Welcome to the Q&A Forum

There are many factor which influences a site's ranking in one region or another.

Google is heading toward personalized results based on user location, but that's no panda or penguin issue.

Some things to consider are:

• the location of your hosting server
• the tld of your site
• the location and tld of your linking sites
• the location you set up in your gwtools or in your buiness page
• the content of your site, if it's english it may be more british focused or american
• and other ranking factors which only google knows

Hi Sung, first of all I recommend you to avoid one term keywords, look more to keyphrases. Look at what people normally add to the entrepeneur keyword to make their searches, for that you may use the adwords keyword tool. Expand your list of keywords as much as you can and then refine it removing the not related ones. You need to spend a lot of time in it because that will be the base of your entire work in the future.

After you got the keywords which more interests you look at the seomoz keyword difficulty tool. That may give you insight of which keyword will be the easier compared to the volume it has. Than if you still find those keywords are still too much competititve try to extend those ones with the third term. In that way you'll find which are the best kws to start with.

Remember that when you start achieving value to some longer keywords you're still getting value for the shortest combination, and in the future you may achieve some authority and start seeing your site ranking for the most competitive keywords too.

As a general rule, start getting market share in the bottom lines, huge brands normally leave unseen lower trafficked keywords, they achieve traffic because everyone looks a t the top keywords only. Then you'll start growing from the bottom.

Hi Niki, I think that your strategy to maintain the url short is good, it's always best to give short urls if they're descriptive enough. Normally the best thing to do is to give to users an URL which let them understand what a page is about without clicking into it, this may be beneficial also in linkbuilding since people linking to you with your url will involve also some traffic if the linking site is thematically related.

About the structure I think that 3 categories are not that much, it really depends on how many products or child pages you have. The best thing to do is to organize them in a way which is thematically organized having all your page not more than 3-4 clicks away from your home, in that way you'll be sure that google can easily find and crawl them frequently because a page deep in your website may not be found or crawled that much.

Hi Marcus, your approach is very solid, the hreflang and the language information in sitemaps solidifies the /en/ and /es/ folders. Google is smart enough to recognize such different languages but you'll do a well job if you add those tags too.

You can also consider to add a parameter instead of a folder and then specify in GWT what is the functionality of that parameter.

Well if you have an high pr link which you don't trust to poitn to your site only because it's not related it's a good idea to boost the power of your backlinks.

Just be sure that you don't automatize it in a way which may get you in troubles, because you won't be able to submit disavow requests for your backlinks

Be sure that you'll judge the high pr link not only by its pr but also for their adomain age, freshness, content quality, traffic and all this qulity rates which are not just pr juice.

Hi James, I'm seeing that your not focusing only on restaurant keywords since your business ismore htan just a restaurant. I think that you're not achieveing high results due to how much that keyword is diluted on your homepage.

1st: you have a page made for restaurant keyword http://theseatroutinn.co.uk/Restaurant.html use that. Try to enhance that page to achieve better links and better rankings

2nd you always use the same title: "The Sea Trout Inn in South Devon, Near Totnes - Luxury Bed and Breakfast and Restaurant - XXXXX" The xxx part seems to me the only one you change. Try to make shorter titles (normally less than 60 characters) and don't go after everything in all pages, but focus. In the restaurant page you may think aboutchanging it to: "Luxury Restaurant in Totnes |  Eat in the South Trouth Inn". In the meta description you may try something more attractive including a call to action like "Do you want an enjoyable lunch in Totnes? Try the south throuth inn a luxury restaurant in totnes"

In that way you'll have more different titles in you website and pages highly focused which won't cannibalize rankings from one to other.

an html sitemap is always a good idea to be sure that google will easily find all your pages, however if you structure well your website being sure that all the pages are not more than 3 clicks away from your home google wille asily find them all.

Hey Josh, the title you've put in those page is the same. The structure is good but you're repeating the same in every page. Maybe you can use that title here: http://www.farnorthkennel.com/german-shepherd-puppies-the-girls

and then in each page you may consider adding the dog's name at the beginning/en of the title like:

Hazel Index Card | German Sheperd Puppies in Alaska

Sorry for the bad translation however I think you got the point. In the titl eyou should specify what do you want to achieve with that page. If you're lloking for external visits try to fit there a good DIFFERENT keyword. If not just try to be descriptive like: Hazel profile | Meet the Kennel mother

hey Ken, yes I've used an advanced search but couldn't find any category for that product, just because that was in fact a product as you specified now) you can still maintain your pdf linked, what I recommend you is to be sure that the pdf won't cannibalize the kw for your page to rank, this by:

• modifying the title as be more descriptive
• using a link like more info on the product to link the pdf (no zyflamend kw on the anchor)
• maybe nofollowing the link to the pdf if you're goal is to not rank with the pdf

Hi James, I agree with Keri, the beginners' guide is a great content developed by the seomoz guys. If you want to achieve the success, you have to prepare yourself, and know at least the key elements of a page because there you'll want to include your most important keywords.

• title: text shown on top of you page and in blue in google result page. You want there some keywords and at the beginning if possible
• meta description: that's the short descriptive text below the title in google serps. You need to write compelling descriptions to attract users' attention and have your keyword bolded so to improve the CTR

Fix those two elements, try to enahcne the density of your restaurant in totnes keyphrase in your restaurant page and you'll be near the success

linking to the http://www.domain.com is the same as linking to / just develop the way which best suits your needs. The most important thing to do to avoid duplicate issues is to set the 301 to redirect everything to the same page thing you've already done so really there is no difference in that. About using the full url there's no issue on google seeing that as an external link since it's poiting to the same domain. hope this helps!

