Welcome to the Q&A Forum

You're welcome Joe.

Regarding those links that you mention;  they could potentially cause an issue such as link spamming, which can happen when two websites send each other a lot of reciprocal links.

(Simpler solution towards the end) ~ My advice would be to remove them and make it clear on the website that those on the UK site, in the US, can visit the US site and vice versa.

As some landing pages will no doubt be deep pages (i.e. not the homepage) perhaps a widget type of box in a prominent position would help to direct visitors to the other site if they are on the wrong site at the time.  EG. "If you're a visitor from the US then visit our site especially for our US customers" or such like.

With some clever coding (and use of nofollow for such links) you could get it to work that when clicked on, the visitor goes to the corresponding page on the other site.

Or alternatively, an easier solution, make sure that all those links are "nofollow" links so that search spiders don't follow them, reducing the risk of a penalty.

Regards

Simon

Lol, can't argue with that answer, No says all that needs to be said

Ahha, all makes sense now, thanks for the clarification.

Seems like you're already on the right tracks, what will be tricky is getting your site known as a review site by Google, so that when searches such as 'ServiceMagic' are performed, your site's review page for ServiceMagic appears.

Once your site is classed as a reliable review site, you'll find the reviews starting to appear. Just need more reviews and to keep all the usuals such as on & off-page SEO going strong.

Seems like you're part way there as 'Click for Full Review >>: already appears.

That's a superb answer from Alan.

The only thing I'd add is to also consider what the most logical and easily navigatable structure is for your website's visitors, which will likely be one of Alan's suggestions for your structure anyway as they are logical suggestions. Just make sure that you're chosen option caters well for your visitors as well as for Search.

Regards

Simon

Hi Kevin

That is a risk, you could end up blocking search engines from indexing your entire website. Usually, both www and non-www point to the same location, so one robots.txt file can apply to both (unless you've configured your site differently).

Check out  http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=44231

I'd suggest removing that Disallow command within your robots.txt file and do the following:

Within Google Webmaster Tools, go to 'Site configuration' 'Settings' ~ from there you can set how you'd like your pages to be displayed in Google's search results, either with or without the www. (or can leave Google to decide).

Regards

Simon

Hi Matthew, you are quite right, there is little to be gained by this.

Only provide a link out to another website where it benefits your visitors from visiting that other site. Links out are good, but not as a part of a link exchange, that can actually be poor for your SEO efforts.

Always think of the user experience first and foremost, that way, the SEO you do will be ethical and beneficial, you'll gain more that way.

Regards,

Simon

Hi FishEyeSEO

That makes sense from István.

An example of structuring a website based on International location without a dedicated TLD and separate hosting is Nike, check out:

http://www.nike.com/nikeos/p/nike/fr_FR/?ref=

you'll see the  /fr_FR/  which is for France

and  http://www.nike.com/nikeos/p/nike/fr_CA/?change  where /fr_CA/  is also in French, though for French speaking Canadians.

I hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

Hi Pano

1)  what may be the cause of some rank declines?  ~  there are literally so many possibilities as to why your rankings have dropped, impossible to have any realistic idea without a site history brief and a full analysis.

Have a think as to what changes, if any, have been made recently, such as new content, content removal, lost links, new competition, site restructure, redirects...  the possibilities are (almost) endless.

A 'decline in traffic' can be attributed to a decline in rankings, there is often a correlation that exists, however that's just one factor out of so many, so is likely to be a more heavily weighted factor or even more likely, a combination of different factors that have caused a drop in rankings.  More to the point, it's the drop in rankings that will likely cause the drop in traffic, though not always.

2)  how do I bring them back up when the indexed page is the homepage?  ~  there are a few changes you could make, the first one I'd suggest is looking at your site structure and perform some Housekeeping.

From what you've described, you are correct, it's (usually) not at all feasible or realistic to target 1 page (the homepage in your case) for a variety of different keywords.  It's lately been deemed a Frankenpage when that does happen, as in one page trying to be the jack of all trades, ends up in an ugly mess and can be detrimental.  Check out a Whiteboard Friday Video entitled "Mapping Keywords to Content for Maximum Impact".

So the answer to this question is above;  figure out what page is supposed to serve what purpose, do some housekeeping to ensure that the navigation is easy and logical so that users can find the right page for what they are looking for.  Focus on your Category Pages for those important Yoga keywords that can't be catered for on the homepage yet are still very important to be found for.

I hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

Ok.  If a page has totally different content to any other page on the website, then a Canonical tag won't be appropriate. In this situation, use a NoIndex tag on the page and/or disallow it in the robots.txt file (only if you don't want any visitors to find it through search that is).

Or alternatively don't do anything, it sounds like the pages have some unique useful content on them  

If your website has a history of acquiring 45 to 60 links per month, then 75 shouldn't cause any issues, should be fine, in terms of the number that is.

• Q) Are the Press Release Backlinks good for Link Metrics and Ranking or not :
• A) 75 press releases in 1 month is a lot of press releases, to have that many links coming from press release websites may be flagged up as suspicious, purely on the grounds that all the links are of the same type, links from press release websites. Usually, it's best to have a natural mix of links from various different types of websites.
• A) It's a risk. Not all links are beneficial and 75 from press release websites is a risky strategy. It could work well for you, or it may not. Nobody can actually know until it's all happened, you'll find out fairly soon afterwards.  I'd take my best guess that if it's a one off with this many type of links from similar websites (all press release websites) then you'll be fine and rankings may improve, depending on the quality and relevance of the new links. It's not a strategy I'd do personally, I would have mixed it up over a longer period with many different types of sites linking in.

Yes the are different types of sitelinks, Zsolt is correct, however the question was related to Brand searches. Also, several years old is not a confirmed requirement for sitelinks, just that a site should be 'reasonably authoritive' which could be several years old or just a few months in some cases!

Hi James

If you have reason to believe that your website has received a penalty from Google, then I'd suggest submitting a Reconsideration Request once you're sure that your website no longer violates any of Google's guidelines, such as excessive duplicate content in your case, going by what you've described.  It sounds as though your traffic levels have dropped as a result of significant drops in ranking.

There are two main types of penalty;  'Algorithmic Penalties' and 'Manual Penalties'.

If you received an Algorithmic Penalty (more common of the two) then your rankings will start to improve anyway, once some time has passed since you rectified your issue with duplicate content and have added value to your website.

If you received a Manual Penalty (less likely for duplicate content issues though certainly still possible) then a Reconsideration Request would be worth a try.

So once all is great & healthy again with your website (which it could be already) then decide whether or not to submit a reconsideration request based on how much time has passed since you believe you received a penalty and rectified the suspected issue. If you feel enough time has passed and your rankings haven't started to improve, then go for it.

Hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

Sure have Crystal;

1. Content  -  unique, relevant, topical, interesting, valuable content that's well written is absolutely essential.

2. Distribution  -  distributing content online such as through Marketwire and high quality blogs, plus through social sharing, is very important.

3. Link Building  -  Producing and Distributing great content will result in some great natural links for you. Aiding the process can make it even more successful, such as sending an Infographic (with a text link within it) over to relevant sites that host and review infographics.

So in summary, Content is still King, it's so very important, the right kind of high quality content that is. Then comes the distribution and the link building.

There are so many factors that count towards rankings, it can become overwhelming if you start thinking about them too much. Focus on delivering as valuable a website and experience for your visitors that you can and that will in itself take care of a vast amount of the SEO for you.

There is a great SEO Beginners Guide at  http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo which is well worth a read.

Regards

Simon

Hi Sagar

That was a good reply from Ryan.

Check out http://www.seomoz.org/dp/rogerbot

rogerbot is the name of the SEOmoz crawler bot, the above page has all the info you require.

Regards

Simon

Hi Gary

You'll find an excellent Link Analysis Guide at http://seomoz.zendesk.com/entries/20036956-link-analysis

It highlights all the important elements to analyze, such as Followed Linking Root Domains and Page Authority.

Really worthwhile working through it in conjunction with the available tools in your Pro account.  Focus on your own sites' strengths and weaknesses and how you can improve it in various ways, a competitor analysis will give you some ideas for links and such like, though the real effective work is focusing on your own site first and foremost.

Hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

Hi Gajendra

That's a good answer from James.

Also inform Google of your preferred domain using Google Webmaster Tools.

