Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Thanks Lesley, I'm not sure that this is what I was looking for though. It looks more like a way to markup what brand particular products are, rather than an organisational brand?

Thanks, I was using this for the address locality, i never realised there was a "name" property under "organisation" duh! Anyway I've added this in...fingers crossed!

In the old days it was all about the PR of the linking site. But now I'd say, stop worrying about PR of the sites that you are seeking links from, and concern yourself more with relevance.

If I have the choice to get a link on a PR6 site that is in another industry or a PR2 site that is in the same, then I'd go for the second every day of the week.

Hi Mozzers,

I've been trying desperately for months to get my domain to rank #1 for its brand name in Google. This is made hard by the fact that the brand name is also a combination of two keywords, one of them being "Hire".

I've actioned everything I can think of, setting up and maintaining social networks (including g+), adding the site to lots of high quality business directories, internal and external linking. I even asked right here.

The site continuously rises in the ranks until it hits top of page 2 and then starts falling again.

When searching [Brand name] +[Town of HQ] we get the open graph info displayed, and the g+ pin, but still only rank 3rd!

My Question: Is there a schema.org markup for brand names? and would it make any difference adding this? I feel like I'm clutching at straws now...

Oh were in the UK if that helps. I'd also be happy to share the domain via PM if anyone is willing to help!

Thank you!

We are currently adding reviews to a clients site from The Review Centre. We are trying to use semantic markup more, so would like to know the best way to do this.

Example:

<blockquote cite="http://www.example.co.uk">
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
</blockquote>

Question: Does "cite=" pass equity and if so, should we nofollow them?

Didnt want to say on a public forum after the MBG fiasco. Look for us on social media and we can chat more

Hi Tom, Thanks for a quick response!

Yeah you probably do know the directories I mean as it's one of the biggest "networks" over here, although there are only 5 domains, they are all strong to powerful in metrics. You have echoed my thoughts on "going paid", so I guess my gut instinct is correct and we need to weigh up the risk vs benefits factors on this. And the same again for the "easy links".

I never dreamed that one day I could be debating links from domains like these, but lately it feels like link building has become a game of russian roulette with websites!

Hey, yeah I'd link them up for SEO, though the benefits will be far less that if you concentrate on funnelling your visitors to these recipe pages through to the target pages. It's really hard to convert a sale when someone is looking for information, but all of the traffic that lands on your recipe pages are now aware of who you are so make sure the site is well branded too!

Hi Mozzers, I have a link building question, in 2 parts.

1. I am in the UK. We have a large local directory network over here which involves some high authority national news domains. Basically, you get a citation for free but if you go "featured" as well as the benefit of being returned top for keyword searches in the directories, buried under a tab on your page are deep links to your website, and they are followed. What are the risks/benefits of this?

2. Are followed links from other high authority domains like Visual.ly and Behance worth it? They are easy to get and I've always believed an easy link usually isn't a good link.

Thanks in advance!

Hi Michael,

If you mean that they are landing pages - just not ones that you are managing within the campaign, then adding page titles will almost certainly help improve the seo for the entire site as they may be missing out on potential traffic to these pages by implementing a really quick and easy fix.

Its still indexed on a "site:" search so it hasnt been de-indexed and it still has its PageRank so probably not a manual penalty, if it is suffering one. Google really doesn't like these kind of directories though so I'd stay away in the future - just incase.

Hi Mozzers,

I have recently began the SEO on a website which is a few years old, with little SEO done beforehand.
I really want to get this domain ranking #1 for its brand name, however the brand name also happens to be a combination of two highly competitive keywords - one of them being "hire".

I have done everything I can think of as a recommended step to signal Google, but it still sits between position #20 and position #15 (on a good day).

So far I have:
Set up G+
Linked the website
Added Rel=publisher
Submitted site to Yell.com and a couple of other business directories
Added branded links from every the bio of each article on the blog pointing to the homepage.
Built a handful of branded links from related niche websites.
Set up social pages.

Question:
What else can I do to improve on its position in the SERPS?

More info:
The site ranks number 2 in Bing for the brand name. The domain is an exact match of two keywords without a hyphen between them - the site ranks position #1 for that search on Google.

Question:
Would a hyphenated domain make any difference at all?

Thanks everyone!

Have you seen this? Ouch. http://blog.searchmetrics.com/us/2014/05/21/panda-update-4-0-winners-and-losers-google-usa/

Oh yes - the site i mentioned that had recovered massively is also now displaying the product and review schema, that wasn't previously displaying - even though rich snippets testing said it was all fine. I hadn't considered that the two could be linked. Duh, thanks.

Hey Karen, yeah I checked with the developer who laughed at the "line of code" but said yeah its something we could look into doing. Although I may not need to now as Panda 4.0 seems to have done the site a massive favour this morning

We're in the UK and 2 of our ecommerce sites that had been suffering have seen improvements this morning. One of them particularly has improved in rankings massively for many, many queries.

Also noticed that some queries are dropping forum threads as results.

No problem, glad I could help.

Speaking broadly I would say yes, if the niche is the same. Particularly if the domain is aged rather than new.

The practice in itself isn't spammy. Its a great way to get further exposure if you are using the right sites.

Check out "Biz Sugar" - theres a pumpin' community over there.

How do you know if a site is spam or not? If your bookmarks are sending you referrals that spend a good amount of time on site then you're on to a winner!