Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Chandana,

IMO for most sites the meat description is one of the most critical elements in On-page optimization (notice I did not say on-site). When we query a search engine for a product, service, or information and a SERP is returned, for organic search we look at the title and meta description to determine which is either the first to appear to have an answer or the most likely answer to our query.

While many CMS plug-ins have an option for a "site-wide" meta description, that is not the best option on sites with more than a couple of pages. You want a meta description that states: "Here is the best answer to what you searched for: Get it now! Get it Cheap!" (obviously, in a way that reflects your page.) Without showing you have the answer to the query you are going to get less click throughs and therefore traffic to your site.

Even if CTR is not a part of the algorithm, you will not have a chance to sell, etc those who are never getting to your site.

Now, in using the first 155 words you are likely losing an opportunity to sell the overall of the page while making it a bit easier on filling out all that is needed for a page in search. The first few sentences in a paragraph generally are broad and not necessarily speaking to the "answer is here, answer is now, answer is cheapest!" So, we do a lot of web pages and, typically, if I have a complaint with a site on final review, most will be around meta descriptions that fail to show this is where the answer is to the searcher's query.

Hope this provides a bit of assistance,

Robert

Bob,

Welcome to fun! We deal with a few attorneys so I will throw in my two cents worth for you:

... I was going to recommend to my client that they set up an account and blog away!

My experience is that every attorney wants to blog until it is time to blog and then......

...now I have to "ride" my client to get busy and start creating content.

I do not know that you will have success with this on a couple of levels: they won't like being pushed and, if you have not spelled out the relationship regarding who is responsible for content, they may resent it.

I feel like I want to do more for them on the blog side to keep things going but not having a law background, probably not doable.

I will tell you what my head of development has said to me along these lines: "This is not your job. We do not need you doing this, we need you moving the company forward! This is a low return item for you." Now, you may be smaller and having to do more, but you need to weigh you doing it against what else you could achieve by you not doing it. Ask yourself what your role is.

Do most SEO's do the blogging for their clients, farm it out or keep pushing their clients to do it?

I don't think there is a "most" in terms of business practices. (I do occasionally write something if it is moving a major client project along - once every two months a page or two). You can farm it out, but do it on a basis of paying per piece if accepted. There are several copywriting sites you can look at). We have hired copywriters from major colleges here on a parttime / paid intern basis and some of them have worked out great. You have to have time to spend with them early on to teach them CMS, on page SEO to a point, .etc. (Maybe 10 to 20 hours tops). You would be amazed what they can write about given the right background material to research. Since it is law i would be happy to share a few pointers via phone or email on this.

I also want them to sign up with articlebase but the same thing is going to happen. I have to push them to write articles. I guess this is my job?

I am not familiar with Articlebase, and don't have time to read their terms, etc. If you are simply giving them articles, then hoping someone picks them up, there may be some better legal publishers to look at.

As to the last ?: I guess this is my job? NO, it is a massive opportunity for you to provide exceptional service and make a great return for that! Get them first to understand why they need to post content (blog, articles, PR, etc.). Then show them they will not do it due to their needing to handle their business. Then decide what amount of profit you want to make in order to provide them this service. Add the cost to provide it to the profit number and show them how you are going to benefit them by providing the service for them. That is what a great SEO/CEO would do!!

Good Luck!

For your research, you can use the new Keyword Planner in Google Adwords and leave out the region to see how many searches for that term regionally. So, for nail salon Tucson, you can set the Targeting for USA, Tucson AZ or for that DMA OR SMSA, etc. (DMA is just a branded SMSA by Nielsen). I like to look at both with and without the region identifier just to have an idea as to how people are searching. This will teach you what will work if you use enough terms with it.

Now, when it comes to optimizing, there are multiple considerations and I am going to _generalize._First, if it is a situation where you can utilize the 7 pack or whatever pack, you first need to insure you are optimized locally. Then, if you have a url that you are wanting to be in that, you will want one in the organic search not associated with maps (so you need two different urls with different content but the same city identifier). For your title tag do not do Nail Salon Tucson | Tucson Nail Salon | Salon Tucson, etc. Use the city only once there. Then, be sure you do not overdo the city any more than you do the keyword. (KW stuffing).

Also, today only I am giving away two bonus tips and a set of ginzu knives to the first ... (Just kidding, no knives). For the page you want to show in the 7 pack I suggest having the Google map API in that page with address, etc. and I urge you to make sure you have good photos with exif data showing lat/long, etc. For the photos your alt text should have a location identifier and I would suggest an H-1 with a location identifier.

