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I would set up my website as www.branname.com and my blog would be www.brandname.com/blog. Create content your users will like and then they will link to and share your blog pages: www.brandname.com/blog/article  : )

Hello,

If I put out too many press releases/blog entries out can google penalize the site?

Google will panelize a site for search engine manipulation. If you are linking to your site using your keyword ONLY and not using your brand name/URL it will look unnatural and you can get penalized. If you are linking a ton of sites that are not relavent to your site it will also look unnatural.

Also other than wordpress or blogger are there any other free blogs that are worth while?  Can hosting on the main site help also? I was thinking of hosting on the main site but I wasnt sure If I needed to buy a new domain name, or just host it as XXXXXX.com/blog

I would recommend hosting it on your site xxxxxx.com/blog, that way when people like your articles and they link to them/share them your site gets the credit : )

What I think is good or what you think is good doesn't really count. It's what people in the industry think is good. These days creating an article takes time and sometimes a team of people.

Step one research: What are relavent topics? Who has a real following (people who interact)? What are they currently talking about?

_Find related industry's topics that are trending. Find the social leaders for these industries. _

Step two add value: Do you agree with what they are talking about? Can you add something of value?

Read what the industry is currently all about. Add content to your blog that will educate or entertain these people.

Step three connect:  Can you network with the industry leaders?  Do these industry leaders have a google +/twitter/facebook. Where do these industry leaders hang out?

_Do whatever it takes to network. Buy the flowers, movie tickets, concert tickets. Find out who they really are and what they like. Build a relationship based on other things rather then business business business... _

**Please could someone point out what are the basic guidelines for writing good content for google & users ?           **

_                       "Give the people what they want and Google will give you to the people."_

Hi,We are currently working on location based info.Basically, when someone searches from Florida they will get specific Florida results and when they search from California they will specific California results.How does this location based info affect crawling and indexing?Lets say we have location info for googlebot, sometimes they crawl from a New York ip address, sometimes they do it from Texas and sometimes from California. In this case google will index 3 different pages with 3 different prices and a bit different text, and I'm afraid they might see these as some kind of cloaking or suspicious movement because we serve different versions of the page.

What's the best way to handle this?

You can also check their link profile.. Do they have a natural back link profile or are they over optimizing. Also check the onsite work, do they have a site that is trying to manipulate spiders (footer links, hidden text, stuffing keywords).

Do they have a blog on their site? when's the last time someone posted on this blog? dare these blog posts shared? Is the sites social media activity real?

If they have a good site with a good linking profile

and

If the site is active (frequent posting) and it has real followers on twitter or likes on Facebook with interaction/commenting then it is a good company to link with.

I would redirect to the www version because it is more common. To do this just add the code in your htaccess file.

This should help:

http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection

From what I know your looking to gain 2 things! 1. Users linking back to your blog and 2. Sharing the content on social networks.

Building up social lists on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ etc so when you do post something new you have a hub of users to help push your post by sharing it on social networks which should also help to generate more backlinks.

Yes and there's more... Building up social lists is very challenging, it takes time and added value. The goal is to make friends with people in your or relevant to your niche. By interacting with their posts and contributing to their posts you will also be able to find good content that they are missing or add to content that they have already created. Building a social lists requires a lot of engagement, but when done properly you win.

Is this the main purpose of a blog for SEO? Would anything else apart from the above effect the SEO for the site? Maybe the freshness of content also has a positive impact!

The main purpose of your blog should be to help your users and other users that are relevant to your niche.

Also if your blog is picking up lots of links, for this example lets say 100 links a month and the rest of the site outside of the blog is picking up 10 a month will the blogs power of picking up links effect the rest of the sites rankings, would you need to anchor text link out of the posts in the blog to make the most out of it?

The blog will help the entire site.

Include anchored text where it would make sense for your users.

Example: If I had an article about creating content:

This article is about creating content bla bla and also learn how to share content bla bla bla

I would try to include my keywords, but always think of the users. Is this going to help them learn more? Is this going to entertain them?

_The external links that are generated will be natural if your content is natural.  _

Is this a recent incremental Penguin Update?

Penguin update happened around April 2012...

if I build more backlinks with anchor text other than my keywords it should help?

Yes.. Build quality links (your brand/URL) from relavent authoritative sites (Link to sites in which your site can benefit the users).

What is the best startegy to build these links ( Social Bookarking, Blogs etc ) as I need it indexed quickly.

I would build a blog on your site and write articles that can benefit specific niche related people. I would find niche related people and build a relationship with them (by adding value), offer them to contribute on my blog and then ask them to share it.

Do you think Google will tell me if I'm penalised if I contact them?

I would not contact Google because they did not send you anything. However I would invest my time in some quality work that can benefit users..

Conclusion:

Give the people what they want and Google will give you to the people.

