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I would look at meta keywords using ScreamingFrog - you could do it the manual way by right clicking and viewing source however not worth wasting your time now you have this awesome tool which will help you optimise your site and have a cheeky glance at your competitors

Justian makes some good suggestions - I would also suggest that you consider SEMRush - http://www.semrush.com/ - I personally find this tool invaluable for competitor research. It is very powerful and can really enlighten you in terms of competitor research in both organic and paid keywords.

Not a tool but you could also get a rough idea by having a quick glance on your competitors sites and see if they are using meta keywords 

Also run your competition through Screaming Frog and pay particular attention to Page Titles - I tend to find you can see what keywords are being targeted like this - they usually standout like a sore thumb

http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/

Hope this helps!

BTW welcome to Moz - enjoy

As I mentioned before I would recommend concentrating on reading the Moz Guide to SEO then systematically checking and improving your site in accordance with the advice. At that point ask any questions you have on here - this is a brilliant community with lots of clever people so you are sure to get some great help.

Reading the guide should remove this confusion and it might well bring up some more specific questions. At the minute I am snowed under and won't be able to jump on a call, but any specific questions or elements you are struggling with bring them to the community and ask. Try to be a specific as possible and give examples if you can this will allow people to help you. You are welcome to drop me a private message, but as I say there are lots of experienced people on here and getting more than one persons advice and experience is what makes this community invaluable. You also have members all over the world so you are likely to get a quicker response posting on here rather than waiting for one member to come online.

Hope this helps

Hi Kumar

Oh ok - that makes sense well there are lots of people that can help you on here - however I would consider having a go at some of it yourself as your site isn't huge and you could improve some of the basics before getting help. The resources above should really help and off course you have the community to turn to - just a suggestion to help you get the most for your money. As ever I guess this boils down to your time available and budget - good luck

Best Regards,

Matt

I would recommend that you run your site through the Panguin Tool  - http://www.barracuda-digital.co.uk/panguin-tool/

This maps your Google Analytics against the Google Updates to give you a better idea if you have been hurt yet.

It also sounds to me that you need to talk to your SEO and see what their complete strategy is - what are they doing on your site to optimise it naturally for terms you are targeting? Have basics such as your page titles, meta descriptions and other on-page factors been systematically optimised? In terms of your off-page what have they been doing to earn you links or has it just been some directory submissions? There needs to be a strategy to strengthen your site and the exposure of your site in order to help gain exposure. Do you get a lot of social interaction on your site? Do you have a content strategy in place?

These are just some of the areas that you need to consider in order to start to get a proper SEO/Marketing strategy in place...

Hi

In terms of how you can handle duplicate content I would suggest having a look at this guide from Moz themselves - http://moz.com/learn/seo/duplicate-content - if you then have specific questions don't hesitate to come back and put them to the community - you are sure to find some great advice.

In terms of how you can improve your websites SEO I would suggest that you look at Moz's free guide to SEO - there are lots of things that you can do to get your websites ranking improving for keywords that you are targeting.

http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo

I see your website is on WordPress - I would recommend that you consider installing the Yoast SEO plugin - it will help you optimise your site in terms of SEO. This will also help guide you on how to use it -

https://yoast.com/articles/wordpress-seo/

This is a guide from the creator.

Welcome to the community

There is no limit to 301 redirects and in my opinion it makes your site much more crawl friendly for the search engines.

Here is Matt Cutts of Google on the subject - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1lVPrYoBkA

Egol I agree that a bespoke solution is always best and a decent consultant will guide a client as to what they need and what will work best in their situation. However I believe it is possible to create certain "products" or packages to offer as a basic solution and then further tailor them to the clients needs - I have seen agencies work like this and produce results for clients.

If you offer specific products or packages as a technique to initiate work with a new client then you can further enhance this and tailor it to a specific client with your own knowledge making it bespoke. This is where you need to sense check what the client is asking for in order to make sure it will work for them and achieve results.

Obviously an audit is a great start as this "product" will allow you to get a picture of where the site is and what needs doing.

Somebody comes to you wanting to rank for their business or service locally -

Another example of a "product" that is often offered is a local SEO package or process that lots of companies predefine and seem to have a lot of success with. You could even say that is what Moz do this with Moz Local to an extent - offering a product that takes care of a specific aspect of Local SEO.

As we are in agreement that a custom solution is always best -

Probably the best "product" would be a set amount of time for an initial consultation to help diagnose the persons needs...

In terms of rel=canonical that will pass value the same as a 301 redirect - for evidence have a look here:

http://moz.com/learn/seo/canonicalization

"Another option for dealing with duplicate content is to utilize the rel=canonical tag. The rel=canonical tag passes the same amount of link juice (ranking power) as a 301 redirect, and often takes much less development time to implement."

See DR Pete's response in this Moz Q&A:

http://moz.com/community/q/do-canonical-tags-pass-all-of-the-link-juice-onto-the-url-they-point-to

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?rd=1

http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2288690/how-and-when-to-use-301-redirects-vs-canonical

Matts Cutts stated there is not a whole lot of difference between the 301 and the canonical - they will both lose "just a tiny little amount bit, not very much at all" of credit from the referring page.

