Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Thanks Jarno

Hi Parvesh,

Although not perfect, the best way to find localised keyword usage is combing the data from the keywords tool with Google Trends.

For example, if you find the search volume for 'beauty salon', you can then see how this volume is divided across the subregions and cities across Australia. Here is an example:

http://www.google.com/trends/?q=beauty+salon&ctab=0&geo=au&geor=all&date=2012&sort=0

Sadly this data isn't too specific, but it's a great way of getting an indication of what Cities the search demand is coming from.

Another way is to lookup keyword + location in the Google keyword tool. So rather that search for 'beauty salon' you can search for 'beauty salon Melbourne' 'beauty salon Perth' etc

Again, this will give you a strong indication of how the main 'beauty salon' search volume is divided across the country.

The only real way of getting the cast iron data, with no interpretation required, is to actually run some test campaigns through AdWords and see the impressions data for each region. This will give you the exact information, but will also mean you'll have to dip your hand in your pocket (which can get expensive dependant on how many regions/Cities you want to cover)

Thanks,

David

Hi,

In regards to the geo-targeting, have a read of this case study. To me it's the definitive guide to the issue as it goes through most of the options available, and offers a pretty solid solution:

http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/territory-sensitive-international-seo-a-case-study

And if you are worrying about the white/black aspects of using these tactics, here is a great guide from Rand on acceptable cloaking techniques:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/white-hat-cloaking-it-exists-its-permitted-its-useful

And finally a great 'Geo-targetting FAQ' piece from Tom Critchlow:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/geolocation-international-seo-faq

In regards to the other locations ranking that you don't think have been crawled, this is probably down to the number/strength of the links pointing at this sections. Google have stated in various Webmaster videos that a page doesn't neccessarily need to be crawled to be indexed (weird huh?), Google just needs to know it exists.

If there were plenty of links point at a page, Google would still believe it's an authoritative/relevant result even if it hasn't crawled the page content itself. It can use other signals such as anchor text to determine the relevancy for a given search term.

Here is an example video from Matt Cutts where he discusses the issue:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBdEwpRQRD0

Best of luck

David

Hi,

In regards to keyword stuffing; yes it can be an issue in alt tags and personally I believe it is a spam signal to the search engines.

For example, a good alt tag would be along the lines of:

'A young couple stood in front of the Egyptian pyramids whilst on holiday'

However, you will find some people will stuff and go with:

'Egypt, Egyptian, Egypt Holidays, travel to Egypt, flights to Egypt, see the pyramids' etc

It's fairly easy for Google, and your customers, to see that you are trying to manipulate the rankings.

The alt tags should be a simple description of the image, however you need to be SEO savy enough to include your keywords as well.

In regards to your site; if your competitor isn't using alt tags on their buttons, then it's a fantastic opportunity for you to take the lead. It's difficult to tell you what would/wouldn't work, but if you work on the lines of offering a genuine description then you will be fine.

If your site is selling events, then it makes sense to explain in the alt tag that this is a buy button for X event on X date.

Again, with a little bit of code trickery you can have this created dynamically so it's on a quick job and will happen automatically whenever you add a product/event.

In regards to making words/phrases bold or italic; there is no SEO benefit or risk here so it should be simply down to what looks best and what portrays the information in the best way for your visitors.

Thanks,

David

Blue Widget 2143 was just an example product, without knowing what kind of products you sell it was the best I could do. If you sold soccer jerseys, your alt tag could be 'buy button for the 2012 Manchester United home shirt'. This would pick up more search traffic, as well as make your website more accessible to customers. The whole point of the alt tag is to provide a description of the image you are displaying. 'Buy now' tells neither Google nor your customers any information, and you are missing out on a great opportunity to please both. Depending what language/CMS your website is built on, you will be able to insert a bit of code that dynamically creates a suitable alt tag depending on the product. So whatever page/product template currently instructs the alt tag to be 'buy now', would instead instruct a dynamic name to be generated along the format of 'buy button for <product name="">' Cheers</product>

Blue Widget 2143 was just an example product, without knowing what kind of products you sell it was the best I could do. If you sold soccer jerseys, your alt tag could be 'buy button for the 2012 Manchester United home shirt'. This would pick up more search traffic, as well as make your website more accessible to customers. The whole point of the alt tag is to provide a description of the image you are displaying. 'Buy now' tells neither Google nor your customers any information, and you are missing out on a great opportunity to please both. Depending what language/CMS your website is built on, you will be able to insert a bit of code that dynamically creates a suitable alt tag depending on the product. So whatever page/product template currently instructs the alt tag to be 'buy now', would instead instruct a dynamic name to be generated along the format of 'buy button for <product name="">' Cheers</product>

Hi,

By definition, the alt tag is there to give a description of the image for users who aren't able to view it (visually impaired users, or visitors with restricted browsers or speeds).

