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Hello Everyone, it's me again...

After receiving feedback from many of you, we decided to add new and informative content to some of our more important blog posts.  While the industry we're in isn't the most interesting and fun to talk about, we have always been told to just write high quality, helpful and useful content and people will find it and link naturally to it.  We also believed that this would help improve the rankings of some of the inner pages on our site.

So now we've spent numerous weeks updating specific posts, and still nobody links to it and still no significant rankings increase.

I'd appreciate it if you would take a look at this particular post: http://goo.gl/8q4XQk   and provide any kind of feedback or advice that you may have.

Thanks...

Thanks for your opinion... Please keep in mind i am not questioning the rank of my e-comm website, we will continue creating and improving content and those rankings will continue to improve as the content continues to expand and improve... (FYI, it is constantly updated and there is an on-site blog linking to products/categories/other blog posts etc...).

I'm not particularly concerned with Moz rank domain authorities b/c that can be easily influenced by artificially building links (which i'm not interested in doing).  In regards to us "not selling a bunch of different stuff", well i guess we'll just have to disagree about that, but that's neither here nor there...

This post was about why my microsites don't rank at all for the high quality content that is on them.

I appreciate your help/advice

Takeshi, first off i want to thank you for your time and opinion/advice...

The biggest problem i'm having "building" links to the microsites is that they can't be found.  How would someone know to link to that site if they can't find that site and have never seen that site?  It's like a catch 22

Hi, I did this in the first place because my ecomm website sells a bunch of different products.

I created microsites because i believe it would be beneficial to consumers to be able to read as much useful and helpful content as possible about the specific product line they may be interested in.  So i spend a lot of time updating these microsites with tons of content about that specific product in hopes that it will help consumers make an informed decision/purchase ... Only problem is they can't find the microsites in the SERPS so my content is going to waste.

Fair enough ... but what happened to "content is king"?

Also, if the site isn't being shown in the SERPS how could people find it and "naturally" link to it?

I'm not spending effort building links to the microsite (as you should know by the lack of backlinks pointing to the microsites, as you just pointed out).

I'm spending effort building high quality content on the microsites because each microsite is about a specific product line that i carry on my main website...

I'm not concerned with building links, I'm concerned with building quality content about the specific products or product lines that i sell and then i will include a link back to A) the manufacturer of those products, B) my e-comm website where they can buy those products and other sites as well such as pinterest or wikipedia etc...

Hi Peter, thanks for your response, but i truly don't think these are considered spammy...

Please watch this video from Matt Cutts http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0-jw_PfwtY

He mentions that linking niche sites to each other is not spammy and is absolutely allowed as long as the content is high quality on all of the sites and as long as someone on site A would find the info on site B useful.

Does anyone think that someone on Site A (plastic-storage-bins) would not find Site B (monsterbins) useful?

These little niche sites like akro-bins and plastic-storage-bins are highly informative and full of content and they link out to other helpful/informative/resourceful pages, including my own e-comm website.  I put a lot of time, effort and thought into creating those sites and coming up with info that helps interested users/consumers.  Every outbound link on any of these sites is highly related and highly helpful for anyone browsing the site.

Would anyone who watches that video that i posted above disagree?

Hello,

I have a wordpress website that i have updated with a lot of content about the products i sell.  Some of the pages link back to my ecommerce website (all links are targeted at the proper/related page).  I put a lot of time and effort into creating the content and providing all of the information that i think users or consumers would find useful, but the site doesn't rank at all.  I'm wondering what your opinions are as to why this is not being shown in the serps.

The URL is http://goo.gl/Qz5jSQ

All opinions welcome.

Thanks

Ok... Glad everyone got that out of their system, now back to the main/original question... What are some of the better diretories to get listed in/on...

Please take a look at these two examples and let me know if you think these are "high quality"...

http://www.directorybin.com/

http://www.worldsiteindex.com

Awaiting your feedback, Thanks!

Hello,

I'm looking for a list of the best, most trusted, SEO friendly directories to list my company on.

Can you guys please provide some directories that you have seen help increase your rankings and also drive targeted traffic?

No Black Hat directories, only high quality ones.

Thanks!

ok, if you say so... Thanks for the help.

Chris,

If YouTube links being no-followed is the reason then why do other sites show backlinks from Youtube and why do some of my own backlinks say "no-follow" next to them in OSE?

Anyone else have any ideas?

Hello,

I am looking through my backlinks in OSE and i have noticed that there are no inbound links from YouTube.  I absolutely have a Youtube account that has links to my social profiles as well as my website, and all of my videos have links to inner pages of my site.  Still, no links shown from Youtube.

Here is my YouTube page, http://www.youtube.com/user/simplastics ... Any idea why I don't see any inbound links from either my profile page or the individual videos?

Thanks!

Thanks for taking the time Mike.

Appreciate it.

Nevermind, got some good ideas and i'll look into it and report back.

thanks anyway

Hey Ian, thanks for the response.

The new categories have already been created so it seems like it's too late to rename the older categories and urls.

Question is should i remove the ones i don't want to rank from the sitemap...

Thanks

Good Morning...

I have an ecommerce site running on Magento and the sitemap is automatically generated by Magento based on the categories and sub categories and products.

I have recently created new categories that i want to replace the old categories, but they are both in the auto-generated sitemap.  The old categories are "active" (as in still exist if you know the URL to type) but not visible (you can't find it just by navigating through the site).  The new category pages are active and visible...

If i want Google to rank one page (the new category page) and not the old page (old category page) should i remove the old page from the sitemap?  Would removing the old page that used to target the same keywords improve my rankings on the newer category page?

Sitemap currently contains:

www.example.com/oldcategorypage

www.example.com/newcategorypage

Did I confuse you yet?

Any help or guidance is appreciated.

Thanks,

Thats the tough challenge for me... You're telling me to add videos and testimonials and reviews but at the same time telling me that it's already too cluttered.

All I can tell you is that this particular page has a lot of traffic and a high exit %.

Time for the weekly "help me improve this page" post

I'd appreciate it if you all would take a look at this page and give me some tips to improve it from a user - point - of - view.  The URL is http://goo.gl/9mcyF

My main goal is conversions and I'm trying to make this page as good and helpful and easy as possible for potential buyers and visitors.  I'd appreciate any tips or suggestions that you think may help.

Thanks!

Thanks again, Karl...

Anyone else have any feedback regarding internal links and anchor texts?