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I have yet to come across an Analytics campaign where the traffic report doesn't show some traffic from the site we're analysing. The reason is that people visit the home page from the other pages so it's basically an 'internal referral'. What you want to use is the landing page analysis instead, or just use the filters to exclude example.com referrals.

If you're redirecting all variants of the home page to root and your canonical is going to root, then you should be fine.

Check using a site:example.com search in Google and if you only have root and no /default.asp /index.asp etc then it's fine and you don't have an actual canonical problem - which is what I suspect.

I think it's just ensuring you look at the right analytics reports now and don't get confused in the myriad reports it lets you have.

To answer one question first - a trackback basically is an alert to you, the blog owner, when someone links to your post.

Great definition over at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trackbacks

Wordpress often auto-creates redirects, as this saves you, the blog owner from considering these things and it minimises 404-Not Found... the main things that create a redirect are posts being moved or deleted, the same with comments.

As to whether you NEED to do anything about the redirects SEOmoz software is finding for you will depend on whether those addresses being redirected

• exist on-site
• Are linked to on your site
• OR are in the SERPs

Do a site:redlandsorthodontics.com search in Google/Bing to see if those pages exist in the SERPs.

The only thing I would say is that if the pages being redirected don't exist, or shouldn't exist, and probably won't be brought into existence then go into the .htaccess file and look for the offending URL and make it a 301 Redirect (Permanent Redirect, rather than temporary), as there's no need for it to be temporary.

Seriously, people over-estimate the importance of having a keyword in the domain. Google have said they are weakening the importance of this and have said many a time that a good brand is much more important.

As Kevin rightly says, that is still 1 factor in a list of over 200. There is still opportunity to get the keyword into file names (therefore still in the URL) if you really want to.

But don't over-emphasis something that Google is de-emphasising. You should build a strong brand first rather than making longer and longer domains just to get keywords in. Save your money and keep & use your main branded domain.

The value of a link is a complex thing, to be honest. Your 2m 'no follow' links can have a variety of value depending on

• The number of domains those are placed on
• The position of those links on the linking site
• The value of the page the link is placed on
• The actual anchor text in that link.

Also try not to think of links purely in terms of ranking. At the end of the day, ranking is great, but what you really want is traffic. A 'natural' link profile will have some nofollow links in it (in most cases) and you may find some nofollows are great at driving traffic.

On the flip side you also want a good proportion of followed links as these represent a 'full value vote' for your site, rather than somewhat of a disassociation, which a nofollow can imply.

So get a variety of links from a variety of sources in  a variety of ways but don't ignore a potential linking opportunity just because it may be nofollow as there may be other advantages to be gained that purely ranking.

I suppose it all depends on what you mean by 'directory'. If you just mean paid inclusion - i.e. there's no value in being on that site, or even no listing on that site if you don't pay, then No, because essentially it's a paid link (which is generally bad).

If that directory is offering you some other paid service on top of a good free listing on a quality directory, then you have to assess that website in terms of its return for you. Do a few minutes research to determine if being listed on that site is likely to be good for your business, except for another 'keyword rich anchor text'...

You need to assess each site on its own merits, but we don't use paid directories - in our eyes you'd be better investing that time and money in producing some great content and then getting that out over social media. There are usually much better investments for your business finances than a paid directory - especially if there's the risk that a website you've paid to be listed on falls out of the Google index and therefore is giving you precisely nil value.

Remember link building should be a natural thing, so get a variety of websites, a variety of link texts and as is preached here at SEOmoz, get good quality editorial links where you can too.

Hope this helps a little.

I'm still not sure you have a problem if I'm honest. If your actual site is fine, then purely providing an image off-site is not a classic 'doorway' website model so can't see why you'd be penalised for that, in my view, quite sensible practice.

That's not a great mechanism for a CMS even before you consider SEO!

Do you understand ASP sufficiently to move the default.asp to the root directory and then apply the rel=canonical?

If the actual homepage is /content/default.asp then there are two things you should probably consider

1. Make the redirect from root to /content/default.asp a 301 as it is permanently at that address, not temporarily
2. Any links you get in need to point to /content/default.asp for max effect.

(2) is really tough as it's messy for webmasters  and doesn't do your website branding any good. So, to be honest I would be looking at moving that default page to root, if the choice were mine.

Open to other opinions.

You will need to do a block in your robots.txt based on a match:

**User-agent: ***
Disallow: /variable=

I think the above would work.

The other approach would be to add a line in your page code itself to generate a 'nofollow' robots tag when that argument is present.

This link should help you, by the way:

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=156449

I don't know what my other Mozzers here would say, but I don't see how your site could be viewed as a doorway just because you're hosting images off-site.

If the e-commerce site itself functions properly and you have the right content on it and is, unique in what it provides (i.e. no duplicate content) then I don't see it can be a doorway.

I also assume that the full-size images won't be accessible by a normal 'link', i.e. you only get the right to that image once you've paid for it?

If that's the case then I genuinely can't see any risk to your e-commerce site. Provide great content, a good shopping environment and build your reputation online, as with any business.

