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  • dcutt


    I have not found a clear answer to this particular aspect of the "first link priority" discussion, so wanted to ask here. Noble Samurai (makers of Market Samurai seo software) just posted a video discussing this topic and referencing specifically a use case example where when you disable all the css and view the page the way google sees it, many times companies use an image/logo in their header which links to their homepage. In my case, if you visit our site you can see the logo linking back to the homepage, which is present on every page within the site. When you disable the styling and view the site in a linear path, the logo is the first link.  I'd love for our first link to our homepage include a primary keyword phrase anchor text. Noble Samurai (presumably seo experts) posted a video explaining this specifically http://www.noblesamurai.com/blog/market-samurai/website-optimization-first-link-priority-2306 and their suggested code implementations to "fix" it http://www.noblesamurai.com/first-link-priority-templates which use CSS and/or javascript to alter the way it is presented to the spiders. My web developer referred me to google's webmaster central: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66353 where they seem to indicate that this would be attempting to hide text / links. Is this a good or bad thing to do?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dcutt
    0
  • inhouseninja


    Hi All, So once you use OSE Tool to point you in the right direction of sites that might be able to give you links, what are the best practices for then reaching out to the website?  I get that you need to give value in your request for a link and offer something of value – but what else to think about?? Ie Call them, email them, email who?  Follow up with phone call??? Do you just use the standard contact form on their website?  Presumably you need to track all this, just do it in a spreadsheet? What do you say in the email?  Do you offer them a link (if you can?) I guess it’s a thing that sounds easy enough – go get a link – but I would imagine that people who have done this enough with some success can maybe share some of the things that particularly worked or did not work… At the moment it just seems a daunting  / time consuming task  - even thinking of getting an intern to help do all this – pros and cons to that as well??? Thanks for your time!

    Link Building | | inhouseninja
    0
  • webdecorators


    I have a list of keywords in a campaign that I need to update. I use the keyword report card to review those keyword performance by page. I dont currently see a way to update those keywords, I only see the option to add or delete. I don't want to delete and re-enter because then I will lose that "mapping". Is there a way to simply update a keyword?

    Keyword Research | | webdecorators
    0
  • mjmorse


    Can you analyze outbound links from a given page with Open Site Explorer?

    Moz Pro | | mjmorse
    0
  • GriffinHansen


    Two sites. One has weaker sales. What would the benefits and problems for SEO of moving the weak site from its own domain to a subdomain of the stronger site?

    Technical SEO | | GriffinHansen
    0
  • larahill


    Is there a way to leverage paid advertisements placed in industry specific publications to get SEO benefits? I am looking to advertise in publications like trade journals or magazines, but want to also reap SEO benefits by getting a link. So I am avoiding buying banner ads, but instead trying to find opportunities for links from editorial mentions, quality article or editorial submissions, etc. Advice on the link proposition, or best way to approach editors, please? Many of these publications are traditional print publications, and their sites are really seo'd. Thanks.

    Link Building | | larahill
    0
  • cindyt-17038


    Does it matter for SEO if one uses a base href meta tag or if it is defined using java script?

    Technical SEO | | cindyt-17038
    0
  • JeanYates


    I could go widget crazy with my website, there are so many cool buttons and linking this and likes and etc. There's one that is used a lot, called "Addthis" that adds a series of small icons to share a page via facebook, twitter, etc. The javascript looks innocent enough, but there's a link, and who knows what google makes of it. Then there are the dozen or so Facebook widgets - are they safe to use without negative SEO consequences? Does anyone know of any other pitfalls with using the numerous addons offered free to enhance your site? Thanks for any wisdom out there! Jean

    Social Media | | JeanYates
    0
  • BradBorst


    I have attended a number of social media webinars with tips on getting the most out of Facebook and Twitter.  Now, I would like opinions from someone who is not trying to sell me something. We post 2 daily blog articles to our Facebook company page which auto re-posts to Twitter every day.  Is that enough, or is it necessary to hire someone to engage people with additional conversation? If your answer is that additional conversation is needed, are there any companies or individuals that you recommend to provide these services at a reasonable cost?

