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Thanks for the reply, I understand all of the general ideas you mentioned.

I was looking for more detailed feedback on how to use the current rankings I have.  Why those images are showing up as pages (is if they were a blog post) and what I should do moving forward with those pages. (Should I turn that image page into a blog post with more text, change the title tags, etc...otherwise when a user ends up there, they would leave because the way it is now it just looks like a random picture on  a page...if that makes sense.

I need some feedback on how to take advantage of some interesting rankings I'm receiving.  If you want to know more about my site, or what we are trying to, take a look at my first post on SeoMoz when I posted all about our site, and our story of what it is like raising a child born with Down syndrome.

Ok, my SEOMoz tools are showing that I'm raking number 3, 4, 13, and 14 for the keywords "cute down syndrome pictures." That is great, but the problem is it's ranking for pages that make no sense. For instance the number 3 spot is this ---> http://noahsdad.com/more-sitting/down-syndrome-boy-sitting-up-sofa/  but that is just a picture (do individual images show up in search results? I'm a little confused if the tool is showing me rankings in google images, or if that pic is actually showing up in the google search results.

If so, is that right? Should my images be ranking as pages?

Now my question is how should I move forward. This "page" (again, it's not really a page, it's just an image that has it's own page) is in no way the best page for people to get who are searching for that term. (or maybe it is...?!?)

I'm thinking it'd be better for that page to be a full post, talking about some of my pictures and having them show up.

Anyways, I'm just getting started on getting this site cleaned up, and really being proactive about the making sure the right things are ranking and people searching are getting the info they need.

So basically I just wanted to get some overall feedback on how to move forward, and how to take advantage of my rankings for these words. (I have some other random words doing the same thing, so the advice you leave here I'll assume can apply to the other pages where this is happening.)

Thanks for all the great info everyone!

Quick question, does anyone know how to tell Facebook what picture to show when someone shares your site?

Thanks!

I tweet a lot from several twitter accounts, and have a lot of traffic from my tweet pictures. However, I'd like to capture that traffic on my blog. I've tried a few plug in's that allowed me to use my blog has a host for the images I tweet out, but I've yet to find one that works very well.

I was wondering if anyone had any ideas / suggestions on how I could send the traffic from all of the pictures I tweet out to my blog?

Also, I don't want this to clog up the home page. At one time I used a plug in that allowed me to do something like this, and I created a separate category (http://noahsdad.com/twitter) and excluded that category from my home page. There were a few issues though, the formatting didn't work well for people viewing the pictures on twitter. And the plug in conflicted with other plug ins I was running. I haven't tried it in a while, so maybe it works better now.

I hoping someone out there was some suggestions.

thanks!

What is the best practice to use amazon affliate links in blog posts? I have read different opinions on this, and want to be sure I'm using best practices.

I sometimes link to amazon with an affiliate link on some of my posts, and am working on a top ten Christmas gift ideas for Children born with Down syndrome with lots of affiliate links on it.

I'm want to be sure I'm using best practices when adding links like this.

Tanks!

Thanks!

So when I remove the redirect how can I check to make sure the new page gets the canonical? There will only be one page if I remove the redirect, right? So since it is just one page, wouldn't that page be the canonical?

Thanks. Like I said above I think my theme adds the canonical tag, because in the seo tools I can see many of links showing 'canonical.'

I'm not sure. I believe the wordpress theme I have does this...

Thanks for the info, it helps a lot.

I was under the impression that it was always best to use the / at the end of the domain when linking, etc. Is this not the case?

When I go to my wordpress settings I see that under general settings my wordpress address and site address both have http://noahsdad.com (no slash) - just wanted to add that bit of info just in case it made any difference.

Also, when you do a redirect I was under the impression that the link juice from the redirected page would be passed on to the page it is redirected to. Is this not the case?

I made a change last night regarding a redirect to http://noahsdad.com/down-syndrome and http://noahsdad.com/down-syndrome-1 (both with and without the slash) I'm not sure if it was something with a slug I changed or something, but I had about 4 different redirects going to one page. I deleted some of those redirects but left the /down-syndrome-1 there...I have no idea how a url was generated with the -1 at the end, but it did.  So i left it there (I may need to do something with that.)

At one point in my SEO journey I had noticed some duplicate issues going on in Google webmaster tools (I could have been reading it wrong.)

It looked like WMT was saying I had 2 versions of some of pages...it looked like pages that ended in a '/' ranking differently than pages that have no slash at the end.

