Welcome to the Q&A Forum

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, glad to be able to help

You're welcome Mackenzie.

I can see the logic in your thoughts around a lot of the links being the web address (which a lot of them will be) which would help search as the keywords would then be in the links, though isn't as straight forward as that unfortunately.

Those links would, I believe, be classed as brand links, so most of the benefit would be based around brand searches which you're likely to rank top for anyway.

All the main search engines love a variety of anchor text in links, covering both generic and longtail phrases.  So as a part of the link management, I'd suggest that when you find a good quality inbound link that is the web address, if appropriate to do so, approach them and kindly ask if they'd be willing to change the link text from the website address to some relevant anchor text of your choosing. Some will oblige, some won't.

Hope that makes sense, not always easy to describe,

Simon

Hi Mackenzie

That's a great question.

The main potential drawback with this is:

• If the short domain that's on a 301 redirect is used for marketing purposes, chances are this domain will acquire a lot of the inbound links. Some of that link juice will be lost through the redirects, it's better for Search if all the links go straight to the domain that's hosting the website (homepage and internal pages).

Also, it's not advisable for usability to market & promote a domain that's redirected, doesn't give a great first impression.

Exact** match domains**don't have the SEO weight that they used to (that's the general consensus, especially with regards to Google), so it's not a real must to have an exact match domain.

Suggestion: Perhaps the short domain would be suitable as the actual website address, or perhaps one in-between with a 'partial match' on the keywords, which is both short enough for Usability and short enough to market & promote effectively, whilst still incorporating the main single keyword or two for Search (mainly 'result to click conversion' from the search result snippet that is).

Hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

Hi Steve

It appears that your reviews are being marked-up with Count instead of Vote.

An example is http://www.freeindex.co.uk/profile(looking-glass-photography)_34386.htm which has a Count of 33.

Check out http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=1093493#countvote for more information on this, could be what's causing some issues with your reviews in search results.

Though with a Google search on 'Looking Glass Photography' you do have some reviews starting to appear on page 2 of the results.

Regards

Simon

You're welcome Jon.

That's a good question. I don't know the official answer on that one, though suspect that Google does check to see if the page exists, mainly because often it will be a valid URL that somebody types in the search box instead of the address bar. If Google don't have that page in their index, they'd at least like to consider adding it.

http://www.google.com/addurl.html is the URL adding page for Google as you'll already know. As well as Google relying on people to use this form, they will also, I suspect, crawl URLs that are entered into a search box. Makes sense to me that Google would at least visit these pages searched on, though can't be sure.

Regards

Simon

Hi Jon

This is a strange one, I too haven't found a link to your admin page. There could have been one at some point in the past. Google's bot is rather clever at finding pages on the so-called 'invisible web', so best to request non-indexing of pages that you don't want indexed (covered below).

You're right in thinking that search bots follow links to find and index pages, whether it be an external or internal site link or a sitemap link. They also find pages through actual submissions.

• I'd suggest modifying the Robots tag on your admin page, include a 'NoIndex' just before the NoFollow'.
• Also include a Disallow command in your Robots.txt file for this admin page, and perhaps all pages within the admin section.
• Then, request the URL be removed from Google's index via Google Webmaster Tools ("Site configuration", "Crawler access", "Remove URL").

Hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

Hi Pano

Timing is one issue, it will take longer. First the pages need to be indexed which can take much longer than 36 hours for some websites, then the pages need to be ranked for their targeted keywords. You say it's a new website, in which case this would be the case. If the URLs are the same as before, then just a reindexing delay and the ranking factors.

Though the Main Reason will be that your internal product/landing pages most probably do not have any (or any good quality) inbound links to them, chances they are all going to your homepage. I'd suggest looking at this as links are a major ranking factor.

So take a look at the on-page SEO again to ensure that it's as strong as can be, then analyse your inbound link situation and if necessary, get some high quality relevant links from reputable websites to link into your internal pages (though don't pay for the links, free natural links are the way to go).

Also, make sure that visitors and search spiders can easily navigate to your internal pages that you are trying to get ranked, have a check for any crawl errors and make sure that your robots.txt file is not disallowing any such pages from being indexed.

Regards, Simon

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 Maxwell

A few answers here for you to consider:

Comments are usually beneficial to a blog, it shows engagement and participation, so I'd suggest keeping the comments there, so long as they are relevant and not blatant advertising.

