Welcome to the Q&A Forum

I believe the General consensus is subfolder.

Eample:

www.example.com/blog

Hope this helps!

Every Link is not necessarily counted....

If the Blog comment was a nofollow outside of his niche, and on a completely irrelevant subject, it can't necessarily "hurt" but it sure wont help.

Maybe back in the days when Authority was based solely on the amount of links or Page Rank. But sorry, from a long term Internet Marketing and Strategy perspective it is a waste of money to get 60% Nofollow blog comments, especially since it was done by someone who there is no idea what he was posting.

So maybe if you just want to make your clients do good for a few weeks or even months, but as a longterm strategy paying someone to do this is a wasted effort in the grand scheme/big picture.

Where you are correct, a link is a link in the fact that someone looking for a service may see the post and if it is genuine and on topic you may get residual traffic, or even a conversion.

But as a strict link building tactic... It is very weak and money could be alloted to other places for more return on investment.

It is not always about just gaining links... it is about Return on the money invested.

SO in the aspect of return, it was a waste of money, but sure your right, he gained a few links.....

Hi,

I believe, and have seen many others here with the same opinion...  find this is a very unreliable way to see links, it is usually very outdated, and a very small percentage of your link portfolio if any.

Personally, I would take operator link: results with a grain of salt.

w00t!

Shane

At one point this was taken as a "suggestion", but I believe almost all search engines automatically ignore this nowadays.

I think even when it was a valid command, it was still more often than not ignored by Googlebot

Shane

I think this would be situational....

Much like Facebook "Likes" you can put a "Like" box that directly makes them a fan, or just a "Like" for the webpage in question.

It really depends on what you use you Facebook/Google+ page as.... Is it purely for SEO purposes or is it a relationship tool?

If it is a relationship tool and you are an established brand i would suggest getting them into your circle/fanbase as this is a more longterm strategy for relationship building as well as Brand Building.

If you use your social media for purely SEO reasons, then the direct webpage would seem to make more sense.

Should a business have more followers or +1's?

Of course you would want both but if a decision needs to be made of which one you need to decide which one will benefit you the most.... It is situational and no blanket answer can really answer this question in my opinion.

w00t!

You can help this!

You can use the data from WM tools to create 301 redirects on your site that will direct these incorrect queries to the correct page, preserving more of the authority than letting it fall off with a 404

There was actually a post recently (4 or 5 months ago) about doing this automatically using a server side script that actually "fixes" it for you automatically. But it is pretty advanced, and if you aren't dealing with thousands of them, might be easier to do yourself (or have your webmaster take care of) (I was not able to find or remember what it was called, maybe someone else will)

If this is just PDF documents and Files that have been picked up by scrapers, I personally don't worry about these so much, but someone may disagree with that

w00t!

"So, its hard NOT to want to throw up a blog farm and do as "the Romans do". "

Yes, but the Roman Empire fell, and fell hard

Content, Content, Content - Would be my advice to combat a spammer! But BETTER content and and EVEN BETTER content Quality not quantity, make sure you are smartly using social and trying to do everything the right way and the tortoise shall beat the hare!

There are hundreds of resources here on SEOMOZ that can help you with an Internet Marketing and Content Strategy Start with the Blog and work your way to Whiteboard Fridays and even last couple webinars have been really informative and timely

Hope this helps

http://www.seomoz.org/blog

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/category/whiteboard-friday

And I am sure others will add more sources and ideas

Hi,

I am in no way experienced with E-commerce as i have never done it, but from an SEO/Marketing perspective.

In my opinion Option 3 would be the most helpful both in SEO and Branding.

Because...

SEO - you have now consolidated your link building potential into one domain instead of spreading it out. Also this way you can get a little more keyword power without resorting to exact match tactics which personally I think are going to "fizzle" out over the next few years.

Marketing/Branding - You have created a better user experience and also the possibility of an up sell.. A person that is looking for a handbag, might also be looking for a matching pair of shoes... So use a "suggestion" algorithm at checkout that suggest "relevant" products. Option 3 in my opinion is also better for branding, as you can easier position yourself better in your filed as a "One Stop Shop" for all your "accessory" needs. If you have multiple different domains, it is hard to get a "brandname" going for yourself - even if you just sell other peoples brands.

I am sure others will have more suggestions, just my 2 cents

w00t!

I have been trying to think of a response for this, as I am confused...

Are you asking how to convert your Black Hat Tatics to White Hat - Or How to Mask Black Hat to look White?

If Black Hat Tactics to White - Focus on putting out great content related to your niche, gaining social signals and building links in a manner that is not just for "Link Acquisition of Anchor Text" - Build a trusted prescece on the web. Focus on building informational long tail queries and building a following of people who think you or your product is interesting. (in very short)

If the latter....

I am not sure this is the right forum for that question, as most of us here spend our days doing things the "Hard' Way" (as described in your question) Due to this IS the longterm strategy - IMHO

Black Hat Tactics in General will never be consistent, cause the latest "fad" will always be rooted out as soon as the masses who follow the "Guru's" who always follow their leader, and latch on and abuse whatever loophole was discovered - Then Google will react - (Circle Ensues)

SEO is still marketing, and the focus always needs to be the consumers - So in general as a Marketing Tactic, black hat is not only un-ethical it is also a loosing strategy in the longrun (as the strategy must consistently change for fear of retribution)

But if you are really only 19 and in this for a few hundred bucks a week..... Then learning and testing to learn your limits as an SEO is important - Just as a suggestion jumping on the Black Hat Train is dangerous not only for you never know what tactic will next week be the new focus of Google's rath. But also consumers in general are becoming more "wise" to webspam and manipulative traffic, thus affecting not only your Search Engine trust, but also consumer trust (which is most important in my opinion)

The old adage "Work Smarter, Not Harder" is incorrect - You must work Smarter and Harder....

