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Hi Joshua,

There's not a perfect cutoff mark as far as URL length. In general, I try to clearly identify the keyword targeted as the page URL, and stick to one subfolder, or occassionally 2 subfolders on a larger site. Beyond that, I try to avoid being redundant, which is the biggest issue with the example you presented - you should try not to duplicate long strings inside the URL - in this case using "german-shepherd-puppies" twice is what makes it too long and redundant.

Assuming you want to target the keyword "Long Haired German Shepherd Puppies", I would rather see a URL like one of these:

• http://www.farnorthkennel.com/puppies/long-haired-german-shepherd/
• http://www.farnorthkennel.com/long-haired-german-shepherd-puppies/

Then for the actual page for Lava or one of the other dogs you'd probably do one of these:

• http://www.farnorthkennel.com/puppies/long-haired-german-shepherd/lava/
• http://www.farnorthkennel.com/long-haired-german-shepherd-puppies/lava/

That is an effective URL that isn't too keyword stuffed and isn't redundant.

Taking a further look at the site, you could also consider options like these:

• http://www.farnorthkennel.com/girls/lava-long-haired-german-shepherd/
• http://www.farnorthkennel.com/puppies/female/lava-long-haired-german-shepherd/
• http://www.farnorthkennel.com/german-shepherd-puppies/long-haired/lava/

So, first off, I wouldn't rely an alexa.com data for any backlink data. For that information you'll want to use OpenSiteExplorer.com and Majestic. Take a look through the links on these two sources to get a better idea of which valuable pages are linking to the site, since the highest Page Authority and Domain Authority links listed are likely giving them the most value.

Judging Directories:

If the page looks sketchy, then in most cases, that's a good indicator to not build a link there. There are exceptions, but gut instinct should be combined with checking the OpenSiteExplorer metrics for that site and that page.

Here's a good guide to judging whether a directory site is worth getting a link from: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/using-blekkos-seo-data-to-evaluate-web-directories-14678

Content Link Building:

In terms of building links for high quality content, you'll get a lot more mileage out of focusing on those high value industry sites. Anything directory-like for content is usually junk. Try B2B focused sites like LinkedIn and BizSugar for getting the content out socially, and use email outreach to existing and potential industry partners to get them to share your content with their audience. Here are some good email outreach templates to get your started: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/linkbuilder-gmail-productivity-setup-and-outreach-examples

In short, your gut instinct that those paid directory sites will offer you little benefit is correct for the most part.

I believe Stat can track those - getstat.com.

Don't know about the other larger rank trackers for sure, but would be worth asking them. Serps.com, Authority Labs, and a few others: http://www.evolvingseo.com/2012/01/24/the-ultimate-list-of-rank-checkers/

The references listed by Branagan and Mike are good. I have personally seen Google Webmaster Tools list external links that were simply URL citations without a <a href="">tag involved, so Google absolutely looks at these and probably factors them in to the algorithm somehow. I'm fairly certain there is no answer to how much they count compared to a normal link and what value they pass.</a>

<a href="">It's pretty easy to reach out and ask the author to add a link. Just be really nice about it and there's a 50% chance you'll get it. If not, no worries, move on and acquire some new links. Unfortunately it comes with the territory. We had a client get their domain mentioned on PCWorld.com last month without a backlink. It sucks, but all you can do is ask nicely and hope they throw you a bone.</a>

It sounds like they're paying $800 a month for the leads from a microsite that they don't own. Technically they did hire a SEO company, but the SEO is being performed on the microsite that will always be owned by that company, not the dentist. It's not a dishonest service, it's just being packaged in a dishonest way.

The tracking numbers can cause issues depending on how they're implemented. Services like Mongoose Metrics can be used in SEO-friendly ways since the numbers are changed using javascript, IIRC.

If the dentists (or you) can track whether they're getting $800 worth of leads from that service, then it's easy to determine whether they should keep paying for it - that decision will have little to do with your services. If the $800 is paying for itself then they'd be smart to continue paying for it AND hire your services.

