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From an SEO perspective, is the title tag more important than the description tag? We use a set format for these tags on our real estate web site. The site contains 300 listings.

Sample Title Tag:
Greenwich Village | Office Space Rental| 2300SF $9583/month

Sample Description Tag: 
Classic Greenwich Village office rental. Hardwood floors, 11' ceiling. 5 oversized windows. 24/7 attended lobby. Renovated common areas. Below market rent.

Are we shooting ourselves in the foot by repeating the Square Footage and monthly rent amounts in the title tag? Should this tag be used for a short more descriptive terms so as to maximize the SEO benefit? Should these numbers be listed in the description tag? The listings are not heavily SEO optimized so I don't know whether this is really a non-issue.

Apparently our site map submits images to Google even when they are on pages that are marked as no index.

The result is that only about 250 out of 2250 images are actually indexed by Google. Apparently Google (as you suggested) is not indexing images that are on pages that are marked "no-index".

Do you think it makes sense for my developers to modify the site map so it no longer submits images that are on pages that are marked as no-index?  Is it worth investing resources in fixing this? If this is not going to cause SEO problems I would just as well leave it alone.

Also, the way images are set up, we do not have the ability to customize alt tags. Is this worth fixing? Could repairing these issues with images improve overall ranking?

Thanks, Alan

Our site is experiencing an issue with indexation of images. The site is real estate oriented. It has 238 listings with about 1190 images. The site submits two version (different sizes) of each image to Google, so there are about 2,400 images. Only several hundred are indexed.

Can adding Microdata improve the indexation of the images?

Our site map is submitting images that are on no-index listing pages to Google. As a result more than 2000 images have been submitted but only a few hundred have been indexed. How should the site map deal with images that reside on no-index pages? Do images that are part of pages that are set up as "no-index" need a special "no-index" label or special treatment?

My concern is that so many images that not indexed could be a red flag showing poor quality content to Google.

Is it worth investing in correcting this issue, or will correcting it result in little to no improvement in SEO?

Thanks, Alan

Does having a small percentage of images indexed by Google harm ranking? Less than 300 out of 2,200 seems low. Concerned it could be a red flag for low quality.

Thanks,
Alan

Hi Oleg:

Good observation. For some reason we can't label image filenames and alt text in Wordpress. Will be a priority to correct.

I wonder if having only a 220 photos indexed out of 2,200 could be a red flag for Google and be detrimental for ranking?

"347" is the listing number "181 Varick St" is the address. Listing number appears before the Street in the URL. We don't show the actual Street address in the URL. I wonder if Google could view this as contradictory information?  Thanks for picking up on on this, I never gave it any thought.

Thanks, Alan

Only 285 of 2,266 Images Indexed by Google. Images for our site are hosted on Amazons CDN cloud based hosting service. Our Wordpress site is on a virtual private server and has its' own IP address.  The number of indexed images has dropped substantially in the last year.

Our site is for a real estate brokerage firm. There are about 250 listing pages set to "no-index". Perhaps these contain 400 photos, so they do not account for why so few photos have been indexed.  The concern is that the low number of indexed images could be affecting overall ranking. The site URL is www.nyc-officespace-leader.com.

Is this issue something that we should be concerned about?

Thanks,
Alan

Hi Matt:

That makes sense. Regarding competition from domains such as mta.info we are targeting a completely different set of keywords relating to office space and commercial real estate in Manhattan, so I would think that we would not have to worry about competing with them.

On another note, do you think that having one hyphen in the domain harms us from an SEO perspective? I understand that visitors might have more difficulty in remembering the domain and returning, however I wonder if there is a direct effect on ranking.

Not sure if the domain without hyphens is available and we already own metro-manhattan.

Thanks, Alan

Hi Sandi:

Thanks for your response!!

Our niche (commercial real estate) is competitive and the most obvious/best domain names are  taken. Whether it is best to use a keyword phrase in the domain seems unclear. Not sure if one desirable word (like "Manhattan" in our case) would be a plus. Not certain  the effect of an actual phrase like "Manhattan office space". I have heard that now a days a competitive phrase in a domain is a ranking minus.

Many of our competitors (regus.com, 42floors.com) do not use any keyword in their domain. But they also have a massive advertising and SEO budget to build links and create brand recognition. As a small firm I don't have that budget.

There is also a question about how brand names will appear in  anchor text and if that anchor text then appears more like a money term or a brand.

In terms of domains, choices would be greater if we use a non.com domain. But I don't know how Google would view this. We also have the option of getting a ".NYC" domain (we are in New York City) but not certain if this would be a ranking plus.

We are looking to rebrand our domain name. Our existing domain is www.nyc-officespace-leader.com.

We own www.metro-manhattan.com and were hoping to use this domain. The company name is Metro Manhattan Office Space, Inc.

Is the fact that the new domain contains "Manhattan" a negative? I know that the fact that it has a hyphen is weak.

Manhattan is part of such keywords as "Manhattan office space". Regarding the company name, is the fact that it contains the target phrase "Manhattan office space" bad? Our company name may sound like exact match anchor text and I am not sure what to do about this if anything. I would really prefer to keep our name but it is necessary to change it to improve SEO we will do so. Would it be better to change to a new name like "Integrity Real Estate" which does not contain target phrases or keywords ("real estate" is not a major target phrase as it is to generic) ? Or how something like www.mmos.com for the domain and leave the company name alone?

How would I go about finding a  company that would assist is in creating an SEO friendly domain name and perhaps a new corporate name if necessary?

Thanks, Alan

Hi Patrick:

Thanks so much for your detailed and thorough response!!!

