Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Not a problem, happy to help

You might also want to consider repeat custom. Having a database of repeat customers can be huge for ecommerce. Increasing lifetime value is one of the keys to success here.

A few ideas (I am assuming the CD key selling is legal, of course):

• Loyalty programmes (buy 'x' products and get 1 free, such as buy 'x' CD keys and get a random free one, obviously work your pricing to be sure you're in good profit, the freebie doesn't have to be an expensive one).
• Consider cross-selling at checkout. By offering an additional, related game at a decent discount, you may increase the average basket value considerably.
• Run seasonal promos, check Google Trends and other sources for when hotspots are (Christmas etc) and ramp-up your promotions - mailing out customers in a 'countdown' style fashion to build the PR (but monitor open rates and unsubscribes to make sure you're not annoying them!).
• Just before big game launches, piggy-back on the publicity & PR that the game generates and run discounts or contests - tie these in with you doing a video review of the game and upload to YouTube (you have a branded YouTube channel right?). Mail out to your list with the review of the new/just released game.

Other than Lifetime Value increasing:

Have you considered Twitch? Why not run a Twitch giveaway - Try to team-up with a popular streamer (if you're not well known yet, don't go for top-tier streamers at first. Find well known but approachable ones) and get them to do a sponsored CD Key giveaway. You'd need to make sure you get good coverage from the streamer (links from their chat, link from their bio for 'x' weeks, stream uploaded to their YouTube channel too if possible, with a link to your store etc).

What about asking any YouTube game streamers if you can sponsor their channel? Obviously, the likes of PewDiePie would be a bit too expensive, but aim for niche gamers with a decent following, you may be surprised how cheap you can sponsor them (CD keys?!) for links/mentions etc.

Just a few more ideas for you there, hope it helps

Hey Adam,

As per my message above, if you can provide more info, I can take a look at this for you. Without seeing the Schema though, hard to help fix it.

Feel free to send me a private message here if you prefer not to give the info publically (click on my profile > 'Send Private Message').

Cheers

Yup, all looks good now - the page has index, follow

I'm going to send you a private message here on Moz with a Screaming Frog crawl export, which I carried out just to check there were no instances of 'noindex' left on any pages... All looks fine from the noindex standpoint.

Sorry for the late reply, checking now for you

Agree with Chris on this for sure. I'd also add that you should use relevant hreflang tags to differentiate between the sites (or subfolders if consolidating into a single domain).

ccTLDs are fine if done right, but be sure that there's a valid reason (targeting a country) and use hreflang. Remember that you can't specific a country on it's own, you can either specify:

• A language on it's own
• A language AND a country
• NOT a country on it's own.

So, if you do stick with the ccTLD tactic, add the relevant rel alternate hreflang tags to all sites (including each having it's own self-pointing tag).

Or, as Chris mentions, merge into one gTLD and then I'd use subfolders for the country targeting (either ccTLD or gTLD option is valid, so long as it's done well and for the right reasons)

Hope this helps?

Hi Gavo.

I think I've spotted your issue!

Looking at https://www.brightonpanelworks.com.au/robots.txt I can see that you're all good now, HOWEVER...

view-source:https://www.brightonpanelworks.com.au/ Check your source code and you'll notice an inline noindex tag!:

Also, checking another page: view-source:https://www.brightonpanelworks.com.au/services/ I get the same meta tag.

This makes me think it's sitewide... So, as you;re running WordPress:

• In wp-admin, go to Settings > Reading, then untick the box that discourages search engines.

Once you've done that, the following optional steps won't hurt and may speed things up

• Submit a new sitemap
• Use the fetch & render, as Kevin recommends
• Personally, and this is entirely conjecture on my part, I'd use Google's page speed & mobile friendly testing tools, as I find that 'seems' to help (I've not bothered verifying by running tests & checking the access log files to bot activity etc - as it only takes a few seconds to do so not worth the time. Maybe I'll check out of curiosity at some point though!)