So I downloaded the redirect plugin and redirected many non / pages to the page that end with the "/".  This was probably a mistake. but I'm trying to clean all of that up. (I'm also noticing that SEOMoz tools tells me my site has many, many redirected url's. I'm not sure why.

I was looking at http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/pages?site=noahsdad.com%2F this morning at my top pages and it shows 2 versions (one being redirected) of the page about my son who was born with Down syndrome. (Noahsdad.com/story and Noahsdad.com/story/) I don't know if I've built rankings for those pages separately and it would now hurt me if I did away with the redirect. I'm not sure why I did the redirects (I must have read something online somewhere.)

I'm wondering if someone wouldn't mind looking at the report and letting me know what the best way to 'clean' this stuff up...Should I go into the redirect software and delete all of the redirects where the non / page is being redirected to the / page?

Thanks.

Hey thanks so much!

And you are very correct...they are VERY kind and giving!

By the way are all the forums public? I wasn't sure how that worked.  You mentioned it's 'now public.'  Did something happen to make it public?

Hey thanks so much for taking the time to take a look at my site. I really appreciate it. Thank you also for the kind words, it's very motivating (and encouraging!)

I'm aware of my issue with the anchor text with my back links....but I can't really figure out any good ways to create links with the anchor text I really need.  When people link to me they usually say things like "Here's a great site about Down syndrome - Noahsdad.com" or something to that effect.

I leave comments on many blogs about down syndrome and i"ll often add a link and anchor text for some of those keywords..but I can only write so many comments..and I'm not even sure how useful it is since so many more people are linking to my site with  the site name.

Another issue is that the items people search for,  and the respectful way to say and write things are different. For instance many people search for "Down's syndrome" (some research will show lots of searches for this and not a lot of competition in this area..so my first thought was to try to use this to my "advantage" to capture some of those searches since I think our site would help them..) But...anyone that knowns anything about Down syndrome knows that the correct way to say and spell it is "Down syndrome" there is no 's. I could tell you the reasons for that if you would like..but just trust me One of the first thing a new parent of a child born with Down syndrome (and most news websites, blogs, etc) knows is that it's not "downs", "downs syndrome" or "down's syndrome") it's "Down syndrome."  But..people who are searching for this info and perhaps haven't had their child yet, but prenatal testing shows that their child may be born with Down syndrome don't..so they search for the incorrect terms...a lot!

So I can't really title anything or use anchor text with that because it's not " correct" and will make me look like I don't know what I'm talking about...if that makes sense.

Also people search for "down syndrome facts" and "downs syndrome facts" a lot. I rank around 37 for "down syndrome facts" right now..which is pretty good for me a guy like me... But...it's hard for me to add anchor text with that phrase because the correct way to say it is, "facts about people with Down syndrome" --but once again people don't know that...so they don't search for it.

So that is a bit of what I'm running into. Not to mention I feel like I've read so much over the last 6 months and have heard many different opinions I sort of gotten overwhelmed. There is so much info, and it seems like everyone tells you something different that conflicts with everyone else. So you can start to feel like you'll never 'get it" and you get unmotivated.

However, I could share a 100 or more email messages we have gotten from people who have found our website and it would bring you tears...those emails tell me I've got to keep going..and learning..and trying. So I do.

I really appreciate you taking the time to help me, and for your kind words, they mean more to me than you know.  I"m humble and open to any advice / feedback  / suggestions, and I'd appreciate any feedback on the road bumps I mentioned above.

Humbly,

Rick Smith

(Noahs Dad)

Thanks for your help, I've been doing many of the items you have suggested, and am aware of where I am for several of my key words. I struggle with how to use a lot of the data included in google analytics and webmaster tools. I see how the data, but not sure how to use it to my advantage.

Regarding subcategories, from the information I have seen online seemed to suggest its better not to use subcategories so I have stayed away from doing so. Do you think it hurts SEO? As someone else mentioned, no one really knows what "Noah's Minute" is, and although it helped brand my site (which I like) it seems like the 'branding" doesn't really help if no one knows what it means, if that  makes sense. (That's just what I'm thinking, I could be wrong.)

We have already created what I think is some really creative and helpful content like our new parent guide (http://noahsdad.com/new-parent-guide/) and our what is down syndrome post (including a crazy awesome picture of what my son's dan (And other's with Down syndrome) DNA looks like (http://noahsdad.com/down-syndrome/)

I can list tons of other posts on there that I've gotten great feedback on. With my wife being a pediatrician we are able to write medically accurate information that has some authority to it which is another area that really makes us unique.

Wow!

I can't believe you are reading this, and taking the time to reply.  Thank you.

