Welcome to the Q&A Forum
Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.
@all: Are you happy with the position you currently have ? (in house, agency or working on your own projects).
Or are you stuck but you would like to move ? (from in house to agency, from agency to in house and so on )
Really curious about the level of "happiness" with current positions in the community - and again, it's mainly about the Q and A community as I've seen a lot of activity on the blog from people that are not present here..
By full url you mean http:// ... or a href html code ?
By the way you should edit the signature from friend to friends.. unless you are helping only one of your friends with treadmillreviewguru 
It can be a good e-marketing campaign. You can get good traffic from those links, directly from people that are visiting the site that hosts this iframe but I still don't think it will help from a SEO perspective - as far a slink building.
Maybe I am off with this but can you try this using a widget ?
(Build a small widget that will contain your link and some other info that the salon owners can find it useful to have on the site).
In this way they will just load the widget or a a rss that will display the additional info and your link directly within that particular page. if you can give them some extra benefit they and a very easy way to include that widget - a copy and paste action - you can have a win/win for both sides.
Anything that will move away from the iframe procedure can help your website from the SEO perspective. In my opinion you should turn it on all sides in order to get the best of it.
If there is no solution, then yes, better an iframe then nothing as it can bring some dedicate hits but again, I don't think it will bring any SEO benefit.
I assume the new url format / structure is also the new inner link structure (all links in the site are updated with the new format). if this is the case the indexation is based on this not based on old urls following the 301s.
As far as testing them - did you test to see what response code do you get when accessing the old urls ?
Though I don't understand why you'd submit a sitemap with the old urls?
** To send google's bot to crawl those and see the 301s and delist them from the index.
How do you ping it?
** There are a lot of free services available that you can use - just run a search and you will have several to choose from.
Some questions that can be on the list:
How dose he (the client) measures success out of SEO? What are the SEO KPIs and targets ? ( with those you can really get a very good feeling on what type of client you have or you will have). You can also elaborate based on the answers and drill down to understand better their view. Leave room for your proposals and other better KPIs that you can propose.
What keywords he would like to target ? (in order to have a good starting point for your keyword research session)
In his view, what are the main competitors and why ? (starting not only with rankings but also with content, UX and social exposure)
What SEO efforts have been done on the website so far ? (really important one - you will probably need a list and dates for changes in order to have a clear assessment of the project)
Dose he track and monitor the site ? if yes, with what tools ? (GA, WMT, SeoMoz etc). Ask for access if possibile (sign and nda if needed)
Ask more about the current tracking: dose the client have goals and tracking events setup in Google analytics. Dose he review the feedback from those tools and what decision did the client take so far based on this feedback. Dose he uses event tracking - when, why.
Separate chapter about Domain Authority - Link building. Any activities done so far ? Try to see if he knows the trends with link building as you can provide a lot of support about the topic - it's a dangerous topic and you need to be in the driver seat.
If not clear, ask about the monetization channels of the website. What is the website income: sales, Saas, adsense, baners, partnerships - it's only for branding etc. At the end of the day you will need to help him reach those targets: income, visibility , exposure etc.
Just a few random ones - Hope it helps
@Catalyst Online: So you you've seen how green the grass is on both sides of the fence. So Is Cesar or Robert that's right ? (drama vs boring) :))
As free tools your best bet will be Alexa. But you will need data from your website (google analytics for example) and Alexa numbers for your website in order to do an assessment for the competitors based only on Alexa numbers.
Alexa.com is not very reliable but if you are in the US, for a US market is closing in to the real numbers in most of the niches pretty well.
Hope it helps.
Hello all !
I would love some opinions about one Link Building technical aspect from SEOs, link builders ...
How important is the number of outgoing links on the page you have the opportunity to place a link ? (from a scale of 1-10 / what about where dose this factor fits overall with your check list , as important to consider as far as link building)
Would you place a link on a page with 200+ outgoing external links if the page is ok (not involved in selling links, all links are related with the subject, target page, anchor text etc) or you would go with a link on a 10-15 links per page but not that 'powerful' and not that related (not spammy but more general on the subject that can contain links to some other non related resources).
Eg:
Option 1:
www.whatever-name.com/links.html
Option 2:
www.some-other-name.com/x-is-so-great
What's your best option ?
Thanks !
Golden rule: If it's not broken don't fix it.
if those 3 pages are good gateways for traffic - get into conversion optimisation and build some funnels to drive the users once landed on the pages you want.
Personally I would't start messing with those 3 pages if they perform well.
As for the video, hopefully is not the only element on the page, it can be hosted on all 3 pages if it make sense and if it's combined with content relevant for those pages as stand alone items.
Hi,
In this case it would be q = searchword ?
