Welcome to the Q&A Forum

how do you manage to pick up clients without having an understanding of how to optimise their site? seems a bit odd

If you are going to go down the paid directory route then just check that you read all of the submission guidelines first.. each directory may have different rules on what they do/don't like.

I'm not a big fan of directory links and it's not something that I put a great deal of effort into.. there are lots of other ways to build links or encourage social sharing.

There are quite a few things on your site to look at.. I would work though all of the issues on here: http://gtmetrix.com/

It would be possible to have the text at the beginning of the html document but then display it further down using CSS, not java script.

I don't think there is a massive need to do something like this. In the past Google may not have indexed all of the content from a page, especially if the document size was very large. This position trick would ensure that the important SEO focused content would be indexed.. if you build your site properly and take into account the size, page load speed, make sure the code is clean etc then there should be no need to move the content around.

I would say it's like most things, if you can do it yourself then in the long term that might work best.. but then if you don't have time then it can pay to get some help.

Depending on how competetive your sector is, you may be able to pick up some good rankings with good quality content and strong on-page optimisation.

For your initial link building you should start by trying to identify the main sites in your area.. there will likely be some niche directory sites that you can submit to, and that should give you a kick start

One think to be wary of with link building is the types of sites where the links are built and also what happens if you cease working with the company - will these links that have been built stay in place or will they be removed?

Why has the main domain been redirected to index.aspx? it makes no sense

I've never seen it before.. looks proper spam-tastic

I would stick to optimising the main site.com/zip/99999 type pages

As the other ones have no particularly unique content and the fact that they arent permanent pages (eg when no listings) means you will never be able build links into them

There are quite a lot of posts about this.. OSE doesn't crawl every single page on the internet, so some links may not be listed/discovered. Even Google may not discover all of the links to your site.

Take the figures with a pinch of salt, try not to be so specific, but make sure that both figures are generally always increasing.

shouldn't you put a slash at the end of the directory in the robots file?

you can create the robots file through the Google Webmaster Tools

redirect the pages in the .htaccess file.

rather than redirect them all to the homepage, you should redirect them to the most relevant page on the other site.

why are you getting rid of one site?

is this thread spam?

slow websites are rubbish.. even if it's not a ranking factor its pretty boring waiting for stuff to load!

without moving server you can still improve the code to make it faster:

http://gtmetrix.com/reports/www.buy-research-chemicals.com/sOqqeQx0

I looked at the site for a couple of minutes, but there are a few more on page tweaks that could be done, have a look here: http://gtmetrix.com/reports/www.musicliveuk.com/WbGhsMXk

Also, your site is hosted in Germany, it would help if it was hosted in the UK.

I've got a range of sites that have them either in the content or outside, say fixed position so that they are always visible.

I havent noticed a big difference between the two, but I would say that I am often quite suprised by how few people actually use them. Most SEO you speak to will emphasise how important they are, but if you ask an average user, eg my Mum, she wouldn't know what half of them are or how to use them.

Much of the decision about where they should go will often be led be the design. Thats generally my approach, if they fit in and look visible then they go in the content, but if not they end up on the side. I do quite like the sideways approach as they are very clear, you can use other things to make them more visible, on a recent site I used a small gif to draw attention: http://thedoubleglazingfund.co.uk/

Yeah. pretty much. It will also cause problems potentially with accessibility and how easy  it will be to make your site responsive so it can be viewed on different devices.

Each image will be an http request.. depending on the rest of your site these can add up and make your site slow

It will also cause problems in the future if you want to add/remove/update things

Hi there,

I have just notced on a website that it has a halt implemented html 5 structure. Well, when I say half implemented, it has the doctype and then one

<header>section. After that all of the divs are custom ones that have been added for the CSS.

Could this lack of structure have a negative effect on the site?

Cheers, Edward

</header>

Hi Russel,

Thanks for your help. I understand the points that you have mentioned. However, it is not easy and there is a lot of room for error when using word.

A hyperlink in word can easily be stripped out by someone and then it is not clear what the link was to or what words it was on.

Cheers, Edward

I have been looking around but not found any great suggestions.

If we send out a direct press release to a journalist, eg to their email address, what is the best format to send it in (eg word, pdf, rtf, html)?

Also, if it was to be sent out as a pdf or word doc, is there a good way to put links in there to increase the chance of them putting a keyword link in the article if it was to be published on their site? Would a hyperlink in there be confusing or is that ok?