** As there's been a couple of errors with indexing, once you've done this change, I'd recommend running a full site crawl (Moz's tools or Screaming Frog is cool too) and check for any other noindex pages!**

EDIT: In case you don't have Screaming Frog, let me know when you've updated the WordPress setting and I'll run a crawl for you and ping you a list of any pages that are still showing noindex tags, if any exist

Can you provide a link to the page this error is on? If we can see the code, will be easier to help

Edit: The 'Warning' ones are you not showing recommended fields, the image & name ones though, they are more urgent as they are required fields. My guess is that either the fields are missing, or are malformed somehow - would need a look at the code to confirm & recommend a fix.

Edited the above re: clarifying rel=canonical advice

Hmmm good question!

Caveat: I don't know your exact situation, but let's discuss the options a little (I'll provide some links to reference material and a useful tool too).

I've not had to do this personally, most of the international SEO I've done involved the site having the same service offering across different economic regions, so the subfolders were only needed in their specific language (e.g. /es for Spain, /mx for Mexico etc).

This might get confusing, so I'll use some examples

One option would be to use subfolders for country, then language. This is a more complex scenario, so would need good planning of course, but by way of an example...  A section of your website targeting Spain (as a country) could be:

https://domain.com/es

Now, if you wanted a translated copy in English, of this page, you could do:

1) Query string (urgh!)

https://domain.com/es?lang=en

2) subfolder-subfolder

https://domain.com/es/en

An example when 'deeper' into an international subfolder, say the visitor is on the 'widgets' page, on the Spanish (Spanish country folder, showing Spanish by default, translated into English)...

https://domain.com/es/widgets/en

To add a little more complexity (sorry!) it'd probably be wise to set a rel canonical tag from the translated copy, to the country-specific version. So in the above 'widget' example, the page https://domain.com/es/widgets/en would have:

Then, on https://domain.com/es/widgets/, I'd set the hreflang to be self referencing, and I'd add a hreflang to the other country versions too (country versions in their own languages, rather than translated version of this one):

So on the above, as the english translation of the Spanish page is unlikely to want to be indexed (google.es should only have the Spanish version, google.co.uk, you'd want to index the English site, not the English translation of the Spanish site!), I'd rel=canonical it to the original Spanish page. But on every page that isn't rel=canonical'd to another pre-translated page (so, the ones we want indexing in their own country & language), I'd add hreflang tags to self and all other international sites, with their own language code.

Some reference material for hreflang (set to open in a new tab so you won't lose your place :D):

• https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2010/09/unifying-content-under-multilingual.html
• https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077
• http://www.rebelytics.com/hreflang-canonical/ (VERY strongly recommended read on not creating confusion between hrefland and rel=canonical)
• http://www.aleydasolis.com/en/international-seo-tools/hreflang-tags-generator/ (a generator for hreflang, but DO check it's output!).

Note: I'd still target the first subfolder from root (/es in the above example) to the specific country (Spain) in Search Console).

Of course as an alternative, you could do ccTLDs (.es/.co.uk etc) and then have a single subfolder for the country (domain.co.uk/es, for example).

UX Conisderations:

(You may have considered this already, forgive me if that's the case! Only adding here as I've had conversations on this in the past and have seen it cause confusion).

One realllllyyyyy important consideration here is how the visitor makes the switch from languages and also to a different country site. THIS is key.

Seriously. If the visitor gets confused and exits because something they didn't expect happened (switched to another country version of your site when they wanted a translation - this becomes worse when you have a considerable amount of country-specific content, such as guides etc), all the technical SEO work behind the scenes for the international SEO set-up is kinda wasted.

What I mean by this is (and this is true regardless of if you go down the ccTLD or gTLD with subfolders routes)...

When a visitor lands on your site, let's say domain.com root/homepage, how will they:

1. See this page in another language

2. Switch to a different country page?

A better example. Say I'm in Spain, you sell widgets and I search Google.es for 'best widgets for under €250' - you've done some awesome International SEO, so your site shows up high and I click on it. I land on:

https://domain.com/es/widgets/

Now, I'm on the **Spain **(country) version of your site, in Spanish (language), how would my journey be (in terms of clicks), if I wanted to:

a) View the English version of this page (domain.com/es/widgets/en)

b) Switch to the English site (domain.com/en/widgets/)

c) Switch to the English version of the site, but view it in Spanish (domain.com/en/widgets/) < Likely 2 clicks needed for this of course.

