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My head of bus dev is tasked with keeping someone who is ADD and I guess moderately hyperactive... on course. She has no problem telling me what I should be doing instead (unfortunately, she is right!). That is why I am more likely to be on Q&A on a Saturday or Sunday morning than the weekdays. Luckily, we just got a big ecommerce site launched for a client and everything else is ahead of schedule. (She is not as mean at times like this!)
Best to you Christy!
Phil (and Martino)
Welcome to the best place to learn and discover, the SEOmoz Community.
When I saw your question my first thought was SE Ranking factors 2013 or 2012 and went to find it to give a link and, there is 2011. So, I will quote Dr. Pete in speaking to one for 2013: Every time we do it, though, it gets a bit harder and more complicated. It is getting tougher by the minute to be sure what works, etc.
So, I will provide an opinion that does come from experience, but not one that is fool proof. First and foremost, build your site for your customer/visitor, etc. After insuring you have solid on page SEO throughout, stop for a moment and be clear that Google is not your customer. Understand that spending 8 hours a day trying to mine links might be better spent with writing exceptional content, acquiring exceptional images, and insuring a visitor to the site gets a quick answer to their query. One of the biggest flaws I see in SEO is tunnel vision: Becoming too focused on one or two parameters of the algorithm and losing sight of the reason you built the site. I have seen extensive discussions on how to get this or that link, to use or not use a hyphen, the value of exact match domains, on and on ad nauseum. At the end of the day, if you have good content and if you have an accessible site with reasonable UI/UX features, you can beat a lot of your competitors in the rankings. NOTE: If you do, please remember to answer the query in your meta description and then again on the page they will land on. (Yes, I have a bit of tunnel vision on this). One last thing on content is that if you really put good content up, they will come to the site. Please keep after it.
I tell clients nearly daily: Our job is not to make you rank first on Google, that is the job of the Indian SEO firm with the gmail email account... Just kidding: **Our job is not to make you rank first on Google; our job is to keep you ranked ahead of your competitors. **
I recently was in a very long discussion with a potential client we would really like to have. He has definitely drank the kool aid because he is obsessed with #1 ranking on the most competitive terms in his vertical. Yes, I understand from a business perspective why he is saying that and, frankly, as a business person I respect him a lot. The problem is that I must be very careful to provide enough other metrics that he can see what actually works.
Stay on moz and keep asking and reading. Answer where you can and understand everybody that has answered more than 3 or 4 questions has gotten something wrong. Because of the type of people here, you won't see people being burned at the stake for a wrong answer.
Best to each of you,
Robert
IMM
My first suggestion will be that you take a step back so you can save a few steps.
You need to be clear as to what you are targeting and here is why: If, your intent is to use Spanish words on English search here in the U.S. (I am in Texas, speak Spanish, handle multi lingual sites, etc.) you need to know which terms are going to return for English, Spanish, or both. Unless you are using a term that readily goes across both languages you need to go either/or there is no Spanglish to speak of. Examples are search on ropas (see screen shot) and you will get both types of languages returns. Change the search to vendes ropas or vender ropas and it is almost all returned as Spanish. Then, search on abogado and you will see English and Spanish sites. (Dumb English speaking sites, yes).
Another question is when you say hispanics, what are you targeting? People from various Spanish, Latin American, or South American countries who now reside in the US and speak Spanish only? Those who speak Spanish and English and are from a hispanic country but living in the US? Or a specific geo target area of hispanics within the US? Remember that the majority of hispanics in the US speak English as their primary language.
So, to do KW research, you need to get clear on what it is you are selling and to whom you are selling it. Then you can become a laser for the language.
But, I would also say you need to be clear as to how you are translating and what is needed with regard urls, etc. When you have two languages on a site, you need to make sure you handle it correctly.
Hope this helps,
Demi,
You will not start from even close to zero if you do the 301's correctly. You need to do a couple of things: The redirects are url to url from old domain to new. Since you are changing the domain name, I recommend also putting in a change of address with GWMT. This will last for 180 days and will insure you have been indexed a few times prior to it going off.
From a lot of experience with 301's, if you do it correctly you should not lose more than a percent or so of link juice, especially given the current age of your site. I suggest running a link profile in something like ahrefs and then after you do the change, running regular ones for the new site so you can watch the progress. That way you will learn what happens with redirects first hand.
Hope this helps,
Robert
Probably the easiest way to assist you is to first say: this type of linking is not a good part of a healthy link profile. Yes, they must go.
It appears someone has spent a lot of time using comment spam as a linking tool. That is going to blog posts, placing a comment that has a link in it and doing that several thousand times: The anchor text on the top three of these is piano sheet music and chords lessons, your domain name in two iterations_, and piano lessons. _That exact anchor text occurs in about one half of over 6000 links.
