Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Jonathan

A topical and interesting question for sure.

I was at SearchLove London earlier this week, there was an excellent talk by Heather Healy of StickyEyes, entitled "Do Social Signals Actually Play a Part in Search Ranking?"

Have a view of it (halfway down the page linked-to above) as it helps to answer your question.

In summary, Search Rankings do not appear to be influenced by Social Signals, although there is some Correlation.

When content is shared (incl. socially) Links are often generated.  It's these links that can influence rankings, rather than the actual social signals.

It is recommended to partake in Social Networking for brand building, influencer outreach and content sharing, rather than as a method to increase search rankings. Do it for Social's sake rather than for Search.

Hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

You're welcome.

A lot of websites make use of Alt instead of Title for alternative image text, with Alt usually only appearing when images don't, whereas with Title, the alternative text usually appears whether the image is displayed or not.

Have a good day

Hi Cyto

I've had a look and they do have alt-text on the three feature screenshots.  Granted the alt-text doesn't seem to appear when hovering-over, but the alt-text is there. In their respective orders:

• "Link Analysis"
• "Identify SEO Issues"
• "Monitor Changes"

The actual code is:

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  <h1>Effectively Manage Your SEO and Monitor Your Social Media
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    <a href="[/features](view-source:http://www.seomoz.org/features)">
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    <div class="<a class="attribute-value">span-2</a>">
      <img src="[http://cdn.seomoz.org/img/transparent.gif](view-source:http://cdn.seomoz.org/img/transparent.gif)" id="
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       Analyze links and track key performance metrics in an 
efficient all-in-one dashboard.
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    <div class="<a class="attribute-value">span-2</a>">
      <img src="[http://cdn.seomoz.org/img/transparent.gif](view-source:http://cdn.seomoz.org/img/transparent.gif)" 
id="<a class="attribute-value">identify_seo_issues_icon</a>" class="<a class="attribute-value">hsprite icon</a>" alt="<a class="attribute-value"> </a>" 
_cdn="<a class="attribute-value">true</a>" />    div>
    <div class="<a class="attribute-value">pull-1 span-6 last</a>">
      Identify critical SEO issues and get actionable 
recommendations.
    div>
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  <div id="<a class="attribute-value">monitor_changes_ss</a>" class="<a class="attribute-value">span-8 last</a>">
    <a href="[/features](view-source:http://www.seomoz.org/features)">
      <img src="[http://cdn.seomoz.org/img/transparent.gif](view-source:http://cdn.seomoz.org/img/transparent.gif)" 
id="<a class="attribute-value">monitor_changes_ss</a>" class="<a class="attribute-value">sprite-screenshots ss</a>" alt="
<a class="attribute-value">Monitor Changes</a>" _cdn="<a class="attribute-value">true</a>" />a>
    <div class="<a class="attribute-value">span-2</a>">
      <img src="[http://cdn.seomoz.org/img/transparent.gif](view-source:http://cdn.seomoz.org/img/transparent.gif)" 
id="<a class="attribute-value">monitor_changes_icon</a>" class="<a class="attribute-value">hsprite icon</a>" alt="<a class="attribute-value"> </a>" 
_cdn="<a class="attribute-value">true</a>" />    div>
    <div class="<a class="attribute-value">pull-1 span-6 last</a>">
      Automatically monitor changes to your rankings and 
take control of your organic traffic.
    div>
  div>
div>

Regards

Simon

Hi There

Check out a blog post here on SEOmoz entitled "Face-off - 4 Ways to De-personalize Google"

• Adding  &pws=0  to the end of the search query URL in the address bar should do it for you (without having to log out of your Google account).

Regards

Simon

Hi Remco

Taking one of your examples;  http://ferienwohnungumbrien.de/  this is a parked domain name, there is no website behind it.

As such, redirecting this to your main website, e.g. to  domeinname.com/de/ferienwohnung  will provide zero SEO benefit.  There is literally no strength to be passed from your parked domain to your website, whether it be an exact match domain or a random domain.

The only benefit would potentially  be that you could market  http://ferienwohnungumbrien.de/  as your website (which would be 301 redirected) though I wouldn't even recommend doing this as some inbound links would inevitably be pointed here and some link juice lost through a 301 redirect.

So in summary, zero SEO benefit to be had from pointing those parked domains to your main website.  Though may be worth hanging onto them for any possible future plans, so keep them and simply 301 redirect them in.