If you're adding to your site, the ability to both switch to another site country AND translate the current page into English (for non-English pages), it needs to be really clear to the visitor how to do either, so they don't click on a country flag and get a result they were not expecting.

Again, the above is true regardless of the gTLD or ccTLD issue. Good planning & labeling can help with this, just make it damn obvious to the visitor what clicking a flag will do and make sure they know how to 1) Translate the current page vs 2) Switch to another country-version of your site.

Whatever you decide, once you've worked out how you want it to work, I'd:

1. Role-play it yourself, visiting the site (mentally or on pen & paper if it doesn't exist online yet!) and try to 'be' the visitor in different scenarios - Is it obvious to get to where you want both country-wise and language-wise?

2. Once the site prototype is built, repeat the above, but on the actual site.

3. Write 2 or 3 scenarios (seriously, it will only take 5mins each!) and pass them to work colleagues - Ask them to run through the scenario and see if they get stuck).

4. If you want to really push the boat out (I recommend this!) use an online UX testing service:

• https://usabilityhub.com/ < Cheapest option of the two, with a few different tests you can do. Personally in your situation I'd probable have them open a country-specific page and ask them to switch language to English, then run a separate test asking another bunch to switch the country to England (or whatever countries you serve, but you get the idea... Ask one group to switch language, another group to switch country - check they do it right).

• https://www.usertesting.com/ < More expensive, but worth getting a small number done. Here you set a series of tests and a screencast of the user trying to carry out your tasks, whilst they talk into a mic.

Spending a few $ on user tests can be VERY useful for identifying where users may be getting confused, resulting in a much better user experience which, let's face it, is key not only for SEO these days, but also for conversions and £, $, and €

Phew!  long-ass post that may raise more questions than it answers I guess?! I don't know your exact situation so it's a tough one to advise on, but hopefully the above is some food for thought

Hey Damon,

I sent you an email with a couple of suggestions for your site, things I think may have possible slipped through the net during your redesign, I hope that helped!

Also, re: press releases, as someone that owns a Google news approved PR site, I can give you another angle on this if you like?

I agree with what everyone here has said about quality for a start! One of the more traditional uses of a press releases is obviosuly to get the word out... these days some folks try to submit crappy spun articles as press releases. A visit for somewhere like the warrior forums will show you people using, and selling, that tactic.

As a PR site owner that just means more work on our part, declining trash releases, and banning IP's from our system! Not everyone does this though, obviously the big sites do (prweb etc) but some of the smaller, free PR sites don't have much of an approval process.

What that can mean for you, is that you may end up with your news release on a site promoting questionable products and linking to questionable sites. Whilst I doubt this would be bad enough to cause you much harm, it may not be the panacea that you could be hoping for!

If you go down the PR site route on a regular basis, try to opt for sites that have some level of quality control, look for ones that are Google news approved, and also ones that will show your full contact details, ideally including a link back to your site.

Write decent releases, and when you write an especially good one, take it offline too! Send it to your local papers and press.

Regarding the local papers and press, if you want a higher success rate, pick up the phone, call the papers, and ask them who deals with small business news. Explain you have an interesting press release you would like to send them, and ask who the best person to send it to is.

Doing the above can help your success rate pretty massively, as instead of going to a generic, contact@blah type email, then having to be sent around the block, you should go straight to the eyes of someone that is most likely to be interested.

This is only worth doing if you have something to shout about. A relaunch MAY do it, winning some local award, or sponsoring a local charity or something almost certainly should! Look for local charity events to throw a few $ towards for sponsorship, offer a training day to local school kids, anything like that should be good enough to get the attention of the local press. If a reporter does interview you, explain that you would love a nice, clean SEO friendly link from the body of anything they publish online Give them lots of coffee, to keep em happy!

The effect on your local rankings, if you manage to get a clean link from a quality local paper and some follow up news coverage, may well help you to get above the spammy sounding guys above you.

Follow that up with some LOCAL (real local, not spammy ones) directory submissions, some 'social love' and some online press releases, and you may well secure a decent position in time.