It is just obvious that these links did not occur by someone finding your site, saying this is cool I will put it in a post, writing about it and then linking back to your site for attribution.
You need to clean this up immediately. Sorry, wish there was better news.
Robert
Typically, I counsel moving slowly on changes rather than quickly. With that, I would remove the duplication you mention and then watch it for a while. Then begin removing the duped pages county/city.
Now, when you say a subdirectory on your server which duplicated the whole site, I will assume you are clear that is what you were doing. I suggest being sure that was what was happening. Also, I still recommend checking the links given the timing and severity of the drop you saw. You did not see a Panda type drop over time. You saw a dramatic drop at a fixed point.
As to the PPC, the question was different. I know a lot about the dating vertical as I did lead brokerage years ago in that industry when there were a lot more players. My concern, given the top ten variety of site, was that if you are doing any markets where your client is also doing PPC, you risk getting your entire site in a ton of trouble. I sensed you might not be as seasoned as some others and it can be a real problem to recover from.
LMK if I can assist.
Robert
Daniel,
It will not prevent the site/page from showing in SERPs for Switzerland or Austria. But, it will likely limit how often that happens. So, if you want to be sure people see the result in any of the countries where German is more prevalent as a language do not use the geo targeting.
If you can give us more details re the site (generic or cc tld, more than one language on the site, etc.) we can probably give you better assistance.
Best
If not every yes, you can find most. Assuming the old site had nothing to do with their .com or .com.eu, etc.:
Can you get them to give you the access to the FTP? You can get most of the urls if not all from there.
Or,
You need to immediately go to archive.org, the wayback machine. You will see it on the page. I have attached a screenshot of one. I went to the homepage first as that is what Archive.org will serve up. I arbitrarily chose May to insure I was prior to relaunch. You should take the one that is most recent prior to relaunch.
Understand, I would prefer the FTP, but this could work too.
Hope that helps you out.
Robert
Peter,
Your question is not answerable. You say how are they beating you, but you don't give your domain for a comparison. I will tell you that IMO, the worst thing we can do is to look at a site that is beating us, focus on what they are doing wrong in our eyes, and wonder about it. I suggest you ask, what are they doing better than you? It will give you a lot more mileage in addressing what may be keeping you behind.
Also, take a look at their link profile as opposed to just some of the domains. I am impressed they have gained the authority, etc. they have in right at a year. If you use a tool like Majestic, or ahrefs, you may see their links a bit differently. (I agree they do have some that are not best, but they have some good ones as well.)
I hope this helps, but I know it is probably not what you wanted to hear.
Robert
Thanks for the help Thomas, but let me be clear that it is the people who work with this non profit who are changing the lives. My team and I are just trying to assist them with doing CodeCamps, etc.
I really appreciate your help.
Robert
Egol's answer is really well thought out. One thing that really surprised me by Neil's article was the huge slap in the face ads. I say no to the first and it is as if I am assaulted over and over. Cannot stand that kind of experience and I actually think Neil is quite bright. Bummer.
Best
Jbanz,
Your question is reasonable and I wrote an extensive answer that, when I hit post, all went away as moz had logged me out. Even though I could still go to my community profile, etc. and had an option to logout. Makes me want to scream. Spend a lot of time answering and nothing to show for it. But, maybe the shorter version is better.
So, since I have little time I will give you the condensed version. You are trying to use language to target countries and it won't work the way you are trying to do it. You cannot use geo-targeting of a generic TLD when you want to target more than one country.
What you need to do is back up two or three steps and read the following about sitemaps and targeting from GWMT:
Submit rel-alternate-hreflang annotations in a sitemap. (NOTE: not multiple sitemaps for urls from one gTLD domain) This will keep it simple for you. From GWMT (the bold is mine)
If your site targets users in many languages and, optionally, countries, you can use Sitemaps to provide Google with rel="alternate" hreflang="x". These annotations help Google serve the correct language or regional URL to searchers. More information.
Imagine you have an English language page, targeted at English speakers worldwide. You also have equivalent versions of this page targeted at German speakers worldwide, and German speakers located in Switzerland. Your full set of URLs is:
I hope this helps you out and makes it all simpler for you.
Robert
Thanks PrestaShop
I have been a member in business organizations where there was a monthly fee and it does seem to weed out the less committed. I will PM you and any others who have an interest and maybe we can get something going.
Best
Robert
Tim
I like your question because it is presented so honestly. Yes, many web design firms and SEO firms link to themselves from client sites. My parents would say, "If Johnny jumps off a bridge are you going to jump off the same bridge?" Of course I would say, Yes! But, the thing with footer links is they were so abused they no longer carry any weight for you. To some, that would mean, oh, put them somewhere else. To me, and this is my opinion, it is not a practice I want to engage in. I have links to some of our clients from our site(s), but I do not link back to our firm from client sites.