Shane

Author rank is based on social (amongst many others), so gaining positive social signals would be elevation of author exposure. Just because a site has a bad reputation, does not mean it does not contain the recipes for exposure...

I think you are confusing backlinks or PR with Social Signals that go along with author rank and the signals of content relevance it takes into consideration, and how as the spectrum becomes more crowded, the smallest of differences will affect ranking (much like PR and Backlins does now amongst others)

So in essence we are talking about two different things, squidoo is not a backlink building tool, but it is an exposure building tool, or can be.

Cool you trust a SEO figure over someone youve never heard of that was quite a burn, man you have a razor sharp wit....

Hi,

I would have your network team look at reverse proxy..

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/what-is-a-reverse-proxy-and-how-can-it-help-my-seo

This will allow you using either IIS or Apache modules to use a reverse proxy to turn blog.website.com into www.mysite.com/blog/ even if they are hosted on two completely different servers

hope this helps!

w00t!

Hi,

As Mark says a "Knee Jerk" reaction to a Google "Talking Point" is usually a bad idea in the Search Engine World -  Not saying it is not important to listen to Google, but also have to take what they say with a grain of salt, and understand they have there own business to run with motives ect...

With that being said, Mark is correct - The way you have it is actually good for Search Engines and User Experience - As a consumer (and Search Engine) personally i think it would be better to get someone to the correct, quality non duplicate content "Landing Page" that has specific info for a specific query... Not a generic "Home Page"

So the way you have explained your information architechture, you are on the right path - the key is to just make sure you are not using "manipulatory" tactics to elevate your pages...

But as to what Google's term of the word manipulatory is, i think is opening more and more for interpretation by Google..

Hope this Helps!

Hi,

Sounds correct, but the best way to make absolutely sure of markup is the rich snippet testing tool as it gives you debuggin hints or tells you if correct.

http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets

5. No this should not prevent Authorship - Just make sure you have submitted the author

https://plus.google.com/authorship

Are useless, and I think were always "An Old Wives Tale" that they worked (or at least within the past 4 -5 years give or take) (index, follow is default unless specified noindex, nofollow or by other means robots.txt ect..)

is disregarded by Google, but there are still bots out there that accept i believe

Pragma and site verification are for you to decide -

Pragma just tells the individual browser not to cache, and site verification is just for Google Webmaster Tools - which can be done many ways. (.txt, DNS Zone ect..)

Some others are Author, Publisher and Canonical - but especially in the case of canonical - if you do not do it correctly it can really mess with Bots.

Hope this helps

Extra info on Author and Canonical

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/authorship-google-plus-link-building

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/canonical-url-tag-the-most-important-advancement-in-seo-practices-since-sitemaps

Hi,

others may have a varying opinon, but of course a canonical could be used to clear up any dup content issues while you slowly do the transition, but I am not sure I see the value in this specific situation of keeping both up an running. But I may be neglecting to take something into consideration.

This kind of old, but may help with a few questions http://www.seomoz.org/blog/expectations-and-best-practices-for-moving-to-or-launching-a-new-domain

But personally i would just do everyting i could to make sure I was ready, then just "rip off the bandaid" Keeping both up and running seems it might be setting you up for some confusion in the longrun.

It is a brand, so would fall under the Trademark Policy, and will be held most probably and reviewed on a per case basis

http://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=6118

I say this not from experience, but because a Google Search with a few searches I did with Facebook resulted no PPC - So I assume Facebook has asked google to not allow this as part of TM policy - But a few queries like

"How to use Facebook" had a few advertisers.

So it probably is dependent on words used in conjunction and what you are selling/promoting - And I assume they always take the cautionary view, due to the competitve nature of these two companies

I also found some people in forums who said they were suspended for this.

Hope this helps

Hi,

Your admins saying that, is like someone saying "we need to shut the site down, we are getting to much traffic!" Common sys-admin response (fix it somewhere else)

4GB a day downloaded, is alot of Bot traffic, but it appears you are a "real time" site, that is probably actually helped and maybe even reliant on your high crawl rate....

I would upgrade hardware - or even look into some kind of off site cloud redundancy for failover (Hybrid)

I highly doubt that 4GB a day, is a "dealbreaker",but of course that is just based off the one image, and your admins probably have resource monitors - Maybe Varnish is an answer for static content to help lighten load???? Or CDN for file hosting to lighten bandwidth load?

Shane

Does this help?

http://support.volusion.com/article/seo

I would also try their support, it says with purchase, you get lifetime support on product, and SEO as you mention should be a hallmark of any CMS (these days)

whatever Google's default is in GWT - It sets it for you.

You can change it, but it is not reccomended unless for a specific reason (such as Michael Lewis's specific scenario) even though, I am not completely sold that Gbot is what is causing the "dealbreaking" overhead.

Probably not, but would run it through a Gbot emulator to make sure, as Google can parse some Jscript now - But not sure if it would in the section

Is PhP not an option? as it is dynamic and renders server side and echoes can be used for page by page basis