Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Keri,

Thanks for your response! I mostly agree with you, however I'm not talking about just dropping a link as a response to someone's post. I would provide an answer or partial answer on that forum for a specific topic and then put a link for the reference or for a full answer... I don't think this should irritate any forum admins. In the tech community people reference many sites as their answers (now I'm not sure if they're trying to do this as well or not) but sometimes its easier to post a link to an article or a video instead of providing an answer that has to describe 20-50 detailed steps for a user to follow...

Thank you EGOL & Mat for your responses!

I kind of see what you're saying EGOL, however I'm not talking about creating a link for every single post, as that would definitely fall under link spamming. I do want to respond to your answer about you answering that way here at SEOMoz. SEOMoz is more of a closed and tighter community than your average Google or Yahoo group. Most of the time people answer questions with very poor English, directions, instructions, references, etc... If I take my time and knowledge and create an easy to understand blog post with good content and easy to follow instructions and examples and reply to some topics (probably a few week) why would you or THEY think it would be a "sign post" and/or spam links?

Hi Mark,

Well one big change in the last 6 months, is MYSELF joining the game (LOL). I would strongly recommend reading SEOMOZ's Beginners guide to SEO, it was updated on May 22nd which is fairly recent and will refresh your knowledge and updated on the latest http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo

Hello fellow Mozzers!

I've been brainstorming about getting links for my site and thought of the following scenario, let me know if its a good idea or not.

Who we are: an IT consulting firm.

There are many tech support forums and groups on the internet including Google, Yahoo and a few other big dogs...

I thought it would be a good idea to browse them on daily basis and find questions/topics that haven't been answered or don't have any real clear good answers, or are very popular. Then create an article in the blog on our site describing the same exact problem with a solution. Then would post a response under that question/topic with a link back to the solution that is located on our site.

Hoping that this will bring in more traffic, links, and authority...

However I also thought about the possibility  of getting spammed, since there are many spam sites that scrape forums and groups for web site addresses, email addresses, phones, etc...

So what do you guys think, is it a good idea or should I stay away?

Thank you!

Hello,

What do  you mean you migrated your site to HubSpot, do you mean hosting? I thought HubSpot just provides marketing services.

Hello and welcome OJ!

I also started with SEOMoz not too long ago. First thing you definitely need to read the SEOMoz Beginners Guide to SEO http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo

Here is the link to the help section that describes the tools and how to use them:

http://www.seomoz.org/help/

on the left side under tools click on the one you need help with.

Hope this helps!

Hello Christopher,

Thanks for a quick reply! I'm a newbie to SEO so if you don't mind I'd like to pick your brain about 301 redirects ( I will have to research this subject in more detail). However from what I understand:

Create a subdomain hp.domain.com and do a 301 redirect to www.domain.com/hp

Now my question is this, so my content for hp.domain.com technically resides on www.domain.com/hp   correct? or it resides on hp.domain.com ?

Question #2, why would I want or why is it recommended to do a 301 redirect on a subdomain to a folder on a main/root domain?

Thanks!

Hi Joseph, do you run into any SSL errors by using absolute links especially with images? I hate when you get an error message on secure pages saying that some content is not secure would you like to see it... do you think leaving the http part out is a better idea for sites that have SSL pages, use something like www.mydomain.com instead?

Thanks!

Hello everyone!

I have a question about whether we should be using sub-domains. We are currently in the process of redesigning our site so this would be the time to do it. We are a reseller of brand name IT equipment (servers, storage, etc...) should we create a sub-domain for each brand for example:

hp.domain.com

dell.domain.com

or should we just use folders instead like:

domain.com/hp

domain.com/dell

does one have any more SEO value than the other?

Thank you!

Hello Tom,

That's a great tip, I will definitively try to implement something similar on my sites. One question, the design is that all hand coded or there are some tools or templates that you know of that could design this on the fly?

Thanks again!

I might of answered my own question. Dan Price suggested using HubSpot Videos to learn a little bit about marketing in this post, I've bookmarked it but haven't had a chance to go through it... So in my own search I started going through all my notes, books, videos, and bookmarks. Take a look at this video from hubspot which gives a pretty good example on keyword strategy. I think it cleared everything up for me.