Hi Jonathan,

Have you considered looking at what your competition are doing in terms of products in relation to SEO and digital marketing. Many of them will have this all packaged on their websites so you can take a look and get an idea what they are doing and make your own versions...

I am sure you know who you are competing against in your market but if not just Google some location specific terms and have a look at their services, packages, etc.

You could also have a look at the Moz recommended companies list - http://moz.com/community/recommended

Simple I know, but hope this helps and good luck 

You would put the canonical link in the index file and I would point that at the xxx.com version rather than the xxx.com/index.html version as people visiting your sites homepage are going to enter the domain and not the specific page so xxx.com rather than xxx.com/index.html.

There are some great articles on Moz explaining all this which I would suggest that you read -

http://moz.com/learn/seo/canonicalization

Dr Pete also did this post answering common questions on rel=canonical.

http://moz.com/blog/rel-confused-answers-to-your-rel-canonical-questions

In terms of 301 redirects and canonicalization both pass the same amount of authority gained by different pages. If you are trying to keep it as clean as possible you need to be careful you don't create an issue redirecting your index file to your domain - here is an old post explaining how moz solved this 301 redirect on an Apache server

http://moz.com/blog/apache-redirect-an-index-file-to-your-domain-without-looping

I personally find that if all your links on your site reference your preferred(canonical) URL for the homepage so in this case xxx.com and you redirect the www version to this or vice versa depending on your preference then you add a canonical in the index.html file pointing at xxx.com in this case unless you prefer to do it the other way round with www.xxx.com for both you will be fine.

Hope this helps

I would look at what sites are out there which are placed as industry authorities. I would also look to identify who the influencers are in relation to your niche and I would look at starting to interact with all of these on social media. I would comment on what they are doing and get involved (followerwonk is a good tool for identifying these on Twitter as you can search for key terms such as web design). That way you will build a relationship up, then I would look at creating some decent content that people want to share. Some how to guides in relation to what you design in for instance. You could look for common problems or mistakes and then create a simple post on the solution. Then you need to make sure you spend time pushing it - push it to the influencers you have built a relationship with, push it to relevant groups. One tip I would give is look at getting involved with and sharing your content on large Google Plus communities, this will help with your exposure. Following through with this process will take time but you will benefit from earning links, social shares and more traffic.

One other tip that I would like to give you which will help is this - if you struggle for what to write about but you have competitors doing a good job at it then run them through socialcrawlytics.com and have a look at the content they have which has the largest number of shares. This will give you a good base for creating your own unique content based around a specific area that you know has been well received.

Essentially there is a lot to go at in order to earn links and earn is the key word. Spend time building your own profile and relationships up and then place you content in front of these connections. You will find this will lead to links and more.

I would also look at building my profile up by trying to get content placed on other sites such as well known web design resources as this will lead to you being recognised as an expert in your niche. Then you can further leverage this to help earn links,

Hope this helps - if there are any specifics don't hesitate to ask...

Matt gives you some good advice below - I thought I would just throw http://www.brightlocal.com/ into the mix for you to consider...

Hope that helps!

Hi Adam,

It sounds like you went down the right route - however from experience you didn't necessarily need to disavow all links that contained commercial anchor text. Going forward I would concentrate on earning brand links.

Do you do a lot of social media? Which channels? How does your content go on there?

Matt

Hi Adam,

Yeah we are just down the road from you based in Mercury House

Hi Adam,

Out of interest have you run your sites analytics through the panguin tool? If you haven't come across this previously it maps all Googles updates against your organic traffic. The reason I mention it is because over the last month or so there has been a lot of change in Google and always worth checking every aspect.

http://www.barracuda-digital.co.uk/panguin-tool/

When you say you haven't done any link building - I would recommend you still look at working on earning links with great content. By the sounds of it you do a lot around your blog, how's that content doing in terms of social shares etc?

In terms of new links what is the just discovered function of opentsiteexplorer saying? Many new links discovered in the last 60 days?

As Brian said it is really important to make sure that your business name, address and phone number (NAP) match on your Google My Business Page and your business landing page (website). There are also many other important factors that you can use to optimise your local presence and re-gain that A spot. Have you got your business listed in local relevant directories and do your NAP details match across the board? There are so many factors for optimising your business for Local I would recommend that you have a look at Local Search Ranking Factors 2014 - http://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors

If you have any specific questions once you have had a look at these ranking factors just reply to this thread or drop another question to the community and you are sure to get some great help.

I find consistency is key and you need to make sure you push forward with optimising all the different factors that will benefit your business locally.

Hahaha but you can get 30000 links for a $5!!

As ever if it sounds too good to be true it is and sadly for SEO $5 gigs are!

Anything of value you have to earn.

Hi Paul,

Justin gave you some great pointers below. In terms of it being unnatural I would completely agree as you are essentially leaving your site and coming straight back. Keep your internal links internal. Both methods Justin mentions would work well - I too would prefer the enhanced link attribution method.

No problem - that's what this community is all about