HI Juan Miguel, I don't understand well. You want to redirect everything to piensapiensa.com isn't that so?

But in your htaccess you're saying to redirect the non www version to the www version of piensapiensa.es

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.piensapiensa.es [NC]

RewriteRule (.*) http://www.piensapiensa.es/$1 [R=301,L]

What you'll need in your domain is a redirect like

RewriteRule (.*) http://www.piensapiensa.com$1 [R=301,L]

and you're done. if you're sharing server config in the same htacces you can put an

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} piensapiensa.es [NC]

I'm glad that helped you, see you on top of the rankings

Hi Dana, that would be really sad I use related searches a lot to find good related terms to expand my keywords. I still see them in the bottom of the serp.

Maybe is because I'm in Spain but I see both in Google.com and google.es

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Hey, I can't find them on your site.

Is it possible that those pages are part of an older version of your site? I can only see /category/ folder but google definitely indexed 600 of your urls containing such tag.

As Patrick said I really recommend you to noindex all archive, category and tag pages as they are just thin pages useful for user navigation but not for google.

After you have added the noindex tag you may ask google to remove them from index and you'll ahve your issues solved

Ok, actually having set up the GWT makes google understand which one is the main address but it is not phisically redirected for the other Search Engines.

You'll have two different htaccess files. One in the .com site:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.piensapiensa.com/$1 [R=301,L]

if you have the same url structure. If not:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule . http://www.piensapiensa.com [R=301,L]

And the other in the .es site:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.piensapiensa.es [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.piensapiensa.es/$1 [R=301,L]

this will make redirect everything to the www.piensapiensa.es version. HOpe this clarifies you everything. However I really recommend you to have a well trained webmaster doing this for you, because if you don't know how to edit an htaccess you can mess up your whole site.

Hi Bull, actually I don't recommend you to make a 100% accurate math on how much juice is lost, what you have to maintain clear is that this will make you lose value.

So, if you really need to make those redirects, try to reduce them to only one step, but, for ease of management if you REALLY need to create two steps redirects consider that you'll be losing the same value you'll be losing from one page linking to another and to other one (further reading here).

For page rank (juice) purposes 301 are treathed as links. However what I recommend you is after having put in place the generic redirect rules, identify your best traffic delivering pages and create an ad-hoc 301 for those ones, so you'll be sure those urls will receive least impact in that sense.

Hi Jens, first of all welcome to the wonderful world of SEO were nothing is 100% sure but everything is changing and worth testing, you'll be learning by making mistakes, if you don't make mistakes you're not doing anything. Many times is better to make mistakes because the road to the right path is to know where you shouldn't go avoiding bad practices.

Having said this I think you should start on organizing your inventory. Start by creating categories around your best products. Try to create new categories around trafficked keyphrases and try to achieve traffic to your listings. After having organized it create a really usable website with filters and microdata which will help users find reviews on your products making for them easy to choose which one is the best and in whatever moment be able to buy it in the shortest funnel possible, every click they need to do will make them think about giving up the buying cycle.

On the prodcut pages try to build easy and clear title the same product name wills tart delivering traffic by itsefl if it's clear what you're selling.

Also try to use a secure payment to make users feel safe when buying on your site.

Nowadays it helps a lot morehaving a really good onsite seo than build a lot of links to improve your visibility to achieve traffic. After you build a good site, improve your contents, descriptions, photos, reviews, filters, and you'll start achieving some links, you may start consider building some quality links and social media mentions as you may have read in the seo guide seomoz provides. TRy to avoid paid links and use only highly themed pages related to your website.

Adwords may also help you delivering traffic faster but try to optimize a lot your spent to make your first sales and help your site survive until your seo improves!

Hope this may help you starting!

heheh well I'd love that 47 not found could be "lots" by the way, where are thos links coming from? What you have to bear in mind is that it's not the same if the 404 is caused by internal or external linking.

If internal, then you have to see which page is creating the 404 and fix it

If external you have to ask the webmaster for fixing the link and meanwhile have the 301 in place so you can save the value of those links..

I think that having outbound links is a key part of an healthy site (unless your accepting a guest post for each post you create). I think there are also some good assets from linking outside of your site:

• you may get links in return as using those outbound links as part of an ego bait campaign
• people you're linking to may want to give visibility to that mention so they may share that article on their social media and other channels they control
• there are some articles about outbound link cogitation which works similarly to internal backlink cogitation but instead of considering inbound links it consider outbound. In other words, sites linking to same sites are somewhat similar

As you can see there are different approaches, but natural outbound links are a natural part of the we, which is the "web" because of its networking system. Cyrus, covered the topic in a previous whiteboard https://moz.com/blog/external-linking-good-for-seo-whiteboard-friday you may get some nice insights from there

There are many things you may do before considering adding the nofollow tag, maybe you can apply other optimizations to improve your rankings. Anyway, if you think there is some good opportunity, you can always test it. Instead of testing the entire site at once why don't you just modify a couple of pages and see if there is a significant ranking change? Data is far superior than any opinion I can give you