I very much would be ok with you writing a blog or doing anything that you would like in regards to the site.  There is more to my overall plan, and my long term idea, but I already rambled to long and didn't want to add to the rumbling.

I'd be honored to talk to you (email, phone, Skype, ichat, etc..) anytime about what we're doing, and why I think this is an area where my family and I can really help hurting people (90% of babies born with Down syndrome are aborted because they are often considered to be "a burden" on the family) In my case I was very surprised to learn it was not only not a burden, it was the best year of my life. It was nothing like I, or any of my friends who know us, thought. In fact the most common thing I hear from people in "real life" and through the number of messages we get (almost daily) about our site and videos is "Wow...I wouldn't even know your son had Down syndrome if you didn't tell me..he seems so 'normal."  This is the view that I want the world to help see...Again, I don't want to turn this into a religious post or anything, but I really want to use the web to put a dent in that crazy sad abortion statistic.

Another thing is every single website about "special needs" I've seen (with the exception of maybe 1) is either very very outdated, or written by weird-o's. There family doesn't look 'normal' in any sense..not because they have a child with special needs...becuase they are just weird!

Not to mention there is NEVER any quality to the design...not that my site is super designed or anything...but even the Nation Down Syndrome society webpage is lame. My hope is to really step up the quality and be a great resource for people.

Because people who are 'faced" with giving birth to a special needs child are often very desperate to find QUALITY information, they look at everything when they show up to the site. And post, pin, share, like, etc..:)  For instance, this was a popular post:

http://noahsdad.com/nordstrom/

And my wife (a medical doctor) is writing a great new parent guide that is getting some decent views:

http://noahsdad.com/new-parent-guide/

Sorry for more rambling, but I 'm very passionate about this. I'm not interested in seo to simply make money like a lot of folks...I'm interested in doing this to do good. For no other reason that I simply love my son, and know that other families would love people with Down syndrome also..if they just had a window into what life is like raising a child born with it. That's what I hope I can do for the world...give them a window by doing this online narrative. I'm a little behind right now (we just bought a home and moved) but I'll be catching up very soon and will have a one minute video for pretty much every day of his life......an online narrative....a story being told daily in one minute nuggets.

Again, I can't think you enough for showing interest!  (And I'm amazed at how kind everyone has been..typically when you ask questions online about a site dealing with a topic like mine, you get trolled by people making fun of your son, people with special needs, etc...) So thank you everyone for being so kind, and helpful.

By the way, my personal website it http://rickwsmith.com and my twitter is @RickSmith

I think you are misunderstanding me...you could do it in a why where it "looks" like it's part of the graphic..you knew what i mean?

For instance you could have a graphic with a hole in it, and that hole would be the place where the like button shows up on the side bar..you know what I mean?

No, not a pop-up. I want to have a graphic (like in the side bar) that I make in photshop where my son is holding  a sign perhaps that and on the sign is the Facebook like button..if that makes sense. Bascially I want to embed the like button into a graphic...

My site is http://noahsdad.com/

Thanks!

what if I want to put it up in the header somewhere....like make it part of the header with a call out type of box...

I don't have any experience with that....is it possible?

I have a Facebook like button on each of my individual posts and a box on my home page where people can 'like' my Facebook fan page..but is there any way to have a Facebook 'like' button on my home page so people can actually like the home page?

I have a domain called DownSyndromeBlogs.com

There is nothing there now, but what I want to do is create a directory type site where I list lots of different blogs about Down syndrome (my son was born with Down syndrome, so it's a passion of mine.)

Is there a good way to use that domain other than just a simple directory? Is it worth it to do some sort of "all top" like site? Maybe listing the RSS of each blog and pulling in a spinet of info? Or have people rank and view them?

My purpose for buying the domain was two fold: 1. To give people searching for blogs about Down syndrome a good list of where to find them, and 2. To help direct people back to our site about Down syndrome, NoahsDad.com

Another thing I was thinking about was somehow asking people to submit their site to DownsyndromeBlogs.com and perhaps ask for their email address or other contact info (since the people wanting to put their blog on the list would be the same people I would want to know about my main blog - NoahsDad.com)

Or maybe there is another thing I'm missing all together..like making that some sort of 'social network' or buddy press for people wanting to blog about Down syndrome..but there are already many other sties out there like that.

One thing I was curious about is SEO...if it's not a blog, and i"m not constantly putting up new and fresh content, will anyone ever be able to find the site via google search? (If that makes sense.) If I just do a directory page the page will be some what static and only updated when I add a new url.

I'm open to any feedback / suggestions/ advice.

Thanks.