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You should not expect OSE to match Google.

Google is a company that generates ten billion in search revenue a quarter. OSE and Majestic are the two best crawlers not owned by a search engine, and neither company earns even 1% of what Google does, so their crawlers cannot compete.

With that said, Google does not share all of its data either. If you want the most comprehensive link data, it is best to use numerous backlink tools and combine the data.

The rank tracker page you linked to provides all the information you requested.

You can still track rankings for your site by setting up a campaign, just as the page states. Also, the page provides a link to other rank tracking tools.

I worked with a client who reported a significant drop in Likes today.

I understand your position and agree it is a good strategy for large and mid-size businesses. I would agree it is a good strategy for small businesses as well, but it may not be practical. Ideally every business who registers a trademark would expand their registration to every country, but the cost is simply not affordable to everyone. Domain registration is much less expensive, but it also requires an annual fee. There is a lot too consider.

"We're a domain registrar and we definitely recommend trying to purchase your domain name in as many TLDs as possible..."

Please do not take any offense, but as a domain registrar it would naturally be your position to advise others to buy as many domains as possible. You likely would also advise customers to register the domains for as long as possible too. Both courses of action generate revenue for your business. That does not make it wrong advise, but rather you are not an unbiased source on this topic.

"Google will rank .CO.UK better for searches coming from the UK, so that could be handy if you decide to break into certain markets outside of the US."

The TLD or ccTLD is one of over 200 factors which involve a page's placement in search results. Site owners can also demonstrate relevancy to a given country by hosting in that country, setting their language code for the target country, earning links from the country, etc.

It would be helpful is if you can present any solid evidence to support your recommendations. Information from Google, Matt Cutts or highly reputable sources of information would be great.

Feel free to email me ryan@vitopian.com

You may also call my office. In the US/Canada 855-633-4SEO, all other countries 800-633-4SEO

I am not clear if this post violates SEOmoz standards. If so, feel free to delete. I perfectly understand.

Hi Nick,

My website is under construction and has been for over a year. On the one hand it seems shameful. My primary function is to help companies maximize their online presence, yet I do not have one myself.

On the other hand, our growth this year has been nothing short of explosive. We have added four full-time SEO analysts and a part-time project manager this year, and are hiring a full-time writer this week. Most of our business has come as a direct result of referrals as we have never done any advertising. So I wish to assure you we are open and accepting business, even though our website is under construction. If that is a concern, I understand and wish you the best of luck.

-Ryan

"If you need someone to write about manure find someone who knows his shit."

Best response I heard this month! Literally laughing out loud!

"Anyone know where i can get freelance worker that writes about 500 to 600 words original article that is free from Copyscape?"

The key question which needs to be asked....what is the goal of writing the content?

You can have unique content written in the price range Bobby mentions...$10 - $60, but you get what you pay for.

Are you looking simply to fill a page with text? Or are you looking for quality content which will rank well in a competitive niche?

Is this article part of the core content of a quality site? Or is it a random article in a blog?

There are writers who do not speak native English who can write a 500 word article for $10 - $20. You can also employ a writing team with writers which possess advanced degrees in English / Journalism / Communications where a single 500 word article can cost $1000+.

Hi Jaleel,

I would love this feature as well. Last time I checked, it was not available. You can use the SEOmoz Request a Feature page to ask for this function to be added.

For now, you would need to share your username and password with any employee you wish to have access to your SEOmoz account.

A couple Q&As which may be helpful;

http://www.seomoz.org/q/choosing-an-seo-company

http://www.seomoz.org/q/what-s-your-experience-of-working-with-an-external-seo-company

You can also view the SEOmoz list of Recommended Companies: http://www.seomoz.org/article/recommended

After publishing a press release, if that press release is on top position on Google News for the keyword, how will it effect the SERP for that website?

The question you ask does not have a definitive answer.

Just because a press release is published does not mean news agencies will pick up the story. Even if the story is picked up there are several factors involved:

• how many websites publish the press release (versus magazines, newspapers, radio, tv, etc)

• how many of the websites who reference the press release add value through commentary, additional research or other means versus simply publishing the same content verbatim

• how popular are the websites publishing the press release?

• where on the site is your story published? Front page? Linked to from the front page? Or buried?

Many press releases are done purely because the site owner or SEO believes it has value to gain the link. The main factor is the interest of the story. Is there a legitimate story which is worthy of news? Or is the press release simply being abused to provide manipulative links to the client's site?

