font and of course where it's hosted. I've used the google hosted fonts on a project and not had any significant problems with speed.

Speed can be a red herring though as you would have had to download the images before. If you're replacing lots of images with web fonts then you may actually be delivering fewer bytes.

Perception can be different though as the browser has to download the font before it can render the text.

First the good news. One site that I've been working on has seen an increase in traffic from 2k/month to 80k!

As well as lots of visitors, the site is also getting lots of comments with one page getting more than 70 comments/day and showing no sign of a slow down! Approximately 3000 comments in total and growing!

What is the best approach for handling this? I'm not talking about the review/approval/response but just in the way these comments are presented on the website taking both seo and usability into account.

Does anyone have any particular recommendations? Options I've considered are:

• Just show the most recent x comments and ignore the rest. (Nobody is going to read 3000 comments!)
• Paginate comments (risk of duplicate content? Using Ajax could hide long-tail phrases in comments?)
• Show all comments (page load speed is suffering and this is likely to be causing problems for mobile visitors)

How do active comments on a page contribute to an article's freshness?

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Hiya. The "critical" in the screen shot is used to indicate the importance of the on-page factor. It's not a judgement of your optimisation for that factor. (You've got a green tick next to the items so you're ok.)

In the screenshot, the only factor that requires attention is the "Broad Usage in Page Title". which is rated as an "easy fix" and doesn't have the green tick next to it.

Hope that helps clear up any confusion?

Before you spend time buildling a widget, I'd do some research and find out if it's something that webmasters are likely to use (and how many of them would be interested!)

My advice would be to try and identity a "need" first and then come up with something that satisfies that need (and of course give you a backlink too)

What do you know about your visitors? What type of people are they and why are they visiting your site?

Who's currently linking to you and why?

On your website you say "created to help kids, parents, and teachers recall the words and lyrics to loved children songs"

Do you provide nice and easy ways these people can print the lyrics (with your branding and link of course). Getting traffic from off-line sources is still traffic!

Do you have a mailing list? You could offer the lyrics to a song every week. Might to sustain awareness of your site and increase returning visitors.

Don't agree that that H1 tag should be your logo and I don't think this is what Yeost was getting at either.

According to this article on his blog, he suggests that the H1 tag on the homepage should be the "Blog's Name."

http://yoast.com/blog-headings-structure/

Single posts then have an H1 equal to the title of the article, and category pages would have the name of the description/tag.

You've got to be careful not to confuse the semantic structure of the content and the branding.

The function of the logo is to provide your content with a consistent brand across all page types. This isn't specific to the home page.

Besides, there are lots of logos that don't spell out their names of the entities they represent so you might want to have both your logo/ident and then say your company name spelt out in the H1.

You could also argue that the subject matter of the home page is not actually the brand/entity name but the value proposition - the "what's in it for you" and I've seen that used at the H1 heading too...

Just ask yourself what makes things easier for visitors to understand/interpret the content on the page depending on the type of site/organisation etc.

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It might be a better user experience to create a specific landing page for these services at either the old URL or using a 301 redirect from the old service page to the landing page. The page doesn't have these visible in the menu and explain to visitors that the service is no longer being offered by present the partner site as an alternative.

That way the redirect doesn't come as a surprise, it provides some value to your visitors (who'll be able to find someone offering the service) and give you partner site a link.

Would your client be happy to referrer real life leads to the partner/friends site?

I don't think it's quite as simple as that.

You can take any of these metrics in isolation, you need to look at the relative strengths compared to your own site and make a judgement call. If all things are equal then if you can beat these scores, you should out-rank them, but in the real world it doesn't trend to be as simple as that, especially as you start competing for more and more competitive terms.

Looking at these four metrics can give you a quick feel for hoe strong your site/page has to be to get into the game, they can't predict the outcome.

This page might give you a feel for the relative importance of various ranking factors:

http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors

As for your question, "how many of these factors do you normally need to get within top 5?" well it all depends!