Hope that helps,

Simon

Hi Catherine

It's still considered good practice to include a sitemap.xml though not always essential.

It's debatable as to whether or not it actually brings benefit to do so (likely does in some cases such as for dynamic sites and new sites) though as Webmaster Tools still has the facility to receive sitemap.xml files through a submission, is usually good to spend a little time creating one. One more tick in the box for on-site SEO.

A good read on this topic can found at  http://www.brilliantthinking.net/2012/05/22/benefits-of-a-google-xml-sitemap/

Hope that helps,

Simon

That's a great answer from Marcus.

A blog post here on SEOmoz from last week entitled  "The Exact Match Domain Playbook: A Guide and Best Practices for EMDs"  is well worth a read too, check out the section towards the end, "A few things to consider for solving problems with EMD sites".

Regards

Simon

Hi Annie

I'm surprised there hasn't been lots of answers to your question.

Check-out this video here on SEOmoz entitled  "Whiteboard Interview - Google's Matt Cutts on Redirects, Trust + More" featuring Matt Cutts being asked some questions by Rand.  It opens with a partial answer to your first question:

"These days we use it a little less" (2 years ago)  ~  basically means that in locations such as the US, most of Europe, Japan... & so on, where Bandwidth is rarely an issue anymore, 'If-Modified-Since' isn't taken notice of, it's not worth including anymore.

In say developing countries where bandwidth is sometimes still on the low side, it may still be used, hence why a sweeping 'it doesn't matter anymore' statement wasn't given.

**Your second question:  **

• Content, fresh unique value-adding content that is, that's engaging and shareable, is always a positive aspect to work on, which in turn can lead to some awesome new links. This encourages the bots to visit more regularly.
• Ensuring that your site doesn't have any technical issues (say causing significant downtime).
• Ensuring that Robots.txt isn't wrongly disallowing any pages from being crawled.
• Keeping an eye on Google Webmaster Tools (& Bing Webmaster Tools) for any messages or errors.
• You can alter the crawl rate in GWT, though is usually best to leave it on the default auto setting.

Hope that helps,

Simon

Hi Vitaly

A good question.  There are usually 2 main considerations when it comes to cross-linking sites:

1. To benefit the visitor from pointing to a useful related site

2. To try and aid SEO/Search efforts.

Your goal of trying to improve rankings of the newer sites by linking your hotel booking sites together could be counter-productive. Cross-linking sites with the intention of trying to improve search rankings (through the passing of link juice through the said links) usually has a short-term gain, then either neutral or negative. It's a risky game in trying to 'manipulate' search rankings by linking a load of sites together, which being honest is just what this would be.

With regards to the other reason for doing so, providing links that visitors could find useful, that's a sound and credible reason to link the sites together, just play it safe and NoFollow the links as Ben suggests. This would be playing it by the rules and keep the search engines happy whilst also benefiting your visitors.

Have you considered migrating your websites into one large site to serve all cities? Done properly, always with the visitor experience & offering in mind, it can benefit everyone.  You'd only have the one website to create content for and get links into, whilst providing one more in-depth offering and experience to your visitors.  Worth considering anyway, local search can still be catered for with one large website.

Kind regards

Simon

Hi There

From what you've described, it does sound like Duplicate Content is a potential issue for your site, it's great that you're addressing it.

A Canonical Tag as you've suggested is a logical and sensible course of action. Correctly implemented, this will certainly help.

One thought,  what would provide the best user experience for your visitors?  Have a think about whether these 'additional' pages actually add any value or not for your visitors.  I suspect that you could include every different color of a certain type of widget on a single page for each type, rather than having separate pages for each color.

In this scenario, consider 301 redirecting those additional/duplicate pages to the main appropriate widget page, that would almost certainly provide a cleaner better user experience.  Obviously need to take into account your business objectives and target audience goals when making such a decision.

So really, it's Canonicals or 301s, depending on what best matches your business objectives and the user experience.

Hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

Hi Ehren

Unfortunately, I do not believe there is a way of recovering deleted GA profiles.  Though if you're an Adwords customer, it may be worth contacting your Adwords Account Manager to see if they are able to assist.

( The same question was asked back in December, which can be viewed at  http://www.seomoz.org/q/how-to-recover-a-deleted-google-anaytics-profile )

Another option to be absolutely sure, I'd suggest contacting a 'Google Analytics Certified Partner' via  http://www.google.com/intl/en/analytics/partners.html for their verdict and/or assistance.