Personally, I think you can relax - and from a web design perspective, I don't blame you for looking to host large images off-site

My first major comment will be to choose wisely, shop around and make sure any SEO company you take on explains how they go about the link building strategy. Source someone local, or at least in your own country who understands you, your needs and your business environment.

Secondly, you should consider what you are already doing - or think about what you should do. i.e.

• Are you becoming part of communities online?
• Are you contributing to blogs or writing some great content that relates to your website
• What are you doing to engage people on social media
• Do you know what your competitors are doing - so you can learn the good stuff and avoid the junk?

Your question sounds simple, but you need to balance knowing what you can (and maybe should) be doing yourself, while taking on a business you can work closely with who will help you on this front.

You're welcome - I'm subscribed to this thread by e-mail so if you have other questions as you're working on it, feel free to post here and I will get back to you.

I do however agree with what Ryan wrote - in that domains with keywords (unless a valid part of a brand) is not a worthwhile focus. Google particularly likes brands, so build a reputation based on  quality content in your niches and you should be okay.

There's no harm in building a good niche sites, i.e. filling a gap the main competition aren't in, but do it genuinely and do it well - remember you're building a quality site and everything affects your reputation - oh and finally, remember there are no short cuts

Hi there,

You don't have to do much differently for 'niche' sites in terms of SEO than any non-niche site, to be honest. You will still need to choose your keywords, put together some great content, manage your site structure and on-page optimisation well and ensure a great user experience.

After that your link building efforts are fairly simliar in that you'll need to look for good linking opportunities. Look at your competitors for the keywords you're targeting and then maybe look at some advanced search queries:-

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/9-actionable-tips-for-link-prospecting

Niche Communities The thing I would suggest is getting involved in communities based around your niche - maybe hook into some blogs or forums, or other community types and be of use to the people there - get to know people well (don't just see it as 'link building'). If you're in a niche then you want to get known in that niche.

Social Media Look up some communities through social media or do keyword searches in those site to identify people you could get involved with or get to know.

Backlinks How many links it takes to get you noticed? How long is a piece of string? It depends on the quality of the sites linking to you and what your competitors are up to - that will change niche-to-niche.

Web Designer You should be able to get any web designer to create your niche site but I would suggest you go with a designer who understands SEO in order to get the site structure and content right before the site goes live. Ensure you get an Italian Copywriter to look over the content so that keywords are inserted in a natural, linguistically acceptable way - i.e. it reads well.

Hope this is of use to you

More than you wish you had to have, most definitely! Glad we could help!

Oh in that case if there is no actual page, neither for humans nor for search engines, then I don't see how it would affect your SEO efforts, positively or negatively.

Heya,

I don't know what 'Sched.com' is as there's nothing on that domain, or what you mean by a 'Ning' file, but applying basic rules

1. Do what you can/have to, to reduce errors on the site - this may involve restructuring the site or moving files around
2. You don't need new domains for storing content, sub-domains or sub-folders will suffice
3. Having content/files which are not 'SEO-able' is not an issue. If you focus on the user's experience of the website, reduce clutter and errors and ensure the site is easily crawlable then you are getting things off on the right footing.
4. 600 pages in a root domain is crazy, but if they are named helpfully then it doesn't necessarily have to be a problem. I often have sites where an index.php governs the site and then all the content is stored in a sub-folder. It's not necessarily where the files are stored, but how they are managed and organised that makes a difference to the webmater, website visitors and indeed, search engines.
5. You should be able to fix errors without moving pages off-site, else why have them anywhere?

Hope this helps in some way

Apologies for the delayed reply - I've just spotted your question.

Rel=author is really easy to implement on your own site or on guest posts.

1. You have to make sure you are a contributor to the website you're writing for and that you have a link to that site on your Google+ profile.

2. Then, you have two options - the meta tag or a rel="me" part of a link which credits you for the post.

There are good number of guides on the web - two good ones are here

http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/how-to-implement-rel-author

http://www.pr2020.com/blog/claim-your-content-how-to-set-up-rel-author-tags

I'm afraid I can't advice on 'Good Auth' but if you have a decent blogging platform you should be able to get a good plugin to help you with implementing rel=author.

You can add multiple sitemaps in Google Webmaster Tools, that's not a problem. So you could, I suppose, add a sitemap of just your new pages.

In my opinion though, I think you should just generate a new one at http://www.xml-sitemaps.com and upload and resubmit it. That would work just as well as a part sitemap.

If your site is really large though, maybe the part sitemap is the right answer, but going forward you'll have to remember which bits appear in which sitemap so you don't have overlap or accidental omissions.

Hope this helps.

Why does the homepage need to rank rather than the category page? By it not being the home page that suggests the category page is actually more relevant to that keyword.

So what you should do is add more great content onto the category page and check your on-page optimisation then build some links directly to that category page.

The homepage is not always the most relevant page for a searcher. If you want people to go back to your homepage then provide some on-page encouragement on the category page instead.

Unless you have a compelling reason that the homepage should be the one that ranks, because at this point, Google appears not to agree with you