Welcome to the Q&A Forum

David/MaxOnce again, thank you very much for such detailed information. This has been really helpful and I'm truly grateful. I do have one more question if I may. The main primary domain name contains the word "wood" - is it really essential to contain the word "wood" into "sub categories" also (as seen below)? You can see how we're planning to structure the site.Many of our key words have the word wood, so for obvious reasons this term is essential. Thank youwww.thebestwoodcompany.comParquet & Reclaimed - 1./parquet-reclaimed/lights-greys/PROUCT 2. /beiges/PRODUCT                                                                3. /browns/PRODUCT 4. /darks-blacks/PRODUCT                                                                  Engineered Wood  - 1. /engineered-wood/lights-greys/PRODUCT 2./beiges/PRODUCT                                                                   3. /browns/PRODUCT 4. /darks-blacks/PRODUCT  Prefinished Wood  - 1. /prefinished-wood/lights-greys/PROUCT  2. /beiges/PRODUCT                                                                   3. /browns/PRODUCT 4. /darks-blacks/PRODUCT

Thanks David

These are all areas I'm currently researching. My client is ambitious enough to really expand their product range, so I'm interested to find out more about JQuery and how it really works? If I'm correct, this helps shorten the url by replacing key words with specific code?

David/Max/Sheena

I cannot thank you guys enough. And Sheena, thanks so much for your help. Max sorry if I confused you - I probably confused myself more.

My thought process now consists of the site "architecture", "keywords" as well as considering other client needs. It would certainly help if each product was a generic name. However keeping the url for this is also challenging.

By manufacturer - gallery-wood/engineered-floors/grey-sabe - Keyword, Grey Engineered Wood

By manufacturer - gallery-wood/oak-flooring/grey-stone - keyword, Oak Wood or Grey Wood etc

By colour - gallery-wood/beiges/blonde-oak - keyword, Beige Oak or Oak Wood

By colour - gallery-wood/blacks-brown/engineered-ember - keyword, Brown Engineered Wood or Black

Maybe we could title "Gallery Wood" into "gallery-wooden-floors" to expand our keyword range?

Thanks so much again!

Hi Sheena

Your comments certainly help. It's really about architecture and what keyword to rank for. The sub category "gallery-wood" has a number of different products such as - Stone, Ember, Sabe, Shell, Oyster etc. I've already considered these urls

www.companyname.com/gallery-wood/whites-greys/stone  - keyword?

www.companyname.com/gallery-wood/mid-drowns/shell  - keyword?

All products currently are easily selectable on the same page. By using these url types we can build up their selection of products and later easily move them into sections "mid-browns", "whites-grey" etc - we're not planning this now as the "mid-browns" section for example would be to empty. With a structure like this, the headache now would be what keyword to use which matches the url?

Really appreciate your feedback.

Hi Max

Thanks for getting back to me.

We have a very good inbound strategy in place that includes content creation, social media, influencer outreach, the list goes on to help build authority.

However my question is how to optimise a page that is focussed on the brand name itself - the name of the product is "White Grain", meaning the "title" of the page should be named the same (branded product). If the name of the product was called “Brown Engineered Flooring”, this would be a piece of cake http://www.companyname.com/dark-engineered-flooring, as the url suggests.

BUT - How does a product name like "white grain", "stone" or "Ember"  become fully optimised for a keyword? Currently we have http://www.companyname.com/gallery-wood/white-grain

Hi Guys

I'm reading some very contrasting and confusing reviews regarding urls and the impact they have on a sites ability to rank.

My client has a number of flooring products, 71 to be exact - categorised under three sub categories 1. Gallery Wood - 2. Prefinshed Wood - 3. Parquet & Reclaimed. All of the 71 products are branded products (names that are completely unrelated to specific keyword search terms. This is having a major impact regarding how we optimise the site.

FOR EXAMPLE: A product of the floor called "White Grain" - the "Key Word" we would like to rank this page for is Brown Engineered Flooring. I'm interested to know, should the name of the branded product match the url?

What would you change to help this page rank better for the keyword - Brown Engineered Flooring.

---

Title page: White Grain

Url: thecompanyname.com/gallery-wood/white-grain (white grain is the name of the product)

Key Word: Brown Engineered Flooring

**Seo Title: **White Grain, Brown Engineered Flooring by X

Meta Description: BLAH BLAH Brown Engineered Flooring BLAH BLAH

Any feedback to help get my head around this would be really appreciated. Thank you.

Hi Garrett

I suggest using followerwonk.com to pull out "bloggers" or influencers within your target market. This is a fantastic tool and I reccomened you check this out. You can search Twitter "profiles" and "bios" that relate to your business.

I'd never cold call an influencer "unless" your prepared to add true value to what they do, just saying :). It's much better for example to write and "epic" post and include the good things they do, how well they do it, as well as demonstrating your industry expertise - then let them know! This really does help to build true working relationships.

