Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi,

I would suggest WPTouch but since you used it and seems like you didn't like it, maybe try WordPress mobile pack.  However, most of these plugins will convert the layout to posts. I believe most of the free plugins works that way as well unless you get a developer to develope one for you.

If you want people to view your website on the mobile and look something similar to the desktop version, I suggest you find a responsive theme.  When it detects someone viewing in mobile, they will change the look of your website and make it more simplify.  This will be the best way to go or pay someone to create a mobile version of your website for you.

Hi Paul,

I would prefer Sample A: Custom Car Parts - Personalized Wholesale Car Parts | Company Name over the other one.  However, if possible, instead of using car parts twice, is there any term for it in that industry?

To answer the question in your title, what do I consider as over-optimized title tag then it would be a title tag with tons of keywords.  For example, Traing a Dog | Dog Food | Dog Toy | Dog Apparel and etc.  Something like that I would consider over-optimize or irrelevant.  Doesn't tell Google or visitor what the page is exactly about.

Hi Nikolas,

I wish seo is like 6th sense to me.  I believe you have more traffic from Google to your Squidoo page in the past and not your site is because Squidoo has higher authority than your new site.  Squidoo has more backlinks and content under Squidoo's domain and as you might know backlinks is an important factor in SEO.  Furthermore, your site is still new.  Squidoo has been around for a while and Google also look at the domain age as a ranking factor.  I don't think you can simply create a new site and hope to get as much traffic as Squidoo.  You will need more time, create more content and earn some links.

Hi Erin,

1. I believe using the Geo Tag and the ref="lang" tag for the subdirectory will be enough to tell Google that it is a page that targets people in UK.  I believe that will avoid having duplicate content or keyword cannibalization even if it is the same.  However, since you are targeting UK, the spelling may be different or the terms may be used differently.  So keep that in mind and see if you can change the Title tag, H1 anc content a bit.  For example, in US, we spell Optimization and in UK I believe they spell it Optimisation.  Both have the same meaning but spelled differently in different locations.

2) I have asked a similar question before and the answer I got is that purchasing the UK ccTLD and then redirecting it to your .com page will have no benefits.  The ccTLD won't rank in Google.uk.  Mind as well just optimize the UK subdirectory and have it appear in the UK search engine.

Hope this helps Erin!

Hi Neil,

YouTube is owned by Google which mean if you optimize your YouTube video (such as Title, Description, and all the other factors), if someone searches on Google, it is possible that your video will appear.

Optimizing your YouTube video is very similar to Optimizing a website

You will need to optimize your title with keywords and CTA to get more clicks/views.

Optimize your video content so that it is imformative and exactly what your title reflects

Optimize your description with keyword

Optimize the video tag (Don't over do it)

Build back links to your VIDEO like a website!

Share your video on social media platforms like sharing articles.

If your YouTube video is well optimized, it will be found via YouTube search and Google search.

http://www.mktdojo.com/youtube-seo-guide-8-youtube-ranking-factors

Hope this helps!

Hi Bob,

LIke what Ricky said, spending your time on building quality backlinks will be better and has more power over building backlinks to your backlinks. Building backlinks for backlinks will work since it gives the backlink pointing to your site more authority which will benefit you.  However, by doing so, it is the same as building backlinks for another site so why not spend the time building backlinks for your site?  Having more quality backlinks, even if it is 1, will have more power and authority than getting a lower quality link.

Hi Diane,

If I understood your question correctly, the website ranking is dropping because there are no updates on the website and Google loves frequent updates; therefore, you are asking if there is any ways or methods to avoid the "Freshness" factor.

If that is true, as you have suggested, creating a blog and constantly writing useful articles will help you solve this dilemma.  A blog is part of your website and if you post frequently, then it is considered as your website being updated frequently.  So in conclusion, what you suggested in the last paragraph should work. (Make sure to include keywords in your articles)

Furthermore, as Keri and Logan had suggested in the answers, fixing up your page layout will also benefit your ranking.  It will reduce bounce rate and by breaking down the page to many different pages or sections, it will have more pages for google to crawl and easier to read.

Other than update frequently, there are many other factors and reason why your ranking drop.  Try building more qulaity backlinks and BLOG (have more pages to crawl).

Hope this answers your question.