Many people who were affected by the penguin update did not receive letters in GWT (Google webmaster tools)

The anchor linking profile for http://www.renta-vw.co.za:

http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/anchors?site=www.renta-vw.co.za%2F

Your back linking profile is based on mostly exact keyword phrases, In fact I only found one back link here that is branded or pointing at your URL. This does not look natural, a natural linking profile has more branded keywords/ URL links then exact anchored links.

| cheap car rental cape town | 53 | 78 |
| cheap car hire cape town | 42       | 71 |
| long term car rental cape town                        | 38 | 60 |
| renta vw | 2 |  3 |

For this to look natural "ranta vw" should be first on this list...

Hi Neil,

Yes use rel=Canonical, by using this code you are telling Google which page to count.

Hi Chris,

The on-page factors are based on the keywords you want to target for each page. You can optimize them here.

Your site does not have many backlinks, I would recommend building a blog on your site with content that others will want to link to. The key here is to get traffic to your site that can learn from it, get entertained by it, or simply just find what they are looking for. I would also recommend getting involved with others in the same or similar niche. Follow them, interact with them, buy them a drink, and then ask them to help you share your article or contribute to it.

The design of your site looks good to me but I don't eat cheese. Unfortunetly there is no set it and forget it when it comes to design... It's more of a test it and then test it again to ensure that its converting. I like to use visualwebsiteoptimizer.com (A/B Testing) for this.

I also noticed that you don't have canonicals set up... I would recommend adding canonical codes to your pages.

Hope this helps.

The campaign tool is not guessing, it is taking the pages that rank for the term and showing.

If you want to check each page simply use this tool: http://pro.seomoz.org/tools/on-page-keyword-optimization/new

with the tool provided you can manually check the pages you want and the keywords on them.

It is impossible to get the card to 100% for more then one term however you can get it close.

** I just wish there were a way to tell the system what keyword we're trying to target with a particular page, rather than the tool pulling a keyword from the list and giving us an unwarranted "F."**

The "F" you are receiving for a page is only there because that page is already ranking in Google for the term you have selected.

For example:

If you set your keyword to "blue cat" in an SEOmoz campaign, it will check your entire website within Googles index. Every page of your site will be checked to see if it ranks in Google for the term "blue cat". SEOmoz will then return your results for the term "blue cat" if you by chance have a random page ranking for the term "blue cat" even if you did not specify the term on that page(target the term) it will show you the page where that term is ranking on the search engine. It will also grade the page for the specified term on the ranking page.

It is not pulling random data.

Lets say you wanted to rank for "blue cat" having your page set up like this:

URL: http://www.brand.com/blue-cat

Page Title:blue cat

H1:blue cat

body: blue cat

link on page: blue cat

This is considered over optimizing

Having your page set up like this:

URL: http://www.brand.com/blue-cat

Page Title:blue cat from the Brand

H1:Welcome to blue cat - where we painted our cat blue.

body: the blue cat has many friends and smells like paint. lorem ipsum etc. etc.

link on page: learn more about the blue cat

This is a page that uses diversity and still includes your main keyword phrase. This is how you protect your site prom the over optimizing.

This is not selecting random keywords... It is selecting keywords you chose for your campaign. Then it is telling you where you rank for each of those terms and which page's of your site are showing up in the SERP.

It also gives you your report card grade, just in case you would like to make some additional changes to that page, since it is already ranking for one of your selected keywords.

So your SEOmoz campaign takes your keyword, pulls the page that is ranking for that term and then grades it on which ever page is ranking. Not up to you rather up to the search engine.

I recommend using the report card tool for your main keywords and only targeting one keyword per page... Two max.

I like to think from a users perspective. When you type something into Google many times you will click on the title that shows exactly or close to the exact thing you were looking for.

SEOmoz report card recommends that you place your keyword as close to the beginning of the title. However do not use exact keyword in your URL/title/H1/Body, use diversity.

This does not really matter as much as it used to. I would not worry about having 120 links as long as they are there to help the user rather then manipulate the search engine. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/smarter-internal-linking-whiteboard-friday

Search engines look at your: URL / title tag / H1 / Body  but do not place your exact keyword in each of these because that is over optimizing.

If you keyword is "blue cheese" your title can be "blue cheese is my favorite dressing."

As far as meta description: this does not help SEO with spiders however having your keyword within this will result in having that term bold when searched.

Meta keywords are outdated, Google does nor count them and Bing consideres this a form of spam. Also having meta keywords will givre your competition your terms.

Just use this tool: http://pro.seomoz.org/tools/on-page-keyword-optimization/new

I would recommend focusing on one keyword per page. Two max..

I like to use this report card and only target one or two phrases max per page. just type the keyword phrase you want and which page you want that keyword phrase to rank for, just follow the instructions.

Tip: getting two keywords A's for one page will be extremely challenging.

By using them properly. Getting people in similar niches interacting with your profile (retweeting and commenting).

Follow industry leaders and interact with them, add value to their social presence and they will add value to yours.

We are working on a reputation management case and we learned that in order to help give more authority to a social media site is by using it properly.