Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Also, I believe you can only change it once.

What do you think of this site?  This is the top, number ranking site in Halifax, UK.

No authority, no backlinks and high keyword density considering the low amount of content.

http://www.maknetic.co.uk/

Search term is SEO Halifax.

How is it number 1?  There's nothing in it and no user value at all!

I've attached a screenshot of what you should be looking for.  You need to go to your dashboard -> users -> all users -> then select any user.

There should be several fields including your bio area...as per the attached.  Mine is filled in with my google plus proifle.

Something I forgot to mention is that your user will also need to add themselves as a contributor to the blog on their Google plus profile.  I have attached a link to my google plus profile.  If you check out the about section you will see about two thirds down a section where is says 'contributor to'.  Here you add the url to the blog.  This links the two.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/101142923283224674423/about

1. You need to link the blog to the G+ Profile

2. You need to confirm in G+ that you are truly a contributor to that blog (or you could add any old superior influencer)

That should be it.

g+jpeg.jpg

You don't need a plugin to set up authorship for multiple authors.

All you need is that all your authors have a Google + account.

If you go into Users in wordpress and set up your users/authors. ( I presume you already have these users set up as authors if they are already writing content?).    When they are set up as an author, you go into the user profile and add their Google+ profile link into the section on their profile where is says Google + Profile URL.  You do this for each author on the site.

Then, when any author writes a post, they just need to ensure they are writing as their user profile name (i.e. they are logged in as themselves) and that should cover it.

The admin can change the author of a post by doing a quick edit on the list of posts - when it drops down there should be an 'author' section where you can select a list of authors.  This list is your users and each of these need to have their Google+ profile url added to their user profile in wordpress.

Hope that makes sense!

I agree with the previous poster.  SEO is a long winded and tough nut to crack - you either need to do it yourself or you need to outsource it to a professional SEO.

If you have made the decision to do it yourself, you need to learn how to do what SEOs do and that means starting at the beginning and learning from the ground upwards.

There is no one answer to your question, it's just a steep learning curve from the moment you accept taking it on yourself.

That said you are very much in the right place for learning how to do it properly. The only advice I would give is to do everything with caution and make sure your understand the actions you are taking for your site so you don;t end up getting penalised by not understanding the consequences.

Thanks Mark - Would you be happy with a dofollow branded link, or err on the side of caution with a nofollow link?

I agree I like to see them there, but I'm wondering how Google would view these links given the irrelevance of them on the actual site?

What are your thoughts on SEOs and web designers putting their own links in the footers of client sites.

For the sake of argument, lets assume that the client is happy for the link to be there. I'm referring to the SEO merits of the link being there from an 'irrelevant' website.

My belief is that this goes against what Google is looking for and that these are irrelevant links and likely to be picked up and penalised.  That's what I believe!

However, I see lots of sites offering SEO services that have dofollow links from their client sites, using exact match anchor text and they are all ranking highly.

Is it just a matter of time before Google sniffs them out and penalises them for it?  Or should I be going through my client sites and adding myself a dofollow link in the footer? (with their permission of course).

The highest ranking sites in any UK city do this.  If you search SEO Manchester, SEO Leeds etc and find the top ranking sites and check them out on opensite explorer, they are all using a disproportionate amount of dofollow backlinks form client sites.

you could try IFTT.com (if this then that) where you can automate your posts - i.e. if you post something to twitter, it posts it on facebook, tumblr etc.

I wouldn't really say that's a winner though and I don;t think the automated 'ping out posts' is a particularly good strategy. You need to be genuinely using more social media sites and engaging with your audience if you want them to become a loyal visitor to your blog.

It goes without saying that your visitors will return if they think the content is worth returning for.

Rather than searching for a solution for driving traffic to your blog, I would look to learn what makes a blog grown and become successful, encourages trust, loyalty and growth among your reader base.

Good keyword research and on page SEO for your articles will help you get organic traffic, but looking for a golden chalice traffic driver isn't the answer for any blogger these days.

Thanks very much Tom and eyepaq, responses much appreciated.

eyepaq, just wondering what tool are you using there in the screencast?

Just wondered whether you think the footer text here on tis page constitues 'keyword stuffing'.

I think it does but wondering why they haven't been penalised for it.

http://www . lippyliciouscakes . co.uk/

Thoughts?

Many thanks.

I use flare and can't say there has been any significant negative impact in terms of speed.  It's a nice plugin, very clean and fresh looking, I can't fault it..

Does it happen on all images or just some of them?

Are you adding the alt text when the image is loaded into the page, or are you doing it in the media library?

