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For infographics I like to use industry reports as a source. Most industries manage to produce long, dull reports that no-one cares about. However that 100 pages of boring text probably includes some gold for infographics. Best of all it has already been collated for you, saving lots of research. Ask the client what has arrived on their desk / in their inbox that might be relevant
Can you share the keywords (by PM if not publicly)
I'd double check the terms, but I reckon this is ok. You have a real physical location at each spot, which is exactly what Google wants to map. They specifically ask whether you serve customers at each location or not when you submit to places, so that isn't a criteria to be listed.
The answer probably differs from site to site. I'd start by looking at how much you earn a month from people who land on product pages to give you an idea of the potential cost of that traffic bouncing.
I suspect that the compromise is something along the lines of redirecting to categories as you suggest. However I would additionally be looking at all of the top entry pages that are product pages and 301ing those. How many will depend on that value.
Also do talk to your developer. It might not be as hard to match the old urls to the new ones as you imagine. There are usually some fields that you can tie together and build a redirect rule from.
Another alternative to directing to the category page might be to direct to a search (it can still return a 404 if you wish). If your URLs were KW rich you might be able to turn that in to a search so that the product still comes up.
Few options there to think about. Good luck with it.
It's probably not personal. There is a thread here where are few of us have spotted the same: http://www.seomoz.org/q/bug-with-seomoz-level-display
So either it's a wider bug, or Roger got really drunk and is picking on a bunch of us!
Comparing client site to industry site is useful, but unless there is some striking difference it could serve to narrow the appeal of your content.
If you've got access to their data maybe just start by joining the dots and seeing what interesting patterns form along the lines of "Customers who X are more/less likely to Y."
Think about the sites you want to link/republish - what are they interested in and what data do you have related to that?
Looking just at that first key term: (initials cdav). keyword tool shows 210 GLOBAL searches on a broad match. <10 on local. However switch that to a phrase match and it is <10 on global.
That means that any traffic from that term is a good thing. It just is not a busy phrase.
When doing keyword research it is absolutely vital that you understand the difference between broad, phrase and exact match.
I doubt that is the answer you were hoping for, but I hope it helps none the less. I would start researching additional terms.
Here are a few I have noted:
Please don't take me listing these as an endorsement for them!
I must say, I haven't used these. I've done a bit with myblogguest, but generally try to go direct to blogs. Some of them work slightly differently but the gist is the same. In terms of quality I think that MBG has it. With some of the others you might have to sort between the spam and genuine opportunities.
Sitemap.xml is useful, but it won't help with this issue I am afraid. To solve the problem of the wrong version of the site being indexed you need to instruct search engines that they are looking at the wrong version. It might sound logical to give them a list of the right URLs, but that is not enough. They don't follow the logic of "... and ignore the rest".
There are 2 main ways to go about this. I personally prefer the first, but either is a win. Unfortunately both method will probably require the help of your developer.
Option 1 - 301 Redirects
A rule is added to the server that says "if a user requests a url of http://69.16.xx.xx/pagename.html send them instead to http://www.example.com/pagename.html . Also send a 301 code - and instruction that the old address has been moved permenantly.
Depending on your server set-up this is most likely done by adding some redirect rules to the .htaccess file on the server. Quick easy job for someone who knows that they are doing - literally a few minutes.
Option 2 - rel Canonical
Depending on what powers you site this might be simpler. A conditional statement is added to the code that checks that pages are being served from correct sub/domain. If they are not then a simple tag is added to the HTML output that points the search engines towards the correct address.
If you are using a CMS to power the site this might be a simple change. A few lines added to a common template. Again, quite a fast job. If you are using static pages you won't have the option to use this method.
If all of the above sounds like gibberish then you need to talk to the developer. If not,. then great!
I hope that is some help. I wouldn't panic about this. Even if the IP address versions do all get indexed it is probably not going to cause a big problem to be honest. However if you can you should get it fixed.
If it were me I would be looking to make the pages more unique.
Even just a small bit of unique text, tying in with differences can be enough to prevent issues. We've seen this on commerce sites that have multi-faceted navigation that effective create long lists of similar pages.
I'd be looking to add a few lines, even just 3 or four sentences to each page. Get that high up in the code and have it relate to the page. I know that lots of people talk about having 500 words of unique content, but I don't think that level is neccessary (nice if you can though!).
You can get freelancers through odesk or similar to do this sort of work very affordable.
However, if you want to stop a piece of content, like a list being indexed your main options are probably:
I do think that this is really trying to hide symptoms, rather than dealing with the cause though.
With regards to googleoff/on I don't think these are what you think they are. Someone may correct me, but I think that they apply to search appliance, not the public google search index (off to check now!)
Edit : Yes... I am not going mad. That tag relates to search appliance, which is something totally different to the search that you use at google.com etc.
Myblogguest seems to be the stand out community for this. I haven't been able to find anything directly comparable myself. However, here are a few similar services (or at ones that overlap in some way). Quality varies... in truth some of these are quite spammy, but it's still good to know what is out there:
Also linked in has a couple of good groups for bloggers that can serve a similar function.
