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Great suggestions. I've recently combined some pages (login/register, about/contact/ToS/privacy, and a few others) and have been very happy with the results. I removed 8 links from every page.
I am also thinking about removing some more links from my product pages, to try and keep the most juice on those pages. Those pages don't need the same navigation as the homepage.
I think comment links are more valuable for building relationships with other sites and for branding with targeted audiences. I think the links themselves are diluted as far as SEO value goes.
Google knows when links are comment links, and might even disregard them all together on certain sites. If the blog has an editorial policy (needs approval for comments, or deletes spammy ones) they might offer more value. Plus the links are generally at the bottom of the page, and may send less value. It really comes down to a case by case basis. I would use the same criteria for blog posts as I do for links in general:
-Page rank or moz rank?
-Regularly cached pages from the blog in the index?
-Good content? Is it related to your site?
I would say if it's good related blogs it's not a waste of time, but don't expect to climb up the rankings just because of those links. I also wouldn't differentiate too much between no follow and do follow links. Google still tracks the no follows and having some will look organic and would still give you some of the networking and branding benefits mentioned above.
Vinnie
Hi,
I can't think of it off the top of my head but one of the keyword spy websites has a tool that shows PPC history I believe. This could help you know the source of the old traffic. Does anyone know what site I am talking about? It might actually be keywordspy.
That is interested that in analytics you can disable PPC tracking. That could help scammers sell websites claiming organic traffic.
My suggestion would be to probably make different pseudonyms. Something you could look into is whether the aforementioned people have personal accounts. I'm sure they have friends and family that they might not want to address as The Oatmeal and NotSleepy, so they probably have private accounts for personal sharing.
I see only one real benefit to ordering 1000 facebook likes. They won't be targeted, and won't generate any leads.
What they can lead to is more people liking your facebook page, or making it look like you have more credibility. Would you be more inclined to buy from or like a site that has 12 facebook likes, or 1012? Google may crawl those likes and see they are rubbish, but the average consumer or visitor wouldn't. You may not get a boost in the rankings with fake social signals, but it could lead to more genuine social signals.
Cheers,
Vinnie
Hey Dave,
One idea that comes to mind is building a few links to that directory page. The nice thing is they don't have to be very targeted since you don't really need to worry about penalties or anything like that. That category seems to be pretty deep which could explain your problem; it probably doesn't get very much link juice at all from the categories above it in the directory.
Get a few links to it and it may be crawled/cached/indexed more often and start showing up in Google.
Cheers,
Vinnie
I am a big fan of guest blogging too. My favorite is a bit more traditional though. I just do some advanced Google searches and contact sites that have links pages or are relevant to my site. I make each email personalized. Not too exciting but pretty effective. Sometimes I will offer content or something else in exchange for a link or a mention.
For free guest blogging I would suggest:
Everyone I know who posts there absolutely loves the community and service, including myself. It's a good place to get a few high quality links, but also to connect with some other webmasters who also work in your niche. These contacts can lead to a lot more link opportunities.
Vinnie
I don't think a lot of visitors are gonna look into that stuff as much as SEOs would. They might see the plugin on the homepage that has a like button, and see that it shows 500+ or whatever and say "hmm I guess they have some loyal customers". Granted some may check the actual facebook page (as opposed to the website likes) to see about coupons and specials.
Some people may be dubious. I don't know what my official stance would be on doing the likes or not, but I think the numbers would still be more of a benefit than a detriment.
I look forward to seeing more input on this issue too. I am having the same issue as we speak. One of my smaller (but older) network sites is outranking the bigger site for a particular (big) keyword that I want to rank for. I keep thinking about doing something with it, but I am hesitant. I am also a bit greedy, as I think I could get both sites on the first page with some more work.
For now I am going to go back and optimize the smaller site so that it will be more suited for monetization.
I agree with you about the value of links over time. I think an aged, older link from an older page is definitely stronger than the average link. I also think there is a temporal boost for a new link. So when you get a new link, it might be valued at a 7 on a scale of 1-10. After that initial window (whether it's weeks or months) it may drop to a 4 or 5, but then over time will work back up to a higher number. I think it's a bit more complex than that, but in general that's how I look at it.
