To make rest a project after a while. That pause will benefit your creativity, because your brain will work on it in the background without stress. When you return to the project, it will seems new somehow and those ideas your mind was breeding will come out with force.
Best posts made by gfiorelli1
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RE: What's your best hidden SEO secret?
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RE: Are press release sites useful?
I not a great fan of press release sites, as I think they are not giving a real personalized (is it correct this word?) service.
If I was you I would try to convince your clients to transform those press release into posts creating a blog. Then I would use the newsletters as a way to promote the blog with Media and contacts in Media.
That way it would be possible to create a more personal relationship between your clients' sites and the media, and from there more interesting linking opportunities.
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RE: H1 Tag.
Hi.
First of all I'd like to tell you one thing: H1 is not anymore so determinant as a single ranking factor, as you can verify from the 2011 Search Engine Ranking Factors by SEOmoz.
Said that, H1 is still important, especially to help Search Engines to understand "semantically" the content of the page the same H1 is present.
That means that neither the standard solution Magento offers, neither your idea are totally correct.
Let me explain it.
To have as H1 the Logo of your site, means that you are going to have the same H1 for every page of your site. This is not suggested, because you are indirectly telling to the crawlers that "The Printer Depo" is an important keyword for every page your site have... and that is not surely true.
More over, having as H1 you logo (hence, the alt text of it) can cause that more H1 tags will be present in your page (i.e.: in the product page, usually the name/title of the product is treated as H1); and this is not really a good practice, also because you are telling to the search engines that your document is about the 1st H1 keywords and the 2nd one too, fact which may create confusion.
My suggestion (which is also a suggestion Yoast offers in its old but still useful Magento SEO guide) is to maintain the logo as H1 in your home page (using the hack you did is ok), but making the logo has H3 in all the other pages.
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RE: SEO for PPC landing pages
Ciao Mike,
first of all my compliments for having "A" grade on every page of your site.
And now I will try to answer to your question.
- When it come to PPC, is not really necessary to create one Ad Copy for keyword and, therefore, one Landing Page for Keyword. The Ad would have to be written in order to well respond for a semantically related group of words. And the same it for the Landing Page.
- Landing Pages for organic traffic are very different from Landing Pages for PPC one (or Social Media). So they must be planned (and tracked) differently. Therefore, I would not do any external SEO for a PPC Landing Page but yes I would pay attention to some basic On Page factors (Title, URL, H1).
- From your last phrase, I see that you are going to use the Landing Page as a step to the real Landing... I wouldn't do that. Remember, a commercial lead is something that can be a succes or a fail in question of seconds, so I would not make think the user that have to click to discover more about the service/product and then, maybe, again in order to contract/buy it. So, try whenever it is possible to make the conversion take place in the same landing page.
- PPC landing pages are usually the most bounced LP of all. In order to obtain a valid goal from the visit (and so give a profit to the visit), I always offer a second conversion objective. It could be a subscription to a newsletter or a like/follow me. Most of the time people don't buy the first time visit you, but yes, probably will sign to your newletter or social media profiles in order to stay informed about your products/services. This is an old marketing tactics whose purpose is to not loose the contact with a potential customer
- Finally I give you the link to a wonderful Unbounce post: http://unbounce.com/landing-page-examples/your-landing-page-sucks/ where are described 10 great example of landing pages and that can be an inspiration for yours.
Good luck with PPC, it is a great marketing tool, but can be a real pain in the... if not well planned.
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RE: Hreflang tags and canonical tags - might be causing indexing and duplicate content issues
Hi... I'm sorry to tell you that the answer offered by Gaston is not totally correct.
So, in your Spanish page you have these hreflang and canonical annotations:
This is not correct because you are not adding also the self-referential hreflang annotation
Google is very precise about this, and it states its need in the help pages as well in many Googlers tweets and webmaster office hangouts.
The rel="canonical" is correct. Remember that the self-referential and the alternative href URLs must always be canonicals.
Finally, regarding the subfolders blocked via robots.txt, yes! that's totally incorrect:
if you're blocking Googlebot from accessing the Spanish, French and Italian subfolders, then Googlebot won't be able to parse the code of their pages, hence it won't be able to see also the hreflang annotations... with obvious erroneous consequences.
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RE: Structured Data - Best Practice?
Hi Philip,
I'd invite studying what a site like Booking.com does, because it can offer you the answer you are looking for.
