Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Thanks for the advice on using URL shortners. I have a client who has been told they were great for SEO purposes which I thought was incorrect but needed to double check.

They certainly have a use though.

The new Chrome browser add-on is a huge improvement.

I agree with everyone above. I use tags for internal search which it is fantastic for, but I don't use it for SEO purposes

I'm really impressed with the Tribe Calendar- I've been using it almost a year for a community run arts initiative Mass Culture and its working out really well. Not only does it look great but in terms of SEO it has he most complete functionality I've yet found. Also the new Geolocation information really assists in local search too.

I agree with Chris. With such large websites it would be advisable having a sitemap index and then splitting the index into various individual indexes such as Pages, Products, Categories, images, media, tags etc.

I work with a lot of arts events on a minimal budget and I normally move the old website to: www.website.com.au/2011, www.website.com.au/2012 and make the current year www.website.com

In this way you're still getting benefit from having a large website, the archive of the previous events is still there, artists still have a presence and people still find the website in the SERPs, navigate to the homepage which is the current event.

For the most important tags I would recommend writing meta descriptions to help increase traffic and leave it for the less important tags.

There are many website owners that know little to no SEO and keywords aren't even a consideration.

I work with a lot of artists and this is true in many cases. The competition for sculptor City XYZ is huge but the volume is relatively minor. It just means there's A LOT of sculptors in that city.

I find the guest blogging classifies horrible these days. Like all things SEO they were great for a while and now its so full of people that wouldn't pass Grade 2 English that it's a waste of time. It's just a little too hit and miss. I would simply find some blogs you love that are in a similar niche and probably about the same size in terms of online standing and send out a 'how do you do' email. If you like their blog then you already know they have an agreeable writing style so you're half way there. Either that or hire a content writer (like me!) . Many content writers rates are quite inexpensive, especially if you get say 10 articles for a set price.

I just saw this working well for a small web design firm in Victoria Australia. They created a separate page for all the towns in the area, linked to it from their homepage and were dominating SERPs for no reason apart from tricking google into thinking it was a larger firm than it was. That stuff annoys the heck out of  me

Something as simple as what Takeshi said will help your rankings immensely.

I find Google Adwords a great tool for the most part.

One thing I have noticed though is Google Places is being tweaked almost daily and some days a keyword I'm chasing will be #1,2,3 organically but is so far down the first page behind all the Google Places listings that chasing that keyword is next to useless (unless they rearrange Google Places again).

Learn from my mistake- do your keyword research and then Google the term when you're logged out!

Great- Thanks Keri, I'll do that.

As you are automatically taken to the third-party Webmaster screen I wasn't too sure.

Cheers

Rob

I don't have access to the clients Google Analytics Password.

Can you set it up without being redirected to Google webmasters? Is there a way to insert a simple code into the website and then have SEOmoz double check the code?

Thanks so much

Apart from the plug-ins mentioned above, for websites with a small budget I really enjoy using Dagon Sitemap Generator. Having a dedicated page as a sitemap for clients really helps no end and it doesn't take long to set up either.