Hello Again Erin,

1. 301s are used for 2 purposes.  One way is to tell or direct bots to crawl the other page and it will send linkjuices to the new page.  The second way is to redirect visitors to a new page.  If you are bulk redirecting all pages to the home page, it is kind of a waste.  Visitors want to visit a specific page but then you redirect them to the home page?  They will be frustated since it is not what they are looking for and may leave your page.  Bad user experience.  Furthermore, sending link juices to the home page might also be a waste.

The best practice will be redirecting specific pages to a new specific page.  For example, Page A on old domain is about bikes, you want to redirect it to Page A on the new domain about bikes.  One, it will transfer all the old linkjuice on bikes to the new one and visitors are redirected to a page where they want.

2. The canonical tag is for bots to know that you want one version to be crawled over the ones.  301 is kind of for visitors as well and redirecing linkjucies.  Depending on whether you want your visitors to visit only one version, then you might want to use the 301.  Furthermore, if different versions of your page is getting backlinks, maybe use 301 to send the linkjuice back to the canonical page.

Hope this helps.

Hi,

1. Yes, definitely have the blog under your domain.  It provides more benefits than not doing so.  You can either create a subdomain or a subfolder for your blog.  Blog.website.com or website.com/blog

2. Whether you have a blog outside or under same domain, you should have a link on the main website to drive taffic to the blog.

3. If you do not rewrite the article and simply post the same article to ezine, it is not beneficial.  Posting on ezine and article directories is an old tactic and doesn't work as well now.  However, these directoies can definitely give you more views but not good for SEO.

Create a blog under your domain and post frequently so your site will get the freshness update overall.  Keyword research before publishing and include them in your article.  Provide informative articles and make sure to share on Social Media sites.  Social Signal is slowly playing a part in SEO.

Hope this helps.  Please let me know if you have more questions.

Hi,

I don't think it is possible to crawl any password protectec pages.  Password protected pages are usually blocked and bots are unable access those pages.

And yes it is true that only sites that are publicly and live can be crawled.

Hi Dina,

1. Depending on wordpress theme and whether you have enough useful contents on the HP, I would suggest using a static page for Homepage.  If you simply have a blog with different articles, I would use the latest posts as homepage.

2. I use categories as the top navigation header so i wouldn't use no index/follow on that but i would put no index/follow on archive and tag pages to prevent duplication.  Furthermore, pages on archive/tag pages should already be under Category so it doesn't provide search engines anything useful/unique so it makes sense to make it no index/follow.

3. If you use static page for homepage, it will have unique contents and provide visitors with useful information so you shouldn't put no follow/index.

4.I say depending on how much of the latest post it is showing.  If it only show snippets, i wouldn't put no index/follow since you do want your HP to be found/crawled.  However, if it displays the whole post for all of your latest posts, then yes.

5. I like to have breadcrumb so that visitors and even bots can track the path to a certain page.  but for user experience purposes, i would include breadcrumb.

6. I would put recent posts/popular posts if it is useful for visitors.  If it helps visitors find more related posts that they are interested.  go for it.

7.  Yup, social sharing helps your posts get more visibility and increase traffic.  Recommend using it.  Once again, if putting related posts help reader navigating the site / finding useful contents.  Go for it.

Rule of thumb, provide good user experience

1. If you don't want to share your link juice, then use the nofollow.  You should let your links link natually instead of manually adding nofollows to links.  The following 2 links can provide you with more information on the nofollow internal linking.

http://www.seomoz.org/q/no-follow-internal-links-2

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/questions-answers-with-googles-spam-guru

2. The more popular way to promote your website is to guest blog on other authority sites.  One, you get to spread your name and knowledge and two, you get a nice juicy nautral backlink from them.  I guess you can post on other sites with the same article to gain more visibility; however, you HAVE TO MAKE SURE that they use canonical tag pointing to your article so that Google will know that your article is the original article.  Well, Guest blog is the way to go.

Hi Mike,

I also had a similar experience and debated for a while to finally come up with a solution.

If you are posting exactly the same content on your blog and on another blog, I belive that is already causing duplicate content even if you posted on your blog first.  How duplicate content works is that if someone search for your article title (like what you did), Google will pull up websites that best match the search.  If G sees that the bigger site has the exact same article as your blog, they will use the bigger site in the result because 1) it probably has more backlinks 2) it probably has more authority and 3) it's domain age is probably older than your blog.