Hi Grant.  I might be interested in this  I work on my own as a freelancer.

I have to say though that I would never advertise myself as a link builder  though. I view SEO holistically and work on creating content that earns links and also I recommend (and build) a strong social media presence..

If you are interested drop me an email jo@socialitesos.com.

More than happy to have a Skype call to run through the details with you.

Cheers

Jo

I just wanted to add my views.

I don't think there is such a thing as 'Google Images'.  Google is returning a search result of images that exist on peoples websites, with links through to those websites.  The purpose of those images is to drive people to those sites they are attached to, not to take directly from Google.

If your posts are along the lines of 'what to do in this city', you'd be better off approaching the people and asking if you can feature them on your site?  e.g. if one of the things you are suggesting is 'visit this theatre, or visit this restaurant, I'm sure the theatre and restaurant would be delighted to get a mention and willingly let you use their images.  You should link to their sites and they may well give you the benefit of linking back to you as you are featuring them as a 'good things to do when you are visiting x'.

The bottom line is always ask permission.  Chances are, if you are giving credit to the photographer, or the owner of the images (i.e. the restaurant, theatre etc), they will be happy to let you use them as you are promoting them.

You can get into some hot water by just taking them and it's not fair on the owner not to receive some credit for their work.

You need to put the nofollow property into the html.

I've enclosed a link below to how you would put an image into a page using html, using the img src tag. This is where you would assign other properties to the image, such as the image size, the alt text for the image etc. This is where the nofollow needs to go.

If you wanted the image to be clickable you'd need to add the a href tag around the img src code.

http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_img.asp

Are you using wordpress? If you give more details on what you are using to access the back end, I could answer more specifically.

Hope that helps!

From my initial glance, it does look a little like you are overoptimising for lifestyle magazine.

If it were my site, I would be rethinking my approach on that keyword altogether.

I would concentrate heavily on optimising all the articles for the content that they represent.  For example, the article, members of staff too scared to take time off work.  I would be looking at changing you title tag and optimising the content to appeal to people searching for articles, news, tipes etc specifically around that subject matter.  You'd need to get creative for each one and do the research into what the exact message of each article is and who your audience is.  What might they be searching for etc.

The title tags of each article do not need to be the title of the article. I would start with optimising each article one by one.  The backlinks will come as your readers find exactly what they are looking for on an article by article basis.

If you optimise the content on your site for what it actually is, you will become known as a lifestyle magazine just as a matter of course.  I'm not saying don't optimise for that, but I think you are focussing on the wrong topic.

If you do find people nicking your articles, try sending them a polite message telling them you have no problems with them borrowing your content as long as they link back.  If they don't, give them the heavier email!

If you have several duplicate pages (with the exception of location), I do think you run the risk of being penalised for duplicate content.

Does each local area actually have a branch or is it all run from one location, with all the additioanl pages being written to garner the local belief that the service exists as a 'local service'?  I've seen businesses do this and it doesn;t feel right to me.  I agree with the previous poster that you'd be better building a national brand that services different parts of the country rather than making it look like you are a network of branches.

If your client does have several branches/franchises, I'd be tempted to make every page unique and about that local service.  Use images specific to each location and title and alt tag accordingly.

Hi Derrick

Back in November I built a website for a client that is already ranking between 1 and 4 for several keywords and I had similar concerns at the outset.  One thing I noticed about that report you ran was that all the directory style competition had very low page authority scores.  Good page authority can outrank directories.

What I've written below is based on what I did...It started off with a lot of work in the initial set up, but it's generally just a couple of hours maintenance a week..

As it's local, get a google + page and link the page to your site and focus on getting some good social signals for each page - tweet your pages, facebook like and share you pages, google +1 your pages and so on and if you are blogging, do the same.  A good bit of content and plenty of social sharing can work wonders.  Set up social media accounts on a few of the main networks and use them to really connect and bulid relationships, rather than churning our rss feeds.

Also ensure you have cast iron on page, pick a keyword per page and make sure the page fully reflects that keyword so that when a search lands on it they are truly finding what they are looking for. Have that keyword in the title tag and a good meta desc that tells the user what your page is about.  Don't stuff the page with the keyword, just make sure it appears a couple of times, particularly in headings if you have it broken up.

You can also get yourself some free decent directory links - proper local business directories, not spammy ones and industry specific national directories.

The verified google plus page is invaluable and you can well optimise your google+ page, get reviews etc.

Very helpful answer thanks (even though it wasn;t me who asked the question!).  If a forum allows lots of low quality dofollow backlinks, e.g. in signatures, would they be penalised?