In regards to the search engines, it's an opportunity for you to tell them about the content of an image which the crawlers simply can't see. This gives you two opportunities; firstly to let the search engines know that the media content of your page is relevant for a search query. Secondly, images with a full description will stand a much better chance of ranking in image search, which can be a rich traffic source for you.

For both circumstances, the alt tag should be descriptive and a genuine reflection of the content of the image. A alt description of 'buy now' doesn't add any value to either your visitors or your SEO efforts, as it tells them very little.

I would recommend using an alt tag along the lines of 'buy button for the Blue Widget 2143'.

This gives visitors a full description of the image, as well as helping the search engines know that your site is relevant for the Blue Widget 2143.

This would also solve your issue of duplicate alt descriptions that are adding no value to your site. If you followed the format of 'buy button for the <product name="">' it would give you unique descriptions that genuinely benefit your SEO campaign.</product>

I definitely wouldn't recommend blocking the alt tags, this would be totally shunning a serious on-page ranking factor.

Thanks,

David

I feel for you, I've been in the position myself.

Cheers

David

Hi Scott,

I wouldn't call this blackmailing, I'd say they are simply putting a price on their time and work.

It's not their fault that Webmasters who where chasing a quick win are now trying to back track, and they shouldn't be expected to work for free to undo the bad choices of others.

I know it's not always the fault of the Webmaster, and more often than not it's down to a dodgy SEO they hired in the past, but it's certainly not the responsibility of the directory owner.

By defination, people who set up these low quality directories are out for a quick buck. It's very optimistic to expect them to show compassion in this scenario.

To me, it's a case of live by the sword, die by the sword.

Cheers

David

Hi Bilal,

There is no 'one solution fits all' solution for getting rid of these links, it's simply a case of visiting each site and seeing if they have a process to remove your entry, and if not contacting the Webmaster to politely request they do so.

Here is a great guide to clearing up your link profile:

http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/how-to-create-an-excel-spreadsheet-to-remove-link-spam-post-penguin

I would suggest following this process to get rid of the worst offenders.

Personally, I'm a big believer in balancing out your link profile by acquiring new, authoratitive links rather than chasing to get rid of old ones. It seems a much more positive tactic to me, although it's not right in every scenario. With Google specifically highlighting you have got damaging links, it might be worth highlighting the most toxic ones and looking to have them removed, whilst at the same time looking to acquire new healthy links.

Good luck

David

Hi there,

In terms of some personalised link building suggesting:

Clients/partners/customers

I always recommend the first step in any link building campaigns is getting the quick wins. Sit down with the people in your company and list any companies and individuals who you have worked with, used their product/service, or had use your services.

These are often the easiest links to get as there is already a relationship built, so get the Project Manager or Account Manager who had the closest relationship with the partner to simply make the call or send an email asking if they will link to you.

If the relationship is good, they are nearly always happy to.

In regards to products and services your company has used, you can often get a link by offer a testimonial to go on their website. It's win win as they get a real customer review and you get a nice link. List every company you've spent money with, be it software, products, or even your catering firm. These are great links to get.

Also, if you have any execs or senior staff members, leverage their contacts. Book in 30 minutes with them and ask them to go through their major business contacts (or even better, their LinkedIn account) and find out which business contacts would be likely to link to your business. You can earn some really valuable links just by approaching your Chief Execs golf buddies.

Guest posting

This is the bread and butter link building for a lot of companies nowadays. It's a great and scalable way of building links, creating relationships and adding value to the web. Find powerful websites and blogs in your industry, and simply approach them offering to provide a piece of content for their site. Have some of the experts from your company write great articles and guides to their niche (you'll be surprised how happy people are to knock up an article about something they care about).

This can be done on scale, and is a effective and positive way to earn yourself some very strong editorial links.

Broken site fixing

This isn't my idea, in fact it only came about this week through this excellent post by Eugene Krall:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/php-errors-as-a-means-of-getting-links

If you have some PHP boffs in your company, get them to go out there and fix some website errors in their spare time. People will be delighted with the help and happy to give you a link. You never know, it might drum up some new business too.

Inbound Content

Of course, the most scalable way of getting links is through the viral effect, and this can be achieved by adding outstanding and eye-catching content to your own site. This isn't just a case of posting an interesting article though, you have to think outside the box to come up with content that is going to blow people away (or at least impressive them enough to hit the 'share' button). This way is a longer game, but once you've built up a fan base you can be receiving tons of new links every time you press the 'publish' button.

In regards to the link building methods you proposed (directories, article submission, social bookmarking etc etc)...

