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I am in the process of redesigning my website, and I have been working on the Genesis framework a lot lately, so I used the Genesis framework to make my new site.

The URL is http://protechig.com

As I look at the H1 on the page (homepage only, every other page has solid h1s from an SEO perspective.) The first thing that I see is that the home page H1 is a links (to protech's home page). The second thing that I see is the the title text is replaced with an image (my logo) and there is a text-indent:-99999; and overflow:hiden; I just want to know from an SEO perspective if this is okay, and, if it isn't, what I could/should to to rectify it.

Thanks

Zach

After doing some individual research, this is what I found out:

When adding an using an "M." mobile site to Google WMT you need to add, and verify, this subdomain into Webmaster Tools the same way you would add and verify the "WWW" and "Non-WWW" version of a domain.

Hope this helps you out too

Hello Everyone,

I'm in a situation that I have no idea how to handle. I have only really dealt with RWD, and not a mobile-specific site.

Anyway, I have a client who is launching an m.domian.com for their mobile site, how do I add/configure this in WMT?

Thanks

Zach

Good answer we both submitted this at the same time.

Check out this article, it's the Google Requirements for Removing content

There are multiple ways to do this:

Ideally, robots.txt is the way to go, you can also noindex the page. There is no need to do both. If your looking for the page to disappear as well, i'd let it 404.

Another option is to request the URL to be removal request in Google Webmaster Tools along with these things it's under optimization>Remove URLs.

Hope this helps

Aaron,

That kind of sucked, I always like Moz's better than the keyword tool, it was a little more aesthetically appealing.

Any reason why Google Revoked Access across the board? I know Raven lost access as well, but I thought it was because of finances, not because google decided to go power hungry.

thanks for the update though

Thanks,

Let me know what you think of my post, I am trying to start establishing myself in the blogosphere, though that particular post is really is a high-level recap of Search Love, though I had a lot of points made in David Mihms Presentation, which was amazing.

In response to the local algos, they seem to be, in my opinion, even more neurotic than the organic ones. I mean they are ALL over the place, it is also VERY hard to track local rankings.

You'd be treading in some murky water there. I had a conversation last week at SearchLove Boston with David Mihm, one of the most reputable local SEOs, and we had a conversation about creating fictitious addresses for businesses, the problem is that you cannot use a PO box, which leaves you to use things like UPS store mailboxes. Google can obviously tell that if your at a UPS Store and will take it down; David Mihm explained it as a Wack-A-Mole game.

Also, if you use fictitious addresses, what stops competitors from reporting you? Again, you could try it, but it's real tricky to do, and successfully get away with. I'm much more of a fan of #RCS.

Some good resources to learn from

getlisted.org

davidmihm.com

http://protechig.com/seo/search-love-boston-2012-takeaways/ (not to toot my own horn, but I have a good amount of local tips in this post)

Hope this helps!

Zach

I personally haven't had this happen, but I have a few friends who have had their posts promoted. I'm pretty sure it is a 301 Redirect. What happens is your post gets syndicated to a lot more people (more people subscribe to the main blog than the UGC).

An interesting thing that my friend made me aware of is that if your YouMoz post does get upgraded to the main blog, you lose all the social shares of it as a YouMoz Post, personally I think Moz should try to fix that , but it may be impossible (because if they keep both posts then it's duplicate content, unless they noindex the page, but I digress).

Depending on the volume, I might just want to integrate both blogs into one, but delineate the equivalent of a YouMoz post as a "Guest Post" which is what YouMoz is.

Hope this helps

Zach

Okay after some research the only thing that I have found that has changed since the 23rd is an increase in missing meta descriptions, around 700 of them. Could that impact SERPs

I'm a WP developer and an SEO, i'd be more than willing to do some troubleshooting here on the forums for you. If the settings>privacy is checked to allow search engines to crawl, then I doubt it's a WordPress issue in itself, though a plugin could do this.

What is the URL of your site? You may have a robots.txt that is blocking search engine crawlers, i've also seen a thing where all URLs on the site are noinexed and nofollowed.

Let me know and i'll take a quick look for you.

Zach

Redesigning is an undertaking on a site from an SEO perspective, and should be well thought of well before you implement it.