    Social Media | | BradBorst
    0
  • yudz


    Hey SEOmoz guys, My question is simple. Have you re-test your metrics (DA, PA, mR etc) correlation with SERPs in google panda update? are they still valid in determining authority, trust and popularity in panda update? are they still usefull? Thanks! Yudhis

    Moz Pro | | yudz
    0
  • sbg781


    Hi. I am responsible for choosing an ecommerce platform and overseeing the implementation of a large ecommerce site. The site will have tens of thousands of products and will be fairly complex. Eventually the site will integrate with the suppliers back end inventory/order management system, which is some sort of custom Windows/.NET system. (I'm not very technical if you haven't noticed....) Primarily I want a platform that is SEO friendly, and I have to be sure that the site is developed properly from an SEO and usability perspective. I thought I would go with an asp.net solution (aspdotnetstorefront, specifically) to facilitate the future integration, but I am questioning this choice after reading some of the comments I have found here at SEOMoz. So is asp.net really a bad choice SEO-wise? I almost considered Magento, but was having trouble finding a good solution provider to work with. I also worried about integration issues down the road. I would appreciate any advice or input anyone may have. Thank you!

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sbg781
    0
  • davebrown1975


    Hi All, I'm trying to decide whether to switch to a more relevant domain name for an SEO project. For a while now I've already been doing the standard SEO work on an existing website, content optimization, link building etc but I can't help feeling I won't ever get the full benefits of SEO until I also change the domain name. The current website is for a law firm in new jersey called sandz.net which obviously has no immediate impression it is for a law firm so I'm looking at setting up a new domain and doing 301s to a new site. My concerns are that as its a highly competitive market,  I've initiated the campaign to target local searches so I'm wondering just how beneficial buying a domain name with the term lawyer or attorney which actually be. And of course the ideal domain names such as njlawyer, NJattorney  .COMs are all taken so I would be looking at perhaps a .ORG with the intention that all printed material the firm has still contains their original name, sandz.net and by word of mouth they should tell people their site is sandz.net as its easy to remember but for the sake of SEO and links then these should all be focused on a new domain.. Any thoughts appreciated.. Thanks

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | davebrown1975
    0
  • damoncali


    I've got a small, 3 month old site that was ranking for a few low-competition keywords. Then, yesterday, it dropped out of the rankings almost completely. The only way to find it is to google the URL/site name, and then it does come up. There are pages in the index, they're just not ranking like they did two days ago. I'm not doing anything black hat or even slightly shady - just writing articles and clean link building. Is this a normal part of the Google process? I've never seen it happen on any other sites I've been involved with.

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | damoncali
    0
  • DojoGuy


    I know people suggest having a H1 with your keyword on your page somewhere to help with SEO. My current wordpress theme has the post title as a H2. Is there a big difference in using H1 vs H2

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DojoGuy
    0
  • hellemans


    Hi all, I just noticed some extra links in the SERP where a webpage was showing events in the city. Does anyone know how these events can be indexed and placed by google in teh SERP? I have attached a screenshot, the underlying pages don't seem to be that special. I was wondering if there are special guidelines when optimising for events. It seems that Google will only show upcoming events for the next few days... Any help is greatly appriciated! Cheers!

