Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Thanks for the insights.

It really helps

Hi Stu,

Why not approach one of these companies/individuals SEOMOZ recommends...

http://www.seomoz.org/article/recommended#link-building

Thanks

Iain - Reload Media

Hey Pat,

Good question. Firstly, well done for being involved with two very high Domain Authority sites. However (get ready for cheesy quote) with great power comes..... etc.

Strictly from an SEO perspective, 301ing pages from the specific product site to the main domain will transfer about 80-90% of the authority. You should see an increase in DA when you do this. However because DA is an exponential scale, it's difficult to say by how much.

I would definitely do it, making sure the pages are 301'd to equivalent pages on the main domain, not just the home page. I'd do this because it's easier to expand the content, and target new keywords.

However, the question you need to ask yourself is, "Is it the right thing for the brand?" especially as you have loyal followers for the specific product.

Hope that helps

Iain - Reload Media

Hi L E Nieto,

First of all congrats on a no.1 ranking. The On-page tool gives recommendations for ideally optimised pages. This is often required for competitive keywords. As your keyword isn't that competitive, Google is just trying to find the most relevant page, which it thinks is yours.

I'd strongly recommend that you do follow the recommendations from the on page tool to strengthen your position.

How that clears everything up for you.

Thanks

Iain - Reload Media

Hey Housing Interactive,

Good question. The answer depends on if you are targeting those paginated pages with different keywords to the main sub-category. It's highly likely you're not.

The other advantage of having those pages indexed is it's more internal links to point at your most important pages.

However, Search Engines only allocate a certain amount of bandwidth/processing power to crawl your site. If it uses that time up crawling less important sub-category paginated pages, it could miss the more important pages you want to rank.

Therefore in short, I wouldn't bother.

Hope that helps

Iain - Reload Media

Hey Carolina,

Jarno has nailed it.

Just on a side note, if you want to see the traffic for http://domain.com your web developer should be able to supply you with the server logs which will tell you similar stats to regular analytics.

This is achievable because log files record requests to a server. Google Analytics record requests for pages with the Analytics code installed.

Hope you can sort it

Iain - Reload Media

Hi Royboy,

It's a common issue with SEO, as we don't have the precise control the PPC guys do over our desired landing pages.

First step would be to optimise your internal links, make sure /cool-widgets is very well interlinked from within your own site.

Next build external links into that page. After awhile you may get both pages listed in one SERP, #win. Then you can re-target your home page to a more relevant competitive keyword.

Depending on your external link building, it can take several months though, but is worth doing.

In the mean time, put something very obvious on the home page pointing visitors towards /cool-widgets

Let us know how you get on.

Iain - Reload Media

Hey Greenhornet,

This depends on how the widget is made. If it's none accessible by Search Engines, i.e. it's made in Flash, then Search Engine can only read limited information from them. So in the Flash case, it's not of any really benefit.

If the widget is accessible to Search Engines, then better for the home page. However if it's on every page, you'll have issues with duplicate content. Therefore just have the crawlable widget on the home page, and start developing content for all your other pages.

Hope that helps, and good luck.

Iain - Reload Media

I know that pain! I imagine the perfect world, where all clients are on Wordpress.

Hope it goes well.

Iain

Hey Dean,

It's a common problem when dealing with a specific niche. Therefore you have to look to the wider industry they are in, home renovation.

As Keri says below, the articles will need to be unique to get them on sites that will make a difference to your SEO.

I can't stress enough, for your guest posting to really work, make sure the posts have valuable insights. One way to do this is to interview the business owner, they are the expert on the subject.

Thanks

Iain - Reload Media

Hi David,

In short, yes it does need to be in the head. Unfortunately it's the basic structure of an html page. No way round it, you'll have to customise the headers.

If you did put them in the body, search engines wouldn't recognise them, and they would generate their own title tags, which would make it difficult to target your chosen keywords.

Thanks

Iain - Reload Media

Hey Max,

Hopefully this article will be able to help...

http://devnet.kentico.com/Knowledge-Base/API-and-Internals/How-to-set-pure-extension-less-URLs-without-suppor.aspx

Thanks

Iain - Reload Media

Hi Vladislav,

As MA is quite a wide area you have got a chance of getting a local listing in Springfield. Assuming you have verified you Google + Local page, it's all about getting as many valuable citations for your clients Business Name, Address & Phone number.

There is more details in this old post by Rand, but still all very relevant...

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/one-dead-simple-tactic-for-better-rankings-in-google-local

Hope that helps and good luck.

Iain - Reload Media

Hey Andy,

Good question. To answer we need to consider your intent for having a share or follow button. Shares helps attract new users, follow helps retain previous visitors.

Do you have a site that is likely to get repeat visitors?

You also mentioned the share button is on the thank you page. It's highly likely this is accessed by posting some type of form, so it could be tricky for others to see what the original sharer saw.

I'd use the thank you page to retain visitors with follow buttons and add share buttons to useful content to attract new users.

As far as the value of the links of shares goes, you get little value from Twitter & Facebook. However it's fair to say in the not to distant future social signals from Google Plus will play a significant factor in SEO rankings.

Hope that helps.

Iain - Reload Media

Hey DDLUX,

I see where you're coming from. The important question is are any of these pages in Google's main index? If so don't remove them. Also check if any are receiving SEO traffic directly. If so, don't cut those either.

However thin/low value pages need cleaning out otherwise you'll get a visit from Google Panda!

Thanks

Iain - Reload Media

Hi Paul,

Good to see you getting in to the mindset of an SEO. It's a challenging, yet rewarding job. I've recreated the filter OSE search you've done...

http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?page=1&site=www.springer-marketing.co.uk&sort=page_authority&filter=follow&source=external&target=page&group=0

These are only external sites, but some are similar, for example 301 from www.springermarketing.co.uk/ (no hypen).

You can give yourself strong links, internal lining is a fundamental SEO strategy. Have a look at this great article by SEOMOZ http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/internal-link

Hope that helps

Iain - Reload Media

Hi Kenneth,

Good news, Google loves people like you. You're making the Internet a better place, by focusing on the content.

You're sitting on something valuable, and the best thing to do is to rewrite them, as if the attracted links before, they attract more. If for some reason you can't write a page, our the subject is now out of date, 301 them to similar page. That will pass on the link value.

Hope it goes well

Iain - Reload Media

Hi Gerjan,

You're doing the right thing. There is a risk of losing some rankings with any site migration. Your job as an SEO is to reduce these and let the client know there is some short term risk.

301's are the main thing but if you follow this check list you'll be ok...

http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/3546-SEO-Site-Migration-Checklist

Hope it goes well.

Thanks

Iain - Reload Media

Hey PeachTree,

Sounds like you have a complicated situation there. However to answer your specific question, Canonical's only work for pages on the same domain, so it won't have any benefit.

You could 301 redirect pages from the hyphen domain to the equivalent page on the branded domain. This will pass the majority Authority of the hyphen domain to the brand site.

Hope that helps

Iain - Reload Media

Hey Paul,

You are linking your social media profiles correctly. However you have made a small mix-up between Social followers and Social shares & plus 1's. OSE only reports on shares & plus 1's, not followers.

Your Twitter profile link will show in OSE eventually, it just needs to find it (index) it first. This can take several months. Even though SEOMOZ do an amazing job with OSE, they are essentially trying to reverse engineer Google, which is no mean feat, as Google is quite well funded shall we say.

Give it a couple of months and it will show up.

Hope that clears everything up for you.

Iain - Reload Media