Hope that helps you out,

Robert

Edit, I forgot to add, if you are not using structured data, start.

Steve,

On the whole I don't see a problem with it. I am big on attribution if we use someone else' content and would suggest that you provide attribution within the caption and/or on mouseover even though it is on the feed. Something like ...from SEOmoz, a leader in Search Engine Optimization thought and practice. (this is simply a quick example)

As to the question, I think it is a good idea, is a valid way of creating good content (so long is you remember good attribution), and is credible.

Best,

Robert

Laurens

I had to read this a couple of times to understand but there are a few questions: Still in position 1? Conversion rate sitewide dropped 4 % points... do you mean from 5% to 1% or do you mean from 5% to 4.8%?

For traffic from the keyword dropped 80% I would look at it like this: If the keyword was a phrase with two or more words: hot bananas tonight and that auto-complete no longer finished to be the full term I could see a lot of banana lovers just leaving tonight off, and subsequently you would see much of that traffic for the "newer" auto complete (hot bananas) IMO. But to drop 80% just because of this would be something to see.

As to your conversions dropping that is what makes the picture quite cloudy. You have to look at other/similar keywords and ask the same questions. If you see the same drop across the others I don't think you can say this caused it.

If total traffic dropped by 10% and the keyword was 80% then look at site traffic and this KW traffic prior over time. Get a median ratio of the two. So KW = 100 visits overall equal 1000 prior to change. Then KW = 20 and site = 900 after drop. For the keyword traffic that remained, is the conversion rate different? So, same keyword, different conversion?

Once you lay these out you will have more actionable data. I would look at visitor flow, etc. in analytics and slowly draw a picture of precisely what is happening. Don't look to prove it is the change in auto complete. Go see what is there, get the data down, then draw a conclusion. It may end up the same, but you will know you covered the bases.

I know this is not a perfect answer for you, but I hope it helps.

Best

Keri is right, Q&A has quite a few mentions.

Also, I would suggest you think about this: In SEO, there is easy and there is good; I do not know of anything that is good and easy. If link building was easy, if learning and fully understanding SEO was easy, if grasping all that is necessary to really deliver real and lasting results was easy, everyone would be in SEO and there would be no real discussion around what is best and there would not be a myriad of people testing a measuring, etc.

My advice is avoid anything that seems to be a shortcut to something others talk about putting a ton of time and effort to.

Best,

Robert

Sorry Craig, 
I got pulled away literally. Knee surgery so I am at the mercy of others right now. (Humbling).

As to this particular set of issues here, let's discuss some things that may provide additional clarity for you:

To a certain degree you are asking about eCommerce as if this were eCommerce while also asking about localization which is antithetical to eCommerce as it is viewed today. (I will refrain from an example by name, but say think of many large computer or electronics retailers who have an online site and locations.) (Also, I have no desire to venture toward the conversation around various apparel colors please, but I do have a few opinions I will give here.)

There is nothing good or bad in what you are doing inherently. Using auto parts, you could be the local Bob's Auto Parts who grew and is now also facing the Internet and trying to come up with options. You could be a huge National Auto Parts Chain that lazily was pushed into the 21st century and realizing they own real estate all over must also deal with this "internet thing." There is nothing wrong in either. If you are an online concern who is trying to appear local by having a few pseudo local operations, I don't like it because you may be messing with a client of mine or two (So, yes, I have skin in the game) but there is still nothing inherently wrong with the attempt IMO.

The mixing of the two is causing you a problem but I do not think it is as big as you think.

What I do think is you may think you are not ranking for reason A, but actually it is reason something else. But, that is a real issue for you. So, let's try and approach it less globally and more specifically:

• From the eCommerce side you would not want to have duplicate product pages - but you are only in 5 markets. (Interpretation - I do not believe google will in any way penalize you for the product - broccoli seeds - being identical on all 5 city sub pages. (I would not use someone elses product page 5 times though.) Oh, proof is needed of my opinion... GWMT duplicate content issue per Webmaster Blog. 
• That said, the issue is ranking in individual cities for these products - (But you throw in a curve if at any time you are saying that some cities won't have the item all the time). So back to broccoli, if Rocky Mt. is not going to have broccoli seeds, I do not think you get a broccoli seed page there. But, assuming they all have Broccoli seeds and you use the same product verbiage identically, no problem. You are going to have different city verbiage though - **Is that correct? **If not, and you are just using the city in Places and Title Tags, you have a different problem in that you are not optimizing locally IMO. Your Rocky Mt. Page must differ from Fredericksburg from Charleston, etc. "That's a fact Jack."
• Next, you seem stuck on Business name first and you state: _"We see a substantial amount of their traffic coming in from direct company name queries, company name + location name,..." _So you are seeing a query for the company name and location or you are seeing a query for Company name + Location + Item or Company name + Item + location? Not Direct traffic - Queries from WMT?
• I think one problem is possibly not attaching enough value to the Title tag and URL structure. I would be surprised to see queries as you state (not that I am saying you do not, it would simply surprise me as that is not something I have seen before - and I have yet to see it all.) I cannot say enough that IMO its Product, location, Brand.
• Next, you are using place schema and that is great. Are you using review schema? Think about it and yes you can use both (Yes, we do.). Frankly I would use authorship as well, but you cannot have both authorship and review schema show in a serp. (That is why I suggest reviews) and most CMS (more common) have review plugins that work fairly well.