For comments that are purely there only for link building and add no value to the post concerned, I'd suggest removing them if your blog guidelines forbid such link & advertising practices. If not, update your blog guidelines and remove any further posts that are only made for link building purposes and ensure the existing ones are Nofollow.

For links within comments, I'd suggest making the links 'Nofollow' by default, if they are not already.

Hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

Hi Michael

As there are no suitable alternative pages to 301 redirect them to, then yes, the Homepage will be fine, that will remove the broken links and provide a destination for anybody that clicks on one of the links.

Regards

Simon

Thank you Alan, glad you agree

Hi Michael

That depends on what the errors are that you're seeing in Google Webmaster Tools.

Broken Links (Pages not found) could well be one; if so, identify pages that are still linking to those old blog posts and remove those links or change them to a page that does still exist.

Or you could place a 301 redirect on those old blog post pages to a suitable page that is still live (which would have been good to do originally rather than just deleting the old posts, though you may have implemented 301s already, I don't know what your errors are).

Perhaps those old blog posts are still included in your sitemap.xml;  have a look and if so, remove them from the sitemap.

You could also request through GWT that the old blog post URLs be removed from Googles index.

So a few things to have a check of there. Best of luck,

Simon

Hi Zoltan

A good question.

It's the general consensus that Google does not place much weight on keyworded domains anymore, some sure, though not much. So bearing that in mind, I'd suggest going for a domain that is user-friendly and describes your business.

'spiceandcoffee' sounds ideal, it does what it says on the tin!

Domains without hyphens are better in my opinion, they are easier to communicate, remember (as you said) and to type, so avoid hyhpens if you can and stick with e.g. 'spiceandcoffee'.

(hyphens are considered the same as spaces by search engines, though they can easily distinguish between and identify words that are all together such as in your suggestion of 'spiceandcoffee', no need for hyphens).

So no difference for Search, just better for usability without hyphens.

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

Thank you.

A good point from yourself there, could indeed result with a double listing

Hi Filolari

Well done, you've performed the correct actions to try and get your internal page back ranking for the term "realizzazione siti internet".  It's even the first page linked to under the 'Featured Spotview' section on your homepage, it's in the navigation, so it's well linked to from your homepage. It's also in the Title, Description and H1 tag on your internal page, which all helps.

Your robots.txt file looks fine, nothing to worry about there.

As the homepage is often (not always) the strongest most authoritive page, it can take time for a deeper page to rank for a particular keyword instead. Switching back from the homepage will take a while, just need to wait a while longer and try as many of the following as you can to aid the process:

• Your website doesn't appear to have a sitemap.xml file, it's not located at http://www.spotview.it/sitemap.xml ~ I'd suggest creating a sitemap.xml file and submitting it to Google via Google Webmaster Tools.
• I'd suggest to continue what you're doing, obtaining more natural links to your internal page from other good quality relevant websites, with the optimized anchor text.
• Perhaps create a useful & interesting Infographic with a link back to the page, then distribute the Infographic to a variety of relevant websites.
• Create some more new unique content on your website to keep it fresh, where relevant, link some of these pages (only if appropriate to do so, avoid significant link sculpting) to the page you're trying to get ranking highly again.
• When the opportunity arises, do a Press Release and distribute it well, linking back to the page.

Hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

Thanks for saying so Ryan, much appreciated

Hi Shawn,

Not solely for its PR or age. If you first find a good domain for sale that you'd like to use for a website or blog, then factors such as age, history and current strengths can be taken into account.

If you'd be buying it just to redirect it to another domain, then there will be Zero Pre-existing SEO value if it's dormant (not hosting a site).

Put things like age and PR to one side, think of why you'd like the domain and how you could use it, then bring back factors such as age and history to determine if it's actually a good domain 'for you' and how much you'd be willing to pay based on it's strengths and its value to you.

There are always potential issues to consider when purchasing a domain; check out it's hosting history and who has owned it previously, look out for it being associated with poor quality or poor neighbourhood sites such as porn and evaluate it's own inbound links. Wayback Machine can help as well as registrar history.

There is a useful video for you to view here on SEOmoz, entitled "Age of Site and Old Links - Whiteboard Friday".

Hope that helps, Simon

Hi MetiX

Good, well done, a healthy mix of links is essential.

50 for now would be a more comfortable number than 75, good decision.

Hope it all goes well for you