Example: http://www.prweb.com/releases/European-Wax-Center-NJ/hair-removal-bikini-wax/prweb10213517.htm

A local business offers students a discount on bikini waxes. Is this really a news story? Or is the site owner simply paying PRweb to get links to their site? Does this press release offer value to readers? Would the site owner have issued the press release if the links were all "nofollow"? I would suggest the answer is no. If that is the type of press release you offer, then there likely will be no benefit at all to the press release

Businesses offer press releases daily. Prior to making a press release, you should have an idea of your intended audience.

SEOmoz used to use Google Search for the site. I am confident Google has a solid method for keeping their own results clean.

It appears SEOmoz recently changed their search widget. If you examine the URL you shared, notice none of the search results actually appear in the HTML of the page. For example, load the view-source URL and perform a find (CTRL+F) for "testing" which is the subject of the search. There are no results. Since the results are not in the page's HTML, they would not get indexed.

If Google is viewing the search result pages as soft 404s, then yes, adding the noindex tag should resolve the problem.

If you are providing affiliate links to another site, or anything similar, the links need to either have the "nofollow" attribute applied or be 302 redirected. The major affiliate programs I am aware of do such.

Will changing this links with my url or brand will help? or should I delete them all ?

If you built manipulative links to your site, my recommendation would be to delete them.

If you modify the links to change the anchor text, you MAY fool the Penguin algorithm in the short run. I strongly believe Google will update Penguin in a similar manner as to how they have updated Panda over the past 2 years. If that happens, Google will incorporate signals other then anchor text and you will be in the same situation in a short period of time.

Hi Michelle,

The concept of crawl efficiency is highly misunderstood. Are all your site's pages being indexed? Is new content or changes indexed in a timely manner? If so, that would indicate your site is being crawled efficiently.

Regarding the link you shared, you are on the right track but need to dig a bit deeper. On the page you shared, find the discussion related to robots.txt. There is a link which will lead you to the following page:

https://developers.google.com/webmasters/control-crawl-index/docs/faq#h01

There you will find a more detailed explanation along with several examples of when not to use robots.txt.

robots.txt: Use it if crawling of your content is causing issues on your server. For example, you may want to disallow crawling of infinite calendar scripts. You should not use the robots.txt to block private content (use server-side authentication instead), or handle canonicalization (see our Help Center). If you must be certain that a URL is not indexed, use the robots meta tag or X-Robots-Tag HTTP header instead.

SEOmoz offers a great guide on this topic as well: http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/robotstxt

If you desire to go beyond the basic Google and SEOmoz explanation and learn more about this topic, my favorite article related to robots.txt, written by Lindsay, can be found here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/serious-robotstxt-misuse-high-impact-solutions

The 24- 48 hours time frames are highly overstated. There are numerous methods of transferring a site with no downtime. Even if you have downtime, it is typically a couple hour period (locally) where some users will go to the old site, whereas other users will go to the new site. If you have a relatively static site which services a local area, such as a local realty site, the issue is quite minimal.

Here is the bottom line....your current site is hosted on a shared server which is so restrictive you can't even add a 301 redirect. To be candid, a site which has operated under those conditions could not reasonably be so hyper-sensitive to the potential short transition period from a simple server change. If I am mistaken, then you need to hire a professional developer to manage the migration on your behalf.

I was also wondering what is your opinion on Rankings impact from changing Host providers?

If done correctly, there is no negative impact at all. The primary issue is during the switch over itself.

The issues of duplicate content and split links should not be a factor. Those issues can potentially occur when URLs change. That does not happen if you are simply changing hosts. The same applies to the www vs non-www and index.html issue. If these issues are not presently occurring, and you properly move all files associated with your site, and your new server is properly configured, the items you mentioned will not be considerations.

Is VPS Hosting worth the extra expense for a local Real Estate Website?

In short, absolutely. Longer answer below.

Shared hosting typically involves hundreds of websites on a single server. Shared hosting is the lowest form of hosting offered. It is very common to have all types of bad sites (porn sites, mail spammers, etc) on the same server as your real estate site. Server outages are common along with numerous other issues such as having your mail server flagged for spam.

A VPS typically divides a server's resources like a pizza into 8 - 12 "slices". You have dedicated resources assigned to your site along with over a 90% reduction in the user population. If you care at all about SEO, which you apparently do based on your presence at SEOmoz, you should consider using VPS at a minimum for site hosting.

I have worked with clients in the past who have tried shared hosting with quality hosts. I worked with the hosts to move the sites to other shared servers which they deemed as more mature / stable. The sites still experienced monthly outages. Typical site owners are not even aware of these outages. As part of a solid SEO plan, you should use a monitoring service to notify you of any site outages. I use Alertra but there are many similar services available.