So, that is the approach I would take. Where you can locally, I would insure I had my own local pictures and they contain the appropriate Exif data, etc. In other words, I would nail my local optimization at every turn. I think then you will be fine with the products in those markets.

But, hey, it's just an opinion.

I would love to know how you handle and how it works out. After you are down the road PM me please. All the best, I'm gonna wheel on outta here.......

Alex,

Using ahrefs, I am seeing 880 backlinks to the site. Of these, there are a couple of bad ones (the main porn site with keyword anchor text and 99 links). For that one the whois data is all available and he is registered with gDdy, is in San Diego, etc. (Easy way to pressure the take down). The one with bloom in the name is the same way. I did not look at all.

Overall, you have some good links here from other photography sites, etc. I would send a note to the webmasters of these sites and ask them to remove them. If they do not respond in a week, send it again and each time keep track. I would send via email and attach a read receipt. If they don't respond I would report abuse to the registrar gDdy in both cases here.

You are not at a place IMO where you need to use the disavow tool, etc. Write up a template email, put in the 5 to 10 offending sites and send them the email. Keep a log and copies of any and all correspondence with dates, etc.

If you need further direction, we are here,

Robert

Tadbir,

With sitelinks, you get those because Google sees traffic to these particular pages or in some other way finds them relevant to the search. They also show when your site is in a non branded search on a SERP, but sometimes slightly different. (See the screenshots attached). You can ask Google to take a sitelink down in GWMT and they will but only for 30 days and you must ask again. Unfortunately, you cannot ask them to put a sitelink up for you.

I apologize that the screenshots are heavily redacted but I do not wish to show any info about the brand or firm in them. In the first, you see four sitelinks and of them the title only had the brand name in one. All the titles are pulled from the sitepage and are the Title Tag and H1 in this instance.

On the second, notice that the sitelinks are only the link with no snippet and are in a row as opposed to two on top of two. The first is from a search on the brand, the second was on a Geolocation + non branded KW. In both they are receiving sitelinks.

I hope this helps you out.

Best,

Robert

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Wardy,

Kudos on utilizing a tool like this for links.

A while back Matt Cutts talked about Google starting to devalue links from infographics. Whether or not they have followed through is anyone's guess. The reasoning (and I paraphrase) was that they felt too often they were being used by people without knowing they were a link back to a site and the infographic was not really a "vote" for content on the site. So, let's assume that Google would look at your tool and see it much the same way (And I think that is worst case scenario); I do not think they would look at some "negative" links from spammy webmasters/sites in a vacuum. IMO they would look at the overall link profile and, based on what you are saying, you should have a "natural" mix of links for this. As to the anchor text in the imbed, I think I would mention the tool and not use your domain. Something like, SiteName's Test Your Broadband Tool, would seem appropriate. The url for the link can be your site's homepage or other.

Hope this helps a bit,

Robert

Alice,

Without more data and something visual it is hard to say what I would do. Are you sure the links are from 100 different domains a day? Versus 100 links from a domain or two? I am only asking for clarity sake.

If there is a way to give us a screenshot it would help. Short of that, I would say if you are not being affected yet, look in GWMT and see if the bad links are showing there yet. If they are not, that may be the reason. (With ahrefs for example, you will pick up the links long before Google does.) If it begins to affect performance, I would use the disavow tool to block them. I realize it is a lot of work, but I have seen a major client get hit by bad links and have helped them using the disavow tool.

What you are stating re the tool and Google's warning needs some balance - Google states that it can harm your site's performance. An example would be someone being over worried and they disavow 75% of their links, they are likely to fall in ranking.

