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It sounds like you’ve never gone down this route yourself. I have never given my content away... but lots of people have given their content to me.  I have one of the stronger sites in my niche and when they give me their content, my site then usually ranks above theirs for all of the keywords targeted by the content that they gave to me.   And my site is then going to rank above them for these keywords Permanently. Giving your content to a stronger site is not good if you are competing for the keywords in that content.  However, if your goal is simply to "get a message in front of as many people as possible" then giving your content away - even to competitor sites will increase your visibility overall.  Those are the types of people who usually want me to publish their content.  If I rank above them they are OK with that even if I cut off their traffic. Don’t you think that Tom’s opinion about guest posting can be useful for online relationships between websites of a similar subject... I am not out to build "relationships" with my competitors, I am out to beat them. If you are simply trying to "get a message out" then relationships are fine. If you have really good content and you want to get traffic then expose it to social media.  If your content is really that good it can be like tossing gasoline on a fire.   But, if you give that same article to your competitor... you have just tossed gasoline onto his fire. ...maybe Google is not as keen to reward this kind of activity regarding links in the article but I’m not sure if that’s true. Lots of people right now have Penguin problems from all of the guest posting that they have done.

Hi Alan, One option you might not have considered is buying a pre-buiilt premium responsive theme, either as HTML/CSS templates, or a Wordpress theme, then customize the design to suit from there. Some of the big theme marketplaces like ThemeForest have premium themes focused on holiday rentals, so I can imagine you'll find something suitable. This should reduce your costs quite a lot, whilst still allowing you to keep up with the competition. Let me know if you would like any further advice on this. All the best, Greg

Hi Mark Yes I got all my Google plus score back  log into my account or not,  so it seems like things are back to normal, like you say it musts have been a bug ! Best Alan

Thank you I got the same 8 and 12 on G.com using hidemyass.com  but not on the Rank Checker ...not good if it’s inaccurate

Hi Alan, From the sounds of it, I believe you are missing the crucial element of adding the reference before the -site: operator. For example I want to search for all references of [seomoz] minus results from the actual site (seomoz.org). Therefore, my search would look something like this: seomoz -site:seomoz.org Hope that helps.

There are sitewide links to http://www.whitby-holiday-cottage.com/ and http://www.northyorkmoorscottages.co.uk/ in the left navigation. I would not do that.  I would have a page on the site that received traffic from those links and then one link on that page to the other domain.

Of course I wouldn't and except any kind of links if there from a good source, cheers

Hi Alan! Check out themeforest.net I use them for all of my templates.

Absolutely spot-on advice again EGOL I've got to admit that I don't think design is my strength, or to rephrase it is definitely not but as they always say it's in the detail and I recognised the advantage of your suggestions again as soon as you point them out. http://www.endeavourcottage.co.uk/ I've have removed the horizontal text links and put a simple banner at the top. I think tomorrow I'll put the social share buttons in the constantly  side field smaller size at the bottom. The whole site is much cleaner, easier to understand immediately. Potential customers don't have to start using brainpower to understand what's on offer where it is! If I start to pull in more property owners it will need a more sophisticated site, but I'll be paying for that design and functionality becouse it is beyond my capabilities... Best Alan

Hi Igor I totally get what you're saying people are not interested, unless they are interested.. It's my focus at the moment Twitter,  so I'm going to try to build up following is in each category that into that category. I was listening to the SEO called Kelvin Newman on his podcast and he a suggested that you should concentrate your efforts on one particular twitter account to build up your followers and save time etc , but it doesn't make sense. I like the guy and his advice usually but not on this occasion. I actually have control of another twitter account for a celebrity and that's building up more followers than all the rest of my accounts put together, but unfortunately once again I don't think the celebs followers will be generally interested in my holiday cottages or CCTV! At least I'll put a small ad at the top of the account for myself just in case Thank you for your clear punchy advice

I agree with Kevin here, as web users get more search savvy, long-tail keywords conversions are dramatically higher than of the shorter competitive keywords, and I experience that every day, However, I don't see what value Hittail.com provides you more then good ole Google Webmaster Tools. Just as hittail, WT tracks your visitors and provides you with a huge list of long tail search queries that brought users to your site and I'd say its safe to say that 80% of it is from all sorts of long tail keyword combinations.

Years ago I paid $1500 for keyword rich, two-word.com and it has worked out really well. However, if I had it to do over again I wouldn't.  Now I think a unique, brandable domain name with one of the keywords in it for $10 is a better choice. example: 2-word keyphrase:  abcde-efghij.com unique/brandable: abcdeworld.com Regards, Sam

I bought the domain whitbyjet.com for $300 and I'm pleased that I've got such a specific domain name with the two main keywords. Thanks for the help

The 301 redirects was quite easy to set up, but I've actually found a better solution using Dreamweaver for my problem. I replaced all the old pages where I'd broken the template in the sub folder with new versions which are attached to the template with the correct copy and paste the content and title tags. So all the pages which are indexed and now the new looking version. The one thing I've learnt from this episode is that if you don't know how to operate a particular piece of software and you can't get the answers you require immediately, be patient until you know how to do things correctly. It saves time in the long run..............

Hello Thomas I understand your point that if usually an financial investment gets a good enough return in an ideal situation with unlimited funds you just go for it, but in the real world unlimited funds don't exist usually. The 95% occupancy throughout the year is only because I've worked at getting every aspect of the business correct the facilities of the cottage after this spot on with the films tour etc. the other properties I represent on the same website and not quite as good and do not get the same occupancy rates so you've just got to get everything correct it appears. I can see the you probably would get diminishing returns at some point on search engine results in comparison to time input but I've never got their because I've probably managed at this moment in time to get around 60% of the high traffic keywords working for me above the fold on page 1 of Google but there's still room for improvement. Only limited by time and money But like you I love SEO it's become a way of life which is enjoyable on many levels.

Absolutely great advice from EGOL, but it's a lot easier when you really selling just one product from your webpage, checking the analytics everybody goes to the tariff page and then moves on to the availability if they make it,  some get put off by the tariff page and leave

The various responses from SEOMoz staff here are a pretty good example of why I'd consider a Pro subscription worth the money. The tools are great, but what compels be to stay is the community and the immediacy of responses to common questions or pitfalls that professionals and novices alike will encounter.