Hello fellow Mozzers!

I've been reading quite a few books and forums on SEO for past few years. Finally a few weeks ago I decided to dive into SEO a lot more seriously and start building and optimizing our ecommerce site. We sell brand name servers, workstations, storage and related replacement and upgrade parts for them. I've read many articles, browsed all the popular SEO forums, watched SEO training videos religiously. I'm happy to say that I now (more or less) understand how to optimize a site/page for SEO (On page optimization, unique content/blogging, link building, social sharing, off page optimization, etc...) However the biggest challenge I'm have with is Keyword Research (which I think is the first and most crucial step). I can't seem to find a tool that will help me find good keywords/phrases that I can target in my business profile. Since its an ecommerce site, and we have about 2500 products which means about 2500 pages. the good thing about product pages is that there are part numbers which get searched quite often so I have no problem with selecting keywords for product pages, however for the home page its a NIGHTMARE. I searched the word "server" in Google keyword tool, and it shows that it has 40,000,000 monthly global searches with low competition. That's great news (right? high search volume, low competition) However when I google server or servers, the 1st page is filled with sites like: Dell, HP, IBM, Wikipedia, and a few more with a very high domain authority and thousands of links. So I'm assuming trying to target "servers" as my keyword for the homepage is probably a bad idea, correct?

When I google "buy server" i get mostly irrelevant content like "how to start a calling card business, a few articles(also irrelavant).

I guess my question is this: Can you please provide some advice or information on the keyword research articles and/or tools you use? Something that would provide relevant keywords based on a main keyword. Or am I not using the Google Keyword Tool properly

I also checked out our main competitors site to see which keywords they use, to get an idea, but when trying to google the keywords they're targeting they're not being displayed on Google for those keywords on the first few pages.

We are almost done building our new site which will have a few tools like online server configurator, Q&A section, Server Talk (Forum), Quick Product Finder(Suggests products based on entered criteria) and a few more Which  most of our competitors don't have, and I pretty much have an idea on which keywords to use for those pages and sections of the site, but I am completely clueless on the keywords to use for the home page.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Also forgot to add, should I just use the company name and a few simple keywords for the home page like servers, buy servers and then write weekly or biweekly article that are server related like Does a small business need a server? How do I choose a server for my business? Should I upgrade my server or buy a new one? Do I collocate or host in-house? Should I virtualize my server? Obviously adding links to products and services within these articles and try to create brand awareness that way?

I've tried to search your post and google displayed as the 1st result, take a look at the screenshot...

http://imgur.com/TOCqx

TOCqx

Hi There,

I'm not an expert in SEO yet, so please don't shoot me if I'm wrong. Unless you have a 1 page website or your home page is mainly concentrated on "iphone repair" then it is better to link to a page like www.mysite.com/iphone-repair

In google search results a URL is displayed, and I believe that people often times notice that and would prefer to click on something that would take them directly to the page that seems like  what they're looking for instead of a homepage.

Good to know. Thanks Kevin!

Hello everyone,

Wanted to  know if anyone has any information, if a dedicated IP address for a website or having your site hosted on a virtual dedicated/dedicated server would have any impact on search engine rankings versus hosting a site on a shared hosting account or shared IP?

Thank you all!!!

Understood now. Thank you so much!

Thanks for a quick reply, I made a mistake in my previous post. The domain names that I was referring to were itsupportla.net and itsupportla.com ...

Hello EGOL,

Yes that is on my to do list.

Thank you!

David, if I may ask for your professional opinion in regards to domain names. I provide IT services to small and medium size business, haven't advertised online or did any kind of marketing in the last 5 years. I currently have a website (which I am in the process of completely redesigning and optimizing for SEO) which is 911PCTECH.com

I did a little research of my top competitors for similar services and found out that IT Support LA is a very high volume keyword phrase with very low competition. I went out and got the itsupport.net and itsupport.us (itsupport.com is not available and there is no website built) My services are locally based (southern California mostly) from the 3 domains which would you recommend I use? I read the article that Kevin suggested above, and it recommends to use keyword rich domain names, so do you think its better for me to switch sites and start using itsupportla.net or .us? Thanks again!