Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Does seem a little odd. Could you post the domain so we can have a more detailed look?

Thanks

Iain - Reload Media

Hi Hardley,

Dana has listed some great factors to consider when choosing directories. However just consider the relevance of that directory rather than just the raw authority of the site.

Example (I've just been to Australia Zoo, hence this example) You're doing SEO for a company that transports Kaulas. The best link you could get isn't from a high authority site, with a PR of 8, & 1,000,000 links. It's from the most relevant sites. Out there somewhere will be a website on the perils of transporting Kaulas, written by the foremost expert in the world. Target that site.

In the case of directories, you target animal related ones. Because Google will know what the site is about, you won't need to worry about adding a list of keywords.

Hope that help

Iain - Reload Media

Hi Diane,

When I worked in the UK there was only one company to use if you wanted dedicated servers. Rack Space. The customer service they provide is second to none.

If you can't afford Rack Space, just stay away from 1 and 1. They lost a site when I used them and their customer service is just terrible.

Hope you find a new home for your site soon

Iain - Reload Media

Hi Hardley,

It's a good question, and one many people ask. Even though Joel's advice on using the link: search operator is a good one, you'll also get limited results with this. As Google will only show a handful.

As Dana mentioned, OSE only updates once a month. However as much as I love OSE and use it everyday, it doesn't have nearly as much data on links as Google does. Therefore it can take a while to find all your hard work.

Try using Majestic SEO. In my opinion they don't do as good as job summarising link info, they have a bigger index of link data. It's likely your links will show up there.

As with any SEO/life subject, get data/opinion from multiple sources and make an educated guess.

Hope that helps

Iain - Reload Media

Hi Joel,

Good to see you looking to take advantage of what will be the most influential social network on SEO. The good news is you're in the game early for your industry.

As Smart Locksmiths Solutions says from a technical angle, link your blog posts to your Google + profile. This will make your profile image appear in search results.

However from a strategic marketing perspective, post links and statuses that will help establish you as an expert in the field of Real Estate. Then start to interact with other Realtors on G+. Comment on posts, share things you agree with. Make online friends.

Google will pick-up on this and assign you Author Rank (speculative at this stage, but an obvious step for them to take.)  Because you've linked your profile to your site, via the blog posts, you'll rank better then your competitors.

Hope that helps.

Iain - Reload Media

Hi Katherine,

Try using Screaming Frog SEO software to crawl you site. That should pick up if you have a incorrect internal links.

For external links pointing to none existent pages, try Majestic SEO. It has the largest amount of link data (Sorry Open Site Explorer, but you know it's true).

Hope that helps

Iain - Reload Media

Hi Chris,

Brad makes an excellent point re regular organic rankings. RE local listings, assuming you've verified and done all the standard on page work to your Local page, it's time to start building citations. These are Name Address & Telephone references. The more places Google sees you're address the more likely you are to rank in local listings.

Here is an awesome resource for finding places to get citations...

http://searchengineland.com/top-50-citation-sources-for-uk-us-local-businesses-104938

Hope that helps.

Iain - Reload

Hi Raphael,

These are the steps you need to go through to first identify the issue, then solve it.

1. Identify if there is any seasonal variation in your target keywords - Google keyword tool will help with this.
2. Identify if there is a drop for keywords you're not racking. You maybe tracking 100 keywords, but it's a safe bet to say you're getting found for many more than you're tracking. Have the traffic to these dropped?
3. Has your (not provided) keyword traffic increased? Check in Google analytics

Once you understand where the drop has come from, you can then start to work out the problem.

1. If it's seasonal, were the search terms for Halloween? Not much you do.
2. If it's non rank tracked keywords, start making useful content that is about your long tail keywords and build some related links
3. If it's not provided, then your overall traffic probably hasn't gone down.

Following these steps will put you on the right track.

Thanks

Iain - Reload Media

Hi Jon,

You're on the right path. I'd be checking the amount of citations your competitors have, and checking the proximity your competitors are to the centre of the town/city.

In my experience if you're further away from the centre, you can still get a local ranking, just depending on who you are competing with. If more competitors are getting into local, it could be the reason your ranking is dropping.

Also are there any citations that conflict with the address your getting citations for, i.e. another address.

Iain

Reload Media.

Hi Kyle,

Your main consideration here is are your images generating traffic through Google/Yahoo/Bing image searches? If you do then it's something you'll need to address.

If they are, you can always 301 redirect old image paths to the new ones. If not I wouldn't worry about it.

Hope the site migration goes well.

Iain - Reload Media

In short, yes. You're much more likely to get penalised by Google (particularly Penguin) as the natural links you'll gain will link with your keywords in the anchor text.

You'd have to produce lots of varied content that would naturally attract a wide variety of anchor texts to over come this.

Also exact match domains are only good at targeting a handful of keywords. Sites that gain the most from SEO get traffic from a huge variation of keywords.

It's a great question, as many people want to be the recommended brand within Google.

I haven't seen any keyword domains as recommended brands in Google. You'll struggle to achieve this with a keyword matching domain simply because these types of sites don't give off very strong brand signals, which Google uses to list brands.

An example of a brand signal is how other websites link to you. Other site will naturally link to the site with the domain name, as they can't link with a brand. There also won't be significant references/citations over the net. Here is a great list of brand signals to consider (http://www.seobook.com/potential-brand-signals)

If you can replicate a lot of these then you may have a chance, but it will be tough.

Let us know how you get on.

Hi Ryan, It's a good question, and one many an in house all rounder will ask themselves at some point. Can't comment on specific companies, but it all come down to what you want. If you need a very custom service, for example you know certain keywords don't work for SEO & you want this transferred to your PPC campaign, you'll need a company that offers a bespoke PPC service. Thanks Reload Media

Hi,

It's a good idea to get existing product reviews on your site. However it will likely cause a duplicate content issue and harm your SEO efforts, as it's highly likely these reviews will show on other peoples sites.

The best tactic is to automatically send a product review request to customers who bought from you 1 or 2 weeks after they have ordered. Give them a small incentive, like 10% of next purchase or free delivery if they write a review. You'll then start to get unique reviews on your website and save the fee on www.powerreviews.com.

From my knowledge I can safely say the age of the domain is from the day your domain is registered.

Thanks