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That's a great study - thanks for sharing it with me.

Thanks Tom, yes it's Wordpress - I do manually edit the slug to take out stop words and irrelevant words but sometimes its just not enough.

If I use digital marketing as an example, I may end up having:

contentwhiz.com/content-marketing/keyword-optimisation/optimise-your-blog-posts-with-perfect-keywords

How long is too long? No idea!

I'll just Snapchat Rand and ask him...

p.s. (Sorry if contentwhiz is you!)

A client's site currently uses the URL structure:

www.website.com/�tegory%/%postname%

Which I think is optimised fairly well, as the categories are keywords being targeted.  However, as they are using a category hierarchy, often times the URL looks like this:

www.website.com/parent-category/child-category/some-post-titles-are-quite-long-as-they-are-long-tail-terms

Best practise often dictates (such as point 3 in this Moz article) that shorter URLs are better for several reasons.

So I'm left with a few options:

1. Remove the category from the URL
2. Flatten the category hierarchy
3. Shorten post titles two a word or two - which would hurt my long tail search term traffic.
4. Leave it as it is

What do we think is the best route to take? Thanks in advance!

Absolutely remove your links / disavow links from as many of them as possible.  You'll probably lose more ranking by keeping them, over the coming months.

Even if you have to work to replace them with quality links, it will definitely be worth doing!

So there's an obvious difference between a branded and non-branded search term, but I'm interested in the SERPs that are shown as a result.

Branded search only results in 7 listings on the first page - obviously because branded search is generally more navigational in nature and the lower results get minimal CT.

Are their any technical differences beyond this?

Also, how does google define a branded search term? Because a search for Vodafone or Dell show reduced results, but Coca Cola does not.

Thanks guys

Comprehensive... thanks!

If you're trying to create a site which is an information hub, obviously linking out to authoritative sites is a good idea.

However, does linking to a PDF have the same effect?

e.g Linking to Google's SEO starter guide PDF, as opposed to linking to a google article on SEO.

Thanks!

I asked a similar question recently, the response covers your question and offers some useful tips.

Good luck!

http://www.seomoz.org/q/quality-links-are-beneficial-but-are-neutral-links-detrimental

Provided the site isn't spammy and its content and link profile are of a decent quality, I can't forsee any problems.

Besides, what if a website was called freespeech.com? I cant imagine Google seeing that as spammy.

So obviously a link profile featuring quality / authoritative / relavant in-bound links is preferable, but here's my question:

If I'm starting work on a brand new domain, should I build links that one would consider neutral (i.e. from a non-spammy, but unrelated site) or should I not bother and only focus on quality links?

Thanks

If they are paid links, then it would almost certainly hurt your rankings to advertise on there. This is because they are not marked as sponsored links - Matt Cutts' article should shed some light:

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/why-did-my-pagerank-go-down/

However, we should note that those links aren't specifically paid links, but are automated links to pages with advertisements on there so there may be some ambiguity.

My advice would be to look elsewhere for quality, related linking domains.

Confirmed, my suspicions.

Thanks Philipp!

Just doing some research for a potential PPC campaign. For the search terms I'm looking to target, no paid results appear wither above or to the right of the organic SERPs.

Does anyone know the reason for this?

Search term "Cigar Merchants"

Is this because the search term is smoking related?

Thanks!

We're on the latest version and still use that plugin, working fine. But if you'd rather be safe in the knowledge that the plug in is being maintained, take a look at these

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/search.php?q=redirect

Wordpress site?

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/simple-301-redirects/

Very easy to use, highly recommended

I agree with Brad - However, you may find these links start to disappear. Lot's of these directories feature 'recent profiles' or 'new links' in the sidebar / footer etc, which causes your link to appear everywhere the template is repeated.

They may reduce down to 2 or 3 links from this site over the coming weeks

Definitely agree Matt - I find the description tag needs to be optimised to inform users about the site and to inspire click-throughs, as opposed to optimising keywords for Search engines.

good advice

Muchos gracias

I think everybody has made valid points. I would suggest what you need to take away from the discussion is this:

• Google is placing more and more focus on natural links - therefor there are some SEOs suggesting that anchor text 'Click here' or 'www.domain.com' holds more authority than 'PLUMBING PLUMBERS PLUMB'. Extreme example... but you see my point
• It's true that keywords in domains are getting less and less emphasis, partly to combat keyword stuffing in URLs but predominantly because there's no reason why www.chris.com should be any less of a plumbing authority than www.plumbing.com.

Alas, I'm rambling... the keywords in that particular anchor text wont do a great deal assuming modern theories are correct, but using the URL as the anchor text appears natural and will have positive influence.

Like all SEO, these are just opinions though! good luck

If you have no physical premises (i.e. operate online) but you only serve clients in a specific area, what is best practice for targeting a local area?

I know G. Places can be used if you have a premises, and that .co.uk / hosting server location make a difference, but beyond that... ?

Thanks!