For instance, we have the hotel Residence Michaela in Milano Marittima, and it is listed in the Italian and English version of the site:
If you, then, use the Structured Data Testing Tool by Google, then you'll see how both have the aggregate rating (you must be logged in Google to see the links here below):
Those Booking's pages of the Residence Michaela have a link to the Review pages (click on the "Good 7.3"):
The two reviews' pages work differently. The Italian one presents first the reviews in Italian, which are the big majority of them. The English one, instead, presents first the ones in English, and just after the ones in Italian or in a language different from English.
Substantially they are doing what Rank Tracker does, somehow, and what Tom Anthony suggested in his answers.
The use of hreflang in the reviews' page is essential if you are going to present the same reviews, even if ordered differently.
I hope this helps you.
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RE: What is the purpose of submitting your blog articles to directories?
Hi Kevin!
The first thing you must ask yourself is this one: why do I need to post articles in posts/articles directories.
Surely you'd like to do it for link building reasons...
But is it worth the time and bucks spent? I personally think it is not.
The fact is that article marketing directories give you an easy way to create backlinks is surely tempting, but they are bad quality links. As Rusty wrote, they pass very few PR because:
- many of the article marketing directories have their PageRank discounted by Google;
- you article with your backlink very fastly deepens in the archive section of the directory or in one of the many faceted pages, which usually have almost 0 PR
Secondly, the articles published in those kind of directory right now rarely are picked up by other webmasters in order to fullfill their content needs, therefore the original reason to be of those sites (publish your original content to see it redistributed with an attribution link) is totally failing and fading.
So... in order to see some kind of effect on your ranking thanks to this hiperspammed tactic (and I'm sorry to notice that Rusty practically suggest to follow this way) you would need literally hundreds if not thousanda of articles.
That means that even though article marketing at first seems fast and cheap, on a large scale it is not, all the contrary: it expensive, time wasting and overly distracting.
If you have the money and time to engage in that kind of big scale strategy, then you'll probably see still a good effect on your rankings, results that probably will be blown away if only Google decide to put a final end to these kind of links.
I don't say you have not to use article marketing (or PR sites for press releases), but do it once in a while creating always original content, not respinning it all over the web and just to create diversity in your link profile.
But I suggest you to change your link building chip, and start using other more productive and effective ways in order to create link building occasions:
- spend the time in bettering your own blog, making it known through social media interaction with other bloggers and site owner;
- creating connections with other bloggers in your market in order to create guest blogging opportunities;
- invest your money creating amazing content, or simply very good one that people would naturally like to share and link to;
- invest part of the budget which would be spent in article marketing (37$ * XY article... ) in Adwords in order to make your site stand up in front of your potential users while you're creating a solid link profile which can help you ranking higher. That adwords will help you for branding and making your site known and, eventually, reviewed, linked to and shared, not just for monetary conversions.
- and so on and on.
I do really suggest you to look at this old (august 2011) Whiteboard Friday by Rand Fishkin:Article Marketing: Mostly a Scam
Ciao!!!
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RE: Twitter Username: Keyword or Company Name?
Don't take me as good example (I'm not).... in fact I use none of above (gfiorelli1)... but you know, when you have a nick attached to you since the BBS era.
Seriously talking... brand name is always better for the twitter handle of a company. For the "professional" twitter handle of an employer of the company, the best is Name-Brand.
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RE: Location of the web host provider and SEO
I do not have studies with me to prove (or not) if local hosting providers influences rankings...
But I want to underline that is the IP location what counts, especially if we accept the idea that for Local Search Search Engines are looking also if the website is for real localized in the country it is competing for.
That means, that you can also avoid a physical hosting in the country you are competing for, but you can host your website via proxy in the local country, as very well said Richard Baxter in this comment (http://www.seomoz.org/blog/international-seo-where-to-host-and-how-to-target-whiteboard-friday#jtc132564 )to this WBF: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/international-seo-where-to-host-and-how-to-target-whiteboard-friday
Anyway, the most important is the domain termination, so - whenever it is possible - try always to use the country domain name termination of the geography you want your site rank for.
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RE: In the U.S., how can I stop the European version of my site from outranking the U.S. version?
Hi Alan and Matt,
I am sorry to tell you that if you set up the hreflang for "Europe" as hreflang="en-GB", that won't work.
That annotation, in fact, tells Google to show the URLs having it only to users searching in English from Great Britain.
It would be better to use only "en" in European website.
Said that, this is not the best solution either, because it is telling Google: "show this to users searching in English globally (but not if they are in the USA).
If the European web site is meant to reach users who not necessarily are using English as default language (eg: Spanish, French, Italians, Germans et al), than a solution could be tagging the European website with the "x-default" hreflang.