Additionally, some information to try and help you out;  your website has some areas that could be improved on the SEO and User Experience sides, such as your URL structure which is not currently ideal for the user experience or for search. Your current homepage is:

http://joeyvalyphotography.com/#/special/splash/orlando-wedding-photographer--portrait-photographer--joeyvaly-photography-/

which is 4 levels deep with some unnecessary folders there, such as # and special and splash

These Splash pages are very 1990's and create an unnecessary step and barrier to your main content, I'd suggest getting rid of it and bringing your homepage up to the root level ( i.e. http://joeyvalyphotography.com )

I know an impressive good looking website is usual and really good to have for a photography website; you can still have that on your homepage without a Splash page getting in the way.  Also worth considering HTML5 rather than flash moving forwards.

I'd also suggest considering adding some real textual content to your homepage, such as migrating your Information page content over to your homepage, to benefit both Visitors and Search.  Adding to this content with some fresh unique interesting & valuable content is worthwhile spending the time on.

That's just a couple of areas to start with.

I hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

Hi Diane

Domain Auction Services such as this one can either work really well in acquiring an already registered/owned domain name, or can be really frustrating as per your experience. (They usually work best when the domain is due to expire shortly and if the domain is infact not renewed, you may end up being the first person to grab it when it becomes publicly available).

Basically, Go Daddy try to contact the current Registrant for a period of 30 days, to inquire as to whether or not they are prepared to sell it (this page has some useful information on about buying through Go Daddy auction). If nothing is heard within 30 days, the request is cancelled. Sometimes, the messaging can be incorrect or confusing, causing frustration to the person trying to purchase the domain through auction.

The message you received, "This message is to notify you that the current registrant of in2town.com has renewed their domain name..." is rather strange as the current registrant did not renew the domain name recently going by a Whois Lookup as it was registered on September 24th 2010 and is due for renewal on September 24th 2012.

So it looks like that Go Daddy either got no response from the current owner of the domain or they were informed that it was not for sale. Their messaging and communication back to you could certainly have been clearer.

May be worth putting this domain on 'domain watch' (plenty of domain registrars offer this service) about 6 months prior to the renewal date so that when renewal time does arrive, you'll have a fair chance of grabbing it should it not be renewed.

Regards

Simon

Hi There, Lots of reasons, including: Webpages are crawled, not keywords. If your pages have changed, the keywords the pages rank for could also have changed. Google make over 500 algorithm changes a year, rankings are constantly changing for many many different keywords. Personalised search may be showing you different results to what you saw before, as can location changes and browser caching. Perhaps the inbound links to your site have been devalued, which in turn can lower your rankings. I'd suggest performing an on-page analysis to help identify any page errors that you may have. Check out the inbound links to your website for anything dubious. There are plenty of other tools to use, SEOmoz has a great set that you could find useful. Hope that helps, Regards Simon

Hi there

From the sounds of things in your question, yes, you will likely be better off targeting your internal pages to rank for relevant search terms rather than your homepage as a 'catch-all'.

So e.g.  http://xxxxxx.org/the-keyword-for-ranking  try to acquire (natural, not paid) inbound links to these pages from relevant authoritive websites with relevant anchor text.

Your homepage will acquire links anyway (usual scenario), this page will rank for your brand and perhaps main overall keyword, difficult to tell though without knowing anything about the website.

There was an interesting White Board Friday recently entitled "Mapping Keywords to Content for Maximum Impact" which is worth a view. It introduces the concept of the 'Frankenpage' which is best avoided (e.g. a homepage or internal page that tries to cater for too many different topics and keywords), better off targeting 1 page for one or two phrases based around 1 main topic.

Hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

Hi there,

Some good comments and advice from Alan here.

I'd just like to add that with this new URL structure, you've placed these pages 1 level deeper within your site, thus indicating that pages such as  http://www.helpwithassignment.com/Assignment-Help/nursing-assignment-help  are not so important as they are now deeper than previously.

I'm sorry to say that this new URL structure will not improve your rankings as you intended because of this reason, plus the only extra word in this URL example is 'Assignment', which was there anyway. There isn't any SEO improvement to be had here unfortunately.

Reverting back to how it was before would mean removing the 301s that are currently in place and placing new 301s on the new URLs. This could well end up doing more harm than good, so probably best to stick with your new structure, other than perhaps Alan's advice of ensuring that you use all lower case in your URLs.

A good exercise to start as soon as you can is to identify your most valuable links into your site that are now being 301'd and kindly request that those links are changed so that they are direct links, thus not loosing link juice through 301s as Alan mentioned does happen.

Best of luck,

Regards

Simon