Welcome to the Q&A Forum

I agree with Cyle. If you link to other authorities, it makes you look like an authority. Basically Google says, "These people know who other authorities are, so that means they must be an authority too..."

Hi John,

Currently I don't know of a way to dependently get Google Reviews on your site. We just created a video of highlights for our review page. It shows reviews from around the web... if you want to check it out you can

If the FB mention had a link in it, I would choose the Facebook share. In the ranking factors for 2011 release Facebook has WAY more influence on Seo then twitter (especially now that google and twitter no longer have their "real time stream" agreement)

OSE will count the the domain that is redirected to you as a link. I don't think OSE counts links pointing to the 301 domain ( everyone correct me if I'm wrong)

Although Google will pass between 90-99% of the link juice to the site that is receiving a 301 redirect.

-Bryant

Hi Greenman,

Google has stated publicly that they do read pdf documents.

"...However, while we can process HTML, PDF, and Flash files, we have a more difficult time understanding (e.g. crawling and indexing) other rich media formats, such as Silverlight" (from Google Webmaster Tools Forum)

So, I think this strategy will definitely help your seo efforts. As with all things seo, there are a million ways to chase backlinks (here is a good list of back-link article to read) so I wouldn't put all your eggs in one basket, but I think your off to a really good start. Good luck with your site!

-bryant jaquez

(just a suggestion) In my experience, it would be wise for you to add a clause in your contract where, the seo will be guaranteed a specific amount of money.

You would probably be able to attract a higher quality applicant this way. A bussy, experienced seo is probably going to be hesitant to put a lot of work into something that may or may not make them any money.

This isn't really an seo suggestion, but if you want to make a little more money on your site, you can always sell some "justin" fan paraphernalia/art/shirts... etc

I know that comments can help long term keyword  optimization. For example: If the commenters use variations of your keywords, and partial matches of your keywords, then it can help build more organic on-page optimization.

If your blog gets a lot of spam, you can consider adding a quora style system where other users can vote for comments. Allow people to vote comments up or down.

The answer to this question is not a white/black one. From a strictly seo point of view, the closer a keyword is to the root directory the better. But you also need to think about Navigation, UI, customer experiance, and the overall strategy you are going to use for your business.

To give you a few examples: If you offer tools on your site you should have a /tools folder, if you have a portfolio you should have a /portfolio/example#1 If you are going to have a /blog you can use it for tips and stories, and then you can use the root folder for something more universal like root/whyisseoimportant

Whichever way you choose to set up your site navigation will be fine, but try to make it easy for customers to understand.

Right now the article "Justin Bieber Confess on Wearing Women’s Jeans" is posted on your home page. When that article is no longer on your home page, Google serps will display the article title, instead of the homepage title.

For example, search for this phrase (which is not on your home page) "Dirty Bieber Secrets Which Rolling the Twitter World" and you will see how this displays in serps.

-Bryant Jaquez

You can try combining 2 tools to accomplish this, #1 use advanced search Queries like:

Intext:"keyword" + "blog" to find blogs in your industry.

#2 Then use a tool that mesures their rss subscribers.  Tool From Google | 3rd Party Tool

Best of luck,

-Bryant Jaquez

You are correct. The more links you get from a website, the less important future links become. However, at least the first 3, or 4 links from that site will be worth a lot of links juice.

If I were you, I would try to write up to 5 unique articles per site, all with unique anchor text (watch this weeks white board friday video) Point most of the links to your home page, and a couple of them toward important internal pages. I would say that mixing up the landing pages will help a little, but make sure your links go to related and relevant pages.

Remember, inbound marketing is all about getting high quality traffic., If your articles are accomplishing that goal, go for it, even if the link value isn't high.

Since there are a few different opinions on this topic, I figured I would weigh in.

A bad backlink profile can effect a sites SERPS, but it depends on the site. If your site has a mostly White Hat, clean on-page strategy, and mostly good backlink history, you should be fine. If your site has a lot of authority, then the bad back links definitely won't hurt you, they might even help you (read this), but be careful, because you still don't want to get to careless.

I would say that you should remove as many links as you can, and then forget about the rest. If you move forward and build a strong link profile that is filled with editorial links, and legitimately acquired reviews, you'll be fine.

Best of luck

-Bryant Jaquez

It's hard to say. But I ran a whois on that domain. I found out that the website is still fairly new, it was created in 04-Feb-2010 Here is a link to his linkedin account. http://www.linkedin.com/in/alanearl . I can't give a conclusive opinion of this company, but just ask him for examples of their other projects.

Ask what kind of keywords his other websites targeted, and ask if you can see before and after analytics of the sites (typically a 6 month period of time is a good indication of web traffic).

To be safe, you can also ask him to put you in touch with a few of their past customers.

If everything lines up, and if you feel comfortable with the information they provide, then I say go for it.

If you have accesses to the other websites's webmaster you can simply ask them to use the rel= canonical tag in all syndicated content. This tag will tell the search engines who the author is, and you'll be fine.

This is a tough question because (everyone, feel free to correct me here if I'm wrong) Google does not directlly tell us how to influence those links. However, I have observed the following patterns.

#1 Branded searches tend to lead to "bulleted snippets"

#2 From what I remember, their patent talked (vaguely) about how users can influence those links. The more people visit a page on your website the more likely it is for that page to show up in serps. You can influence this by leading people to the pages you want displayed in serps. UI and Site Navigation can play heavily into influencing those serps.

#3 Google will display internal pages, or bulleted snippets, if it thinks those pages are relevant to a users search. If you search for my brand, you will see pages that tell a searcher everything they need to know about Nerds On Call.

#4 Google will only display these internal pages for the first result.

Here is a link to that patent. http://bit.ly/nRBa8L

Jason, (in my opinion) the best way to use Bold is to use it as the title of a list. In your example http://www.keystonemortgages.co.uk you used the Bold tag within a list. Instead you might want to use it like this " Why Use Keystone IMC for Independent Mortgage Advice" and then start your list.

Here is an example of bold tags, http://www.callnerds.com/blog/10-free-ways-to-clean-up-your-pc/

When you use the italics tag, try to use it in places that make sense and look attractive. I usually use them within blog posts. You can use italics to ad a "side note" or a quote to an article.

I agree with Daniel, applying a class to them will borderline on cloaking.  Hope this helps.

You should definitely watch this whiteboard friday video, it will explain a lot about Google PR. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/what-is-googles-pagerank-good-for-whiteboard-friday .

Page authority (namned after Larry page) only rates the authority of an individual page, so alone PR does not guarantee a good link. I believe search engines combine PR and DA (among other things) to decide the value of a link. Domain Authority is harder to build than PR, so I give DA more weight then PR.

There are a few reasons the numbers can be far apart. Often, homepages have higher PR then their DA. Sometimes /blog sub folders have a higher PR then DA because they have a lot of links, and social media engagement, this isn't a bad thing, but make sure the root domain isn't a spammy site.

When looking for links, I would be more concerned about getting links that will send high quality customers to your site. If a site fits that criteria,and it isn't a spammy site, then their PR doesn't matter very much.

Thanks guys. That answered my question!

I believe new domain names usually take 2 months (average) to "age". Beyond that, your ability to rank will rely on standard seo ranking factors.