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Well, there's certainly a balance between what % of keyword searches you can expect to capture. Lower volume words like offer less traffic but if targeted they should have better CTR - right? We know this. Using Moz tools to quickly check your site, you have good links and optimization, so there's two other things to explore: the keyword isn't as viable as you think it may be and possible technical issues with your site that impact the end user.

What does your Webmaster (or other analytics tool) show you? is that term driving traffic and/or what other keywords are sending people to your page? What's your bounce rate? If it's high and tied to your keywords, then perhaps it's not the fit you think it is.  Have you considered going for a higher volume term, like 'hosted voip' and then 'business hosted voip' on a different page?

As for technical issues, that's a whole other slew of things that I am sure other Mozers can speak to in better authority than myself. From a quick look, again, you seem pretty solid here. You did a nice job getting a lot of things right - including rankings. So I'd look at other keywords to expand opportunities.

Oh, good question! I've noticed more and more people being (professional) transparent about their desire for links and giving more specific - polite - suggestions for where to link or what content may be good for it.

You mention your reports - when you send them out, do you include ways to link? Are there embedded links? If so, do they work consistently (random question, I know - I've run into issues where the hyperlink doesn't work so it's wasted). 
What about adding a section, like: For additional information and resources, please share these links: widgets: URL; exec info: URL, etc.

I think a big part of it is approach. (I'm sure you know better than to point out that a site is linking to a competitor and complain to the site/author about that.) A follow-up message, like: great post, glad to see the report is of value, here's some additional resources that could be valuable to your audience (link, link) if you'd be interested in updating your post.

I've noticed more people approaching me with specifics like that, and they do better than those who are just trolling (literally will email me just asking for any links from my site to their content). Not that I think you'd troll - like I said, it's about approach.

'No follow' isn't the same as a 'no index' code. No follow just tells the search engine it "should not influence the link target's ranking in the search engine's index."  'No index' is where you tell the crawler to not index the pages, then you can remove that if you at some future point want them indexed.

So, in theory, what you did wouldn't  have anything to do with how many pages are indexed on your site anyway.

Mike, it's a tough situation. It's so important that you are informed about your site and holding an agency (or any partner) accountable is critical. It's tougher once the relationship is over and it is a big deal if you find out you got hosed. It's unfortunate that this wasn't caught earlier.

At the very least, they should be able to give you some sort of overview. I spent most of my career on the agency side and you paid for their services and asking for information on your account isn't out of line, IMHO.

If you can get the data, great, however you know enough to not let it stop you. I mean, if you can hold them accountable, OK, but that won't change your predicament, right?

It sounds like there's plenty of black hat stuff you need to clean up and are smart enough to know to make it a priority before it really hits your site negatively.

And you know for next time -if there is a next time - who not to go to or what to make sure no outside partner does

Good luck!

I've had mine take several days and Moz has told me that's not unexpected (even if it hasn't happened to you before).

If it goes longer than let's say today, contact their help desk. It's possible something got stuck (it's happened to me) and they have a great help team who will get you taken care of. They are very responsible and approachable.

You know, I've seen all kinds of data that says ranking #1 means you get 33% of the clicks, or up to 80%. (I take it all with a grain of salt.) Matter is: if (this is according to my AdWords; I just looked) "business hosted VOIP" gets 58 clicks per month (yes, I swear that is the number they gave me when I selected "exact" and "local monthly" but I also really like to look at what the smallest opportunity would be), then 1/3 of 58 isn't many. Even 80% of that isn't many and matches back to the numbers you are talking about.

(590 comes up for "broad" in AdWords which isn't anything I use, mostly, again, because I like to look at what the smallest size could be so I know what I could be getting myself into.)

As for lower ranking pages having more traffic, that can vary as well. You'll hear people say searchers go for the top 5, but if a page ranks #6 for a word that has 11,500 searches a month, there's more opportunity for traffic than a #1 ranking for a KW that gets 58, you know?

Ideally, a bounce rate of 30% is where you want to be - you aren't that far off from there, but if 50% is the average, I'd look into additional keyword opportunities. For as much stats and science is behind SEO, there's just as much art to it

A few things could be at play: they have their on page content optimized properly (keywords are in the page title and used OK in the proper technical sections on the page). The domain is older than the other sites ranking after it (2007 vs 2009, etc.). And, the keywords aren't highly competitive.

All this means is that you just have to do a bit more than them to possibly surpass. Ex: they only have 2 links - get 10+ for you. Add solid content, update it often enough, etc. and you should be able to surpass. Again, it's not that their site is great - there's just a few things in their favor for right now.

