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What happens if I do duplicate the title tags, Matt?

Ok Matt.....that sounds perfect.

One more question (i'm sure I typed this but it somehow disappeared)

The about us page is ranking for London Portrait Photographer yet the home page is ranking for Portrait Photographer London would it be sensible to change the title tag of the about us page to London Portrait Photographer so it is an EXACT match?

Hi Matt

Thank you for your response.

Ok so firstly I will change my homepage title tag to Portrait Photographer London.

The homepage is much more powerful in terms of PA than the about us page....infact I would say 97% of the clients links point to the homepage and the other 3% to their blog.

The about us page is highly optimised for the keyword [London Portrait Photographer] too do you think if I make the change to the title of the homepage it would be possible for the homepage to replace the about us page in serps?  The reason I ask is I think it is more natural for the landing page to be the home page for a search query like [London Portrait Photographer] rather than the about us page and I fear I could lose click thru.

As for [Portrait Photographer] keyword I am not worried at this stage as by default most photography sites have very little if any content whatsoever....most appear to have the rankings they have for two reasons A) there domain age and B) number/strength of links.

I am working with the owner to produce good quality content and hopefully that works.....also her work gets featured on blogs which are dedicated to showcasing photographers work, on the how to we haven't really done any of that...I guess you mean "how to use flash?" or "how to shoot in the sun"? Those kind of how tos? The only concern I would have about doing that is the audience those would be catering to would be different to who she is trying to sell her services too.

But I do know one particular photography although in a different niche who has done that and it has brought them quite a lot of followers and links from other people in the industry trying to build their photography business.

.

Hi

I have a dilema that I could do with some help with please.

I am working on a site and its home page is ranking on the second page of google position 2 (12) for a term such as [Portrait Photographer London]

The title tag I am using for this homepage is "Portrait Photographer | Clients Brand Name" ( which does NOT include the word "photography / photographer")

The reason why I used this term for the home page is eventually I would like to rank in the top 3 (I'm ambitious) for [Portrait Photographer] so I left out the location on the home page as I have an about us page where I have the title tag "Portrait Photographer London | Clients Brand Name"  this is currently ranking on page 3 position 3 (33) for a term such as [London Portrait Photographer]

I'm wondering if including the location would help move my client up any? So it would be: "Portrait Photographer London | Clients Brand Name" and the keyword I want move up for is [Portrait Photographer London]

Hope this makes sense

These pages are indexed by google right?

How about I PM you instead I wouldn't want the owner of the site to google themselves and find out I have been interrogating their site.

Thats quite interesting that you say this....I haven't done any research into this competitors rankings per say yet.....however purely from a DA & PA perspective this seems to be doing their site the world of good.

Furthermore the industry is dominated by women (I know I'm one but still) and they tend to comment & talk ALOT and it would seem to me that comments make up 80% of this persons link profile.  However from reading the comments I think they are completely genuine and its just a case of someone connecting with others within her industry on a regular basis too regular for my liking but I'm a old school (I don't have a personal facebook or twitter I like good old fashioned face to face chats)

Weird.

I think you are correct, I am working on a site at the moment it has a DA of 28 and PA of 40 but there is one their competitors who has been trading for a shorter period of time with a DA of 45 and PA 53 and most of their back links appear to be comments (mixture of no follow and follow)

So I was confused by this!

Hi

I think we all agree that social network sites such as pintrest/instagram/twitter are all now no follow however I believe there is benefit in having them....

So I wondered if anyone had been experimenting with commenting on blogs which had no follow attributes and if there was any benefit in terms of improving your rankings?

I have used almost all of these directories that you have mentioned.....they do have some positive effect imo but not that much and probably no where near enough to move you up above the bigger guys.

You need to get more authorative links if you want to beat out national sites.

Other than that you need to write better content than them and more frequently so more people link to you.

Use site explorer and see if you can see any sites linking to them that you could get to link to you too at the very least that is a start....then look for other sites that are in your industry that can link to you.

Try and get in to a local newspaper, local radio etc.  You need as many links as possible.

Thanks John.

Can I ask what do you mean by "questionable" links...I can't imagine anyone doing white hat seo would have anything that would be questionable? Can you describe these links please in terms of the type of site that they were on and any significance in anchor text and also how long did it take you to remove them?

Now that you have explained it in more detail I would say I agree with you.  I'm currently working on a site and I am getting some links with specific anchor text such as [portrait photographer] or even [London Portrait Photographer] as I don't think that is unreasonable or out of the ordinary from what a "normal" person would do, I'm also getting some links with solely their brand name: probably 50:50

But most of the links my client already has are of their brand name (which makes my job a little more complicated as the brand name doesn't say what they do as a business, neither does their domain name) so if I couldn't use ANY anchor text I would be nervous.

But your explanation and reasoning seems sound to me! thumbs up

John

Why have you suggested to only use "brand name as the anchor text"?

I don't understand that?

No tool is 100% accurate.

When were these links added if in the last few months they may not be showing yet.

Also have all of these pages been crawled by google yet?

Lastly try removing the www's when typing in the domain I have found some extra links by doing this when they were not visible to me with the www's

Time is what you need.  The more you write and get indexed in google the more traffic google will send to those pages and future pages you write.  Keep writing and then use social media to try and drive traffic to your site and help these pages rank better.

Tweet everytime your write something, put it on facebook and make sure you interact with people who are following/like your page that way they will be more inclined to help promote and share these pages.

I personally wouldn't put this content on another site as if their site is more powerful than yours and theirs get crawled first then you could well be in for duplicate content.

I dont think its quite that simple.....

For instance even if I have got one link from a blog that doesn't mean I won't revisit that blog again and get another link from the same blog however to a different place on my site.

I do however try to get as many different links from as many different domains as possible.

The key I think is variety, variety of domains linking to you and variety of places you are linking to on your site.

LOL at the dark alley remark.

OK. I think you make a good case.

Hi Kevin

Thanks for the reply this seems like a good answer but I need to understand why you would avoid them.

Is it a gut feeling or do you have any real evidence or even a reasoning you can share...the issue I have is because SEO is so secretive often people make assumptions without no real basis.

The issue I have with Yahoo (other than the price with no guarantee of inclusion) or even Dmoz is that they are not neiche they are not really in my industry so wouldnt it be better for me to get a listing in a directory that is about what my site sells rather than a big one for all directory?

Hi John

Thanks for the answer I think you are correct.

My competitors have been advertising on these sites and I was absolutely sure they were getting some benefit from doing so (more than just brand awareness) and now I think this thread had confirmed it for me.

Alot of people have websites and many of them are not interested in seo and therefore dont read up on google guidelines so it is easy to understand how these things can be missed by some web owners.

Hi Guys

Im doing a little link building and in the industry Im working in there are quite a few directories....most offer free inclusion as long as you link back to them. This process can be slow due to the number of people trying to get listed.

Also most offer a "express service" whereby you can get your site reviewed and uploaded faster if you pay a nominal fee circa £15.

I'm not refering to any old directories these are directories which are industry specific and related to my site, however they are not confined to the country I am in (UK) but extend world wide

So that got me thinking has anyone actually done any conclusive research which suggests that either A) you will not get any benefit from being included in such a directory or B) that you get penalised if you do so or C) none of the above and there is some benefit.

I have been using open site explore and I can see these sites are giving link juice to my competition (as far as I can tell ofcourse) I found a site with almost all of its back links from these types of directories ranking on the first page for a very competitive term (67% using Keyword Difficulty tool)

Would be interested to hear your thoughts / experiences