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Hi Judah,

There are quite a lot of articles and resources on targeting branded keywords right here on the SEOmoz site.

A search for "branded keyword research" yielded a nice list that you could start with.

Hope that helps,

Sha

Hi,

Since this is fundamentally a question about how OSE works, the quickest and best option would be to email the help team direct  help [at] seomoz.org. Provide them with the example you have listed here and they will be able to explain it for you.

Hope that helps,

Sha

Not having seen the code your programmer intends to use, that is not possible to say definitively. That is why we built the test for you, so that you can see the code.

If you take a look at the code you will see that the Rule is writing 301 redirects if the conditions are met.

A .htaccess file is read from top to bottom. The first condition matched will be the one used.

Basically, you have one set of files on your server, all of which have the extension .html.

When a request is made, you are asking the server to load  the .html file in the browser, but rewrite a "pretty URL" for the user to see in the Address Bar.

So, there are three possible scenarios for a request:

1. the user requests /page.html (server loads.html and rewrites the URL to /page)
2. the user requests /page (server 301 redirects request to /page.html, loads it in the browser and rewrites the URL to /page)
3. the user requests a page that does not exist on the server (server 301 redirects the page to /404.html, loads it and rewrites the URL to /404)

Personally, I would not be going out of my way to rewrite simple URL's just to remove the .html extension, but that is your choice, and I am assuming there is more to it and you had some good reason for doing this in the first place.

The one thing you need to be cautious of in making these types of decisions is that chopping and changing from one thing to another and back again is not a great idea. A 301 redirect should really only be used when you are sure that you want to make a permanent change.

Hope that helps,

Sha

Hi BJ,

From the information you included here it seems your programmer's approach is sound.

We made a demo for you with a working test and example code for the .htaccess so that you can check that it will achieve your aim in any likely scenario.

Take a look at 301 Redirect and URL Rewrite Example

Hope that helps,

Sha

Hey Will,

Very cool to see you dropping by on the Q&A

Sha

Hi Matthew,

It is not possible to see changes in Domain Authority over time in your Pro App. If you have downloaded reports from Open Site Explorer or the Keyword Difficulty Tool for your site over time you could lift the DA from your reports and consolidate them in excel to create a chart.

If you would like to see a history of your DA in the Pro App, you could ask the Moz staff to consider adding it by lodging a feature request

Hope that helps,

Sha

Hi,

Google and Bing can see how much time your users spend on the page, and since they can also see that there is a large amount of information accessible through that page, I don't think you need to be as worried about the "single page" factor as normal.

That said, just because your main user interface lives within a single page, there is no reason that you cannot have other pages linked to it. In fact there are a number of other pages which should be included in your site. For example: Contact, About, Terms, Privacy Policy and (if relevant) Disclosure and/or Disclaimer. They do not have to be right up front or included in your main UI, but they should at least be available for users as text links at the bottom of the page, in a sidebar or somewhere. If you don’t include them you are reducing the appearance of transparency for the site. This works against trust and will make people less confident about doing business through your site. Given that you are in real estate, these things should be a major consideration.

Also, if you do not have an About page, you are reducing your opportunity to grow your customer base and add more clients.

Hope that helps,

Sha

Ah...Great news!

Glad to help and I hope the new site will do well for you

Sha

Hi again,

Glad you are getting things sorted out now. BIG thumbs up to Shelly for the help with your IIS box - ours is a LAMP company, so thank goodness for Shelly!

Panda is intended to make it harder for low quality sites to rank, and duplicating content will earn that tag, BUT there are plenty of "dodgy" characters out there who are willing to use black hat tactics to get good rankings for stolen content in the short term (for as long as they can make money from it).

Unfortunately, as Shelly mentioned, if they have a higher authority domain at their disposal, they could end up outranking you using your own content!

Your next focus ... backlinks is one good way to stop that from happening. The stronger your Domain Authority, the harder it will be for them to outrank you.

Sha

Hi CP,

This is an issue for all stores that use the information supplied by manufacturers without any change. Unfortunately the sheer number of people out there with the same content duplicated across hundreds or even thousands of sites, makes it a serious problem.

Search engines will see this as low quality content and it will certainly make it more difficult to rank above your competitors. After all, by copying everyone else, you are not providing anything of extra value for the user.

Katie Morris wrote a blog post recently on this subject - eCommerce Syndicated Content: How to Win. In it she explains how you can improve your content very easily by doing some clever, but simple editing to improve rankings.

Hope that helps,

Sha

Hi Paul,

Great answers from Ryan and EGOL.

The other thing to keep in mind is that traffic doesn't automatically equal business.

While it may seem attractive to be "free from Google" and other search engines, there is an important consideration that must not be forgotten.

If the Lion's share of your traffic is perhaps from RSS subscribers or referrals from more general sites, how many of those visits are actually delivering you people who need a lawyer?