** Yes, this should be your query parameter.
As far as options - it's a case by case on what you want to track - I would start "big" and then cut and edit things based on the feedback you will receive. It's hard to set the search tracking from the start and get it right (by right I mean exactly what you want to know) - you need some time for "trial and error" to spot the perfect setup - this is only to save time and to make sure you don't miss what's important.
Cheers.
Ciao Maria,
The first link is a no follow so it doesn't count.
bellow a copy paste from the source code
a href="http://www.davincidrivers.com" rel="nofollow">
More then that the url is very "dinamic" probably not even indexed so even if the won't have the no follow attribute it still won't be detected by google.
The same story with the second link:
href="http://www.davincidrivers.com" rel="nofollow">rome airport transfer
So that means with those links or without them is the same => no actual links for your domain.
If all links build are the same - it's not going to help as far as Domain authority.
This is the reason for not having any link love from those links.
Mi dispiace per la notizia
The first steps, easy steps you should do is create a few social accounts for your site: twitter, Facebook, g plus. Add links there. Those even if no followed are counted differently.
Get some links into a few good not spammy directories - pay attention not to go over board and become a spammer - you should read a few guides to stay safe.
Contact a few bloggers in the same industry and request for a link: be nice, don't beg, underline advantages for them to.
Just a few initial ideas - for a quick start.
To keep it short:
If you have any doubts about it and if the only reason is to get your pages into the index then just add nofollow to those links and it will be safe from the points / concerns you've raised. Safe all around.
On the another hand, if those links are really bringing additional value to the pages, to your visitors for those pages the number is irrelevant - you can have as many as you want and nothing will happen.
More then that, outgoing real valuable links will also bring some value in your on page optimisation score for those pages. Linking out is not a bad thing as long as it make sense and everything is genuine.
One hing that is really important is where you link out - if your links are pointing to "bad" sites (whatever bad will mean: spammy usually) then and only then you might have a problem.
if the links are on the same vertical, niche you can proudly link with no issues and the number ris not relevant.
And again, if you have any doubts about all or some of the links just no follow them and you will be safe.
If they ask you to be the SEO guy you are part of the company so it's not "claiming to be part of ..", you actualy are
Hi,
If all keywords dropped - and most (90% at least) are +50 as far as position now then Penguin can be the reason if that happen during the update timetable. otherwise the reason is different and I hope for you that you are not under Penguin as far as filter because that will be costly.
If you jump from #3 to #10 and so for some keywords that is probably due to "the google dance" - it means you don't have enough stability to maintain one or more keywords stabile and when a new link appears google might dance with your rankings before trying to stabilize those - it dosen't mean you are necessarily doing something wrong - and whatever you do don't change your strategy based on those movements - unless you are doing something spammy and in that case you need to stop anyway (if you care for the project long term).
Cheers.
People will more likely get involved (circle and comment) on a brand vs on a g+ account that is made for SEO.
The advantages on the SEO side will be higher with more people getting involved vs a keyword optimized vanity URL.
Just my opinion.
I think it works for now but since more and more will use it as a primary link building channel and more and more people will push it to the limit (already the case in some areas) this technique will be soon subject to more tight regulation from Google's side.
I remember 2003-2004 when forum posting was some how in the "beginning". Some people from Google said - it's natural , it make sense then yes, it's aceptable - what about now ? Who things forum signature posting is a "good" approach to link building ? Same with guest posting. I would say in the future you will need to have a no follow in those links since you should do it for the content, referral traffic not the link.
We had a similar approach and the decision to merge all domains into one was to minimize link building efforts .
After all the domains were 301 redirected to the new one, the new domain received so much PR equity that the rankings skyrocketed. So yes, my suggestion is to 301 redirect all the domains to the new one especially if siteone.com, sitetwo.com etc have some authority. It will work for sure.
Should we literally move all of the content to the new directories?
** If technically that's ok then yes. by ok I mean easy to do. Also old domains should just be 301 redirected to the new appropriate pages from the new domain.
It#s just my opinion but again we had a similar approach even if from different reasons and it worked like a charm.
Hi,
I would say that's open for debate. In our case we usually post based on the audience and the audience is very different between facebook, twitter and g+.
In a lot of cases people that are following you on twitter there are also present on g+ and/or facebook and posting the same on all 3 will only annoy them.
My best sugestion in this case is to first put focus on what type of people are following you on each channel and then adjust your posting strategy based on that. (what are those people also sharing, what other channels are they following , circeling, likeing and what type of posts are those other accounts are pushing online.
It will take time but it's the safest way to grow.
However in the beggining I would say you will need to drive blind for a while and do trial and error.
You can use aps like Socialbro for example (www.socialbro.com) for Twitter in order to see who is staying, who is leaving and so on - just to adjust your strategy.
best bet in the begining is to see what other similar accounts are sharing and if those accounts are successfully or not.
Hope it helps at least as a pool of ideas.