While I have some doubts about our brand name, we were solely considering changing our very spammy sounding URL that contains the two hyphens. But from what you say, even if we do that, we may have a limitation in that the company name "Metro Manhattan Office Space, Inc." contains the match anchor text of "Manhattan Office Space".  So if we need to stay away from match anchor text in both the domain in the URL, this rebranding is going need to go a lot deeper than anticipated. My thoughts were solely to replace www.nyc-officespace-leader.com with www.metro-manhattan.com but this is still problematic.  Perhaps a domain of www.mmos.com (abbreviation of Metro Manhattan Office Space, Inc.) would be better? Or www.lastNameerealestate.com possible?

Thanks for the resources on the migration. I understand that special care must be taken regarding NAP information for the move to be successful. But I would think this is less of an issue if we are only changing the domain name.

Could we keep our company name and solely change the URL or this an incomplete job?

Are there any resources you can think that would help us think up both a new corporate name and domain name? Maybe we should consider tackling both at the same time as www.nyc-officespace-leader.com plus the corporate name of Metro Manhattan Office Space, Inc. don't sound like the most SEO friendly combination.

Our current domain (www.nyc-officespace-leader.com) is spammy, using 2 hyphens and several keywords. So we are planning on migrating to a new domain. Our company is Metro Manhattan Office Space, Inc.. We are Manhattan commercial real estate brokers specializing in office and commercial leasing.

For 5 years we have owned an alternative domain but never migrated the site to it. The alternative domain is www.metro-manhattan.com. But I am not sure it is a good choice since it contains one hyphen.

Any suggestions for creating a strong URL for rebranding? It appears the really good names are already taken.

Thanks, Alan

Thanks Linda!!

So by adding the noydir for instance, the specific URL would not be indexed by Yahoo?

I don't quite understand the utility of this!!! I would think that something like a property listing should appear.

For instance our home page has this tag set up like this: name="robots" content="noodp,noydir"/><meta< span=""></meta<>

Wouldn't this exclude our home page from Yahoo and the Open Directory? Now I am particularly concerned because most of our major landing pages have the "noodp,noydir" tag.

Are we doing something wrong??

In term of my original question, are site has many listings and the default tag is 
name="robots" content="index, follow"/><meta< span=""></meta<>

Is there any downside to setting up this way?

Thanks!!! Alan

When should "Noodp" and "Noydir" meta robot tag be used?

I have hundreds or URLs for real estate listings on my site that simply use "Index", Follow" without using Noodp and Noydir. Should the listing pages use these Noodp and Noydr also? All major landing pages use Index, Follow, Noodp, Noydir. Is this the best setting in terms of ranking and SEO.

Thanks, Alan

Thanks!!

Hi Russ:

Thanks for the detailed explanation. I have contacted your sales team and  hoping to speak to a rep soon. A few questions about your product:

-If used successfully, what success rate are customers seeing in the removal of links before having to file a disavow?

-Does the database that generates a link profile include Majestic? That would save me the cost of having to purchase that subscription.

Perhaps, as you suggest I can upload the LinkDetox file to Remove'm and use your package for outreach.

Best, Alan

Now that is interesting!!!

We are in a somewhat similar situation. Ranking declined sharply after the 1st Penguin in 2012. Recovered partially. We hired an SEO firm in 2014, invested about $40,000 in purchasing their reports and implementing their suggestions without much improvement. A year later (after taking a break from SEO and relying on advertising) I see our link profile is pretty bad with a lot of spammy links so we are contemplating attempting to get those bad links removed.

Considering our domain authority is only 23 and we have less than 100 domains linking to our site, do you think we would be better off starting with a fresh domain or redirecting to a fresh domain? Our company is Metro Manhattan Office Space, yet our URL is www.nyc-officespace-leader.com.  Not the best from a branding point of view. Further more we own the domain www.metro-manhattan.com and when visitors enter that domain they redirect to www.nyc-officespace-leader.com.

A fresh domain would help me solve the branding problem. However the idea of starting from scratch is disconcerting.

Hi Chris:

Well that is a good endorsement of RMOOV. Did you you witness any improvement in ranking once the process was complete?

Thanks, Alan

Does anyone have experience with both LinkDetox and Removeem??

According to LinkDetox our site has several hundred toxic links which we are considering removing. Are the features for contacting other Webmaster to request link removal equivalent on Removeem? All things considered we would probably stick to LinkDetox unless there is something fundamentally better with Removeem?

Alternatively, if there is an inexpensive tool solely for contacting Webamsters to request a removal that would be great as we have already identified the offending links with LinkDetox?

Thanks, Alan

Hi Patrick:

Thanks for your in depth response!! The expedite tools in Link Detox is described here: http://www.linkdetox.com/boost.

But if Google will now process disavow files in a few months as the MOZ blogpost your refer to states, I guess there is no point in using boast.

Our site never received a manual penalty from Googlebut did drop in ranking after the first Penguin in April 2012. Recover since then has been sporadic and uneven despite a major investment in SEO.

I have pretty much followed the procedure you describe. Only deviation is that I compiled the links from Google Webmaster Tools plus the Link Detox database. I wonder if we are missing a significant number of links by not sourcing AHREFs, MOZ. If I can identify 80-90% of the bad links I think it is sufficient. I don't expect 100% in removing them.

Thanks again for your assistance!!

Alan

Our site has several hundred toxic links. We would prefer that the webmaster remove them rather than submitting a disavow file to Google.

Are we better off writing web masters over and over again to get the links removed? If someone is monitoring the removal and keeps writing the web masters will this ultimately get better results than using some automated program like LinkDetox to process the requests? Or is this the type of request that will be ignored no matter what we do and how we ask?

I am willing to invest in the manual labor, but only if there is some chance of a favorable outcome.

Does anyone have experience with this? Basically how to get the highest compliance rate for link removal requests?

Thanks, Alan