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Ignore the developer - what worked for one doesn't mean it'll work for you

The easiest way to test this is to manually create a sitemap with 100 or so 'clean' image URLs. Just pull the messy ones into excel and use the formula below to create a clean version (Use A1 for messy, B1 for formula).

Good luck mate.

=CONCATENATE("image:imageimage:lochttp://res.cloudinary.com/greenplantswap/image/upload/",RIGHT(A1,LEN(A1)-(FIND("*",(SUBSTITUTE(A1,"/","*",(IF(LEN(TRIM(A1))=0,0,LEN(TRIM(A1))-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A1,"/",""))))))))),"</image:loc></image:image>")

Hmmmm, okay... Could you post the examples they gave, and an example page where the images are located on the site?

This is a bit of a long shot but if the files have been uploaded using their API it may have been that the 'X-Robots-Tag' http header is set to no-index...

Also, those URLs don't look great with the commas in them. Have you tried doing a small subset that just has the image id (e.g. http://res.cloudinary.com/greenplantswap/image/upload/nprvu0z6ri227cgnpmqc.jpg)?

Matt

+1 for Copyscape... and if you need to check a LOT of URLs, go premium and use their API ($0.05 per request).

Hi Bob,

If you're looking for reasonably good quality at inexpensive rates, I'd use TextBroker.com and choose the '4*' option when you create the job. You'll pay around $10 for an average length article and the majority of the time you won't need to do much editing.

Hope that helps,

Matt

Hi Kristian,

Sorry this is a bit late - logged off when you posted this (I'm in the UK) and only just had chance to get my 'Moz fix

"non-pers google.com" just referred to using the SEOMoz Chrome Toolbar to do a 'Non personalised' check on Google.com for your keywords. If you want to check rankings compared to your competitors, use your SEOMoz Pro account (if you have one) or if you need something large scale and custom, get in touch with AuthorityLabs.

As for the no-follows, yeah - it would make sense to me. Again, depends on the exact situation but sounds like a sensible thing to do...

Matt

Okay, I'm on my phone so no idea if this will format properly... 1. "from say unique wiki based articles, and built like a pyramid so good quality" - that sentence implies poor or, at best, indifferent quality. 2. Different C classes, names, servers, etc... Really? That's easier and of more benefit than just doing (shock, horror) real marketing? 3. No we're not just trying to beat the algorithm. SEO 'pros' are building traffic, brand recognition, and trying to do things in a way that works long term. What you're talking about is a short term scam that could easily end with your main domain getting kicked out of the SERPs. If it's your own site, go for it... If it's for a client then stop and think - you might just end up putting them out of business. I'm with the Oracle: buy beer

Mahalo!

I've had a -really- quick look and to me it seems that you're doing fairly well already! Being up against Career Builder, Monster and Indeed (I hope I'm seeing the correct results - did a non-pers Google.com check) is never going to be easy but the few rankings I checked look pretty good.

I'd probably leave it as it is and spend my time thinking about content creation and outreach as you've already got a great foundation

Good luck!

Matt

Hi Andy,

This is a fun one! I've checked, and the latest version of the site that Google has cached contains the new <title>, so for some reason it either hasn't update yet or is choosing to ignore the tag. If that's happening, it could be for a few reasons:</p> <ul style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> <li><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">There's an OpenGraph tag as follows: <span><meta </span><span>property</span><span>='</span><span>og:site_name</span><span>' </span><span>content</span><span>='</span><span>Emeryville Pharmaceutical Services</span><span>'/>. It might be that Google's using that because it doesn't see your title tag as being relevant. If that's the case it's a completely new one on me as I've never seen this happen before.</span></span></li> <li><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span>More likely is that it's a relevancy / length issue, causing one of these to happen: <a href="http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/url-titles">http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/url-titles</a></span></span></li> </ul> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">Looking at your backlink profile and page content, there's nowhere that matches your chosen title so this is the most likely reason. You could try shortening the tag or tweaking your content but, to be honest, why would you want to? The branded title looks far nicer on the SERPs...</span></p> <p><em><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">Matt</span></em></p></title>

As Luis says, the canonical tag would be your best bet, although that's more of a band aid than a complete fix as it's not guaranteed to be adhered to. In your example, I'd advise the following:

• Use a META Robots tag (http://www.robotstxt.org/meta.html) to NOINDEX,FOLLOW any content that you don't want to be indexed. This could include your sign in / sign up pages, etc.
• Use rel=prev and rel=next on your pagination (http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/pagination-with-relnext-and-relprev.html) and canonicalise back to page 1 if and only if you genuinely don't want the subpages to be indexed.

The last of those two is completely dependent on your circumstances, and I'd advise looking and thinking about things like:

• Whether you're getting organic traffic to the sub-pages (a reason not to);
• Whether they sub-pages target a different keyword to the main one (a reason not to);
• Whether the sub-pages create any duplicate content issues (a reason to do so);
• Whether having the sub-pages affects your crawl quota (if so, a reason to do so).

Finally, on the note about your competitors... there's loads of stuff that will influence rankings so don't be guided by them too much

Hope that helps - let me know if you have any more questions, or just post a link here if you want me to take a (very) quick look at your site.

Matt

Hey,

I would strongly advise you to be very careful when deciding whether or not to try these kinds of tactics. There are few things that could happen here, all of them bad:

1. Nothing. Buying an exact match domain and adding a 301 in itself won't make a blind bit of difference to the target site.
2. You build a load of spammy links into the domain that you're 301 redirecting to your main site. This ends up with an algorithmic penalty, which disappears when you remove the 301.
3. As above but you get a manual penalty. Removing the 301 does nothing. You're screwed until the penalty expires (if it does).
4. You build good links into the domain that you're 301 redirecting which helps the target site... but not as much as it would if you just built the links straight into it.