As to: "you shouldn't have to use it if you are a normal website" is not a guilty until proven statement IMO. It is actually Google stating you should not just have use it willy nilly. This is from Google:

The disavow backlinks tool should be used with caution since it can potentially harm your site's performance. However, if you see a considerable number of spammy, artificial, or low-quality links point to your site, and you're confident that the links are causing issues for your site, you can use the disavow tool to disavow those links. In most cases, Google can assess which links to trust without additional guidance, so most normal or typical sites will not need to use this tool.

So, watch your WMT and the sites ranking and other performance measures. If you see an effect, do not be afraid to take action.

Hope this helps a bit.

Robert

SEO student is correct re where manual or partial manual penalties will appear. As to your real problem, I do not think it is a manual penalty. I think you have messed things up with trying to build a new site on the old while it is still up. Is there a reason you did not build the new site on a dev domain : OliversDevDomain.com/clientsite? Get the site where you want it and then simply repoint the domain.

Probably, you have 'confused' things with the search engines by having duped content, and/or you have redirects that are 404ing, etc. Have you run the site on screaming frog or similar software to see what you have? That would be my first move, then I would make a change in how I was rebuilding. It is likely, if the rebuild is complete and you no longer have duplicate content (and the url structure is unchanged) you will likely pop back into the rankings fairly soon.

I would be disingenuous if I did not say that given the approach to the redesign, it is likely there are other issues. If you have a baseline crawl of the old site to compare to the new that would be helpful.

Good luck with this,

Robert

Hello David,

As Matt says, it does happen; but it has been quite a while since I saw them pull from DMOZ. I have seen everything else lately: Meta description drawn from content and not making sense when the Meta description on the site has nothing wrong with it. Title Tags that do not resemble the one from the sites, etc. Matt is also correct on the quick fix for blocking DMOZ or Open Directory Project (the odp in noodp). I would suggest if it is particularly disconcerting that you put the Meta tag in and then go into WMT and do a Fetch as Google on that page. While this is not the reason Fetch as Google was put in by Google, it often helps reindex quite quickly.

All the best, and good luck,

Robert

Put in the new 301 and go forward. You should be fine. Best.

Robert

Quick edit for clarification. Don't 301 from the new page to the newest page. Take out the old 301's and put in the new. Keep it simple.

I think if you simply do the 301s and then resubmit your sitemap you will be fine. Don't worry over the short duration of the change. I am open to others opinions, but I did this for a large site we manage (not a product but a reference site) with over 1200 pages. No probs.

Best

Rosemary,

People have a hard time with these questions because there can be more than one answer.

--The answer is rough but I hope it makes sense.--

I'd say it should be removed, although the best way to use that markup might be to mark up the actual html that is displayed rather than duplicating all of the "main content" inside of a JSON schema tag.

Does it make sense for the JSON to look like below when you have the content already present on the page and could mark it up in the traditional tag format?

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<scripttype="application ld+json"=""></scripttype="application>

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{

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"@context": "http://schema.org",

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"@type": "WebSite",

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"url": "https://www.example.com/",

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"name" : "Example Group",

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"alternateName" : "Example Enviro Group",

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"potentialAction": {

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"@type": "SearchAction",

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"target": "https://www.example.com/?s={search_term_string}",

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"query-input": "required name=search_term_string"

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}

"mainContentOfPage":"

Lorem ipsum metus ullamcorper viverra. Aliquam

Curabitur at lacus et quam scelerisque consequat. Vestibulum semper et ex quis commodo. Vestibulum lacinia ultricies neque et facilisis. Pellentesque feugiat luctus diam, et mollis elit posuere posuere. Nulla mattis libero lectus, at consequat sapien semper non. Duis lacinia mollis eros, in pulvinar enim interdum ac."

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}

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Let me know if that helps... or not! Sorry for the layout issues, I think you will still get it.

Robert

Ali, there is just not enough information to assist you. You need to provide either a url or some more descriptive data. There are just too many things that could cause a change. The first is did you change anything on the site? Is it highly competitive and have a bunch of new players come in, etc.

I have only see this happen when a change is made to a site. With penalties, there is simply no telling without more help from you.

I would be curious as to why you believe: "The reason being is that it can only be the local citations that is causing the following listing...to be rated above...," the other?

First, your query term for the first link is: chartered accountants Swansea

If you look at DRP (first link - Google Places), the categories they have chosen up to the continue... are: all accounting categories. When you look at Harris Basset the first category is accountant, and the next two are financial consultant and payroll... This does cause a problem.

When you look at DRP, there address is ...Swansea Enterprise Park, Swansea, whereas HarrisBasset is ...Enterprise Park, Swansea, West Glamorgen... Also, you state the others have not claimed their places account yet the one you show, DRP, clearly states it is an owner verified listing.