Ah, the fun of semantics! It's amazing what a difference it can make, though, when trying to convey messages to a non-SEO or Web group.

I traditionally use "on site" and "on page" SEO for the "internal" items you have. That's partly driven by the fact we have some people working on  internal search on our site so people get confused with those projects if I use the term "internal."

I do use the term "external" or "site SEO" for the projects you list as "external." I try to differentiate what' specific to a page and what's specific to the overall site to help people understand there's different layers. And to help educate that because you optimize one page doesn't mean you've done SEO

I also like to educate on "technical" SEO so my team understands it's not just about keywords, but site performance and other things that can mean developer and IT resources. I learned fast that there was a perception that if you just put the keywords in the right place, revenue would come.

As for more social related information, I use buckets for social sharing but also make sure I hammer home the need for "in bound" marketing. There's a difference between those as you need the content to drive in bound but you use social to help give it visibility. And I think it's a more comprehensive element of marketing.

I would argue though that visibility isn't segregated by how you mentioned in. The technical build as well as the keywords selected can both play into visibility. You may not have any 500/404 problems, but if you picked keywords only a small audience cares about, you also limit your visibility.

For me, part of my terminology is dictated by our own internal jargon and how to map back to it so more people "get" it...while I talk about complicated things out of their wheelhouse that can end up confusing them anyway!

The best source for topical information is your customers, trade groups and general trends. First , are you noticing an uptick in a certain service or are you getting the same question over and over? These would mean people want to know about that topic.

Next, look at seasonality - March is home improvement time so what can people do to kick off their lawn care? Summer: if it's extra dry, what considerations should people think through to manage their lawn care? Or, if it's overly wet, what might they need to know? Fall: what should people do to prep their yard for winter? (Depending if you are in an area with more traditional four seasons.)

From industry trade shows - are there certain plants or trees that are a hot trend and being pushed? Is there a fear of any type of bug or insect infestation people need to counter?

What about best practices or care tips? "Tips from the pros." Your industry has plenty of information there - it's just a matter of you looking at it from a different perspective.

Google Trends is one way to see what people are searching for, and same with the Adwords keyword tool to gauge what type of searches people are conducting - not to mention any analytic data you see that drives traffic.

Think less like a business person and more like a reporter - address the topical relevance (timeliness - there's a reason why tax articles are more popular starting in January because it's when people start preparing, not in September), the problems (what problems do customers have and how can I solve them?) and the share. (Who, what, where, why, how?)

Exciting opportunity - good for you! I, personally, do an audit. I don't usually spend hours and hours on it,  but I look at both content and technical to get an idea of what I'd be getting myself into. It's also a chance to bring up things that the client may not even realize.

So, then you look smart. Better, though, you showed you pay attention to them and their needs. Don't overlook the power of asking questions: What might their content be missing you'd suggest? What changes might you make on what they have now? Why did they layout their site the way they did?

I'd also do a Screaming Frog or Xenu crawl to check the health of the site and see if there's a lot of broken links or missing page titles, content, etc. Also, maybe do a page load test, too, which is really easy and there's a ton of sites that do those. Check backlinks (SEOMoz tool) to get at least an idea of how spammy or legit those are.

We "put up with it" because it's part of every facet of any business. There's always trolls. I mean, at this point if anyone believes that a Nigerian prince is going to send them millions as a thank you for fronting him money via a wire transfer, serves you right for getting hosted. That email scam has been around for years and people still fall for it since a sucker is born every minute

I went to SMX West last February and I found it to be very valuable. I'd consider myself a middle-experienced SEO; I say that because I am constantly impressed with the technical proficiency of many of the posters in this forum and their depth of knowledge. That said, I felt like there was a good balance of presentations for the different levels of knowledge and it was a great way for me to immerse myself into some more technical and advanced learning opportunities.

I liked the variety of presentations SMX offered as well as the access to experts and general networking. I was able to balance my interests of SEO, PPC and social media and come back with some actionable (key word there) insight to help our performance. I'd attend again, no question.

Although not on the East Coast, this year I want to look at MozCon in Seattle. The SEOMoz team was in Milwaukee this October for a Mozcation and if that's a taste of what their annual, bigger conference is like then I think it'd be a worthwhile investment.

Good luck!

SEO for these videos may need a bit more help. Higher number of views is good, however, selecting specific keywords - per video - is important, using them in the title, text and closed caption also make a big difference.

