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Hi guys.

Just looking for a bit of advice on this one.  I don't have a huge amount of experience in the outreach area so advice from you guys would be appreciated.

Question is in the title really...

If we see posts go live that are incredibly relevant to our products, should we engage in any outreach to ask to be included? Or is this just bad practice/ anyoning for the journo/ blogger?

Isaac.

Hi Guys.

I've been building a database of journos who write about our niche recently for some outreach.

I discovered that in at least one case (Metro UK), a huge amount of content is simply by bloggers, not 'official' journalists.  (They can be found easily on Twitter but not in databases like muck rack etc)

Generally, bloggers represent an easier 'way in'.

So I thought id ask...

1. Is this common practice?

2. Has anyone identified other publications using bloggers for content creation?

(Bit of context... We're looking at' Best diary/ planner' runs downs, 'best stationery for new year' and similar.  Not strong story-based pitches to journos. (For example: Company blar is revolutionizing market X with Blar.)

Simple product runs downs is what we're after for some quick wins on exposure during the holiday period.)

Hi guys.

I've heard a lot of SEO professionals, Google, (and Rand in a couple of whiteboard Friday's) say it's really important to build a 'good' website if you want to rank well.

What does this mean in more practical terms?

(Context...

I've found some sites rank much better than they 'should' do based on the competition.  However, when I built my own site (well-optimised (on-page) based on thorough keyword research) it was nowhere to be found (not even top 50 after I'd 'matched' the backlink profile of others on page 1).

I can only put this down to there being 'good quality website' signals lacking in the latter example.  I'm not a web developer so the website was the pretty basic WordPress site.)

That's a great response from Ramon.

My thoughts...

I wouldn't touch Adwords at alluntil you thoroughly understand the various match types, for both positive and negative keywords (they do differ in their impact somewhat).  And also how Quality Scores impacts Ad Rank. Ad words can be a real killer if left too broad.

I highly recommend this tutorial.  It will teach you everything you need to know about Adwords.

P.S)  I think it's a great idea to offer as an additional service to your SEO work.  They can work hand in hand nicely.

Understood, and thanks!  Really appreciate your time Rand!

Hi Rand, thanks so much for getting back to me again.

I think we may be cross purposes here. Ha.  Just to be clear I was just asking purely about internal links in the context of your WBF here.  (2 mins specifically)

The basic question is: Can keyword anchor text in footer links (naturally) linking to other relevent pages on our site induce any kind of penalty?  Due to the fact they are on every page does this look 'spammy' or intentionally manipulative?

(I feel I may have got the wrong end of the stick here tbh).

Thank you Rand!  Just a quick follow up if I may?

So should we worry about this in our header section also?

We know from Hotjar that our users find the header Nav useful to really fine tune their search for our products...  Week view diaries, day per page diaries, 30, 20, 15 mins appointment diaries etc.

Seems like a crazy penalty (even if they have revoked it now).  I mean we just added this for UX  Blagged.

Hi guys.

I've just been watching this whiteboard Friday.   At 2.01 mins Rand mentions something about a penalty that Google gives for certain internal linking practices.  I'm a little confused about it.

Something along the lines of... 'stuffing keyword rich anchor text in the footer and nav bar'

Does Rand mean repeating keyword rich anchor text in these areas?

Or just that it's stuffing by nature... because it's on every page of the site?

Hope that makes sense.

I've attached a screen shot of our footer.  Could you let me know if this is bad form?

Thanks in advance

CLYGpiI

Thanks.  At least it's good to know that there no full proof way of avoiding this.

I think you're right about starting with exact match and expanding outward in this case.

It's a pity because we have some other campaigns that do well from broad match, capturing a plethora of variations on similar KW queries.  They vary rarely triggering wasted clicks.

Many thanks to you both.  I appreciate the response.

Hi Robert.  Thank you so much for your detailed response, extremely useful.

A couple of quick clarifications if I may?

Google says it does not use GA as a way of measuring user behavior.  Regarding GA, do you just mean we should use it provide **us **insight that Google will 'pick up' in others ways?

Regarding the specific point of diluting 'link-juice'...

So this is still relevent, but make sure we reduce links alongside imporving user experience?

Ok, So this really p*#%d me off the other day.

I've built an extremely comprehensive list of Negative keywords for our trade bookbinding pages on Ad words.

Amongst 100's of others, I've also included every City, Town, Village, and County in the UK so our Ads don't get triggered by local search intent.

However, we're still getting clicks from searches like this one: **'binding services n worcestr' **

Question: If Google won't assume this is a misspelling of one of our Neg KW, how I can I possibly protect the account from this type of search?