Anyway that was a bit of a long un, but I wanted to give you an idea of how you  could, pretty ethically, out do the guys above you, and also use online and offline PR the right way

Obviously online PR gets used in all sorts of ways, and at the end of the day so long as what you submit is unqiue, well written and interesting, it should probably get approved, what I describe above is something that can give a nice bonus in addition, to help with your results (especially local ones), when you have a news worthy event to shout about.

Hmmm looking at the first 2 pages, I think I can see what's happening here

Not 100% on how Moz's tool figures out dupe content, but I think this is why (3rd point is strongest, I think):

• Similar URLs (first part up to the last folder, then first word, then both ending in 2016) means the URL is a close match
• The title tags are also quite similar
• Perhaps most importantly, it does look like the VAST MAJORITY of the content on the page is in fact duplicate of other pages. It's not obvious at first BUT... To see what I mean, click on the 'Guidelines' tab (looks like jQuery tabs or similar) and we get a big amount of content - the most on the page - that's duplicated between both pages.

Perhaps consider making that a link to a dedicated page that has this content, opening in a new tab or similar?

For your 2nd two examples, check the 'About Your Instructor' and 'FAQs'. I'd advise that where content is repeated over & over, move it to it's own page and then link to it from there, rather than having the same several hundred words indexed on many pages.

Hope that helps?

Ps. There may be a better solution for displaying the content, iframing it into the tab etc, but if you go down that route be careful, it's an effort to make iframes responsive!

There's no hard & fast answer really, as it depends on your situation.

Personally, I'm a big fan of blogs in a subfolder on ecommerce sites. It gives you a great platform for publishing content that's useful to your target audience at various stages of their sales cycle.

For example, educating people about different solutions to a problem, guides on how to do stuff...

Not sure of the exact niche within gamers you sit, but, for example, a post with a detailed guide to streaming on Twitch, including photographs:

• That shows how to set-up OBS (Open Broadcaster Software),
• Explains the best settings in OBS are for Twitch (I know from experience people DO struggle with this part),
• Details how to set-up chat boxes and donation boxes etc in-stream,
• What your options are in terms of Headset/mic,
• What to look for in a webcam and how to do picture-in-picture style streaming (with an explanation of why this is good... It increases followers & encourages engagement etc)
• Detail external streaming hardware (Elgato boxes etc)

All of this will be VERY useful for any gamer wondering how to get into streaming and what hardware and software they need. Of course all the info is already available, but a lot of it is scattered across the web. Make it easy for folks and create an 'ultimate guide' style post.

Provide really uber-useful guides like this (varying depending on your exact sector), mix it in with genuine hardware reviews and comparisons... get a few mid-tier gamers to do hardware reviews on your blog too... and your blog may become someone's 'go-to' place for advice on gaming hardware, software and configuration. The benefits of this happening are that you may get subscribers to mailing lists, plus the brand trust - compared with JUST having an ecommerce store, will be huge.

You can also lock content with an email gate (e.g. in the Streaming example, offer a cheatsheet checklist that goes along with the post, in exchange for their email)... But personally? I'd be sure, if you do this, to have PLENTY of decent, helpful posts first. People will be more willing to give you their email once they know they can trust you. It's a value exchange and the onus is on YOU to provide the value first

The brand trust you should earn from this sort of work will likely increase your conversion rate considerably, as people prefer to buy from who they trust. On the subject of conversion rate, if you've not seen it yet, watch this: https://moz.com/blog/how-to-craft-the-best-damn-ecommerce-page-on-the-web-whiteboard-friday 

The only thing is, if you don't think you can support this level of quality on a blog, don't do it.

However, bear in mind that you DO NOT need to product 'x' posts a week... What dictates the amount you publish should be the capacity you have for producing stellar content. Better to publish less, but better. Also take the time to think about amplification of the content. Lots of good info here on Moz and other places.

Also, are there any folks you can partner with? Gamers who could get involved with the blog in exchange for gear or discounts?