One way to solve this is to use canonical tag but it seems like it doesn't work because they remove it.

Here is where you will have to debate and decide what works better for you.

1. Don't repost on the bigger site so that you article can actually be found via Search Engine instead of the bigger site.  However, with this approach, you will lose those article views from the bigger site and you will lose the opportunity of reaching viewers that will never visit your site,

2. Continue to post on the bigger site so that you will have more views on your articles, you can reach those people who you might not be able to reach if you only post on blog, increase your audience and get your name out.  However, with this approach, your website won't appear on search result since the bigger site obviously hav emore authority than your site and your site might get penalized for duplicate content.  Well, you can stop posting the article on your blog and just post on the bigger site to avoid duplicate content.

You will have to decide which scenario benefits you more.

OR

3. Post on your website but also create NEW and UNIQUE articles on the bigger site to increase view, hopefully traffic and etc.

To answer your questions

1. Yes, no snippet because the author tag is probably noindex.

2. My explantion on how duplicate works probably answered the question

Hope this helps.

Hi Tyler,

Based on your description above, to Google or the bots, it only seem like it is 1 page with the URL and it is definitely bad for SEO.  I am assuming the developers have some sort of script in your website to create this effect.  I would suggest removing the script and making it not so fancy and have different URL for each page.

Furthermore, the URL itself is bad since it doesn't tell bots and users what the page is about.  You should look into how to optimize URLs or best practices for optimized URLs.

Hi,

1. What I was trying to say is that it is not easy to contact the webmaster of certain websites to add the canonical tag to prove that you are the original author.  Therefore, if you are planning to do it, make sure you can reach the webmaster and they are willing to add the canonical tag.

2. Since I don't know which industry or niche you are in, it is hard to recommend authority blog sites to guest blog on.  What you can do is either 1) Google "Guest Blog + Industry/niche" or 2) Visit http://myblogguest.com/ and browse the forum to see what blogs are looking for guest authors.  It is free to create an accont and everyone in the community is nice.  If you ask people, I am sure a lot of people will refer you to that site to look for guest blogs.

Hope this helps!

Hi Ronald,

When did you make these changes.  When you change something, it doesn't immediately take effect.  It takes a while and the time varies.  Be patient and wait.

Hope you will see the changes soon.

Hi,

Did you check the amount of outside link linking to each page and the authority?  Page 2 might have more backlinks than page 1 or Page 2 might have more higher quality links than Page 1.  Page 1 might have a better on-site optimization but in additional to on-page, off-page optimization plays a more important part.  Furthermore, did you check social mention and etc?  Page 2 might been retweeted or mentioned on Social Media more often than page 1.

I don't think you over optimized but you can't determine the ranking based on just on page.  You should definitely check off page factors as well.

Hope this helps.

Hi Zac,

Since your initial website has mainly content on Dallas, i find it hard to incorporate Austin in there unless you change up all your content.  If you have  a generic website, I would recommend either using subdomain or folders to sepearte each location.  Such as dallas.copplaw.com austin.copplaw.com or copplaw.com/dalls and etc.  But that doesn't seems to work.

Since you are moving and having another location, I might create a 2nd website.  This option is definitely not the best approach since you will have to spend more time optimizing both websites and build links for both website.  Basically more website = more work.

If possible, you can rework the content on the main website to make it more generic instead of simply targetting one location.  Then use location subdomain or folder.  I find this to be the best approach.

Hi,

What David mentioned in his response is the best way to remove the /category/ from the URL.  However, based on your comment, you can't remove the /category/ because it conflicts with the page URLs which kind of contradict your initial question.

I would suggest reworking on the page URL and the category URL.  If you use 301 redirect to redirect the old URL to the new URL, everything should be fine once Google crawls your site again and see the redirect.

HI Harvey,

Like Rafi said, I don't believe domain registrar location will affect SEO but the host location will affect SEO.  It will be best to host based on where your domain is targeting.  For example, it is recommended to host in UK if you have a .uk website.  Search Engines will see your host location is in UK and assume you are from UK.  Furthermore, the load time will also be faster if host location is the same.

Rand had an amazing Whiteboard Friday that explains where to host

international-seo-where-to-host-and-how-to-target-whiteboard-friday