Note, though, that this a quite extreme use of the x-default.
The big mistake, anyway, is creating an European website itself:
- Google does not consider political regions like European Community nor continents and geographical areas like "Asia", "Middle East", "Europe";
- Because of 1, you cannot geotarget a website but for Political States (Spain, UK, Russia...)
- To think that not-English speaking users will use English for searching something it is not realistic, therefore it is correct what Matt says in his answer re: translated versions served in whatever format (ccTld, sudomain, subfolder) better fits your business needs.
Finally, personally I would not suggest to a ccTld for targeting European users, because that ccTld would geotarget the site to its country (eg: .es to Spain). Better a generic domain name (.net or even .eu, which is a generic domain name and does not have any geotargeting power), or even a subfolder/subdomain.
Finally, when creating the different country sites, I remind you that in certain countries is spoken the same language. For instance Ireland and UK share English, but they have different currencies, obviously different postal system and phone numbers and, especially, a different culture, so that you should not think in having an European EN version serving all the English speaking countries, but localizing each one of them.
To not talk, and I really end my answer, countries like Switzerland (French, German, Italian and Romance), Spain (Spanish and Catalan), Belgium (French and Flemish), Ukraine (Russian and Ukranian).
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RE: Is there any SEO benefit for links shared in Facebook feeds or wall posts?
Yes, as Google itself (and Bing) told to Danny Sullivan in an interview that I strongly suggest you to read: http://searchengineland.com/what-social-signals-do-google-bing-really-count-55389
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RE: How are you implementing TAGFEE?
Transparent > For me is synonym of Intellectual Honesty. With clients: tell them the truth, even if that can destroy their 300-$$-online-marketing-conquering-the-world-dream. Always be clear, avoiding misunderstandings, making myself "obvious". With colleagues and community: not hiding myself behind a mask or fictitious character (note: my avatar is resembling me https://plus.google.com/photos/110957997763625569561/albums/profile?hl=en ).
Authentic > See the previous answer.
Generous > Help without asking nothing in return... that is also a great way to obtain links by the way. Sharing my knowledge and my experience.
Fun > I don't know if I'm fun... but if you want to share a beer, maybe on Twitter if we cannot actually meet, here I am.
Empathetic > Yes... understanding the feelings of the others... talk to them, dialogue, confront constructively. Making mine their objectives: this is especially important when it comes to clients.
Exceptional > This can't be achieved without the 4 qualities above. And I don't know if I am exceptional... but maybe I am exceptionally humble

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RE: 1 of the sites i work on keeps having its home page "de-indexed" by google every few months, I then apply for a review and they put it back up. But i have no idea why this keeps happening and its only the home page
Seeing your home page I notice how there is a big bunch of text under what is the real footer of the site design.
That text has been clearly added to try to better the on page optimization and, even though it is visible to the user (but with a very little font), when you read it seems written as having the robots in mind more than the users... in fact the repetition of "maternity" in every possible variation is at the limit of the keyword stuffing. That could explain why it gets de-indexed automatically (it does not seems a manual penalization)
What I suggest you is to optimize the home page for your main KW and not trying to have it ranking for all the KWs possibile.
For instance, choose "maternity wear" and try to have it in the most important "places":
- title html (as first words)
- h1 (that means as the alt text of the logo, that is now Eva Alexander)
- using it in the "essential" "the view" and "twilight beauty" text
Deleting that bunch of text below the fold.
About on page optimization, I suggest you to read this evergreen by Rand: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/perfecting-keyword-targeting-on-page-optimization and to wisely use the suggestions the on page optimization section of the SEOmoz Campaign you surely have for this site can give you.
Finally I will start trying to plan a better link building campaign, as the quality of the links actually pointing to the site (and the home page) is quite low. I see you have a blog: start using it in order to create a voice about "maternity" and "maternity issues" (not just fashion)... for instance about Pre-Maman way of life and therefore use it in order to start outreach actions.
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RE: How To Rank High In Google Places?
The best answer I can give you is to read them here: Local Ranking Factors 2011 published by David Mihm (probably one of the best experts in local search). There you can find the solutions to all your doubts.
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RE: Wordpress Plugins
Forget All in One SEO and go with Wordpress SEO by Yoast.
Also consider his Google Analytics for Wordpress
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RE: What should we include in the updated developers SEO cheat sheet?
Actually I feel the absence of everything relates to Windows platforms (IIS, Isapi Rewrite)
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RE: Insare
Mmm...
http://www.isnare.com/ is a classic article marketing portal, and - knowing how Ezine lost all its "SEO value" with every Panda, I would not use any article portal for link building.