So,for example, I wouldn't recommend trying to optimize multiple videos for "ledato guitar lesson." Inbound links to the videos/video embeds also play a role. This is a great site for video SEO that can get into lots of detail: http://www.reelseo.com/

While not exhaustive to your questions, Wednesday SEOMoz hosted a Mozcation in Milwaukee and one of the presenters spoke to mobile. Here's a link to his presentation, in case you find it interesting:http://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/14562864?hostedIn=slideshare&page=upload

Makes total sense and I've found the same thing - people like a human element. And, animal stories are always a great route to go - few things showcase a better side of humanity than helping animals, and it's even better when you have a strong community tie to it.

For any project to be effective, things have to tie together, right? It needs to make sense to the audience. Human interest angles (an interview with the GM/profile of the GM) is a great starting point to bring in her love of animals and tie to the company, without the company or product being the focal point. And, to your point, it's can be used for FB content/social. The campaign can stem from that with the CTA of her helping to drive and encourage others to help animals (like the points you made about # of likes = sponsorship).

That can be the foundation, then shift towards the outcomes: what animals are sponsored, what their needs are, etc. You can do it in waves: establishing the connection between your company and animals, profiling your GM, shifting the focus to how the sponsorship of the animal is making a difference, how to drive the audience to get involved.

While slightly self-serving, is there a way to maybe leverage a patch into your project? I realize this could be asking a lot, but to tie it close with the company and what you do, I'm throwing it out there: a special patch that's part of the relationship with the Animal Sanctuary? Maybe with their logo? It could start as maybe a graphic design logo to use in any postings and such, then if there's a way, it could be manufactured with proceeds going to the sanctuary.

You can also do votes/polls = what animals to sponsor? Animal/sanctuary fun facts - easy sound bites for social media dissemination.

Again, it goes back to trying to make it less passive - how can people be part of something vs just reading about it or clicking a button.

I don't think either of those are really the best examples - Amazon ranks well for several factors that don't have to do with keywords and Ebay is too "owned" by people posting content vs. the site manager managing it.

Retail sites like Kohl's do this (ex: womens>womens dresses>womens maxi dresses) and same with bestbuy.com, and REI.

http://www.searchenginepartner.com/Latest-SEO-News/seo-trends-utilysing-lsi-and-the-long-tail.html

I think EGOL makes some great points, especially about content vs product/sales. And, given that I work on an incredibly complex site that often poses many SEO challenges, here's how I happen to look at it:

• Low volume words that are highly competitive you hope would mean a more targeted audience. (So, not throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks.) One issue: if it's, let's say 100 searches a month, then the best you can hope for is a percentage of that.
• Fact is, not everyone who may be looking for a "lockout tagout custom procedure" may search for that long tail. They may just search for "LOTO" - so, I have selected to build a keyword/SEO strategy that build long tail into short tail/broad terms.
• Also, what I have noticed is that even with the short tail, our bounce rates haven't taken a hit, perhaps because the meta descriptions give enough info away so people can tell before the click if we may be right for them.
• And, our rankings for a section where we did a much better pyramid build with keywords/content/like subjects has steadily improved in visibility - giving me hope that if you can manage the technical with understanding what Google wants (good, relevant content), it works.

Good luck!

Andrea

Hi Gareth,

Alt image text, a smart file name (keyword rich), a good (re: fast loadable) file size and captions are all solid starts. That data helps to tell Google as much as possible about the image.

Do you have a nickname or any branding specifics you need to adhere to? OK, that may be something bigger corporations care about, however, there's implications here: whatever you pick for Twitter will feed into whatever you do for other social media, so I'd suggest looking at your overall branding "wants" before making suggestions. For example, people could look on YouTube and Facebook for the Twitter handle you select, so pick something you don't mind carrying over.

I'd suggest being more specific in your location (it'd help users better identify where you are located): Pilates_Bois_Franc (which you may have already looked into but can't get). Is there some other regional/local tie with Pilates you could opt for?

You're better off, IMHO, looking at a branding tie across social media/Web that ties into one or two keywords than just picking a keyword focus that then may/may not support the brand.

There's going to be a ton of possible answers to this, but my two cents: depth of technical skill set and global knowledge really set experiences pros apart. So many newbies are so focused on the basics - on page optimization and basic HTML coding - that when you come across those who can identify and diagnose true technical issues and work across sites at a global level, you can tell the difference in skill set.

I mean, look at some of the questions that get asked in these forums - great indicators of how complex this can all become.