The best advice is, as you say, to be 'natural'. Hard to 'emulate' a natural backlink profile? - Then I hate to say it, but try to earn some natural backlinks

Add UGC to product pages (reviews etc), try to make product pages (assuming this is an eCommerce site!) more interesting (soem great stuff on MOZ about this - including a whiteboard Friday from a while back, I think!).

If you ARE 'building' links, I would recommend avoiding exact match anchors. In terms of what anchor text % to use for each type, and what would look natural, I very strongly suspect that this is different in each industry/niche. Google is pretty good at spotting what other websites any given site is 'related' to, and so would also be able to calculate what, on average, looks dodgy and what looks natural. I would be very surprised if this data didn't at least influence it's algorithm's a little.

Who ranks at the top in your industry? What sort of anchor text do they have pointing to similar sub-pages? - Check this for 3 or 4 top-ranking sites in your sector.

Link like a Journo or blogger

Consider using a mix of brand, url, and natural anchors such as in-sentence links (read a few New York Times blogs to see how they handle citation links (or follow the example i just made! hahaha). Whilst on the NYT blog, why not follow the links from the NYT blogs to their destination URL, and then run an OSE check on those URLs? That will likely show you other examples of natural linking

The long term goal should be to earn links, not build them - I accept this can be a tough call though!

Very good answer by EGOL. Quality over quantity any day. As for being awesome content, remember that it should be awesome content that answers the needs, questions etc of your target audience.

Also, remember that to be truly effective, your content should speak to your demographic at different stages in their buying cycle. From 'Discovery' pieces, through to comparison articles etc, always be mindful when writing an article who you're targeting the content to, what stage of the funnel they are likely to be, and how you can HELP them understand the issues and move on to the next stage. Sounds like a lot of work, but once you get into the workflow, it's worth it.

For content ideas, think of questions too - If you've been in an industry for a while, you may already know what common questions come up - use this! It's gold. Also, if you have any sales folks (or any customer-facing folks) ask THEM what questions they get asked by customers most often - keep a list, look for trends and there you have an ideas list for your articles. This is just one idea - there's loads of great advice out there on the web for this sort of thing. Check some Whiteboard Fridays on content topics too, there's some good ones from what I remember.

I'd then mix really stellar content with some outreach. Be careful with outreach though, be smart and always think of adding value. Can you partner with any businesses in the articles? Can you write any guides that mention other (non-competing) businesses and produce or co-authored piece that'll be shared to both your social audiences & email lists? If you do base an article on customer questions, would the customers be happy to be mentioned in the piece (always ask!) as if so, perhaps they'll share it? (who better to help you reach more

If you do base an article on customer questions, - always as permission - but, would the customers be happy to be mentioned in the piece ( "Joe Blogs from [town] raised a great question which lead to this article...] as if so, perhaps they'll share it? (who better to help you reach more customers, than your existing happy customers).

Anyway, just a few ideas.

Hi Rand,

Whilst I agree partially with what you say here, at the same time if Gamer paid annually, based on what the sales page sold him, and now you have revoked some of what was detailed on that sales page (and so sold to Gamer), then you really need to look at this I think.

Personally I will also miss the private Q&A, but it isn't a deal-breaker for me.

I do wonder about the pro-webinar's going totally free though, I didn't even realise that was the case. Still, I use followerwonk and OSE quite a lot in my work, so this also isn't a deal breaker.

HOWEVER, I pay monthly. Gamer paid annually. To be honest, as Gamer paid for a years membership to a service, and as you have changed that service considerably after he has paid a years membership, I would think that he should be given the option on cancelling - and having the rest of the year's fee refunded. At the end of the day, that would be good customer service, as he is no longer getting what he paid for.

Just my thoughts

Like I say, despite being disappointed re: Q&A and Pro webinars, I am not leaving SEOmoz - it's just too good - I do also get what Gamer is saying though.

EDIT: Just saw below that a Mozzer offered a refund etc -nice one Moz being awesome as ever

Still... it really is a shame that you can't support the private questions anymore.

4% is low I agree... but did you ask those 4% how important the questions were to them?

Also, SEOmoz does talk about community building - did the community get any chance to offer it's opinion of the webinars moving from Pro to free to all? - Just wondering

Veronica (my keyboard doesn't do accents I don't think! Lo siento Veronica!) gave a good answer, I just wanted to add...