But, even more telling is that there are 3 citations on the Harris Basset Places page that all took place in two days.

Is the company you paid to do the reviews the same one that stated the ludicrous assumption about local citation? Click on the names on each of the reviews and you will see that each reviewer posted two reviews to companies....The same two companies. If a lowly SEO guy can figure it out, trust me, the GOOGLE can. Even if only Swansea is chosen for a probability test, what is the likelihood that three reviewers for one company would have only two reviews each and that the second review was for the same second company? When you add in that the time frame of all six reviews is less than 3 weeks and that the second company was a window and conservatory company (really, they did not know each other but all three purchased windows within a week of one another and then, purchased accounting within 24 hours of one another).

So, you may need a real SEO team to handle your local representation. There are white hat ways to get citations from real Harris Basset clients (assuming HB has clients that are happy of course) posted on Places and other sites. Even with those methods, I never allow my team to have immediate posts one after the other for a client site. It is just too likely to cause an alert in my opinion.

I could go on and on about how these reviews were written but it would be overkill. Sorry to beat that long dead horse, but this is stuff that I see every day. Work on getting the real clients to review over a period of time and clean up the categories.

All the best,

There are several ways to find content writers or copy writers. First and foremost, I would suggest you understand that when hiring for something like copy writing, if you are going to get someone who is accomplished, you are going to pay a high rate. (There may be an exception, but I believe it would be rare.) There are several SEO blogs that mention hiring writers and as soon as i find one of the more recent I will post to this question.

We hire our copy writers from colleges and universities. We place ads through the Student Career Services, etc. and wait for the responses. We get a lot of responses because we tell them what we are looking for and there is no pie in the sky. We ask that they email a resume and a sample of something they have written lately in a format we prefer. The beauty of this is that many who are lazy won't respond and those who do respond provide you with a first test by submitting their writing.

If the writing is poor in grammar, spelling (poor spelling in the age of spell check is a no hire), or structure, we just send a thanks for responding email. If the sample is good, we then send them a task of two paragraphs on something within the context of what we work on. We are very clear that we are not expecting them to be subject matter experts and we provide enough detail where they will understand it is a simple page we are wanting. If they pass that, we invite them in for an interview. This provides us with what I call Likely Hires.

Now, the work begins. Ours, not theres. We do not expect them to understand SEO, CMS's, etc. We have them come in for a day of training and then each week for two to four hours in the office. We teach them what they need to know to be good copy writers. We also set a schedule that they agree to and only require that they write at least one page a week. We continually offer guidance and encouragement. An example of a training subject would be like this post from Cyrus Shepard on copywriting for link building: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/10-super-easy-seo-copywriting-tips-for-link-building. They actually love this kind of thing.

We pay $12 per hour in Houston to start. Once they are competent, we then pay them by the project with a full page of content on an average site (200 to 400 words) paid at between $25 and $50 based on how much research they will need to do. (A medical site might need more research than a site on recycled oil or about a given company). We have writers who want to work more and those whose classes or situation changes who scale back. We never complain as we told them that we understood they were in school and it would change. At the same time, we tell them if they learn as they go, there could be a position on graduation. We use a system where they send in there page or an email saying it was posted in a CMS, and tell us how much time they spent on it. This lets us know if they are pushing the hours up or not working efficiently. We can then intervene.

We provide financial incentive if they seek out a subject that will help the company and pass it (we pay for classes like, web dev subjects, Adobe Creative Suite subjects,  Excel, etc.). They have to complete the class and then provide a one page on what they learned and how they can help as the result of it.

The key is in understanding you must teach them. Not how to write, how to write for disparate subjects and for different clients. You cannot expect to hire someone who is skilled in blogging, smart enough to write a great blog, etc. to accept $25 for an article. (My opinion). But, you can teach someone and pay them fairly and let them see they are learning and are part of a cool team.

Hope this helps,

David,

Not sure what types of businesses they are, but there is a work around. We see this a lot with professional practices where they have a physicians office and spa or physical therapy, etc. So, you need to be able to have separate suite numbers. If you own the building it does not present a problem; if you don't you need to clear it with your landlord. You can even have ste. 101-A if need be (101 and 101-A, but I like using similar: 101 and 103).

Also, you need a different phone number for each business. Sometimes, entrepreneurs have multiple businesses answered at the same number and this will not work. If you set it up with separate suite number at same physical address and a different phone number you should be fine. If the businesses are very similar, I would suggest going all out on showing the dissimilarities when you fill out your Places info.