Your sales pitch will be that you're actually going to help their domain - not some microsite - and that will be a permanent beneficial change, not a rented source of leads.

Hi Moshen,

My guess is that somewhere on the site, someone created a pop up window or another load effect and they used void(0) to create a link. The better practice is to create a normal link and control what happens when it's clicked by using Javascript. You could also add rel="nofollow" to those links, but it's less ideal than the first option.

These explain the issue as well for additional reference:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/3ShUdX7_GqQ

This answer (http://stackoverflow.com/posts/134957/revisions) to this question.

Your issue is that there are 2 hidden links on the page you referenced.

Search your code on that page for <a <span="">href</a><a <span="">="</a>www.powerdms.com"> and you'll see it listed twice. Delete that and the error will go away.

Both links were right next to the blog images in the code, I'm guessing your website editing software added them on accident.

"A software that helps you located individuals on Facebook or Twitter  that have a large sphere of influence and who routinely talk about subjects that are related to the industry that you are in. "

SEOMoz's FollowerWonk tool works great for this. Their social authority metric is fairly useful to sort and you can search keywords in profiles. It won't be able to identify things that people talk about frequently if they're not in the bio profile, however.

This: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCY5pbAuYpk

It's nothing more than a solid link. Don't hinge your strategy on getting in, few of us do nowadays in competitive niches. Apply to be an editor and move on with your life...

Hey Crystal, a couple things come to mind in this scenario.

The first is the obvious stuff like duplicate GA tags, which in my experience cause 100% bounce rates, not 0%, but still could be a possible issue.

The second is that something on the page is firing that causes a "single-visit but non-bounce session". The article linked earlier by Linda is a good explanation of this, but essentially there are multiple interactions a user can have on their first page of the site that would count as a non-bounce visit. They are:

• Pageviews (sent via _trackPageview)
• Events (sent via _trackEvent)
• Ecommerce Items (sent via _addItem)
• Ecommerce Transactions (sent via _trackTrans)
• Social (sent via _trackSocial)
• User Defined _deprecated, though functional _(sent via _setVar)
• (Cited from http://www.analytics-ninja.com/blog/2012/06/google-analytics-bounce-rate-demystified.html)

So, if the developers installed a tag that fired an event when PPC visitors land on the site, for example, that would cause a 0% bounce rate from PPC visitors, even if that user left without viewing another page. Not sure if that's your problem for certain, but it was the first issue that popped into my head. I haven't heard of a remarketing script firing one of these hits but could be the reason.

You should be monitoring them periodically. A quick scan monthly or quarterly depending on how large your site is should be sufficient. I've read reports within the last year that say Bing tends to be picky about sites with 404s in their sitemaps and will begin to distrust them if they get too messy.  I am assuming that Google doesn't like it much, either.

It's very easy to check a large number of links easily, luckily: download the Check My Links Chrome Add-on here:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ojkcdipcgfaekbeaelaapakgnjflfglf

Click that while looking at your sitemap, and it will test all of the URLs and make any errors stick out in red. Then fix them.

On the other hand, GWT will report them within a few days of finding them. If you're already in your GWT on a frequent basis, make that one more task to check on.

You should be fixing all 404s with 301 directs. Read "How to Fix Crawl Errors in GWT" for any tricky ones that you can't figure out.

Hey Chris, one of the bigger two factors on page load speed are the number of http requests (meaning various files that have to be loaded, but each new domain slows things down even further). Essentially, every time they see a new subdomain or domain the browser has to go lookup DNS information for that URL.

Because of that, prefetching DNS info for those 3rd party sites is valuable since it tells the browser "here is the full list of domains you need to get info on" right upfront.

As Ryan mentioned, it's just one more thing that can get checked off the list. I think the value of implementing this is going to be strongest for high-traffic publishers which have tons of 3rd party data collection on their site from ad networks and other providers.

