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Ah right. I'd still go with putting a site straight onto the domain you have bought.

How old was is the domain / how long has it been registered before you bought it and what are the DA/PA of the domain?

Keyword specific urls no longer have the value they once did, although I suspect that they do give some advantage when trying to rank for a specific keyword.

Personally, I wouldn't look to change an already established 'mini' brand url just to include keywords. There are lots of massive websites that started off small, ranking well and generating brand awareness.  You wouldn't necessarily know what they are selling either judging by their domains, but it hasn't hindered them. Look at Amazon, play.com, or even Google - no keywords in the domain - just great sites with great products and customer service.

I would continue with the brand, improve onpage and content where needed, keep marketing the way you have been and carry on.

You could always build a separate blog on a different c class with the keyword rich domain.

**Be carefull if amending the htaccess file. **

Make a back-up of it before you change anything. Test one redirect to make sure its working before you go ahead and add multiple redirects to the file.

**Be carefull if amending the htaccess file. **

Make a back-up of it before you change anything. Test one redirect to make sure its working before you go ahead and add multiple redirects to the file.

Moosa is right, again, if using wordpress install the yoast SEOplugin: http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/

As well as enabling you to handle your on page seo, you can also handle your redirects and robots.txt files through the plugin.

Hi,

Personally I don't use them and have not seen any negative or positive effects of doing so.

The main reason I don't is, considering Google doesn't use them as a ranking influencer, then I just don't waste time filling them in.  I don't think the time it can take warrant's the reward from any search engine that still looks at them. Plus, I don't like the fact a lazy competitor might take a look to see what my main focus is.

Your time would be better invested focusing elsewhere.

If the keywords tab is already on the site, then how many pages would you need to remove it from? How long would it take? And given the only real reason to remove would be to stop competitors seeing them  - info which they can easily find anyway, is it worth the effort? I'd be inclined to say not.

So, in short - if they are NOT present don't bother adding. If they ARE present, don't waste time removing.

Hope this helps.

A good point

I'd agree with Keven, there is nothing wrong with directory submissions as long as they are relevant and manually reviewed by an editor. Also look into local and niche directories that suit your site business.

The problems with directory submissions for me begin with mass submissions where the work is outsourced or automated - I cant see you getting any value from this.

There is a great list of decent directories right here on moz, with a guide.

Thanks Billy, i'll be taking a look at that then. Is there a free/trial version?

Sorry, I am the one that misunderstood your question, read it too fast.

I don't believe there is one single tool that can be used to 'discover' all the keywords any single site ranks for. There are a number of tools you can use collectively that may give a bigger picture.

I dug out an old moz post that might be of interest - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/what-keywords-do-i-rank-for.

Other than that I've not been able to locate a programme in the past that will do what you need on its own.

A great answer

You can install rank tracker from here for free: http://www.link-assistant.com/rank-tracker/

Pretty simple to use, once installed add your sites domain name and then a few keywords you with to see your site ranking for.

Might be a silly answer from me here, but have you logged into your Yahoo account to see if the listing is live?

I took some PA/DA metrics and rank date for my target keywords before signing up to the directories. I re-checked a couple months later and noticed decent increases in PA/DA and steady rank improvements, so i'll say signing up to both was a good move - but hard to say which directory contributed to the improvementes, whether it was one of or both.

But yes, I liked BOTW, much easier than Yahoo to get the listing approved and live, and cheaper to boot.

A great answer from Matt in the first instance, well covered.

Interesting to hear a possible positive story of a site begining to recover from Google changes.

It sound like you have taken some positive action in rectifying the issues you became aware of, which is what Google is saying webmasters should do - so well done.

It would seem Google has picked up on this and re-indexed the site accordingly.

I registered one of my sites back in May on Yahoo Dir and BOTW, started showing in OSE at the start of August, so can take a bit of time - but 7 months would seem way to long!

As mentioned you may need to wait a little while for the index to update.

A great answer.

Did you view the welcome webinar?

Yes, they work ok - best to keep an excel sheet to track who you have emailed. If you dont get a response after a couple of weeks resend. If you still dont get a response then move on.

You can pick some links up, but just make sure you don't spam web-masters and that your requests are relevant.