Welcome to the Q&A Forum

There is a Feedback tab over on the far left of the screen when logged into SEOmoz, not easy to spot as it's in a strange location.

Agree with you that it would be a helpful feature to have, good luck with the request

Hi Bob

Some great advice from the guys already.

Don't be overly concerned about your domain name, exact match domains don't carry as much SEO weight as they used to.  Is more important to have a clear, logical URL structure that compliments your content strategy.

As the others have said, focus on creating and distributing fantastic content, that's unique, fresh, topically relevant, interesting, Valuable content and distribute it via all appropriate methods, such as social, universities...

Becoming an Authoritive figure on your topics of speciality is key, try some guest blogging also and participate in relevant forums.

Regards

Simon

Hi Bistos

Your website appears to only have 27 links from 3 different domains. One of those domains is yours, the other two are from Korean websites.

You have two Homepages (maybe more), one of these is http://www.bistosamerica.com/ and the other is http://www.bistosamerica.com/home

The later is in your sitemap.xml file though the first isn't, which is your main homepage (the /home version should be 301 redirected to http://www.bistosamerica.com/  )

I've noticed that your homepage is using 2 iframes. This could also be causing some indexation issues and worth considering what can be done to cater for that content without having to use iframes.

Because you have zero links pointing to the homepage that's in your sitemap.xml chances are that there will be some indexing issues or delays. I'd suggest correcting your sitemap.xml to include http://www.bistosamerica.com/  then resubmit it to Google via Webmaster Tools.

If you can acquire some natural (non-paid) links from other relevant reputable websites, that will help speed up the indexing.

This will help with getting your website indexed, can then focus on the on-page and further off-page SEO.

Regards

Simon

Hi Adam

Your best bet is to contact the Helpdesk with this one, via http://seomoz.zendesk.com/requests/new when logged into your SEOmoz account, or send an email to **sitesupport@seomoz.org **

It could be that 'rogerbot' hasn't been requested to crawl your website for a long time, or is being prevented from doing so.  The Helpdesk will help you out I'm sure.

Regards

Simon

Hi Ilya

My first thought is why would those top ranking sites want to engage in reciprocal linking, what's in it for them!  If they are ranking highly, supposedly with authoritive sites, wouldn't make much sense for them to do so.  If the link was one way to them, sure, but reciprocal, doubt it.

Engaging with authoritive site owners/publishers and building up a relationship over time can lead to a one-way link from them, usually much more valuable than a reciprocal link.

I'd suggest spending your valuable time on tasks other than reciprocal linking, the benefits are not usually worth it these days.

Create high quality content that others, including those highly ranking sites, would want to link to, then distribute that content well, seed it, engage with others about it, sure, that's a more effective way to acquire those all important authoritive links that matter.

If you haven't already read it, a relevant blog post here on SEOmoz entitled "Proving Trust on the Web" is well worth a read. One of the topics mentioned is Links.  Time spent Building Trust to help obtain those all important valuable links is usually far more productive and beneficial than participating in reciprocal linking.

Regards

Simon

You're welcome, glad to be able to help.

301 redirecting that many pages would take a while for sure and probably unnecessary for many of them.

I'd suggest individually 301 redirecting your most important pages, such as the obvious ones like your main product pages, about us, contact us... plus pages that have any valuable links pointing into them.

Then for the remainder, you can do a Wildcard 301 redirect, for example, redirecting all pages within a certain directory such as /news/

Regards

Simon

Hi Neil

Would that be feedback on whether or not it's worth doing?

If so, then from my experience with it, yes it helps to have some GA traffic data alongside the rankings, brings more meaning and context to the ranking reports then. The other analytics data within Pro Tools is also handy to have at hand at times.

I still use GA on a regular basis, has so much more information there than just visitor numbers from targeted keywords.

It only takes a minute to setup GA within SEOmoz Pro, is worth doing I've found.

Hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

Hi Brandon

If you haven't seen this already, an awesome video here on SEOmoz entitled "I'm Being Outranked by a Spammer - Whiteboard Friday" is well worth a view, it was posted last Friday and Rand has some really insightful and valuable information to share.

I would suspect, though obviously can't know, that the links from this .org site to your competitors will not be the reason they are ranking so highly. If those links are being counted, it will be a small part of those rankings, takes a lot more than 1 good link usually.

Just because it's from a .org doesn't mean that the links carry any weight, it sounds like a site with little value from the way you've described it, I'd suggest focusing on creating and distributing some valuable content rather than chasing the links of competitors.  Link Analysis of competitors is of course important, just don't worry too much about individual links, especially if they are questionable such as in this case.  With some great content, you can attract some valuable links of your own that your competitors may not have.

I hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

Chances are that if you keep doing what you're doing with the link building and take my advice and suggestions above, then Google will, at some point (impossible to predict when) switch back to your original landing page or list it as well as your homepage.

So yes I expect your original landing page to be there again, though can of course be no guarantees, so keep working at it

Hi Diane

There's an awesome White Board Friday video by Rand entitled 'Article Marketing + Submission for SEO' which is well worth a view, seems like it will provide some useful ideas and suggestions for you with your article marketing.