Remember that these aren't the only factors that search engines use when ranking pages. It's perfectly possible to outrank a page that beats you in ALL of these factors by producing a page that's tightly targetted around the chosen keywords. You can beat the competition on relevancy (assuming that there the competing pages aren't so relevant!)

I would say that finding such keywords, where there's a ton of traffic and few relevant pages is rare and my guess is that this is only likely to happen for brand related keywords.

From Google's Webmaster Tools help on Geotargeting:

"If no information is entered in Webmaster Tools, we'll rely largely on the site's country domain (.ca, .de, etc.). If an international domain (.com, .org, .eu, etc) has been used, we'll rely on several signals, including IP address, location information on the page, links to the page, and any relevant information from Google Places."

More info here: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=62399

I recently set the geotargeting in Google Webmaster Tools of a UK hosted .com domain to Australia and started ranking on google.au.

Make sure you've optimised for local as you normally would.

The performance of your snippet on the search result pages can be pretty variable and affected by a whole host of things.

The first big problem is advertising. If your ranking #1 on a SERP that has a high volume of ads then they will be diminishing the visibility of your site.

The ads you're competing with have a big advantage over your organic SERP. It's much easier for the advertiser to put specific language in their ad to entice searchers to click through. Matching the users intent and adding compelling benefits / reasons why they should visit their site. (eg: Prices you can't beat, free estimates, fitted in 1 day etc...)

Your snippet describes your business but it doesn't tell me "what's in it for me?" if I click though on the link. Your first words are "Custom Fabricator" which causes me some friction - This sounds like you might be b2b. Do you sell stuff direct to customers?

EGOL has some great advice about sharpening up your snippet.

You've got some reviews and testimonial - What is it that really matters to your customers? Sometimes it's not always what you think it is, or described in the language you'd use (as you're in the trade).

Another question is how much traffic is there for this search term and how "SEO" aware are your competitors. I've noticed that for some competitive terms the real search volume isn't as high as you think it is. I've come to the conclusion that certain terms can be inflated due to the amount of rank tracking going on!

How are your other keywords performing? Are you getting better results from keywords like "granite counter installation St Louis" for instance? Can you compare the CTR between keywords with a similar intent?

The thing is, you don't know what a good CTR for that particular SERP is. You don't know what you competitors (in ads, organic and local) are getting so it's difficult for you to say if you're earning your fair share.

To add to the other responses, I can see reason why you might want to not use your keyword in a sub domain.  If you do, it means that everytime you give you web address out to someone you have to use it!

Depending on your keyword, this could be a nightmare! I'm not sure it'll do your "brand" many benefits either.

What happens if you go down this route and decide to change your target keyword, or your keyword is no longer relevant to you business (things change!). Do you build a new site hosted on the subdomain for each keyword? (Things could become silly if you take this too far!)

A simple "www" or nothing has become an easy to remember convention.

Good advice from Tom (no relation).

The only thoughts I'd add are:

1. Can you keep the URLs the same and just update the new page content and avoid the re-direct completely. (Unless of course you feel that optimising your URLs would deliver more benefit than retaining all the link equity)

2. Make sure you have an up to date list of your old pages and their URLs before you deploy the new site! Use this list to test!

3. Watch out for internal links in any old content and make sure these are up to date.

4. A good opportunity to look at your 404 page and see how you can improve that to help people find what they're looking for (not just telling them that the page can't be found)

Hi Robert.

Sounds like you're having plenty of fun!

From my experience, there is only one thing that you can really do to establish if the changes are algorithmic or not and that is to benchmark your clients sites against their competitors.

If you know how very similar sites are being affected by an algorithm update you can always tell if it's just you or all the similar sites in your niche.

It's not enough to pick a few random sites in that are ranking in serous for your main target terms. You need to dig a little deeper than that.

Who are your clients real competitor.  Consider their target audience (demographics as well as geographical locaton). What about the size of the business and their suspected online budget. What about the approach they'be taken on their site, blogging frequency etc?