    Algorithm Updates | | hellemans
    0
  • pauldoffman


    Bit of an odd one but I've been getting a large and steady stream of traffic over the last few months from a very random keyword that according to addwords figures shows "on data". Its our second biggest referring term only beaten by our brand name. We get more traffic from this term than keywords we have invested a lot of time in that show thousands of traffic volume in addwords. When looking at behavioral data its gets odder, a bounce rate of 98.11% time on site 2 seconds and page visits 1.02.  So this traffic isn't real traffic and it's not real people. So my questions are, what is it? why do we get this random traffic, has anyone els noticed things like this and is it a problem? I presume it must be something to do with some sort of spam but apart from that i'm stumped. It's just one of those things that has been bugging me so I would appreciate any help. Kind Regards Paul

    Reporting & Analytics | | pauldoffman
    0
  • fleurya


    My two best key words are "gps tracking" and "vehicle tracking". For the Irish market I have got the two domain names: www.vehicletracking.ie www.gpstracking.ie Have a very poor landing page on www.vehicletracking.ie and just redirecting www.gpstracking.ie to our site. I am wondering what I should do thie these two assets? Should I be running them as micro sites? re directing them? Or something else? Let me know what you think. Andrew

    Keyword Research | | fleurya
    0
  • WDN


    A few years ago our company decided to merge all its websites (magazine brands) as sub-domains under one new root domain. So the current situation is like this: brand1.rootdomain.com
    brand2.rootdomain.com
    brand3.rootdomain.com
    ... For the moment the rootdomain has a domain authority of 66. In a few weeks we would like to switch that rootdomain to the strongest (highest trust, pagerank,...) brand. So we get this: www.brand1.com
    brand2.brand1.com
    brand3.brand1.com Before we make the switch i'll have to make a pro and con list. So I hope I can get some advice for you guys if this is a good idea or not.

    Technical SEO | | WDN
    0
  • liors


    Hi There, I am looking for a tool that will allow me to learn about the new links our competitors get each month. Do you know a tool that lets you know each time your competitor has a new link?

    Competitive Research | | liors
    0
  • eazytiger


    A client has a site they'd like to translated into French, not for the french market but for french speaking countries. My research tells me the best way to implement this for this particular client is to create subfolders for each country. For ease of implementation I’ve decided against ccTLD’s and Sub Domains. So for example… I'll create www.website.com/mr/ for Mauritania and in GWT set this to target Mauritania. Excellent so far. But then I need to build another sub folder for Morocco. I'll then create www.website.com/ma/ for Morocco and in GWT set this to target Morocco. Now the content on these two sub folders will be exactly the same and I’m thinking about doing this for all French speaking African countries. It would be nice to use www.website.com/fr/ but in GWT you can only set one Target country. Duplicate content issues arise and my fear of perturbing the almighty Google becomes a possibility. My research indicates that I should simply canonical back to the page I want indexed. But I want them both to be indexed surely!? I therefore decided to share my situation with my fellow SEO’s to see if I’m being stupid or missing something simple both a distinct possibility!

    International SEO | | eazytiger
    0
  • eseyo


    I see that you have already answered this question before back in 2007 (http://www.seomoz.org/qa/view/2163), but wanted to ask your current opinion on the same question: Should I add a site-wide footer link to my client websites pointing to my website, or should I create a "website credits" page on my clients site, add this to the footer and then link from within this page out to my website?

    Web Design | | eseyo
    0
  • dirkla


    I have a website in a niche that's highly graphical in nature. Most of the pages that I rank well for are mainly textual at the moment, but I'm gradually adding image galleries to these pages. The galleries consist of a number of thumbnails that are html linked to the large version of the image (via the Lightbox script). My question: will the page lose pagerank because of the many links from the thumbnails to the images (upto 30/page besides the normal links)?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dirkla
    0
  • SimCaffe


    What could the reasons that a domain is ranking for the plural version of a key word on SERPs page 1 and for the singular version not at all? Google knows that both key words belong together, as in the SERPs for one version also the other version of the key word is being highlighted. If I search for the domain with the plural keyword it shows up on the first page in SERPs, but If I search for the same keyword as singular (in German it is just removing an “s”) I see the plural version highlighted many times but I cannot find my domain. What could be the reason for this behavior? penalties?

