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Link to the most relevant part of the website, which may well be to the home page. If it is to the homepage, I'd suggest linking to www.northamericahvac.com and seeing if there is anything you can do to avoid the redirect.  Changing it will help your SEO in more ways than one - when people link to your homepage, it's not likely they'll link to the redirect and will just use the domain.  SEO aside, from a usability point of view, I think it needs to be fixed.

You can still get useful data directly from the AdWords keyword planner. In addition, you can see limited historical data from the Webmaster Tools report (CTR, Impressions etc), but be warned that this isn't the most accurate and reliable tool in the world. Sometimes the best keywords come from thinking about what your audiences' needs are and then using instinct to think about what search terms they might use to find your content. I will often use the AdWords tool to pick out a few keywords relating to the page and will then create variants that I believe are likely to be searched and are semantically relevant.

Often, content that is well thought-out and created from the sole perspective of quality (without keyword research) can perform amazingly. With semantics, it's becoming easier for content to rank based on the overall theme of the content, as opposed to individual keywords. Do consider the long-tail keywords that pop up in good quality content, too (this has always been hard to research anyway).

Good luck!

My advise would be to remove or improve anything of low quality, even if it has a good page rank/page authority. With search optimisation, I always think about the brand first and holding content of a low quality on your website will not help you in the future. Be sure to always think about content that will captivate, inform and provide value to your audience first.

Perhaps consider improving the content instead of deleting? And if you do delete it, redirect the URL to the most relevant blog post on your website and you'll keep some of that page's authority.

Making sure that each image has alt text would not be considered over-optimisation. With a site like yours, I would suggest using alt tag keywords that appropriately describes the image, instead of using specific targeted keywords too heavily. When creating your alt text, consider what the user might be searching for - and perhaps do a little research - but make sure that the text you're using really is directly relevant to the image, as opposed to the overall landing page.

Hi Gregory,

I like your thinking, but Google would then need to rely heavily on other ranking factors in order to establish higher authority between websites that have equally strong links in their top 100. There's plenty of websites that have equally fantastic, relevant and followed links in their 100 - how would Google decide which one is most relevant  and authoritative?

Thinking about it, it could become quite problematic. A new startup entering an established market with a strong product or USP might be able to acquire 100+ high-quality press links and suddenly level up with a competitor who's been in the game for years - perhaps even a heritage brand - and has the extensive portfolio of good quality links to prove it.

I like the idea, but I don't think Google uses its other ranking signals enough yet to take such drastic action.

Don't you think?

Hi there,

I don't seem to have that issue.

Are you clicking into the individual campaign then Search > Keyword Rankings? Or are you going into Research Tools section?

Agreed! I'm sure this update will come as a big sigh of relief to many. The giant image was completely incongruous with the rest of the site and quite jarring.

There's a lot of empty space on pages, though - especially the profile page. Don't you think?

It definitely takes more time, and can be hard to setup initially, but in the end it'll make life easier.

Outreach to bloggers can be really tough. With this method, you've got a foot in the door before you ask for something.

It's also great for general social development - who better to engage with than the people who have the audience!

Hi Rich

Tom's method is good, but I find that a lot of opportunities arrise from smart interactions and engagement with bloggers on social media channels.

I always find that you're more likely to be allowed to do a guest post for a blog once you've built a relationship first. It's a good idea to research blogs you want to reach out to and then engage with them without asking for anything first. Then, once you/ your brand is on good terms, float the question.

This is also a powerful way to drive blog publicity in a more general way, without even needing to provide a guest post.

I have had a few clients come to me about bad backlink profiles / google penalties.

Aside from manual removal and the disavow tool, I try and invert the ratio of bad links to good links. This can be a real challenge as there are often thousands of bad links to contend with, but I'm pretty sure that a link from an authoritative website helps to dilute the bad links a great deal.

If you change your domain, you're starting from scratch. But at least you're not fighting a penalty. This is something I'd suggest if there wasn't a single good link in the profile and if the change of domain name wouldn't cripple your business.

If he's serious about his business he'd have the site on his own domain name.

The site he's got his site hosted on doesn't carry much weight so I don’t see the point. Also, having a site hosted on another companies domain looks really unprofessional.

Hi Gregory,

I like your thinking, but Google would then need to rely heavily on other ranking factors in order to establish higher authority between websites that have equally strong links in their top 100. There's plenty of websites that have equally fantastic, relevant and followed links in their 100 - how would Google decide which one is most relevant  and authoritative?

Thinking about it, it could become quite problematic. A new startup entering an established market with a strong product or USP might be able to acquire 100+ high-quality press links and suddenly level up with a competitor who's been in the game for years - perhaps even a heritage brand - and has the extensive portfolio of good quality links to prove it.

I like the idea, but I don't think Google uses its other ranking signals enough yet to take such drastic action.

Don't you think?

I appreciate that you're trying to get information about services like Linkvarna, but I suggest you stick to white hat SEO or go to a different forum as you won't find many people on Seomoz who use these kinds of services.

You got responses about this kind of thing on another similar thread - mass submission services may give short term benefits, but you can only last a certain amount before you're found out and banned.

My advise would be to remove or improve anything of low quality, even if it has a good page rank/page authority. With search optimisation, I always think about the brand first and holding content of a low quality on your website will not help you in the future. Be sure to always think about content that will captivate, inform and provide value to your audience first.

Perhaps consider improving the content instead of deleting? And if you do delete it, redirect the URL to the most relevant blog post on your website and you'll keep some of that page's authority.

Try to think about words and phrases that sum up what your site aims to achieve. Then look at doing the following:

• find out what your top compeititors are trying to optimize for

• using Google adwords to get keyword suggestions

Although I do tend to select keyword to optimize when I undertake a campaign, I'll usually let a lot of the keywords be dictated in a natural way (e.g by natural backlinks).  Usually I''ll focus on building the link profile and domain authority so that ranking for a variety of keywords becomes easy.

yes, that's right. I never put trust in Google PR anymore ; I don't trust the websites that give the rank. Stick to Moz metrics...

My opinion on blog comments?

a) Creating lots of blog comments on irrelevant sites with generic 'thanks for the post' comments just looks spammy. As others on here said, it doesn't look good and can raise a flag.

b) the approval rate for blog comments is really low, most are no-follow (pagerank doesn't flow) and it is hard and time consuming to find blogs with a good pagerank . You're much better spending the time it takes to make a blog comment working on content that could potentially get thousands of natural links.

c) Lastly, there are some rare exceptions when you might get a link from a blog comment that is worthwhile. Engage in blogs that you feel fit your niche to build reputability and you may find yourself gaining from it  - but don't use them as a method of link building.

Wordpress - you can't beat it for most websites.

Firstly, I'd add a blog. All businesses should have a blog these days for a varitey of reasons, and it is a great place to publish link bait.

I would also consider adding a content section that has information about phones, technology etc. Here are a couple of ideas:

• app reviews

• iphone skin reviews

• technology news (fresh content)

Be creative!

No-follow gives your link profile a natural look but it will not pass pank rank and will therefore recieve 0 direct SEO benefit.

That said, don't under estimate the usefulness of getting traffic from a good directory. How much are they charging?