It sounds like these were paid links? If so, and it's easy to tell they were paid for, then that could be part of the issue.

Sitewide Links:

Sitewide links in the sidebar/blogroll are less valuable than they used to be - I'd never turn them down but you can't bet your link building campaign on them.

Unnatural Links:

Since you got the "unnatural links" message, you might need to look into removing some of the spammy links to your site - depends on whether you got the message, or actually lost traffic and rankings as well.

Link Building:

The best place to get started is by reading up on link building posts here on SEOMoz: http://www.seomoz.org/pages/searc...

From there, I'd check out the Link Building Basics section in the Beginner's Guide to SEO.

That should keep you busy for quite awhile, but once that runs out, check out Point Blank SEO's list of link building strategies. You'll rarely run out of ideas there.

I always refer back to a post from 2006 that you can find here: http://www.dailyblogtips.com/200-prefixes-and-suffixes-for-domain-names/

It has a long list of common domain prefixes, suffixes, and other add-ons that can be used to modify a keyword.

I'll take a large list of those in excel, pump them into a bulk domain lookup tool like the one on namecheap.com, and see what comes out.

I've never found an actual suggestion tool that was any good, most are junk.

Gotcha. I agree - don't cut off the traffic if those pages are already ranking. Unique descriptions for each tag page are definitely the way to go, if you can keep up with all of your tags. This will obviously be much easier if you use 1-3 tags per post, and not 10 random ones. I personally try to reuse tags as much as possible, and combine similar ones... helps keep your sanity.

For the record, I consider the unique paragraph approach the ideal solution for categories and tags, but typically tags are harder to keep up with.

One quick option would be to use Google Hangouts On Air and simply use a static image for the video, with live streaming audio.

Otherwise, mixlr.com and awdio.com are two other options for live streaming audio.

Blogtalkradio.com is another option that appears to allow incoming calls?

Soundcloud is good for hosting but doesn't do live I don't think. The soundcloud embed widget is a great choice for embedding shows on the CMS of your choice, such as Wordpress. Here's an example at http://www.contentharmony.com/blog/content-marketing-interview-with-technologyadvice/.

Hope those help - please report back with what you find since I'm guessing others will come across this question as well!

They'll definitely help, both for Google+ Local listings, as well as localized organic listings (without a map in the SERP).

Do you have physical locations in those cities? Or are you trying to rank pages for those cities without having a physical presence? If you're trying to rank without the physical address, you'll have to compete without many of these local directories. Not impossible, but easier if you have the address to work with.

That depends. The specific example that you gave is hard for me to tell, because I can't see the code used in referral.aspx, so I have to assume it could be a couple types of redirects.

Whenever I am uncertain about what type of redirect is being used, I right click on it and copy the link, and paste it into WhereGoes.com, which is an awesome and simple tool that will tell you what type of redirect you're dealing with.

BTW, if it shows nothing, then it's some kind of redirect that probably won't be crawlable by a spider.

The best approach to DMOZ (to keep your sanity) is to treat it the same way you would any other link that a competitor has: it's trustworthy and valuable, but not a requirement. If you can get a link from a page with similar PA & DA, I would consider that a rough equivalent for the DMOZ link. Links from DMOZ supposedly do not get a special "bump", it just happens to be a trustworthy and quality link.

Here's a couple of Matt Cutts videos that talk about DMOZ - infer what you will from them:

• Why is Google Still Taking Notice of DMOZ? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rej2TkVEehg
• What Role Does DMOZ Play In Rankings? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCY5pbAuYpk

If there is a link pointed at that 404 page, then I will almost always 301 it to regain that link value. If I control the source of the link, I'll change that instead. If the link is from a spammy or junky website, I don't worry about it.

Here is a worthwhile article on how to go about fixing GWT crawl errors:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-fix-crawl-errors-in-google-webmaster-tools

I would suggest adding more content to your 404 page. Try to help people find what they're looking for by suggesting common pages, product segments, etc.