    White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SimCaffe
    0
  • DigitalLeaf


    Hi, With a the growing trend towards social media signals starting to have a decent impact on Search Engine algorithms, i'd like to know what tools people use for "social media site audits". I generally use a fair amount of manual observations for social media profiles such as profile completeness. Hubspot offer a few really nice tools over at http://grader.com/ that allows a quick 'score' for an account. I then take a look at the 'buzz' around a company over a few mediums such as Twitter Search, Google blog search, BoardReader, HowSociable.com and SocialMention.com Facebook Insights is good (if you own the domain) for testing the number of likes. Im still yet to see a decent tool for testing entire domains for # retweets, Diggs etc. What are your favourite tools for SEO Social Media Audits?

    Social Media | | DigitalLeaf
    0
  • PeterMurray


    I read/was told that it was a good idea to order your HTML to show the most important content first. So, on many sites I had put my global navigation div, for instance, below my main content div. Does this still apply? And does wise use of HTML 5 mean this is no longer necessary (eg use of "nav" section tag to indicate this section is about navigation). In the same vein, how does Google know that my sidebar nav is my sidebar nav (which your site seems to say is probably given less weight than top nav), and how does it know my topnav is my top nav? Maybe a daft question, but when someone asked me yesterday I realised I didn't know! (Phew - at last I have asked a short question!).

    On-Page Optimization | | PeterMurray
    0
  • tomcraig86


    Does using referral programs, such as by using index.php?referral_id=0001 pass any link juice back to the page index.php? I'm creating a web app that ideally I'd like people to be able to link to and bookmark - so that they can pull up their own settings. Is there any way that I can solve both of these at once? The use of PHP GET and the use of SEO. I'd really like to get a solution as I'm developing my new website! Any help would be appreciated!

    Link Building | | tomcraig86
    0
  • KeriMorgret


    I'm in the process of buying and running an existing forum that is running on DotNetNuke 5.2.0 and Active Fours 4.1. As part of the transfer, I'm asking that the site be upgraded to the latest version of DNN and AF 4.3. AF 4.3 has SEO-friendly URLs instead of the current long, ugly default URLs, and I'm looking forward to implementing that feature. My specific question is: What would you do to prepare for this upgrade in terms of the content, especially related to the URL changes? I've gone into Google Analytics and downloaded content by page title, exported the first 1000 results, and put those titles into Word and corrected spelling errors in the title so URLs will be based on correct spellings. General background: The site is not currently monetized, and there will not be an initial focus on monetization and likely only smaller efforts (affiliate Amazon links in a resource section) in the future. The site is free for users. I'm fine with taking a hit in organic traffic in the short term. About 1/3 of the traffic is from search engines right now, and less than 30% of the visitors are new visits. The site is going to continue much the same as it has until now. Same moderators, same purpose, same skin, etc. I have access to GA, site is verified in GWT, need to verify in Bing, and I do have root access to the server. I've already started working on image file sizes, both of user-submitted images and site-related images like the header. Until now, I have no experience with DNN or AF or any of the extensions (and am appalled at the price and lack of features of some of those extensions, compared to what I'm used to for WordPress). More general questions: In terms of SEO, I'm intending to treat the upgrade of the forum with the friendly URLs as a re-launch. I'm wanting good URLs, put in a site map, fix non-www to www, etc. When I start making the changes and submitting the site map and generally drawing Google's attention, I want Google to like what it sees, and have as much optimized as possible when googlebot comes around. My goal is to draw more targeted visitors from search that are interested in the content in the site. What other suggestions do you have for the site prep, both from being a forum in general and specifically on DNN/AF? I'm not putting the URL out just yet, as we haven't announced to the users the change of ownership is taking place. Thanks everyone!

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KeriMorgret
    1
  • jingliang3_rogers.com


    Hi, I would like to know if currently Google tracks pagerank. Also, I would like to know if link values are calculated from 1 - 100 number? For example could a front-page link from a large
    PR 9 news site  have a value of 80 and a link from PR1 blog have a value of 1? Is this generally how link values are calculated? Im pretty new to SEO, so i would just like to know about link weights and how they are calculated?

