Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Matt has some great suggestions!

A few we'd add include:

@joehall

@aaronwall

@cyrusshepard

@stonetemple

@dr_pete

On the off chance that your client is using Adobe Analytics, here's their link as well:

http://www.adobe.com/privacy/cookies.html

Here are a few Moz resources that you might find useful:

http://moz.com/blog/category/technical-seo

http://moz.com/blog/technical-site-audit-for-2015

I am not sure by your question what types of usability issues you are getting notifications about but if it is mobile-friendly related then you will definitely want to get those resolved. Google recently announced that they are going to take mobile usability into consideration for rank - here are a few sources:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/02/finding-more-mobile-friendly-search.html

http://searchengineland.com/google-mobile-friendly-ranking-factor-runs-real-time-page-page-basis-216100

http://searchengineland.com/much-traffic-will-lose-upcoming-mobile-seo-pocalypse-216564

We have 2 keywords that are synonyms we really need to rank for as they are pretty much interchangeable terms. We will refer to the terms as Synonym A and Synonym B.

Our site ranks very well for Synonym A but not for Synonym B. Both of these terms carry the same meaning, but the search results are very different. We actively optimize for Synonym A because it has the higher search volume of the 2 terms. We had hoped that Synonym B would get similar rankings due to the fact that the terms are so similar, but that did not pan out for us.

We have lots of content that uses Synonym A predominantly and some that uses Synonym B. We know that good content around Synonym B would help, but we fear that it may be seen as duplicate if we create a piece that’s “Top 10 Synonym B” because we already have that piece for Synonym A. We also don’t want to make too many changes to our existing content in fear we may lose our great ranking for Synonym A.

Has anyone run into this issue before, or does anyone have any ideas of things we can do to increase our position for Synonym B?

Hi Nancy,

This article might be of some assistance - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25773047/what-will-be-indexed-better-in-search-engines-img-tags-or-background-images-wit 

Good Morning!

I feel like it might be important to discuss how you acquired so many "spam" fans in the first place. I assume these fans were not generated naturally? If so, you could prevent this in the future by being more selective in your ad targeting.

While the removal process will undoubtedly be slow and might not have a direct impact on the "authority" of your page, it will help increase your organic reach. When you have a high number of disengaged ("fake") fans that do not interact with any of your posts, your organic reach will suffer greatly. However, by cleaning up your fan base and reaching more fans who are actually interested with that you have to say, engagement as a percentage will increase - sending positive signals to Facebook - and your reach will increase because of this. It is always better to have a smaller number of legitimate fans that a high number of disengaged fans just for the sake of having x amount of followers. Happy fans = happy Facebook.

Hope this helps!

Hi Isaac,

The others have already provided some great feedback.

A few other ideas we had include:

1.) Guest blogging on relevant, high-quality websites or inviting other relevant businesses / bloggers to guest blog on your site.

2.) Similarly, reach out to industry leaders / related persons who already have a good following and see if they will do a short interview, give a few tips, etc.

3.) Share articles in newsletters / email blasts

4.) Share your articles via social (which you have already heard) but also consider paid advertising if you really want to invest in traffic. Most social sites have pretty granular targeting so you can reach a really specific audiences and tailor your ads to that specific niche.

5.) Consider trying different blog formats (video, for example) to see if those resonate with your audience more and perform better.

Hope some of these are helpful!

Hi there,

Rand did write an article on this very topic a few years ago. While the content is a bit dated, it is still relevant. Take a look here:

http://moz.com/blog/dynamic-urls-vs-static-urls-the-best-practice-for-seo-is-still-clear

Hope this helps!

Completely agree with Kemp & Ruge on this one.

We happened to work in the travel industry and we often see well known, branded sites like TripAdvisor outrank sites like (keyword)hotels.com. The EMD sites often still perform well, but having an EMD is in no way a foot in the door for rankings.

The main focus should be on whether or not you site contains relevant and up to date content on the topic at hand.

We have a few tools that our developers use when they need to - BrowserStack, Virtual  Box, VM Ware, iOS simulator, etc. - most of which are pretty standard. Do you all use anything different?

Definitely agree with the "check robots.txt" comment - it really does happen more often than people like to admit.

I would also be sure the website has any relevant schema markups implemented to give search engines as much information about your site as possible.

Check the website in different browswers / different devices to make sure nothing looks wonky and everything functions properly.

Double check / audit title tags & meta descriptions (this can easily be done by using a crawling software like Screaming Frog or something similar)

Be sure any tracking you want to use (Ex: Google Analytics) is properly in place. Also make sure the site is verified with Google Webmaster tools if that is something  you want to monitor (which you should). Submit sitemap to Google Webmaster tools - will need XML version.

Check for any broken links and check to be sure the site has any redirects / canonical tags needed in place.