On the contrary, I would spent better the time doing some more productive and creative link building action.
Sincerely, article marketing is crappy link building

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RE: SEO for Subdomains for different languages .com/fr, .com/es
Hi Vantresca.
I think it is better to clear thing about how International SEO works.
First of all I see a contradiction between your question (when you talk about geo targeting folders or better using cTld), then in this answer here above, when you talk about languages.
Remember: to target a country is not the same as targeting a language speaking population. The example you give (French) is quite clear about this difference.
That means that if you are targeting a language and the people talking that language, the first thing you must discard is the use of an Country level domain name, because that would mean you are targeting the country of the cTld (.es.> Spain - .fr = France...).
But that mean also that you should not have to indicate to Google to geo target any subfolder for any particular country. Ideally every language folder of the site should have to be crawled and shown globally, in order to be found by all the people speaking those language (i.e.: French, Canadians of Quebec, but also all the African nation speaking French..
More over, you cannot use any classic geo targeting signal, as currency, addresses or else.
And, also, you should pay attention to the version of the language used, as - for instance - the french spoken in Quebec is really different from the one spoken in Paris. In that case you should use the most "standardized" version of french, a neutral french.
So... if your site has French, Spanish, English (or Russian I'll talk later), and you want those languages ranks well in every possible country those languages are spoken, the only tactic you have to use is link building, creating as much campaigns as the languages are and not thinking in outreaching sites from France, again taking French as an example, but from sites of every country were French is an official language.
About Russian, my suggestion is to prioritize the migration to an .ru domain if you think to compete in Yandex, as Yandex give a clear preference to Russian country level domains.
Related to your question about if it is possible to create a campaign on a subfolder level, honestly I cannot answer that question, as I've never had that need. But I would address the helpteam regarding this doubt, because they can tell you in details if Roger-bot will crawl your data (as you have requested) or not. You can contact them at help@seomoz.org
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RE: Link Blocks
There's an old great answer to your question in the Search Engine Forum. I copy it here:
A "C" Block address is based on your IP. In general, webhosts are given a different class C, so if you have a different C block, you are usually talking about two different webhosts.
I'm talking about the actual hardware owners here, of course. If two resellers of the same host sell you two hosting accounts, there is a good chance they are both on the same Class C.
Google assumes that sites hosted by two different hosts are probably separate, and therefore links between sites hosted on them are more likely to be from different people. There are problems with that assumption, but it's one of the things they look at anyway (gotta look at something).
Let's say you had an account with a shared IP address. So, for example, you had two sites that both used 192.168.5.1 as an IP. Google would tend to assume that these two sites are related, since they are on the same IP. This can be an issue with free or cheap hosts, which may have thousands of websites hosted on the same shared IP. You would normally try to avoid this if you had multiple sites that were likely to link to each other.
Now let's say that you got yourself 2 different (static) IP - your host would probably give you 192.168.5.2 and 192.168.5.3, in this example. Well these are two different IP's all right, but they are right next to each other, aren't they? Google would also likely consider these to be related.
But what if you hosted with another site across town? Perhaps they would be assigned a group of IP's to hand out that look like 192.168.122.XXX. Well, that 122 now indicates a different ISP, and therefore two sites hosted at this level are more likely to be considered unrelated.
To make a long story short:
192.168.006.001
is a standard, fully qualified IP address. The blocks in this case are:
AAA.BBB.CCC.001-254
That's not a Typo - Class D and E look totally different. The last 3 digits are actually called the Rest Field
So these are within the same class

192.168.222.111
192.168.222.230And these are different Class C IP's:
192.167.111.233
192.168.222.233I quote just part of the post, as part of is related to a specific issue. You can read it here: http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=14838
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RE: In the U.S., how can I stop the European version of my site from outranking the U.S. version?
Hi Alan!
yes, I was saying exactly that. If you're going for an international multi-country SEO and you have to deal with countries that share language, like in the case of Ireland and Uk, it is better to target them with two different "sites" (being a site in a ccTld or subfolder or sibdomain, depending on business convenience).
if you're doing multi-cointry SEO and one of your targeted counties has 2+ official languages, then the ideal solution is having a ccTld for that country and creating as many subfolder translated versions as are the official languages of that country.
For instance:
www.domain.be, with the French version appended from the root,
www.domain.be/nl/, with the Flemish translated version.
As alternatives be you can redirect 302 via user agent from domain.com to /fr/ or /nl/, while always letting users to eventually choose the alternate version via language selector.