    Link Building | | jingliang3_rogers.com
    0
  • hiphound


    Hi! I just launched our newly coded site and just realized the installed 301 is NOT working. The URL string is the same EXCEPT for the removal of /shop/. Here is the code in .htaccess: ############################################ enable rewrites Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine on #RedirectMatch 301 ^/shop?/$ http://hiphound.com/ RedirectMatch 301 ^/shop?/$ http://hiphound.com ########################################### When I go to Google and click on an old link I get a 404. No bueno!! Here is an example: http://hiphound.com/shop/rubit-dog-tag-clip I thought (and was told) that the installed 301 would send this page to: http://hiphound.com/rubit-dog-tag-clip It's not. Please HELP!! 🙂 What am I doing wrong??? Lynn

    Technical SEO | | hiphound
    0
  • bnbjbbkb


    I have a question regarding a warning that I got on one of my websites, it says Duplicate content. I'm canonical url:s and is also using blocking Google out from pages that you are warning me about. The pages are not indexed by Google, why do I get the warnings? Thanks for great seotools! 3M5AY.png

    Technical SEO | | bnbjbbkb
    0
  • BedeFahey


    I'm working on a site that is throwing off a -lot- of duplicate content for its size. A lot of it appears to be coming from bad links within the site itself, which were caused when it was ported over from static HTML to Expression Engine (by someone else). I'm finding EE an incredibly frustrating platform to work with, as it appears to be directing 404's on sub-pages to the page directly above that subpage, without actually providing a 404 response. It's very weird. Does anyone have any recommendations on software to clearly map out a site's internal link structure so that I can find what bad links are pointing to the wrong pages?

    Technical SEO | | BedeFahey
    0
  • poolguy


    Ok, so I was just hired to do SEO for a company and so I did a backlink analysis.  As it turns out, they've got a pretty dirty link profile - footer links, white on white links, unrelated links, tiny font links, links from penalized sites, hardly any branded links... you get it. I was thinking about taking the worst of the worst links, removing them and leaving the rest, just to clean it up a little.  I don't want them to get penalized.... but... I don't want their rankings to drop either. Think I should leave them all and just start building relevant, branded links? OR Clean up the whole link profile? OR Just clean it up a little?

    Link Building | | poolguy
    0
  • tjgill99


    http://www.shopstyle.com/product/sephora-makeup-sephora-collection-glossy-gloss/233883264 This comparison shopping engine url shows googlebot something dramatically different than My frustration is that a comp shop takes retailers content and copies and duplicates it and then uses it to capture traffic and send sales to other retailers other than the original provider of the content. Although this is a javascript function and not explicit bot detection does this qualify as unethical cloaking?

    White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | tjgill99
    0
  • Amjath


    For example: As a keyword, is "Cisco®" the same as "Cisco"? I tried a couple of things to find out: 1. I put both keywords in Google adwords tool. Google displayed search volume data only for Cisco. That means it ignores the ® symbol. 2. I typed in Cisco® and Cisco in Google search. of SERPs are the same. And the first page results are almost same excpet for Google Places listings. Based on above two observations, I think that Google treats Cisco® and Cisco in the same manner. So if we optimize a page for Cisco®, we will get benefit for the keyword Cisco as well. Does anybody has any other experience? (Note: the keyword used here(Cisco) is just an example. Thanks, Supriya.

    Keyword Research | | Amjath
    0
  • alltreatment


    We're wondering how important it is to use a keyword at least 4 times versus say 2.  Often times we use our keywords once or twice within the body of our pages with appropriate H1 and Alt text use. Will we notice significant SEO benefits by using the KW at least 4 times given that we are scoring 'A's on almost all our pages via the On-Page Keyword Optimization Tool? Thanks!

    Moz Pro | | alltreatment
    0
  • adriandg


    Or does google treat this behavior the same way as a reciprocal link and discount any credibility of the citation?