With internal links, if you're using WP or another CMS platform, there are plugins that do 'related posts', 'top posts', and even 'top comments', all of which could, in theory, send extra internal link juice to the pages. Though, many of these plugins would return the most popular/recent etc, not necessarily the pages you want

An approach I'd consider is manually finding posts that are related to the posts you're looking to give a little boost, and see if it'd make sense (from a content perspective) to link from any of the related posts you've found, back to your target posts. You may want to use an in-content link, or could even add a small 'recommended post' promo area - within or under the related post.

• Also, as you publish new content, remember to internally link to the target posts where it makes sense.
• You've mentioned content relaunches, did you update the last-modified meta (if it exists) or last-modified header?

Can the on-page SEO be improved at all? When you get to the first 2 pages, small improvements can yield results, so:

• Can the standard SEO be improved? (Go back to SEO 101, check things like filenames of images on the page, alt tags, what about subheadings? do you use < strong > when you could use < h2 > or < h3 >?).
• Page load times - can you optimise the images to increase load speed? What about page bloat (CSS/JS from old plugins - cleaning that will help the entire site!)
• Structured data - can you add any Schema markup? (article etc)
• Click through rates from SERPs... Can you improve the title tag (careful!) or meta description to try to get a higher CTR from the SERPs? As you get closer to the top, this gets more important (in my opinion/conjecture not fact)

That's all I can think of off-hand.

Bump for this too! Jon's answer seemed quite positive... any more news?

What I'd recommend (both as a long term SEO and someone who's used Moz for years), is first book an onboarding session with Moz. I've been using the Moz suite for many years, but recently booked one, just out of curiosity really! (and to see if I had any knowledge gaps with regards what the Moz tools can do).

Don't expect strategy advice from Moz, of course, but sitting through a short onboarding session will really help you get to grips with the Moz tools and:

1. Mean you need to pay a consultant for less time training on Moz's tools (so your money can be directed more to strategy & advice, rather than learning the tools)
2. As you'll be a bit more comfortable with the Moz tools, you'll likely understand what the consultant you hire is talking about better
3. Without meaning to be rude to anyone, you'll also find it easier to spot those who can and cannot help you.

I'm not pitching for the work or anything here btw (am booked out solid with project work for the next few months, so couldn't even if I wanted to!), I just though the above might be a good way forward for you.

I would recommend a multi-pronged approach.

First, though, I just want to check something.

"...has locations around the country" They are not simply adding a page per city, with lots of duplicate content, are they? (I am sure they are not, but I had to ask!).

Anyway, on to answer your question with my thoughts (for what they are worth!)...

I like Nakul's suggestions, below, about sponsorship. I would add to this, getting in touch with the local press to let them know about your sponsorships.

Next, consider joining your local chamber of commerce etc, and network with people. Get the news out about their services.

Be sure to submit to local directories (not low quality international directories, but quality, local directories).

Be SURE to use consistent data for each local directory, post cade, phone no. etc... this can help aggregators like Google Local Business Centre to pick up on citations, and attribute them to your listing.

Make sure you have filled out your Google local business profile in full, with images etc, and do the same for Bing/Yahoo.

See if there are any schools or organisations locally that will allow you to give a talk or demonstration - quite often this will include a link on their website to let people know about you before the event - if you can get local schools to do this, you could get a decent link or two from .ac.uk or .edu links, etc.

It is hard without knowing your niche, but also you could try giving a talk to a local government department (if it fits... for example if you are in the data security business, offer a free workshop to a council department, but say you want them to publish the event on their site, to ensure you get a good turnout).

If your business runs self defense classes, offer a one day free workshop to a large organisations staff, teaching womens self defense tactics... but again, you want it published on the companies website/PR section. Follow this up with a Press Release about the day to the local press & online, and use that publicity to do a similar thing for other companies.

Some of the things I have mentioned are perhaps a little more time consuming that standard 'local seo' practises, but then, the links they can gain you could give you 'the edge' on your competitors.

I must admit though, if the company doesn't actually have staff in all these cities, it makes this a little harder!