Welcome to the Q&A Forum

You might just need to reset your Google Analytics authentication. This can be done by going to Campaign Settings in the Pro Dashboard.

I think you should always share your guest blogs over social media as a best practice. The blog owner is doing you a favor by post your content (and hopefully giving you a link). The least you can do is help drive traffic to their blog through social media.

As Erik said, "Most of the time i'm proud to have an new blog post, so i post it also to facebook." I couldn't agree more. If you're not proud enough of your work to share it on your social media accounts, you need to rethink your guest blogging strategy.

You could also take an extra step and submit the URL to social bookmarking sites like Digg or StumbleUpon.

I doubt you have to worry too much about articles getting indexed. As long as you're dealing with a fairly reputable site that has their basic SEO in order, your article should get indexed pretty quickly.

I also like the Google Analytics IQ Lessons. They won't teach about the principles of SEO, but understanding your analytics is a huge part of quantifying the performance of your SEO work.

Mcarle, the blog post you reference only mentions issues with the rank tracker and the Pro reporting system.

There were issues with OSE that delayed the release of updated metrics - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/linkscape-index-delay-explained - but the most recent Mozscape data was released on May 1 - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/mozscape-update-our-largest-index-yet-159-billion-urls

IKHO, with the delays in the release of the new Mozscape data, it's very likely that the data is a little old and SEOmoz just hasn't had a chance to index the links you created for you new site. The next index update is schedule for the end of this month - http://apiwiki.seomoz.org/w/page/25141119/Linkscape%20Schedule

Hi Vinku,

You can find a nice discussion on Raven and Ontolo here - http://www.seomoz.org/q/ontolo-vs-raven-seo-tools

Gianluca makes some good points that they are kind of hard to compare because Ontolo focuses only on link building while Raven is an overall campaign tool. Also, all three of your options offer a free trial. Why don't you give them each a shot and see what you think?

Tim

I love Raven, but like MisterG, I don't use it as a link building tool - mostly because we don't currently offer link building services. However, as MisterG said, it's an awesome hub for managing clients. Your research, analysis and reporting can all be done from one location. It also integrates with social media networks and email campaign tools. I've also their support staff is super nice and always willing to help.

We're hoping to start offering link building later this year, and when we start, I absolute plan on using Raven for link building management.

I've never used Ontolo, so I can't offer much insight there. Hope this helps!

Hi Bob,

Marcin has you on the right track here. You first need to decide what the objective of the website is. The Thank You page used after a PayPal transaction should definitely be used as a destination URL goal, but you might also want to track smaller goals like contact form submissions and email newsletter subscriptions. Both of these could easily be tracked through Thank You pages as well.

Tim

One problem is that the www and non-www versions of your domain resolve separately. As a best practice, you should pick one to be your primary domain and redirect the other to it. Otherwise, you can end up with duplicate content issues.

Hmmm, that's a bit more complicated. I'm sure there's a Macro out there that can do it, but I don't know one off the top of my head.

I think this can be done without a Macro but it will take a little bit of manual work. Here's what I would do:

Place your two sets of keywords in Columns A and B. Select all of Column B and cut (ctrl+x) it. Then in Cell B1, right click, select Paste Special > Transpose. Then, move Column A down one so the list starts in Cell A2.

This will create a matrix with one set of keywords in Column A and the modifiers in Row 1.

Next, in Cell B2, enter this formula:

=$A2&" "&B$1

Copy this across all cells in the matrix and you'll have 10,000 unique keywords. You will then have to remove the formulas by copying the entire sheet, right clicking in Cell A1 and selecting Past Special > Values.

Finally, you'll have to do some manual work of cutting and pasting all the separate columns into one long column of 10k keywords.

I know this isn't exactly what you're looking for, but it's the best I can think of for know. I've updated that spreadsheet example to give you a better idea of what I mean - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AsNfzI57aVSXdGFKME1pamRnZkJNandZWVpoVkFXZkE

Or, if you want to send your initial set of keywords to me, I wouldn't mind giving it a shot myself. Feel free to send it to tim@prontomarketing.com.

Best,

Tim

If I'm correctly understanding your goal here, I think this can be accomplished by just using an Excel formula. You shouldn't need a Macro to combine two columns.

Place your keywords in Column A and the modifiers in Column B. Then, in Column C, enter the following formula:

=A1&" "&B1

Copy this formula down the list and it will combine the contents of the two cells separated by a space. Here's an example I put together in Google Docs: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AsNfzI57aVSXdGFKME1pamRnZkJNandZWVpoVkFXZkE

Hope this helps!

Tim

Hi Adam,

It's based on the preference of the webmaster of those domains. They have simply chosen whether or not to include www in their domain. It doesn't have an effect on SEO because the addition or exclusion of www doesn't give search engines any clue as to the quality of the site.

The important thing to remember here is that http://www.example.com and http://example.com are technically different domains, so if you're not careful, it's easy to run into duplicate content issues. If you're working on this for your own website, you should pick one version and make sure the other redirects to it.

Hope this helps!

Tim

I'm not a pro when it comes to technical server set ups, so maybe Keri can jump in with some better knowledge.

It seems to me like you have everything set up on your server correctly. And it looks like Google currently has only one version indexed of the original page in question.

You site navigation menu points to the capitalized version of the URL, but somewhere on your site there must be a link that points to the lowercase version which would explain how SEOmoz found the duplication when crawling your site, and if SEOmoz can find, so can Google.

I still think you should use the rel=canonical attribute just to be safe. Again, I'm not that great at technical stuff. Sorry I couldn't be of more help here.

Tim

Excellent points, Keri. I hadn't thought about either of those issues. Using a redirect is definitely the best way to go.

The problem is that search engines view these URLs as two separate pages, so both pages get indexed and you run into duplication issues.

Yes, using rel=canonical is a good way to handle this. I would suggest using the lowercase version as your canonical page, so you would place this bit of HTML on both pages:

The other option is to create a 301 redirect from the caps version to the lowercase version. This would ensure that anyone arriving at the page (including search engine bots) would end up being directed to the lowercase version.

Cool! Thanks Doug!

Has there been any research done on CTR for written descriptions vs. snippets grabbed by Google? Personally, I hardly ever look at meta descriptions when searching for something. My judgement is mostly based on the title tag.

Logically, it makes sense that a well-crafted description would be better, but I'd like to see some hard evidence to back that up.

I'm not sure if there is a good, free tool out there, but Rand covered this in a Whiteboard Friday a few months ago. Check out the attached video. At item #4, he discusses using some search operators to get a basic idea of your competitors' citations. This can be done by searching for the competitor's name, address and excluding the results for their own site. Like this:

competitor "1234 competitor ave" -site:competitor.com

The results are sometimes a little messy but its a great place to start. Hope this helps!

[Local SEO Checklist for New Sites](Local SEO Checklist for New Sites)

I go for the agency representing a client position, but I'd like to hear what everyone else has to say about this. I've often wondered if a message directly from the client would be more effective.