Also definitely recommend user testing and getting feedback from people not involved with the website.

Some of these might not be user-specific, just wanted to give a general rundown of things we often check.

Hope this helps!

Definitely agree with Ryan - relationships are key!

Beyond that, you can start building those relationships on a small scale by finding the journalist and/or company in question, following them on twitter or linkedin, sharing their content, etc. then continue by providing comments / feedback or engaging in conversations. You never know, they might start remembering you after a while.

Overall, though, working with PR is definitely a win/win in any situation to fostering a natural link earning campaign.

Have you explored different types of content? Videos, customer resources, blogs, etc?

For example, you said power tools is a business section. Are there videos on how to use different power tools? Are there blogs on DIY projects that one could do with the power tools? Do you have any resources for people to use - guides, best practices, etc. that have to do with power tools? Becoming an expert and a "knowledge hub" in that given area through different mediums might be something to explore. Product reviews might also be helpful if you do not currently utilize those (assuming that is an option that would make sense for your site).

Hi there,

Have you done any analysis as to whether or not the keywords the company wants to rank for actually make sense for the company? Just because they want to rank for something doesn't mean it is necessarily a feasible goal. Google's job is to provide the most relevant content to a search query.

Also, you mentioned 101 keywords that the company wants to rank for. Have you done any research for the search volume for these keywords? Ranking for a term is great but if that term only has a tiny amount of search volume then it might not be worth your time.

Finally, while ranking for a keyword is a step in the right direction, ranking on page 7 doesn't do much good. Do you monitor / report specifically on page one keywords? Those are, in theory, the most valuable keywords that you have. It might be more valuable to try and focus on the "low hanging fruit" - say, keywords ranking on page two - and how you can improve those.

You might also want to set up a content / keyword map to see what pages on your site are ranking for what terms to see if you are lacking content in any area that could help boost rank for those terms.

The others have covered some great topics as well.

Hope that helps!

Do you have your GA & AdWords accounts linked? If so, you can import GA data into AdWords and vice versa. There is a "bounce rate" column that you can add into AdWords across the board, including at a keyword level... Not sure if that is exactly what you are looking for but hopefully that helps!

Hi Holland!

I would also suggest a 301 redirect. The product is discontinued and is therefore permanently gone. While the product that they are looking for might not be there, directing them to the closest related thing would be the best course of action for all parties involved(users and search engines),  whether that be a closely related product or a product category page, etc.

I completely agree with this response.

No one knows 100% for sure what a search engine is or isn't going to do - probably not even Matt Cutts and certainly not Rand, particularly since they are tweaking and improving the system on a daily basis.

And I too agree that you should never post content (blogs) just for the sake of posting content or just for the sake of linking to another page. Updates like Panda will come back to haunt you if this is your practice. Instead of focusing on whether or not a link in a post is going to have more authority than a link elsewhere and using that to determine whether or not you are going to post new content, focus instead on your audience and how you can provide them value. Does the article and/or link provide value to your consumer?

At the end of the day, always remember that websites are for people, NOT for search engines.

Hi Robert,

I agree that it would be helpful to know more about your site. The size and content of the site will have a major impact on this. In addition, how many keywords are "several"? Optimizing for 2-3 keywords is a lot different than attempting to optimize for 10-15 at a time. Also, you need to consider how broad or long-tail those keywords are and how competitive your market is. Perhaps do a little research and check out your competition for each keywords and evaluate what they are doing, why / how is it working for them, and what you can be doing better.

One thing that you DON'T want to do is keyword stuff your homepage, title tags, or meta descriptions. Each of those needs to be as relevant to the page as possible. Keyword stuffing will only hurt the site.

I also agree that, if you are going after a particular keyword, having content related to that moved up from lower level pages to higher level pages that are easily accessible via the homepage would be a good start in boosting the homepage rankings for those individual keywords.

"Regarding 301's of the pages, would I be better doing at the top level and 301 all the pages to the home page, or spending the time and 301 the old product page for instance to the new product page - this is a much bigger project, but what are the potential gains."

From a user stand point and a search engine stand point, I feel it would be better to take the time to redirect each product page from the old site to the corresponding product page on the new site. I am not sure if there is an easy way to automate this, but it is definitely the route to go versus just sending all of the pages to the home page. Think of it from a user point of view. If there was a link to a product on the old site out there and someone clicks expecting more information on that product and then gets redirected to a homepage they will not find what they are looking for and might just bounce off the site. However, bringing them to the appropriate page will keep the user on the site longer and might ultimately end in a conversion (not sure what vertical you are in, I associated products with retail). This would ultimately send positive signals to search engines on the placements of those redirects. Though it might not seem like an issue for a single page or even a few pages, implemented across the board this could make a huge difference.

Hope that helps.