Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Thanks again Patrick. I thought this was a good summing up by Neil Patel.

I don't generally recommend buying press releases as a strategy unless you are trying to hide things in search. It really works well for that. But I would be willing to bet by PR agencies they are not talking about the places that you can go buy a $399 package and have a blast done. They are talking about a different kind of advertising agency that might call Paul in the tech office and say "Hey man, I want this to run, how much?"

Hey Gary, The Google stance is that anything paid like what you outlined in #2 and #3 should have nofollowed links on it. It's the same story for giving free stuff to bloggers in exchange for reviews. The official stance can be found here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en. The reality is that there are still plenty of people getting away with this behind closed doors. The ones that are subtle about it can likely keep doing it for a long time with low risk. The ones that are blatantly doing it are much more at risk for being penalized or losing the value of those links, however I haven't seen many public stories of paid link penalties for awhile. If you choose to do this, do so with the understanding that it carries some risk, and your competitors are going to be happy to report you to the webspam team if you make it obvious that you're doing it.

Hi Guys I apologise for not responding sooner. Attached are "most" of our keywords we are ranking for (for individual pages) since launching in Feb this year. We're now starting to execute a marketing plan that will contribute to earning links. Hopefully this will begin to rank our more "competitive" keywords. Have you guys worked with many start ups? How quickly were they able to rank for non competitive/competitive keywords? Would really like to hear from you regarding your experiences, to ensure I get everything right from the get go. Thanks. Gary ANwsHlZ.png

Hi Steve Having unique content for each product page is a must! I guess sofa beds are individually unique to a degree in terms of brand, size, functionality, design etc. If you could elaborate about what it is exactly you are trying to do, I'll try to help? Gary

Hello Gary, I have to agree with RangeMarketing, in this case the keyword matches are probably your best bet - my only question is in regards to whether you might have multiple brands in the future that produce "Ciro" or "Vogue" in which case it might get a bit heavy and bulky if enough products become available. As things stand, however, your keyword match options are probably your best bet.

Good share, thx Dean

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 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

Hi Gary, We were advertising articles for non profit client based out of Canada. The CTR was low at .06% but i guess that would really depend on the content that you are promoting. The reporting interface is pretty basic , you will not get detailed stats on every single publisher that drove traffic to your site. Their network does include popular sites like CNN, Fox. The distribution might be a lot better in the US . We only targeted Canada with this campaign. The key to success with this platform would really be the viral nature of the content being promoted. I'd suggest you give it a shot with a small budget to start and see how it does. Cheers, SEO5..

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?

im am compelled to use brightlocal as moz local is useless to me in new zealand, I came across this discussion looking to see how trustworthy brightlocal is, seems it might the solution

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.

Some resources mentioned below: Content Syndication 101 on Content Syndication More Strategies (i'd be careful with the article directories suggestion in this post)

Hi I raised a similar question yesterday. http://moz.com/community/q/no-access-for-uk-get-listed-and-now-moz-local-alternatives-to-moz I use Whitespark which is good but someone kindly also recommended Brighton Local yesterday.

Thanks Michael. This looks great. A very similar tool to Buffer. Regards Gary

Good point. Wasn't thinking about that when I wrote my answer.

Gary, I'm not even sure their algorithms can automatically detect duplicate images purely by the image visually.  As a forensic audit professional I have not seen this.  Where I would have concern is from a manual reviewer perspective.  Google employs a large network of manual reviewers, so in that scenario it would be possible for detection of duplication of images. Again though, what matters is context.  If they are on a site where the majority of content is not those specific images, and if that site is a quality site that offers unique value to site visitors, this should not be a problem or a concern.

Hi Yiannis Sure, my email is gary@elitegroupmarketing.co.uk Look forward to hearing form you.

Cheers David We are actually already in touch - but thank you!