You should not re add the website to WMT, or remove URLs. If you aren't using a CMS that dynamically generates sitemaps, I would submit the sitemap once the site is live and delete the old one. There is no real need to ask the googlebot to recrawl your site, i'm assuming you have links to your site, and it is added in WMT, so google already knows the site is there (especially if you have indexed URLs)

As far as deleting old pages, and creating new ones, this will require a lot of thought and effort on your end. What I would do, is look at all the URLs on your website currently, then determine what ones are going to be removed, and what ones will simply have the same content and the URLs changed. The ones that have the URLs changed, I would just redirect to the new URL. The pages that are being removed completely, i'd ask myself, what will the next-most relevant page on the new site be to this page? I would then have the redirect go to that URL.

The other case of this is "category" and "sub-pages" of that category. If you decide to remove all the sub pages to and just have a single category page, redirect all the sub pages for a category page. For example, if you were selling a printer, and originally had a separate page for each feature of the printer (scanning, fax, ink efficiency etc..) and now are showing the features on a /printer/features/ page I would Simpy redirect the /features/fax/ page to the /printer/features. Again, for redirects it's just doing the next-most relevant URL.

Also, once the new site is live, it wouldn't hurt to contact your top links on pages that you redirected and ask them to change the URL of the link, stating that you redesigned the site and the URL have changed. Remember with 301s you lose 1-10% of the link juice that is passed through, so for high-quality links, this could be the difference in top rankings.

I can't emphasize enough the importance of implementing all the redirects necessary, I've had times where I literally had WMT warnings for 9,000 found URLs because a client didn't plan properly and didn't implement the 301s. An increase in 404s can affect your rankings.

Hope this helps

Zach

I'm a huge fan of using things like screaming frog to get a lot of raw information, and then pushing them through something like link detective (or the links extension for excel) to get data on all the pages.

Screaming frog will give you some valuable info like

• title length
• meta description length
• h1-h6 info
• Meta Keywords info (basically to know if anything is there so you can remove them)
• Duplicate meta descs. titles etc

It's also free for less than 500 URIs

Hope this helps

Zach

Ideally, titles should not be written for search engines at all, and search engines, especially Google, is really intelligent in taking in semantic cues, meaning that they will see Photography and Photographer as the same keyword; I'd use the adwords keyword tool and see if the estimated traffic is the same just to make sure

More importantly than focusing your title to your keywords, it really needs to be related to the content on the page; this is what a title is. This is where the finesse comes in of planning relevant content to your keywords. Use tools like ubersuggest, and even search Google without pressing enter to find some common search terms related to wedding photography & London/Essex, and create content based on what people search for.

For your home page, I would probably create a relevant title for wedding photography + location, but then drill down and create specific pages for both London and Essex, being location specific for each one; possible mentioning landmarks or points of interest. I'm not that familiar with London, unfortunately so I can't offer you location specific advice.

Hope this helps

Zach

I agree,

Just kind of describe what it's showing of a specific picture. Just keep in mind the "real" use of alt text, Accessability for people without a monitor, if you keep that in mind, you should be golden.

Thanks,

I'll give it a look

Thanks,

I'll take a look at it

I agree with Paul,

To elaborate a little more, the problem is is that web hosts, most of the bottom of the barrel ones, share many, many websites on the same IP, thousands I'd expect. The thing is, most websites on these shared hosts aren't overly concerned with SEO, and many of them are spam, and if one of the 1000s of sites on the same IP get's banned, then your site could be potentially harmed from a SERP perspective.

Hope this clears things up a little bit more

Zach

Hello Everyone,

I have taken a few clients recently that i'm doing local SEO for; I'm curious of what the best tool is for keyword tracking with local intent? I have heard things about WhiteSpark and MicrositeMasters, but I have no idea what is the best, is SEOmoz's tracking good for local?

Thanks

Zach

Hello Lance

In general, a 301 redirect tells google, "hey, this page moved and is now at this URL." With that being said, here are some best practices:

If you are literally just merging pages into one, within reason, then there is no problems with redirecting them to the new page.

If your just completely trashing the page because it serves no value, than have the redirect go to the next category up, or, have the individual features page go to the features page once you delete them. I would ask myself this question, "If I was a user following a link that links to the 301d page, where would the next-best pertinent page be?"

Be aware of the number of 301 redirects any specific link has. Ideally, there should only be one.

If your concerned with link juice, which you stated you are, what is stopping you from contacting the webmaster of the site that links to that page and ask them to change the URL on the link, stating that you redesigned the site and the URLs have changed. The worst they can say is no, or nothing at all, or they can take the few minutes out of their day and change it.

A great way to do this is use OSE to get the links to any given page on your site, and then run it through one of the numerous tools to find the whois contact info of that domain, or just use their "contact us" page.

Hope this helps,

Zach