I'm not one for playing the black/white hat game, but what I am passionate about is SEO that works against SEO that doesn't, and the fact of the matter is that in most instances these tactics whil be ineffectual at best, and actually damaging at worst.

There are some good directories out there, and some article submission sites that might send some benefit, but these are few and far between and the effort it takes to find them will be the same as using a safe and effective tactic such as those above.

You've got to remember that if a link is as simple to acquire as submitting an automated form, then it's unlikely to carry any SEO value at all. If SEO were that easy I'd be retired and sipping cocktails on a beach!

Good luck, let me know if you want to discuss any further link building tactics or if you need any help with your campaigns.

Thanks,

David

Hi Samuel,

Unless your site is targeting a specific country, then leave it blank. Don't be tempted to point it at US or UK, as you will be essentially telling Google that your site is only relevant for those users, and you will see your international traffic dip.

Good luck

David

No problem, I feel for your predicament.

Let me know if you need any help with anything.

Thanks,

David

Yeh you want at least 50% of your keywords to be branded, so I can see why you are having problems. The two prong attack should help you though, if you can get 20-30 links removed and build the same amount, the balance will be moving back in your favour.

The page that is ranking on page 3, is that the one with all the exact match anchor text pointing at it?

If there are no great links in there, it might be worth cutting your losses and sending a 404 for that page, and launching the same page from fresh.

If the dodgy links are at your home page, then it looks like you're stuck pushing for these removals (unless you're ready to up and move domains).

I'm always about pushing for new links rather than trying to tidy up old ones, but in this scenario I can see your hand is being forced.

Cheers

David

At a domain level (and exact maths aside), yes. However at a page level (i.e within an article), then the link juice is evenly distributed across the links on the page.

It gets complicated when the other link strength factors are brought into it. For example if there were two links on a page, one in the article and one in the page footer. The link juice would be distributed 50/50, however the footer link wouldn't be given the same importance and strength as the one in the article.

This goes for your links in the article too. Although the link juice will be spread evenly, there are still other ranking factors that skew the importance of the links, such as the order and placement.

So the number of links you have in the article effects the PageRank distribution, but there are many other factors surrounding links. The main one that will effect this issue is the diminishing returns of links to the same website (e.g yours).

So if you have 4 links on a page they might get the PageRank spread evenly at 25% each, however this doesn't mean that they will all carry the same weight and value to your pages they are landing at.

Cheers

Fair enough, if there's loads then you might have your options narrowed down.

Are they pointing at the home page or individual url's? If there are any url's that have tons of the dodgy links pointing at them, it might be worth killing them with a 404. Google went on record last week saying that any links pointing at a 404 will be discounted, so would be a good option for something like this.

Even if you go down the route of removing the links, I'd still recommend working to build up a stock of decent branded links at the same time.

If you want any help with the project, let me know.

Thanks

David

Hi Paul,

For the effort you would have to go through to get these links removed, you would be much better spending the time building new links that will boost your site whilst counteracting any links you think are damaging you.

Unless the number is in the thousands, I wouldn't worry about it at all. Go out and acquire some fresh, branded, links that will balance out your profile.

That said, if you are determined to have them removed, it will be a long hard slog with no guarantee that Google would play ball. There are a few ways to contact them, they would probably suggest using their product forums. However, if you want a quicker repsonse find some Googlers on G+ and fire them a message. A good chunk of their bonus is based on the success of G+, so they are all desperate to make it work. If you find the right Googler from the products team you might be able to get some answers.

Cheers

David

Hi Matthew,

I don't have any experience of the tools you mentioned, however I run some fairly large blogger outreach campaigns and I would wholeheartely recommend the tools from Buzzstream and Raven Tools.

Both are great for finding, approaching and managing link targets. They both offer 30 day free trials too!

Thanks,

David

Yes, technically they each pass 20% of that pages link juice.

However, things get a lot more tricky as the importance of the links vary on things like order, and page placement. i.e the value of a link in the footer of an article doesn't carry as much weight as a link in the first paragraph etc

Thanks,

Ah, now your right in regards in link juice distribution on a single page. It is literally divided by the number of links, so 5 links would get 20% each, 100 links would get 1% each.

In this sense, there is technically no limit in how many outbound links you would have to your site, although obviously there would be some spam signals hit after a while.

So if you have three seperate pages you want to share a single external page's link juice, then you can work on the basis it will be split evenly. But again, the more it is split the less benefit you will see come through to your pages until there is practically null.

The rule of diminishing returns applies to the number of links that are individually benefiting you from a single domain. So from a pure SEO link juice point of view, there is no more benefit in having 8 links coming from example.com than having 3 links.

Cheers