Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Just wondering what other sites you guys use other than fivesecondtest.com to test out design changes, etc. I found a few but none of them looked even close as good as five second test.

Those are just short 30 minuets on a SEOmoz tool. David is referring to the webinars they had from other people that lasted about an hour or more. They uploaded one about every month.

Example: http://www.seomoz.org/webinars/online-reputation-management-branding-for-serp-domination

Yeah, it does seem like a nifty took that could benefit us in the marketing / web design industry with communicating what we need done in a simple and understanding form.

Just as the title says, has anyone used bugherd.com for SEO purposes? I was thinking it could be used to show client changes that need to be made regarding the website.

Example could be if you are looking at a CRO prospective, you may want to change/add some graphics or text to improve conversions.

It seems like a nifty tool to show the changes you want made and to keep track of them. It integrates with basecamp also

I think you misunderstood that way EGOL is using the word screen. He is using it like:

Screen: The evaluation or investigation of something as part of a methodical survey, to assess suitability for a particular role or purpose.

That's what you're doing, your screening websites to find mistakes / errors.  Just thought I would clear that up

This is the way we bill for our time:

(1) Have a face to face or phone meeting with the potential client. You really need to have a long conversation about what the client’s wants / needs and what their expectation is. Without this, you’re most likely not going to achieve what the client's looking for and will cause major problems down the road.

Go over how the company had been doing the past (x) years. Look into their Google analytics if they have it set up so you can get a sense of traffic / conversion rate. Talk to the client about their customers and find out what "drives" the customers to your clients business. This will help with getting some keywords down.

Pro Tip: From my experience, 80% of the business owners are great at just that, overseeing their business but have a false idea of what SEO is and how it works. Make sure if they are telling you to rank for X keyword, you’re not just taking their word for it and instead actually researching what the client’s NEEDS to be targeting. Also talk in the terms of ROI and not "ranking", owners understand this alot better.

(2) From that initial meeting, I will give the client a proposal that goes over (in broad range) what needs to be done along with a "recommended" monthly retainer that is broke up in hours. Once the client is on board with us, we will create a detailed timeline (we use Bacecamp for this) that shows what we are doing to the website onsite and offsite. Yes we do the actual work

Example: If I recommend to a client that we spend 20 hours per month at $60 an hour than their monthly retainer would be $1200. I also let them know that if they want to see faster results, we can add more hours per month but this is the minimum recommendation for this particular client.

Your going to need to dig into learning SEO before the tools will be helpful to you. As Brian mentioned. Go to http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo and read that from beginning to end. This will give you the SEO basics.

Used SEOmoz pro off and on for years and this is the first time anything major like this has happened.

What OS are you using?

"When I am commenting on blogs to get links"

Stop right there!! You should not be commenting on blogs for the sole purpose of gaining links. This in no why helps the community that you’re participating in as I am sure the comments being left are of low value. Commenting on blogs to get links back to your website is a tactic people used 5 years ago and should not be used this day in age.

Now, Blog commenting does come in handy when you actually have something with value to contribute and can show a community you know your stuff on your given Nitch. I definitely recommend using blog commenting this way to gain more exposure for yourself / brand but only if your comments really do add value.

"When I am commenting on blogs to get links"

Stop right there!! You should not be commenting on blogs for the sole purpose of gaining links. This in no why helps the community that you’re participating in as I am sure the comments being left are of low value. Commenting on blogs to get links back to your website is a tactic people used 5 years ago and should not be used this day in age.

Now, Blog commenting does come in handy when you actually have something with value to contribute and can show a community you know your stuff on your given Nitch. I definitely recommend using blog commenting this way to gain more exposure for yourself / brand but only if your comments really do add value.

This should answer your question. Kat rose is asking the question and rand fishkin is answering

The following quote is taken from http://www.katroseconsulting.com/search-engine-optimization/attention-bloggers-should-you-be-worried-about-duplicate-content/

KR: Does reposting blogs on other’s blog sites hurt search engine rankings?

RF: It is possible that if you re-publish your content on another site, it could rank in the search engines rather than your own, original version. A link back is often enough to negate this, but there’s also a technical way to make it work 99.9% of the time and that’s with the “Rel = canonical” tag (http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/12/handling-legitimate-cross-domain.html). If you use this (or have those blogs you guest post on use it), you can feel very confident that your own post will be the one to rank.

