Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Aaron,

I would conduct keyword research in the normal way - search volume, competition, relevance for your wesbsite etc. Niches that are filled with spam are just like any other competitive niche - except the competition is easier to beat once you establish authority.

Once you have a bank of keywords that you feel would drive quality traffic, begin to work on producing quality content around them.

It will take work and patience to differentiate yourself from the spam. Building links from authoritative sources, press releases, social media promotions and generating quality content can help to establish the site as an authority on the subject.

The bottom line is that search engines and searchers hate spam. By differentiating your website from the spam and working to gain trust and authority, the chances are that you will be rewarded.

Best of luck!

Hi Cesar, reducing the number of links per page is probably best practice. Google may decide not to index or follow all the links, or if the anchor text is very keyword driven it may be considered spammy. Pages with 1,000 links are probably passing on very little page rank at any rate,

I do understand your point about improving the user experience, but unfortunately algorithms probably won't understand the reasons behind this.

Is there a way that you can refine/restructure the results pages so that users don't see a very long list of results/links? E.g. for a page that has 1,000 results, could you paginate according to letters of the alphabet?

1. It could possibly help you. There's no penalty for having too many links per page (unless they appear spammy), but some restructuring could ensure that internal links pass on more link juice.

2. If these pages are not linked to from elsewhere, they probably will see a drop in ranking/page authority.

Good luck!

Hi John, that's a really frustrating situation, especially when you feel that the national companies have thin content.

Unfortunately there's no quick way to leap frog those national companies - being big and reputable, their sites are considered to be authoritative and they have a good range of links. You'll have to build up authority and high quality links over time to overtake them. JakubMovic's advice about contacting local journalists is a good way to gain links from authoritative sources.

I also don't see a Google Local Business listing for your site - is this something that you have implemented yet? This can be a really great way for local companies to compete with national ones (with the listings often appearing first in the search results), and it's free. http://www.google.com/local/add/ If you do have a  local listing it might be a good idea to review which keywords you're targeting so that you appear for the highest value keyword combinations.

Good luck - it sounds like you've made a great start and with a bit more time hopefully you'll reap the rewards.

Hi Antonio,

I've seen great results from all match types, and usually get the best results from a combination of the three plus some negative keywords. Good keyword research is vital to make sure you're not wasting time and budget on undesirable keywords. For example, if your keyword is "Madrid information", selecting broad match type could result in your ad showing for search queries like "information technology Madrid" or "Information on the University of Madrid."

Exact match type is generally the "safest" option, as your ad will only be triggered the phrase you've selected and nothing else. However don't be afraid to experiment with phrase and broad - you can set your bids lower to make sure you're not wasting unnecessary budget. Then monitor keyword performance closely and use the data to hone your adgroups (pausing keywords that aren't working, increasing bids on the ones that are, expanding your keywords, adding negative keywords etc.)

Good luck!

Hi Sudha,

In response to question 3, I would say that if you already own the .co.uk domain, and you're targeting audiences in the UK, it's definitely a good idea to take advantage of it.

Users often prefer to click on a familiar ccTLD because of the trust that they associate with them (consciously and subconsciously).

You wouldn't have to build a whole new website or stop using the .in site. If you use canonicals and geo-taregtting (through Webmaster), you'll avoid major problems with duplicate content.

Good luck!

Hi Paul, Irving has nailed it. This sounds like a link network and it's a prime candidate for penalisation.

Hi, it would be a good idea provided that the sections aren't keyword stuffed like you say your competitors are. Information like shipping, schedules etc. sound like they'll be useful for visitors, so it could be a win-win situation if done correctly. Good luck!

Hi, yes it's a good idea to think about SEO throughout the development stage. There are lots of things to think about during the build which may affect SEO, inlcuding:

• Has the website got more elements than it needs (multiple CSS files that can be reduced, lots of small images when one sprite would be better, redundant java files etc.)?
• Have you thought about the content of the site (one relevant H1tag per page, clean simple URL structure, all images have appropriate alt tags, appropriate navigation etc.)?
• How should search engines see the site (relevant use of rel="nofollow", relevant use of canonical links, 301 redirects on old links etc.)?

Adding quality, SEO optimised content on your blog is a good starting point. If you do link to the homepage before the site is complete, I would consider creating a holding page to explain what the site will be about and when full functionality will be launched.

Hi Dena,

I wouldn't say images are strictly necessary, but it would certainly be much more of a challenge to create a good user experience without them.

Stock images are cheap and even standard digital cameras can produce high quality photos, so it seems like a bit of a no-brainer to include them given the importance of visual stimulation on the web.

Good luck with the client!

Hi Daria, in my opinion Rand's guide is still one of the best around. It may be three years old, but like most good white hat advice it has proved itself to have a fairly long shelf life. Good luck!

Hi Bob,

It's not specifically related to Facebook pages, but this brought a smile to my face this morning:

http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33419/Shameless-Marketing-Tactics-That-Totally-Work-Infographic.aspx

Good luck with the new page.

Hi Ud U, Kevin's recommendations are all excellent.

I would add that building relationships with quality, relevant sites is a good long term strategy. For example, one of my clients offers pub tours. On my client's site we created a profile page for each of the pubs on the tour and contacted the pubs for input. The majority of them then linked to these profile pages without us even requesting it. We also got links from tourism sites and travel blogs.

The result was good quality content for my client's customers to read;  a good set of longtail optimised pages; and over 30 relevant, high quality links. The bottom line is that building relationships with relevant sites (and I mean genuine relationships rather than some sort of linking partner) and quality content generation really can work for all parties involved.

Good luck.

Hi Ben, it seems like you've got a pretty solid strategy in place. I appreciate that social media can be a tricky platform to negotiate when you're working in a sensitive industry like this, and maybe you'll find that some networks simply don't work, while others do.

One thing that I might suggest is to spend some time deciding on the niche you want to reach through social media. Connecting with potential patients in this way might be difficult for the reasons you state above (privacy, reluctance to share/like/discuss openly). Establishing your reputation and increasing your visibility among the counselling community could be achieved by joining Twitter conversations, connecting on LinkedIn, commenting on blogs, answering questions and, once you've built a following, sharing your own content.

Perhaps patients are better reached through SEO-promoted posts rather than social media promoted posts (link building, solid guest posts etc.). Having said that, there are probably lots of ways to utilise social media - e.g. awareness generating campaigns, conducting research and sharing interesting statistics and findings etc.

Good luck!

Hi there, if it's a "relevant and quality" blog it probably will be considered natural. This is fine once in a while but I wouldn't rely on it as a tactic - too many reciprocal links will devalue the link authority.

Hi Vikas, I would be very cautious about this... it's a grey-hat area. If you're providing good quality content and including relevant links, you may see some benefits at first. But as ITRIX suggests, they're likely to be recognised as a blog network.

And of course, each blog would have to gain link authority before being able to pass much link authority on. A better strategy would be to dedicate that time and effort into putting quality content on your own site and earning links to this.

Good luck.

Hi Ron, yes well-placed, relevant links with well-written, non-spammy anchor text should help your other pages to rank higher.