You'll want to monitor the performance of sites/businesses that are very similar,  somewhat similar and dissimilar but related.

It can be reassuring to a client to be told that even though there'should been a massive shake up in the serps - they are still out raking their competitors.

Another thing to consider is how an algorithm update might change the search terms that people use to find your clients.

If the serps are now being dominated by large players, does this mean there is a knock on effect as searchers start using more specific keywords to find the little guys/in dependants?

Or don't they give a stuff and are just happy to go with whoever appears at the top of the search results.

My tips:

Don't just rely on rank trackers - make sure you take screen shots or capture the serps so you can determine the winners and loses following an update. You can then use this info to find out where the top 10 sites are ranking following an update. (Hard to do if you'be not tracked who they are)

Keep an eye on webmaster tools and track the impressions as well as clicks. Impressions may show the impact of an algorithm change more obviously than rank tracking or looking at your organic search numbers.

Make sure you keep a fantastically good record of every change that happens to the site and make sure your client understands the need for a robust change control process.

When trying to determine if it's an algorithm change or just a cockpit ... I'd be more likely to put my money on "cockup".

Hi Bob,

Just some quick thoughts, please don't take anything here as criticism!

My first impression when visiting the site is that it's "a lot about Bob" and not much about "me!" I would suggest that you open with a clear proposition so people instantly get what's in it for them when the hit your site.

Try to take an external perspective and think about your site from your customers perspective. (Have you got a clear understanding of the type of people your customers are?)

What are the problems/needs of your target audience? You need to write content that targets those needs. (They don't need "Bob.")

Can you answer: "Is this for me? Am I going to find what I'm looking for?"

You need to explain the benefits of the service/solutions you offer.

Explain the benefits of what you do - why should someone come to you and not the next guy? What makes what you do unique?

What are the concerns that potential customers might have? How can you address these concerns?

Nice clear call to action, with a reason to take action now.

"Free consultation" is nice, but why should I be interested? Your calls to action are right at the top of the page, before you've given someone a reason to call. I don't go onto the internet to get some "free consultation."

"Call now to find out how YOU can take control of YOUR money today!"

The list of outcomes could be a lot more direct and compelling. They feel a little like "features" and I'm not entirely sure I understand what they mean. Can you flip these into more direct benefits - with what that actually mean to the potential customer. (It's useful to ask "why should I care?")

Once you get someone to call for their free consultation - do they convert to customers?

As for link building, I would have thought there would be lots of opportunities to guest post about these kinds of thing? Not only would this get links, but gets you in front of the right eye-balls and builds authority/credibility?

Hope this helps!

There's something strange going on there. If I try and crawl any of your pages with Screaming Frog, all I get is one page with a length of 44 and with the H1 set to "Ooops!".

Have you tried the "fetch as googlebot" from Webmaster tools? It's under the Crawl menu. It might help show you what google is seeing.

Oh and it'seems important not to panic. We've seen updates get reversed and updates that get scaled back when their impact is just far too drastic.

I'very been watching one site that got hit for about 30 days before search traffic was restored only got the site to get hit again a month later.

Hi Charlotte,

There's a lot to consider, but I'd say that colours/font aren't where you'd start. I'd also say that getting some CRO awareness can really benefit your SEO - after all, our customers want sales/leads not rankings!

It can be really hard, especially when you've worked closely with a website/business for some time, but the key is to try and take an external perspective and see the site through the eyes of your customers/visitors. Can you identify the kind of person who would be interested in the site's offerings? What are their needs/problems and how does the site address these.

What you want to establish:

Are you targeting the right keywords? What is the user intent behind the keyword - are people searching for that term really looking for the products/services you are offering. Are they really likely to be your customers?

If the offering being clearly explained - are you clearly expressing the benefits (to them). Do your pages answer the "What's in it for me?" question.

Is the purpose of each page (and it's position in the conversion funnel) understood?