Exact match domains are on their way out so using this as a tactic to get better rankings just isn't going to work in the long term. Having said that, we all know that there are still instances where they rank very well when they possibly shouldn't, so if you really have to do something like this, create a separate site with some great relevant content and build good links into it. For now it might increase the chances you rank well, and will still be within guidelines as you're providing a good experience for your users.

Honestly... You'd be far better off spending your time, effort and money creating a video, building a really cool interactive resource, or making friends with some niche influencers. It'll be cheaper and give you more benefit in the long run.

Matt

Do you have an example URL that I can take a look at?

• Matt

Yeah, definitely.

Another thing related to this is canonical url implementation - ideally you want a CMS that automatically adds these and, even better, gives you control if and when needed (such as canonicalising to a 'view all products' page for a category).

-Matt

Some of the most important things:

• Product Feeds: Most of our sales come from Google shopping - forget this at your peril.
• Search engine friendly URLs (i.e. /blue-widget/ or /categories/widgets/ instead of ?productid=5 or ?catid=10)
• Make sure your CMS works for you - it should help you match the URL, Title Tag, alt tags, H1 and body content with the product targeted on that specific page)
• Social Media integration (a service like addthis will make that easy to implement)
• Ensure that pages load as quickly as possible - use as few js libraries as possible, combined css, etc)
• Not related to your cart but... Use a blog to post good, interesting content and then market it to other blog owners.

I'm sure there're loads more but that's a starter

Matt

One thing to remember is that PageRank is just one of many ranking factors, and Google themselves say not to worry about it too much. The thing to look at is your traffic - if you're seeing a sudden drop-off then you may have been penalised. If it's gradual or seasonal then there are other things at play such as not gaining links as fast as everyone else, outdated architecture, etc.

Finally, google.com actually dropped from a 10 to a 9 in the recent update and I'm pretty sure they aren't having any traffic issues

As for being able to tell if you've had a penalty - the only real way is a sudden drop in rankings / traffic across your site. Sadly Google don't tell you anywhere so it's all guess work!

Hope that's helpful,

Matt

Although a little over-used, infographics are still a great way of gaining links if you market them properly. A quick outline of the process would be:

• Pick a topic (doing all the proper research into making sure it's going to be interesting to people, etc)
• Create the infographic (make sure to use a good designer - it's worth spending the extra cash)
• Seed it through social media, employing the use of friends, colleagues and random homeless people if needs be.
• Market it to blog owners in your niche.

That last part has a workflow of its own which is time consuming but something that you can outsource (drop me a PM if you need any help). Another quick outline:

• Create a list of blogs. Columns should include things like their URL, contact name, email, contact form, twitter handle, facebook page, title of a recent post, why that post was interesting, etc.
• Add a new column to your spreadsheet with a quick few words about why you find their blog interesting. This will be added to your email so needs to sound like a real person and written in the correct tone... so don't rush this too much.
• Email all of your blog owners telling them of your infographic and asking if they'd like to feature it. This can be automated with data from your spreadsheet but make sure it looks like you written and sent the email manually.

Hope that's all helpful - it's really just a quick overview of a much larger process but should  help at least a little

• Matt

Hi Chris,

It all depends on your budget - you're likely to find resources on oDesk that will give you far lower quotes than you'll receive from the higher profile members of the SEOMoz community. Having said that, I've yet to find anyone over there who really knows what they're doing with SEO (although I'm sure there are people, just not in the usual $3/hr price bracket).

If you're looking for help from a Mozzer I'd advise contacting a few people who post on the QA forum or comment on blogs and asking them to spend a few minutes doing a high level review of your site. If you like what you hear start to explore the option of putting them on a monthly retainer / day rate and work out some outline costs.

(Self promotion alert): I'd be more than happy to help out - just drop me an email / tweet / contact form from my site.

• Matt

Yeah, it's been generally positive. I'd always used elance in the past, although that was primarily for development tasks, so moving to oDesk was a bit of a worry at first. If you do a time-based project you're at relatively low risk as you get screenshots every few minutes of what your staff are working on. (ie. If they're looking at YouTube videos you'll be able to see and refuse to pay them).

A lot of people will offer services for very little outlay so it's worth spending time investigating their feedback and interviewing candidates properly. I generally keep it quite informal and just try to work out if the person I'm talking to is able to string a sentence together and have a bit of banter. If they are I'll give them a week's trial limited to 10 hours or so and see what the results are like.

Virtual assistants are really low risk as the outlay is so low... at worst you lose $30 and at best you find someone that will work with you for the next year or two doing all the tasks that you don't have the time or inclination to do yourself.

In the past I've always done the outreach part of a link building task myself, although there are those that take the view that it's possible to outsource this effecively so I'm giving it a try at the moment. Will most likely YouMoz how I get on at some point

• Matt

I always get that URL wrong - sorry! Curse of the bookmark - it's like speed dial... 3 years later and I still don't know my other half's phone number. She's consistently disappointed when I have to ask for it.

With regards to the research, use oDesk and hire a virtual assistant. You can get someone who's proficient enough to create you a list of sites that accept guest blog posts / niche directories (and do the submission) for $2-$3 per hour.

• Matt

Hey,

You can do this through OpenSiteExplorer.org - Run a report for your competitor's site and then set the filter to show:

'Only 301' links from 'External Pages Only' to 'All Pages on the Root Domain'.

• Matt