If you feel a little lost at the mention of rel: canonical tags, as many do, I’m going to break it down for you with the help of another great source—my friend and SEO guru, Tisho Richardson, Web Associate at ThomasNet.com (formerly the Thomas Register).  Very simply, you put this type of html tag between the “head” tags on the blog post page of the ORIGINAL post; this way the search engines know that this is the one true original version and should rank this version above all others.  This is an example of what a rel: canonical tag looks like behind the scenes of a website:

For example, with the first scenario I referred to–guest posting on another blog, the rel: canonical tag should appear on their site on the page where the blog is posted.  In the second, where others are sharing your already published content, the tag should appear on your blog page (and always be sure that they link back to your original post).

If you have a wordpress blog, as I do, there is a plugin called “Canonical URL’s”. Once the plugin is installed, you will see a box under the post marked “Canonical”.  In there you put the link to the post."

The best way would be to use the Rel canonical tag

On the page you would like to rank for put the Rel canonical tag in

This lets google know that this is the original page.

Check out this link posted by Rand about the Rel canonical tag [http://www.seomoz.org/blog/canonical-url-tag-the-most-important-advancement-in-seo-practices-since-sitemaps](http://www.seomoz.org/blog/canonical-url-tag-the-most-important-advancement-in-seo-practices-since-sitemaps)

There is no "secret sauce" in SEO, Just hard work and knowing what you’re doing. If your blog is not well established I would look into guest blogging with other blogs in your industry so you can build up your name / followers.

I agree with Shane 100% but I would just like to point out something. I have read a few articles about applying the rel=author tag to websites / service / product pages (instead of just articles). From what I gathered it seems most people actually found drops in visits to their website after the Google plus picture started showing up with their SERP snippet.

It seemed users may have been skipping them because it looked like an article or blog because of the portrait image. You may want to do some more reading on this subject or if you go this route, track your visits closely.

If you’re talking about SEOMOZ, they automatically crawl and give you stats weekly. If you just signed up for an account and it still says "In progress" that is normal. I seen it take a few days when I first created my account.

Be very careful with this. If I am understanding this correctly you want to use both domains for your Boston wedding photographer company. Google is not going to like to see 2 websites with similar content for the same company. It’s going to look like your manipulating the search engines to get a bunch of sites in the top 10 for your keyword for the same company.

Also, your putting to much Enphasis on your keyword URL. Years ago that did have an effect on your rankings but Google has deminished that ranking factor. If i were you I would stick with the site you have been working on.

If you’re doing blog commenting for the sole purpose for gaining thinks than you should stop. This is just spam and does not contribute to anything.

Now, commenting on blogs can be a really good way to connect with other people in your industry and get your name out there. This also works well if you want to become a guest blogger on a site. Start commenting on their blogs with useful insights and you can gain a personal relationship with them. Other people might also start following your blog because of your helpful / informational comments.

This is the way we bill for our time:

(1) Have a face to face or phone meeting with the potential client. You really need to have a long conversation about what the client’s wants / needs and what their expectation is. Without this, you’re most likely not going to achieve what the client's looking for and will cause major problems down the road.

Go over how the company had been doing the past (x) years. Look into their Google analytics if they have it set up so you can get a sense of traffic / conversion rate. Talk to the client about their customers and find out what "drives" the customers to your clients business. This will help with getting some keywords down.

Pro Tip: From my experience, 80% of the business owners are great at just that, overseeing their business but have a false idea of what SEO is and how it works. Make sure if they are telling you to rank for X keyword, you’re not just taking their word for it and instead actually researching what the client’s NEEDS to be targeting. Also talk in the terms of ROI and not "ranking", owners understand this alot better.

(2) From that initial meeting, I will give the client a proposal that goes over (in broad range) what needs to be done along with a "recommended" monthly retainer that is broke up in hours. Once the client is on board with us, we will create a detailed timeline (we use Bacecamp for this) that shows what we are doing to the website onsite and offsite. Yes we do the actual work

Example: If I recommend to a client that we spend 20 hours per month at $60 an hour than their monthly retainer would be $1200. I also let them know that if they want to see faster results, we can add more hours per month but this is the minimum recommendation for this particular client.

300 for all 5 campaigns