Sorry - that just isn't a great phrase. As a phrase match "Switzerland villas" only has 73 Global monthly searches. As an exact search [Switzerland villas] has just 36. Although kwt estiates are never particularly accurate at small numbers, you are not going to get more clicks than there are searches.
The broad match numbers are not really relevant if you are focusing on the organic term.
I'd broaden the phrases you are targeting. Chalets would seem to be a word with more potential for Switzerland.
This sounds trite, but the best way is "try".
People are more receptive to guest blogging that you might imagine. If you can initially hook their interest and stand out from the offshore junk peddlers, and have some decent content at hand then you are heading the right way.
Only 1 of those sites has drop-down navigation for me, but I'll assume that the other is representative of what you are referring down.
There are a few ways to do drop down navigation. Some are better than others in terms of SEO. My experience is that a pure CSS method is the most indexable, so I would stick to that. You can easily test if this is the case by disabling all styles when you a view a page (for instance by using the webdeveloper toolbar): A pure css menu will show all the items in plain text.
I've used these extensively for years and am happy to do so. When we first started using the pure css versions of such menus I had concerned that the hidden layers would either hide or devalue the links. We did quite a bit of testing at the time and were happy that this wasn't the case.
That was some time ago, but I do not believe that has changed. Certainly links in such menus are followed and we haven't seen any measurable drop in linkweight being passed.
More importantly though users respond well to them. Such menus provide an inuitive means to breakdown a large number of options in an easily digested manner.
User orientated sitemaps can be useful, but it is dependent on the site. Certainly I remember coding them (and writing them out manually - the horror!) for a long time before Google et al started reading xml sitemaps.
Depending on the site structure they can use useful for SEO too. I would say this is particularly the case where for medium sized sites that do not have the best site architecture. In those cases a sitemap can provide a nice fast route in to deeper content for spiders. Potentially useful.
Hi Pontus,
The 3 metrics are measuring links pointing to specific place.
Page : In the example you gave that is looking only at links pointing to familjesmycken.se - no sub pages, other domain etc.
Subdomain: This will include links to any other pages on that subdomain, so a link to familjesmycken.se/somepage.htm or familjesmycken.se/myfolder/somepage.html would also be counted AS WELL AS the ones for that page.
Root domain: This would count links pointing to any other subdomain on the familjesmycken.se domain as well. So links to www.familjesmycken.se www.familjesmycken.se/mypage.html sub.familjesmycken.se/folder/page.htm etc would all count
Is that any clearer?
See the attached image.
Broad match searches are 4400. Phrase match are 73. Exact match are 36.
Broad match is useful if you are doing PPC, but less so for organic search. In short they are saying that:
36 searches a month are match for "switzerland villas"
73 searches a month are made for phrases containing "switzerland villas"
4400 searches a month are made for phrases that google thinks are related to "switzerland villas". That might include "swiss hotels" for all we know.
As I said - it is VITAL to understand what those numbers represent if you are doing your own SEO work.
If you have a picture of the link profile you are trying to build (usually based on competitor analysis) then that helps guide you.
However my one guiding principal has always been to try not to be overly reliant on too few tactics. That probably means I've missed out on some easy wins over the years. However it also means that I have sites that have been sitting at the top of their industry results for over a decade, never leaving page 1.
Mix it up. Find something that works - then find something else. No reason why articles can't be part of that, but if you are producing that content anyway then why not put some aside for guest posting? If you are researching guest posting opportunities why not see what else those sites are looking for?
Changing the extension of the page will, in itself, not damage or the rankings of pages. The main issue is, as you have identified, to ensure that the old pages 301 to the new ones. With that in place you should not notice much difference.
On paper the only difference should be a tiny (virtual imperceptible) drop in PR gained from external links pointing to the old pages. try to get the major external links updated if you can, but I wouldn't sweat that.
However... it is rarely that simple.
Watch out for changing in internal linking: If the structure changes at all (it usually does if changing CMS) that can make a big difference as internal link equity is funnelled around in different directions. Likewise be certain that the on page elements add up to a page that is at least as good as the ones it replaces.
In short: changing the extension shouldn't be an issue, however watch out for other pitfalls. Hope that helps a little.
The general principal that we're trying to work towards now is to lose the /blog part completely. I'd much rather have the content "in deep" close to where it will help reinforce sales and where any shares/links will do the most good.
Where the site has regular users who might like the chronological nature of the blog we're using "new on site" type pages, giving headlines and snippets of recent pages. These are quite handy in ensuring that new content gets indexed too!
Is there any software (other than Wordpress) that people would recommend using?
I've never been a huge wordpress fan myself, partly because I find it tricky to implement with other systems like this. We've been working with Drupal more and more this year. If you are used to nice friendly Wordpress to set up it is rather less than welcoming (See Drupal learning curve). However it is incredibly capable at this sort of thing.