Do you have clear, appealing calls to action. Is it obvious to visitors what to do next? Don't leave people hanging.

What are the objections that people may have before taking action. How can you address these objections (social proof/testimonials etc, guarantees, try before you buy etc)

Hope this helps!

I don't think this is a surprise. Just because you know you're the Brand's Italian site, doesn't automatically mean you're going to rank for your brand name in Italy!

As your site is new, it doesn't have any authority (it has no link profile to speak of). A link from the .com site would be a nice first step!

This is why it can be beneficial to have multi-lingual content on the main, parent site so that you can benefit from their domain authority.

Think about how you can undertake some out-reach/promote the new Italian division site in order to build some authentic back links and raise awareness of the site.

When you're checking your ranking manually, are you ruling out things like personalisation?

I wouldn't get too hung up about small changes in your ranking reports. Remember that different people are likely to be seeing their SERPS differently anyway.

Manually checking the ranking position of email a small number of keywords can be hard work - something that is much better left to tools, and being consistent about the tool you use means your can identify trends better rather than being confused by variations in tools/methodology.

Remember there are lots of different factors that contibute to your ranking and it's more than likely that you'll experience some fluctuations while you're working to promote your pages against your chosen keywords.

Keep an activity diary and look for patterns/results in the SERPS, but remember that your actions are unlikely to result in an instant change in the SERPS.

One ranking factor is "freshness" and depending on the type of content this can cause some surpises if you're not looking out for it. I've seen "new" content rank highly for a few days before drifing down the SERPS. Of course someone else's fresh content can bump your slightly more stale content down the rankings for a while...

So, I wouldn't fall in the trap of checking your ranking daily, expect some fluctuation but focus on the trends over time and make sure you're keeping an eye on the traffic keywords are sending you vs. expected traffic.

Hope this helps.

Are there any local publications (on-line/off-line/both) that would appreciate guest articles?  Remember direct traffic is also good!

Are their options for seasonal content? Frost, students going into their first rented accommodation at the start of the academic year...

Another way you can stand apart from the spun content is by carefully defining your target audience and then writing content that specifically addresses the needs of that audience.

Are there any trends/patterns in the types of customers/types of problems they have?

Where do each of these customer types congregate? Can you create awareness of your offering in this place?

As James mentions, capturing content (video/testimonies,pictures etc) as part of they day job makes it a lot less of a burden.

What are your competition doing? Remember you don't have to build the most awesome plumbing information portal - you just need to be better than the competition! What are they doing right? What could you do better.

Are there any news worthy stories? We regularly get stories about the left of copper pipes etc in the local press - are there any way you can help out local journalists?

Good luck!

Here's an article about rel=canonical where Dr. Pete answers some rel=canonical questions. With regards to rel=canonical passing PageRank he says:

"This is very difficult to measure, but if you use rel=canonical appropriately, and if Google honors it, then it appears to act similarly to a 301-redirect. We suspect it passes authority/PageRank for links to the non-canonical URL, with some small amount of loss (similar to a 301)."

http://moz.com/blog/rel-confused-answers-to-your-rel-canonical-questions

At the end of the following Matt Cutts video (2:10), he says that there isn't a lot of difference between the page rank passing via rel=canonical and page rank passing a 301 redirect.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zW5UL3lzBOA

When it comes to the content of the page, yes, the two versions of the page should be pretty close to identical. I've seen Google refer to it as "highly similar". Here's what Google says:

"A large portion of the duplicate page’s content should be present on the canonical version. One test is to imagine you don’t understand the language of the content—if you placed the duplicate side-by-side with the canonical, does a very large percentage of the words of the duplicate page appear on the canonical page? If you need to speak the language to understand that the pages are similar; for example, if they’re only topically similar but not extremely close in exact words, the canonical designation might be disregarded by search engines."

See: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/5-common-mistakes-with-relcanonical.html

So, if your pages are too dissimilar then Google may ignore the rel-canonical "suggestion" and the "wrong page" or both pages may appear in Google's index.