I use the same criteria for looking at existing links as I do for new ones. Is the site relevant to yours? Does it have authority? Is it spammy? Does it link to bad neighborhoods? If not, I'd say it's always valuable.
I think Andy explained it pretty well.
New sites do tend to get a temporal boost, as well as new links (I believe Rand did a great post on SEOMoz about temporal links but I can't seem to find it). The issue may be that you didn't keep up the link pace, so it went back down to where it should be for the time being.
If it is a fairly competitive term that you are talking about I wouldn't be that surprised, as 2-3 months usually won't be enough for a brand new site/domain to rank for the bigger phrases. Give it a few more months of steady link/content building and you should see some positive results.
I'm sure most SEO people here can share a story where they had the temporary boost and crossed their fingers hoping that maybe it isn't temporary only to see it go down a few pages.
Today's Whiteboard Friday post addresses this situation: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/cross-domain-canonical-the-new-301-whiteboard-friday
Since you have identical content on each page and it's basically the same site you could rel=canonical the secondary sites to the original and you should see your original site gain the rankings, while keeping the old sites online for the time being.
Like the others said, just a small amount of link building should let the original site outrank the others.
Cheers,
Vinnie
Hi,
Yes you can appear twice in the SERPs. Check out this query:
Brooklyn-Exterminator.net appears at the top and bottom of the rankings. That's a nice double hit. A lot of the stuff you do to optimize your places listing can also help your regular SEO efforts. A lot of local directories that give you citations will also give you links, so they can definitely go hand in hand.
Hope that helps,
Vinnie
I've been reading about the proper use for block quotes and citations lately, and wanted to see if I was interpreting it the right way. This is what I read:
http://www.pitstopmedia.com/sem/blockquote-cite-q-tags-seo
So basically my question is, if I wanted to reference Amazon or another stores product reviews, could I use the block quote and citation tags around their content so it doesn't look like duplicate content? I think it would be great for my visitors, but also to the source as I am giving them credit. It would also be a good source to link to on my products pages, as I am not competing with the manufacturer for sales. I could also do this for product information right from the manufacturer.
I want to do this for a contact lens site. I'd like to use Acuvue's reviews from their website, as well as some of their product descriptions. Of course I have my own user reviews and content for each product on my website, but I think some official copy could do well.
Would this be the best method? Is this how Rottentomatoes.com does it? On every movie page they have 2-3 sentences from 50 or so reviews, and not much unique content of their own.
Cheers,
Vinnie
I agree with you on both fronts. I never target any specific long tails, but I always build content to rank for long tails. The way to do this is with quality content with a large word count. I never write the content with any long tails in mind, but I know that with quality link building I will naturally rank for some long tails.
One of my sites gets thousands of visits from hundreds of keywords. I might get 5-10 visits a month from each phrase. It would have been silly to plan for any of these keywords.
Have you set up Google Places? Since you are a local business that serves local clients, that could be a good route to go. You can always set it to "do not display address" if you work from home and not an office. Once you do that, make an effort to hit even more local directories like Manta, US City and others. It may be easier to rank your places in conjunction with your website.
You could also go the route of designing a widget or WP/Joomla theme, that may have a "designed by so and so" link in it somewhere. I wouldn't force people to keep it in, but a lot will.
You could consider making a page for each town you want to rank for as well, and then you can optimize the homepage for the bigger, more lucrative phrases.
Vinnie
Does anyone else have anything to add? I'd love to see a few examples of pages that make use of the tags and how they are doing in the search engines. I certainly understand if you don't want to share your specific pages though.
You can also check out Google Trends: http://www.google.com/trends
This will give you data from the past three years or so, but should be viewable in a monthly format. Insights should also work well (like Aran suggested).
If he put the image within the h1, and set the alt text to what he wanted the H1 would that help? It wouldn't be ideal but it could be a workaround that would yield some results.
I agree the design should encompass the proper tags, especially the H1 and H2.