Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Thank you Matt!

Hi,

I just have a quick question. Is it very negative to link to "bad" sites, such as online pharmacies, dating, adult sites, that sort of stuff? How much does linking to a "bad" site negatively affect a "good" site?

Thank you.

Hi,

I will ask a private question in March.

Thank you very much.

Hi Bojan,

Thank you for your feedback. I will follow your recommendation. Just one question: are you able to check the problems that a WordPress site has and fix them?

Thank you.

• Sal

Hi Dr. Meyers,

Thank you for the answer.

Your kind analysis is too technical and difficult for me to understand, so I'll just hire someone to check my site. As you may know it is always a risk to put one's site in the hands of other people who claim to know what they are doing in terms of SEO.

I'd like to contact someone who is an expert in WordPress, as my site are all in WordPress. Someone who knows the technical aspect of WordPress and knows how to optimize a WordPress blog. If you know of someone, please kindly let me know in private. If not, no problem and thank you for your time.

Best,

• Sal

Dearest SEOmozzers,

I am creating WordPress blogs and I would like to know from a WordPress expert how to better optimize the homepage of a site.

In particular, I'd like to know how to create an SEO-friendly homepage that I want to optimize for certain keywords. Do you think that it is better to show on the homepage the posts that I write, which change constantly, or a static, well-optimized text that will include the keywords I want to rank for? I have been naively using the changing posts, but after an analysis of the competitors I have noticed that most of them use a static text and show only the most recent post at the bottom of the page.

I'd really appreciate it if you could let me know the best practice to adopt to optimize the site.

Thank you.

• Sal

Hi Journeyman,

Thank you for the reply. One question I'd like to ask: is it bad to exchange links? The fact is that I have been offered a decent amount to show three links on my homepage. It's the only three links I am selling. I know that Google is against the sale of links, but do you think that only external three links on the homepage will signal Google that I have sold links?

Thank you and have a fantastic day.

Dear SEOmozzers,

I just have a quick question. Can you please tell me how I can find out how many DoFollow links I have on the page of a site? I did a link exchange with a person who claims that she found 50+ DoFollow links on my homepage. How did she do that? What tool did she use to find out the number of DoFollow links on my homepage?

Thank you.

• Sal

Dear SeoMozzers,

I have a question related to one of the sites I have recently changed the URL, going from http:example.com to http://www.example.com

I did 301 redirects, as I was recommended to do. In the past month I have noticed an incredible drop in Google's rankings for many keywords and checking the crawling errors appearing in the SEO Crawling Report I have witnessed mayhem with Canonical/301 redirect types of errors.

Now, things seem a little better. I have noticed a reduction in the number of 301 and Canonical type or errors (by the way, I still do not get the Canonical issue :-)). My little questions are the following:

1. Will I ever go back to the positions I used to occupy before I redesigned the site's URL structure?

2. I have now noticed that the SeoMoz Crawling report show "404 Staus" errors and one "505 Status" error. Can somebody please tell me how to fix the 404 Status Errors? Can I fix them by myself, or maybe I can ask the guys at the web hosting company, since I am really bad at taking care of technical issues?

Thank you for the time you took to clarify my doubts.

Ad maiora,

• Sal

Hi,

I have a question about one of my sites whose PR does not want to increase. It's more of a curiosity, actually. the site pokercasinomania.com has been online since 2007. I had developed a link building campaign dedicated to it, so I have many links directing toward it. I just don't understand why the PR is stil 1. Also, at one point the PR had raised to 2, but it went back to 1 after less than a week. Can someone explain why this happened?

Thank you very much.

• Sal

Hi JourneyMan,

Thank you for taking the time to answer my question. No, apparently the web designer did not include the GA code in all the pages. I'll ask the web hosting company to put it back ASAP.

You say that my site has a lot of SEO related issues. I wish I knew what you are talking about. I'll try to find a reliable/trustworthy company that can work on the site and solve the issues you are referring to. Hopefully, she will not forget about the GA code...:-)

Thank you and have a great day.

• Sal

Hi Robert,

Thank you so much for your feedback. I am learning so much from people like you!

The problem with me is that I study a lot of SEO but I am really bad at taking care of the technical issues (coding, web design, etc...). I have to ask other people to do it for me. As you know, sometimes you hire people who do not care about your site and problems emerge. I would have never found out about the fact that the web designer forgot to include the GA code in the site, for instance.

Thank you for your recommendations on how to make the site more SEO-friendly. I'll follow them. Finally, I'd like to know if it is possibile to find a reliable (and not too expensive :-)) company I can hire to do just that: analyze my site and get rid of all the those technical problems (bad coding, missing WordPress plug-ins that are good for SEO, et similia) that I cannot detect, as I am incredibly ignorant in this field. I feel that it's the technical issues that prevent my sites from performing a little better.

Thank you again and all the best to you!

• Sal

P.S.: I love and miss the wise US sayings

Hi,

I have a question regarding my site (http://www.pokeronlineitalia.com) that has, all of a sudden, lost rankings on several keywords; plus, Google Analytics and the plug-in Clicky installed on my site (the site is built on WordPress) claim that my site has no visitors/visits anymore.

I would like to provide a little background of what has happened. Three weeks ago I asked my web hosting company to do a 301 redirect from http://pokeronlineitalia.com to http://www.pokeronlineitalia.com. At the same time I asked a web hosting company to to a redesign of the site. Strangely, the day after the new redesigned site went online Google Analytics and the Clicky plug-in showed that my site, from one day to the other, had no visitors/visits anymore (I had installed Google Analytics and Clicky before the 301 redirect). In addition, I noticed that I had lost positions on many keywords for which I used to rank on the second page.

However, the PR of the site has remained intact and Google is indexing it without problems. Plus, I still rank high for a keyword. I tend to believe that because of this, my site was not penalized by mighty Google...but I'd like an SEO expert to tell me what he thinks about it. In particular, please answer this: has my site lost rankings because of the 301 redirect? Has my site been penalized because of the redesign? Is this only a temporary situation?

Thank you very much for your help.

• Sal

I was about to make a mistake. Luckily, I read your answer and I have changed my mind.

Thank you very much.

• Sal

P.S.: I've never been to Seattle and the post "Seattle rocks" was just an example. Although, I feel that Seattle must be a great place. I'll visit it one day

Thank you for taking the time to support your claim with an example. I really appreciate it. I now understand what would work best for me.

All best,

• Sal

What a wonderful answer! Thank you.

Hello,

This question is for the WordPress experts out there. I've always wondered if it is better for SEO to focus on a particular keyword by writing a page or a post dedicated to it. For example, if I want to rank high for the keyword "Seattle rocks", do you think I'd be better off writing a page titled "Seattle rocks" or a post titled "Seattle rocks".

The ideal for me would be to create a category with the URL that includes that keyword for my WordPress blog, but I do not know if I can do a good job in terms of SEO optimizing the keyword. For instance, if we consider the keyword in the example above, I'd create a category which will have the following URL:

http://www.seomozthebest.com/category/seattle-rocks

Do you think I can still focus on that keyword having such URL? As you know, WordPress would allow me to write some text in the description tag, which will be visible on the site. I guess that I could use the description box to create some optimized content using the keyword "Seattle rocks" and then launch a link building campaign using the anchor text "Seattle rocks" directing to the URL: http://www.seomozthebest.com/category/seattle-rocks

Do you think that I can optimize the keyword by creating a category?

Thank you for reading such long question. I tried to be as clear as possible.

• Sal