Hope this helps.

Hi SEO5

Thanks for sharing this. Are you able to further share exactly what it was you were advertising? Which geographical areas did you target? What was your conversion rate? Did you generate any back links with high authority?

We're wondering if this platform would be good for local businesses as well as national..?

Your feedback would truly be appreciated.

Thank you

Thanks for the comment Rand.

When I asked the question "Should companies now shift away from creating great content..", this was a little tongue in cheek. I wanted to stir up some dialogue within our community. Sure, well written informative content is fantastic, we all know this is truly valuable as part of any sustainable marketing strategy, but has this now lost "some" value? I have my own opinion, what's yours?

I thought Joel Klettke wrote a fantastic piece http://www.iacquire.com/blog/authorship-photos-removed

Thanks for all your feedback. I'm certainly not questioning the value of creating content, or your approach to SEO. Ultimately authorship CTR's have taken a "drop" since Google kindly removed profile images., so it's great to hear your thoughts.

Should companies now shift away from creating great content and invest the time and money into something else?

After Rand tweeted his frustration at @JohnMu in relation to "Authorship CTR's", it got me thinking - should we really be blogging as much as we should?

https://twitter.com/randfish/status/481948721031024641

I'm certain Google ditched author profile images to improve "mobile UX" and "CTR's" for "paid advertisers".

So what I would really like to know is - should small businesses continue to focus on developing great content? How has your marketing strategy changed?

After watching todays Whiteboard Friday post, I'm keen to find our more about how Outbrain worked for you. I'm interested to find out about what content you amplified? Duration of amplification? What was your total spend? Did it skyrocket social sharing? Did it boost backlinks? Has either your company or your clients company seen a dramatic increase in organic search performance, as a result of your content marketing amplification strategy via Outbrain?

I would love to hear your experiences. Thanks Mozzers!

Thank you to you all for your valued feedback. Marie, please do let me know when this article becomes available. I'd be vary interested to read.

We use Moz to analyse and correct the general health of a website to eradicate errors accordingly.

Panda - I'm aware Panda updates have happened more frequently. All duplicates and the quality of content has been implemented for our client.

Penguin - I have disavowed "all" poor quality backlinks, ensuring good quality links remain. We did this manually checking each link and the referring websites for quality assurance.

**But how do we know when the Panda penalty has been lifted, when it's obvious we have a Penguin penalty in place? **

**Does a business who are desperate to advertise online simply begin creating new "valuable" **content, reach out to industry influencers etc,  to achieve backlinks with authority - meaning waiting maybe months before the penalty is removed, if removed?

Or, create a new site, "completely" separate from the old, and implement our marketing strategy knowing that the spammy practices conducted in the past will not affect my clients new site?

The disavow tool has of course been used. Some links still appear in webmaster tools. We've also asked the webmaster of each site to kindly remove the links, which some have been kind enough and removed.

I know once a link has been "disavowed" Google adds an invisible nofollow tag to the link. Similar to your no-followed links in WMT.

My client is reluctant to spend money on developing links with relevance and authority until we see some evidence that the penalty has been removed.

It seems we've exhausted all avenues by cleaning up the website. Plus disavowing links should also be used with caution!

Having seen no recovery for such a long time - my question is, will the site every recover if it has seriously abused Google's guidelines in the past?

We're working with a client who had been hit by Google Panda (duplicate content, copyright infringement) and Google Penguin (poor backlinks).

While this has taken a lot of time, effort and patience to eradicate these issues, it's still been more than 6 months without any improvement.

Have you experienced longer recovery periods?

I've seen sites perform every black hat technique under the sun and still nearly 2 years later..no recovery! In addition many companies I've spoken to advised their clients to begin right from the very beginning with a new domain, site etc.

Yes relevance is a key performance indicator.

Thanks again Tom. Your feedback on this subject has been invaluable. If you do come across any data which supports citations to SERPS, please do let me know. I very interested to know its true impact.

Pixus - I'm with you on this! May I ask if you use a particular citation platform here is the UK? If so, do you use it for your own business to promote your services, or for your clients, and what impact has this had? I'm really interested to find out more.

Thanks so much for your detailed reply Tom. Unfortunately Moz is not available to the UK, yet!

I would love to dig deeper into the true impact citations have on SERPS. What are your thoughts on this?

Bright Local have a package called "Citation Burst." This looks great but, we all know directory submissions can have an extremely negative impact.

Has anyone used Bright Local for Citation Burst, please let me know?

Thanks

Gary

They have a package called "Citation Burst." This looks great but, we all know directory submissions can have an extremely negative impact.

Has anyone used Bright Local for Citation Burst, please let me know. I'll ask the community also.

Thanks again.