To avoid anything like this happening again, ensure that anybody with Admin access can be trusted, has had the required training and knows the sign-off procedure to go through before deleting anything.

I hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

Hi Jarno

The Linkscape Index is not updated daily, a schedule of planned (& previous) updates can be found at  https://seomoz.zendesk.com/entries/345964-linkscape-update-schedule

The last update was on January 17th, so your link that you obtained last week won't be showing up just yet. It likely will be after the next update on February 29th (or the next time your site is crawled after that date).

Regards

Simon

Hi webfeatseo

That's good advice from Serge.

You can find Ontolo's phone number under Section 20 of their Terms & Conditions of Use ~  http://ontolo.com/legal/terms which is worth trying before taking it any further.

You could also try contacting them on Twitter ~ https://twitter.com/#!/ontolo

Regards

Simon

Thank you Doug.

Likewise, some good points & views from yourself there.

Hi Nightwing

I suspect you'll likely get several differing views to this question as it's a highly topical and debatable area of SEO for which there is no hard & fast right or wrong answer, it's down to ones' own views, beliefs, ethics and experience.

My view is:

• If providing a link out will likely benefit visitors (which means it's a valuable, relevant, value-adding link) then by all means link out.  It adds to the user experience if they have good quality relevant links to follow to other websites.

• If the link is purely there as a part of a link exchange and/or purely for SEO reasons (i.e. visitors won't benefit from visiting the site being linked to) then don't link out to that site.

• If the link out will benefit visitors from following it and just so happens to be a part of a focused & select link exchange, then go ahead (always with careful consideration) as it benefits the visitor and helps to create a positive user experience.

So in summary;  link exchanges can be beneficial to a website owner and to the visitors, however only when certain conditions are met.  If those conditions are met, then go for it.  If not, then don't partake.

Hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

Yep, guest posting is on the whole a pointless exercise for Search purposes, the links that are followed will tend to be poor quality links.

That's why I suggested Guest Blogging which is different and with the right blog, most worthwhile, also for reasons of building up ones' authoritiveness. A good blog post will attract social sharing for example and those social signals and social links are very important.

One important service from agencies should be advising and educating their clients rather than doing all the work for them. Advice for the client on where to guest blog, what to blog about and why is an important part of the agency/client relationship I believe.  If the client is unwilling to put any effort in and only throw the bucks at an agency to do it all, then perhaps they are not the best client to work with.

Going back to how viable is it to build up a network of sites for linking purposes?  It's time consuming, resource heavy and more often than not will provide very little benefit, those days have gone.  So it's viable in that it can be easily done, given the time and resource, though totally non-viable from an expected results perspective.

So education, advice and encouragement can go a long way in helping the client to achieve their goals, so long as the client is up for it

Hi ConversionChamp

Any private link network created to aid SEO (Rankings) is shady by nature, even if that's not the intention, there is no avoiding the fact that's it's not an ethical practice.  Though granted that won't stop many from participating in it.

A far better, more beneficial and sustainable strategy (your white-hat alternative) would be to build up relationships with relevant site owners;  do some guest blogging and provide them with content, socially connect with them and distribute your content around their audience, which will lead towards some awesome links.  Building up your own contacts to engage with and hopefully get links from without exchanging links that go round & round the network, is the way to go.

Regards

Simon

Hi There

One good reason to create a mobile sitemap for specific mobile content:

1. Because Google encourage it.  Check out  http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=34648

Hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

Hi levalencia1

H1 tags are a ranking factor, though one of so many and have a very small direct impact on rankings.

Is still worth having an appropriate & relevant H1 tag though, perhaps more-so for User Experience than for SEO.

Ideally, H1 tags would be actual text rather than a logo or an image.  However so long as the logo/image has descriptive Alt Text (which it does in the example in your question, though maybe 'Printers & Printer Supplies' would be better than the brand name) then that's also fine.

Hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

You're most welcome Julie. This community on SEOmoz is certainly amongst the very best and is managed & moderated extremely well by the Moz community team.

There are some excellent SEO guides available here, both basic and advanced, plus there are loads of awesome blog posts and videos to help those learn more about the ever-changing world of SEO and Search.

Don't be too disheartened, there are a lot of true professionals out there who'd be happy to help with your Search and business aspirations