Is this something we just have to accept having KW's on broad match mod/ phrase match?

Hi Cesare.

Appreciate the response.  8 to 12 weeks for new content ranking is my experience also.

However, when we got a link from a different charity (about 18 months ago) our rankings jumped up in the SERPs 2 to 3 weeks after that link being indexed.

So I imagine the answer is not the same for on page/ off page signals.

I'll happily stand correct though.  Anyone else care to comment?

Howdy Moz friends.

I've just been checking out this post on Moz from 2011 and wanted to know how relevant it is today?

I'm particularly interested in a number of links we have on our HP potentially harming important landing page rankings because not enough 'link juice is getting to them i.e) are they are being diluted by all the many other links on the page? (deeper pages, faqs, etc etc)

It seems strange to me that as Google as has got more sophisticated this would still be that relevant (thus the reason for posting).  Anyway, I thought I was definitely worth asking.  If we can leverage more out of our on-page efforts then great

The question is pretty much in the title.

We had a link from a Charity site (high PA/ DA) and from Metro online recently.  Indexed about 3 weeks ago and 5 days ago respectively.  No movement to speak off.  (Previously we've seen significant boosts from far lesser links).

Should I assume they have had no effect? Or is too early to tell

I know it takes up to 2 months for some of our new pages to rank, same with passing authority from links?

(Note: I appreciate the competition will play a significant part in this, but my question is specifically about how long one should leave to know one way or another. )

Hi Dan.  Sorry for my delayed reply.

Thank you so much for your detailed response.  That is really helpful!  May I pick your brain for just a couple of clarifications?

'Traditional print/online publications quite often have a features calendar which they make available on request.'  Do you mean simply get in touch with these publications and request their features calendar?  See if our product would fit?

'Making sure you're easily findable when journalists are looking to quickly grab some examples to finish the article they have to submit in 30 minutes'  I totally agree, we've seen this work using Pressloft Jouno requests, and we do use HARO (although it's rarely useful for our products)... is there any other things you can suggest?

Isaac.

Hi guys.

We make custom diary products which can start/ end anytime, and so we feel they would go down really well in 'Back to School' type posts this year.  (Website here)

I've been looking for examples of 'Back to School' content, but with it being retrospective there is no guarantee a publisher would do a similar thing again this year.

My question is this: What are the best ways to find our about upcoming** content** that relates to a specific niche? (In this case Academic year Planner products)

What tools, research methodologies, platforms, websites would be useful?

In other words, how do we 'get in the right place at the right time'... in front of people 'warm' to the idea in the first place?

I appreciate this is a very broad question (albeit a in a very specific context)... but any insight/ advice would be greatly appreciated.

Hope that all makes sense.

That does help thank you.  Really appreciate your time, and I can see how the extra content on the products pages could help with conversion.

Hi Guys.

A quick one about duplicate content...

So we have a lot of pages that are very similar on our site, but are actually different products.

e.g)  Our Fortnight view refills and our week to view refills.

Our MOZ report defines this as duplicate content.

Question:  Would a canonical tag be the way to go to 'remove' this duplicate content?

And if so, which page should it point back to?  Just picking one of the products?  Or the higher level Landing page?

Many thanks in advance...

Isaac.

Hi guys...

I've just been working through some issues to give our site a little cleanup.   I'm working through our duplicate content issues (we have some legitimate duplicate pages that need removing, and some of our dynamic content is problematic. Are web developers are going to sort with canonical tags this week.)

However...

There are some pages that are actually different products, but are very similar pages that are 'triggering' MOZ to say we have duplicate pages.

Here an example...

http://www.toaddiaries.co.uk/filofax-refills/filo-12-month-inserts-personal-size/fortnight-view-filofax-personal

and

http://www.toaddiaries.co.uk/filofax-refills/filo-12-month-inserts-personal-size/week-to-a-view-filofax-personal

They are very similar refill products, it's just the diary format is different.

Question: Should I be worried about this?  I've never seen our rankings change in the past when 'cleaning up' duplicate content.

What do you guys think?

Isaac.

Hi Guys.

I mostly use this forum for business questions, but now it's a personal one!

I'm trying to find a supplier that might still have discontinued product.  It's the Behritone C5A speaker monitor.

All my searches bring up a plethora of pages that appear to sell the product... but they have no stock. (Wouldn't removing these pages make for a better internet?)  No 2nd hand ones on eBay

Do you have any suggestion about how I can get more relevant results... i.e find supplier that might still have stock?  Any tips or trick I may be able to use to help me with this?

Many thanks in advance to an awesome community

Isaac.