When I need a lawyer for myself or a family member (when my need is immediate and I am ready to contact the one that seems best able to help me), what am I going to do?

Will I:

• Look for a blog to subscribe to?
• Surf around and read other websites looking for links to lawyers that might help me?
• Go to my favorite search engine and search on a term that will take me straight to a list of local law firms in that practice area?

While diversity of traffic sources is important, the reality is that if they were not the most useful means of finding what you want on the web, search engines would not still hold the place they do.

I have a number of clients who are lawyers and would agree that the approach Ryan has described for you is the best way to go. In addition to that I would say that the key in developing content for them has always been remembering the mindset of the client. A person who needs a lawyer is a person who needs help. The practice area and seriousness of the situation will dictate what type of help.

Hope that helps,

Sha

Hi David,

First, my preference would always be to use 301 redirect to send pages that no longer exist to a new URL.

Using a 301 passes link juice and signals search engines that the old page should be de-indexed and the new page indexed in its place.

Barring some issue with your rel=canonical tags, which would be the first place to look, I would check other things that can send signals to the search engines about freshness:

• meta refresh tags
• update frequency reported in your sitemap
• custom crawl rate setting in Webmaster Tools

Then of course, there is an analysis of the differences between your old design and the new...have you made a significant change to your menu(s) and/or internal linking structure which has made it harder for crawlers to follow links to all pages in your site?

Hope that helps,

Sha

Hi Tim,

hmmm..that is a quick response from Google!

I suspect your problem is that you have unintentionally broken all of the indexed links in the google search results- Ouch! ...and any external links to posts from other sites - Ouch again!!

Basically, Google has the URL of your pages indexed, but you have changed all of the URL's without creating a 301 (permanent) redirect. So, when a user clicks that link in the Search Results page it returns a 404 Not found error.

Ah..I see that Dan has explained what you need to do to fix the problem.

Sha

Hi David,

Just a few questions to help understand your situation:

1. When you say "new site" do you mean that you have changed to a new domain?

If it is a new domain:

1. Did you 301 individual pages to relevant pages on the new domain, or do you have a catch-all sending all traffic to home?
2. Is the chart you uploaded from the new Webmaster Tools account (for the new domain)?
3. Have you created and uploaded xml sitemap(s) for the new site?

If it is not a new domain:

1. Have you created and uploaded xml sitemap(s) for the new version of the site?
2. Have you checked the crawl rate setting in the Webmaster Tools account in case it has been manually altered?

These answers will give us a clearer idea of where to start.

Thanks,

Sha

LOL...hanging on your every tweet!

but seriously though... it's much appreciated.

Rand,

Thanks for keeping us up to date with your latest post, Linkscape September Update in the SEOmoz Blog.

Sha

Hi Adam,

If you are just wanting to rank your keyword terms according to the number of searches per month, you can use any of a wide selection of free or paid keyword research tools.

Probably the most well known and commonly used is the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. In order to get the estimated number of searches per month for the exact keyword terms you are seeking, type the list into the Word or phrase input field at the top (one term per line). Check the box underneath the input field that says O****nly show ideas closely related to my search terms. When you click "Search" you will see two separate lists. The first one will show you the exact terms you entered. You will now also see an option on the left of the screen to change from the default broad match to exact match or phrase match (I would normally be looking for exact match and local searches - USA by default). You can sort the list numerically by clicking on the column heading.

To download just your list of terms, check the box to select them, then click "download" and choose "selected" from the menu that opens. This will allow you to save the list in a number of formats, including csv for Excel.

The second list you see is a selection of "keyword ideas" which Google thinks may be closely related to the terms you entered. If you want to add some of these to the list you are downloading, just check the boxes before downloading "selected".

If you want to change location (you are not in the USA), or just look at search numbers for mobile traffic etc, click the Advanced Options and Filters link underneath the word and phase input field.

You should always keep in mind with any tool of this nature, that search numbers can never be exact, but it will certainly give you an indicative feel for the popularity of your terms. There will always be variations in search traffic from month to month, there are seasonal influences etc etc.

As Ryan indicated, there are a number of other factors to take into account when assessing the keywords you are going to target and the Whiteboard Friday video he suggested is a great place to start.

I would normally suggest that you also use the SEOmoz Keyword Difficulty Tool to help refine your list according to how competitive your terms are, but I believe there is an issue with that tool at the moment. The SEOmoz team are working on that, and you could make use of it once the issue is resolved.

Hope that helps,

Sha

Hi Hanson,

I would recommend checking out the recent Whiteboard Friday from Cyrus on anchor text matching - Beyond Exact Match Anchor Text to Next Generation Link Signals

Hope that helps,

Sha

Hi John,

I would suggest reading this recent post from Justin Briggs to understand how Search engines identify spammy links and why they will not hurt you if your site has a strong natural link profile. Better Understanding Link-Based Spam Analysis Techniques.

Sha

Thanks for catching that Ryan! Having a bad copy/paste day