You are a good SEO firm and are trying to do things correctly. Keep it up and don't worry about how many links you have to your site. (I realize some will call that sacrilege) If you stay at it the links will come. Post good info re SEO, web dev, etc. and links will come. I have never ceased to be amazed by the links we get to some of the oddest things we have posted. We actually posted a pic with several screen types showing responsive design sometime a year or two ago that has gotten tons of links. Go figure as there are lot of pics like that on the web.
That is one man's opinion, I'm sure there will be others.
Best to you,
Robert
Thanks Malcolm,
As an agency we use more SaaS than God some days! Our head of Local uses it and loves it. Several years ago we installed a different system and often I wish we had gone the BaseCamp root. We are giving that one a hard look.
SalesForce as a CRM, etc. tool gives licenses for free to non profit agencies and these guys have it, but need much different functionality. I thought that every student is really a project over time and Proj. Man. would be better...I think. So, if we can find a solution that would be willing to give them 15 or 20 licenses, I could certainly find ways to make sure the world knew they were being a positive force in the lives of kids.
Best
Yves,
Great question and I do think you already know the answer. IMO I would not update the URLs because you could end up chasing your tail. If you change the URL are you going to 301 every time you change it? If not, anyone who linked to the article or bookmarked pre change is lost.
Anecdotally, a year or more ago I started noticing on a major sports mag online that starts with S and ends in I they were changing titles regularly. Frankly, I don't have much time for reading sports so I need to get the info and go. As a fan of the Mavericks for instance, I would read an article that was Dirk Sets Record and think great cause I like the big German. Then a day later I would see an article that was Another Record! and when I clicked on it... was the one I had already read the day before. My guess now is that they change their titles like I change my socks. When I saw your question I did a quick test and they are not changing the URLs on the two I found.
I hope this helps you a bit.
Robert
Echo1
Based on what we know currently about Google +1, I would have to say that it is much more important right this moment than Facebook. I would ask the customer to +1 you by simply having the bookmark/icon on the pages of the site. For your promotion, I would ask them to add you to their circles.
There was an article on Wired by Tim Carmody on Wired: http://bit.ly/wki28I a few days ago talking about how Google's +1 is essentially a real estate grab. Whether or not you agree with that statement, it appears based on all I have read that +1 is about being able to have yourself in more places on Google which helps you.
When you look at Cyrus Shepard's post of a week ago regarding how Google + is using SEO to steal search from Facebook and Twitter (A must read in my opinion) it is obvious that people are more likely to see something when searching on Google if it is in Google + versus Facebook.
No, haven't tested it out yet, but from all I see Google is after everything. Time will tell, but for today I would go with Google + if I could only spend in one area.
Best
David
I am not sure what you mean when you say when the keywords and industries overlap. With industries I am not sure how they overlap unless you mean in a vertical like law where you could have a bankruptcy attorney and a DWI attorney. Both would in essence be competing for the broadest attorney and law terms. (Lawyer or Attorney for two).
We would take clients like this, within a given geography we will take competitors (5 dentists in a large city), etc. With national accounts (we have a large legal account for example in a very competitive area) we would not take a competitor without some sort of sign off from both sides.
Especially with professional practice clients, one of our biggest selling points is that if a marketing firm does say all the chiropractors in the country...who do they give their best to? If you are serving all are you really serving any? With so many Legal Marketing, Dental Marketing, Medical Marketing, Chiro Marketing companies, we find it fairly easy to get clients when we show them the logic. We don't then turn around and do the same.
We want clients that we help to become best. We tell them from the beginning that if we cannot prove their outcomes in their market they should let us go. We even show them how to measure it in real dollars, leads, etc.
So, we like exclusivity. In an event where we can serve competitors we would only do so if all are in signed agreement for some reason.
Best
EGOL,
This is truly well put and worthy of multiple thumbs up. There is never a qualifier that would keep you from answering a question of mine and this is the reason. What I did not want was speculation.
You are so right about Google's original model vs. today and about how these changes are slowly cutting out sites and affecting wallets. Your paragraph:
OK... Now you ask about what to do for your client. First. Explain that he has a little algo risk... and that he has a little competitor risk... but also explain that even if you achieve the miracle of getting his website to one of the top ten positions of google that he will still be subject to a much greater risk for which you have absolutely no control. That is SERP format risk.
is exactly what we do with every client. We have tons of data before we take a client on and we are very clear about writing checks with our mouth that our ass cannot cash (we will get you on page one, etc.). We just state we will never make that kind of promise and elucidate the reasons. The beauty is we refocus them on actual business results as opposed to rankings. That, we can affect.
I have to say this latest change is really interesting in good and bad ways around some service pages (good) and then real estate (horrific). It will be interesting to see where we go from here.
Thanks and triple thumbs up,
Robert
