Welcome to the Q&A Forum

I agree with Jewel - trying to be all things to all people is a recipe for disaster.

I am teaching a social media class to realtors on Wednesday and I know (from experience) that when I ask who is your target market, they'll say anyone who wants to buy or sell a home.  I'm going to try out this response on them.

When you say anyone who wants to buy or sell a home, you say that I am only important to you in the money you can make from me. Do you think that will make me like or trust you. Instead you say your target market is people who like the arts and dogs. Now you are saying that my interests are important to you. If you say your target market is people who like traditional performing arts (ballet, opera and old-fashioned musicals) and dachshunds, you are saying I am important to you. And then you'll be important to me.

Your photographer is telling prospects that he/she just wants to make a buck. The home page should inspire the real prospect to believe that there could be no other photographer in the area that understands me better.

Thank you so much for your response Ria.  I kept checking and thought of "View Source" and discovered - no follow

They use an intermediary page

http://www.deviantart.com/users/outgoing?http://list.ly/napa/lists

and the source shouws...

| <a <span="" class="html-attribute-name">rel</a><a <span="" class="html-attribute-name">="nofollow" href="</a>http://list.ly/napa/lists" title="http://list.ly/napa/lists" class="gmbutton2 gmbutton2c">Continue to style="text-decoration:underline">http://list.ly/napa/lists |
|   | |

Just in case anyone else has this question.

What an interesting question. I hope someone has the answer.

It has always seemed to me that the businesses I've seen there have been prominent and I've suspected that they get a lot of branded searches.

Do any of your pages currently rank? What is the keyword phrase they rank for?

I have a friend who has an advertising/business listing site who is trying to rank against yp.com and yelp. She doesn't have the resources to go head-to-head against them. Your basic strategy and plan should guide your backlinking (even internal backlinks) tactics.

I don't allow blog comments on my blog posts, and I have tons of posts that rank. It's not comments that help you rank, it's shares and more importantly links.

I have seen zero results from Google+ - I don't even see people's own Google+ profiles ranking (when Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. easily rank).

I am experimenting with some blogs and online communities for backlinks. The Moz bar shows this link as do-follow, but it has the internal redirecting link. My brain is frozen and I can't remember what it's called to look up how it affects SEO.  Can anyone enlighten me?

Thanks Miriam!

Thanks Adam!

There have been several high profile law suits over theft of web content

http://theartnewspaper.com/news/instagram-model-and-makeup-artist-sues-richard-prince-over-copyright-infringement/

If you've owned Binders.com for a long time and it ranks really well in the SERPS, you might think that creating and ranking a new domain won't be difficult. If your company execs think this, they are potentially in for a big disappointment.

If you start a brand new website from scratch, you could wait a long time before it ranks well enough to bring you any sales. Ranking a subdomain on your current site would certainly be quicker.

My Google Analytics is full of this kind of stuff too. Is there an easy way to get rid of all of it?

Wouldn't you hate to be the SEO consultant who had all his clients penalized at the same time? Sheesh!

I researched this for a former client (he quit me when he didn't like my answer) and the risk to using another's intellectual property is high.

If you publish, whether it's a book or a website, you must 1) create it yourself, 2) pay for it yourself or 3) have written permission from the author.  Without that you are risking huge penalties if caught. There is a whole new industry growing of people who look for illegal use of photos, copy, videos etc. so that they can sue.

P.S. I'm not sad about losing that client.

You should always try and keep track of your backlinks yourself, not rely on a third party tool to tell you who is linking to you.  No tool will give you 100% of the linking information, even when it's a regular, popular TLD.

I think the law of unintended consequences would kick in ... soon you'd see Fiverr offerings to get 5 upvotes for your link page for $5.

What happens to your Yext listings when you quit being a paid subscriber?

Do you think anyone can make a dent in Google's dominance?  I had expected Facebook to gain some share this year, but it doesn't seem like they've made an impact.

I think it's like the Highway Patrol.

Everyone speeds, but everyone doesn't get caught.  You point to a similar web page that hasn't been penalized, but there are many who have.

I believe social influences SEO, but even if it doesn't right this minute, will it?

Do you anticipate changes to the way people search for businesses like yours?

I believe that Facebook is working on grabbing some search share from Google. As that happens, that social investment will pay off even if it's not paying off now.  Already I can use Facebook to search for something like Hotels in NYC and get true personalized results - I'll see the names of my friends who like those pages. Knowing my friends, it will let me know which hotel is swanky, which one is cheap, depending on which of my friends liked it.