It is a real shame to be giving high quality topical content away to other sites that benefits those sites but not your own.  There are ways to address this issue, such as:

• being really selective over the sites you distribute your content to and insisting that they provide a link back for the privilege of using your content (though not always an easy task granted)
• guest blogging instead of writing so many articles
• producing different types of content such as Infographics that are generally more likely to provide a link back to you
• consider some Video content which other sites would want to embed on their site

Also, Google's Search Plus Your World (and an SEOmoz post here) is worth reading up on and viewing the video.  Ensure that your website has the Publisher link between your website's pages and your Google+ profile. Also ensure that your articles link to your Author page (about you page) on your website and that that page links to your Google+ profile with an Author link.

Regards

Simon

Exactly. A great answer from Adam.

Stick to the Blog rules/commenting policy, otherwise you could find that your comment is removed by the blog moderator.

Hi Dan, they are separate pages, so 301 Redirect the default.aspx page to your root domain. That'll do the trick.

Also, check to see if you have any links (internal and external) pointing to your default.aspx page and get them changed (if you can) to the root domain.

Regards, Simon

Hi James

The short answer is 'yes and no'.

Solely Local SEO doesn't usually affect International SEO at face value, as local is local and international is everywhere, as I think you already know from your question description (though read on below...)

However, just about any aspect of SEO can affect the SEO of a webpage and a website from the overall bigger perspective. There are lots of common factors between local and international SEO, as well as some differences. For one website that is trying to cater for both, there will be compromises to be made in some instances, plus some advanced SEO to take care of too.

You'll find  http://searchengineland.com/local-seo-international-seo-have-lots-in-common-47937  an interesting and helpful read on this topic.

An example, an IP Address can have a different effect on local SEO efforts than International efforts (i.e. location of where the website is hosted).

There are language differences, user behaviour differences...

I'd suggest reading that article and then figure out who you're targeting, where and how.  The answer could end up in needing more than 1 website, subdomains for different geo-locations, a site/cms language translator...

Hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

Hi Luke

What you will be risking with this strategy is creating a Link Profile for the website that looks Unnatural for which a negative impact such as devaluing the links could potentially occur.

By all means work on getting some great links into this important page, but don't ignore the rest of the site in the process, ensure that other pages and areas of the site also receive some good links too.

"Everything in Moderation" (everything ethical & good practice that is) as the saying goes, is usually a safer bet when it comes to SEO.  Vary the type of links that you actively try to gain and where those links are going to.

Regards

Simon

Hi Atul

You are correct, it's considered SEO best practice to host a blog on the main domain rather than a subdomain (No. 5 in http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/domain which I'm sure you've seen).

As for the naming of either 'Folder' or 'Sub-folder';  both are used and either one is appropriate, they are essentially the same thing.

To try to remove any possible confusion though, I tend to call a deeper part of a main site a Folder, whereas a deeper part of a sub-domain a Sub-folder.  Thus keeping the word 'Sub' associated with a Sub-domain.

So I'd call www.example.com/blog a Folder  and  blog.example.com/news a Sub-folder.

Regards

Simon

You're welcome.

If the address is exactly the same then it raises suspicions as each business should usually have it's own unique address.

Though if it is just very slightly different that will be fine, e.g.

• Suite 4, Example Center, Example Street...
• Suite 4a, Example Center, Example Street...

those are different addresses so would be fine and not against the Guidelines as far as I know, so long as the other criteria are still met such as a local landline phone number...

Regards

Simon

Hi Casey

Yes, that would likely be fine at face value (though still not ideal for reasons covered shortly) and in Luke's question it's about one deep page rather than another page at top-level.  If the page is so important, then probably a good idea to move it higher up as shown in your example.

With this suggestion though, it's very much 'putting all the eggs in one basket'.  It's usually a better strategy to create a really valuable website rather than relying on just 1 valuable webpage.

Using an analogy;  a one-man football team wouldn't be that successful no matter how many fans he had, a strong team supporting that one-man would surely achieve more and please the crowd more-so.

Creating other useful pages to support the site overall and this page in-question, with link building to those pages, would provide a better user experience and offering than just having 1 useful page amongst lots of useless ones.

Though if the business strategy is fulfilled by just relying on one page and one page alone, then yes it would be the best option available to concentrate on just that one page.

So two possible options between us, depending on the business objectives.

Regards

Simon

Hi Zsolt

I don't believe there is a way to, not in a Windows environment anyway.

Robots.txt has to be hosted at website root level, as in  example.com/robots.txt which is where search engine bots look for it.  If a bot can find it (which they usually need to if one exists) then a person can too.

If there are pages or folders that you don't want anybody to know about, exclude them from robots.txt and edit the Meta Robots tag on each page concerned to e.g. NoIndex, Follow or whatever is appropriate.

Regards

Simon

Hi Brian

As tempting as it may be, this would run a high risk of being classed as Domain Spamming, by creating Doorway Pages that link through to the real website for the purposes of trying to manipulate natural search rankings.

At best there would be some short-term SEO benefits, it's not considered to be ethical SEO though and chances are it would end up back-firing in the medium term, doesn't take that long these days for the main search engines to notice this kind of practice and to apply penalities.

Best bet is to spend the time creating valuable unique content and to distribute it well & obtain high quality natural links that way.

Hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

Hi Carl

It sounds like you have 2 live homepages there. If so, I'd suggest Redirecting the duplicate index.php one to the root (as in www.mydomain.com) either through a Rewrite or a 301 Redirect depending upon your server configuration.

Hope that helps,

Regards

Simon