    Image & Video Optimization | | adriandg
    0
  • iAnalyst.com


    Curious if anyone has had success ranking multiple sites with same whois and server info? We have a client who has purchased multiple businesses over the years in the same industry. Each site has a solid amount of link popularity already and good respected Brand. But I'm wondering with the whois info being the same and the same servers, if ranking for multiple domains will be worth attempting.

    Search Behavior | | iAnalyst.com
    0
  • Motava


    Will it make a difference if a page has this format for URLs and breadcrumb navigation www.domain.com/category.html
    www.domain.com/category/product1.html vs. www.domain.com/category/
    www.domain.com/category/product1.html
    or
    www.domain.com/category/product1 does it make sense to change the category page or will it not make a huge difference?

    Technical SEO | | Motava
    0
  • DojoGuy


    I have a website that is nearly all about videos and is based on Wordpress. Does anyone know of a way to create a video sitemap that updates automatically as I write a new post? The video files and other data are all stored in separate meta-post locations... So it needs to be able to grab them. Any help is appreciated.

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DojoGuy
    0
  • joemascaro


    I don't know what ranking factors they are using for this feed. The results vary greatly from a search done at google.com or google.com/news and google.com/finance I'm working with a website that regularly publishes finance-related news and currently gets traffic from google finance. I'm wondering what we can do to optimize our news articles to possibly show more prominently or more often. Thanks

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | joemascaro
    0
  • someoneguy


    Hello All, I've read quite a bit on here and the Matt Cutts blog http://mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-url-canonicalization/ about non-www vs www. I''ve also read a few recent posts on here but still left a little confused. First, my site is PR 4. We don't have many links, but the ones we do have (including internal) point to the www.example.com. You can also get to our site by typing example.com and it will not switch to the www. version. Both versions have the PR4, I just want to make sure I'm not losing any PR or juice between the different versions. My question, would you advise 301 redirect to the www version? if so, I have Godaddy as our host, is it as simple as going into the hosting control and doing the redirect there?

    On-Page Optimization | | someoneguy
    0
  • zarades


    I had 300 good natural links to my site from different sites and site ranked great for my keywords. Somebody (I suppose my competitor) has hacked other sites 2 days ago (checked Google cache) and now Yahoo Site Explorer shows 600 backlinks. I've checked new links - they all are in the same hidden div block - top:-100px; position:absolute;. I'm afraid that Google may penalize my site for these links. I'm contacting webmasters of these sites and their hosting so they remove these links. Is it possible to give Google a notice that these links are not mine so it could just skip them not penalizing me? Is it safe to make "Spam report" regarding links to my own site?

    White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | zarades
    0
  • thappe


    The on page optimization tool recommends a minimum word count of 50. Given the panda update, what word count would you recommend? Would that count vary if a photo appeared on the page, too?

    On-Page Optimization | | thappe
    0
  • poolguy


    Does it do anything to place the Canonical tag on the unique page itself?  I thought this was only to be used on the offending pages that are the copies. Thanks

    Technical SEO | | poolguy
    0
  • bozzie311


    I do NOT have a cms website. just php/html. How do I create a feed so I can register it with feedburner? Not for my blog just the website its self.

    Technical SEO | | bozzie311
    0
  • ciinc


    It is hard to sum up the question in one line, but basically my company has bought several descriptive domains that we would like to build out into microsites that link back to our main site. For example...say we are a florist. Our main site talks about all the different kinds of flowers we have and the work we do. So the idea is to buy weddingflowersdallas.com (example only...) and have a mini site that has the same look and feel as our main site, but has unique content that talks solely about our wedding flower business and has a few links back to our main site. 1. Is this a no no from a google perspective? 2. Is this a good strategy in general? Thanks, David

    Link Building | | ciinc
    1
  • KNect365


    I just received my weekly ranking report.  2 Up, 0 down, 8 the same this week.  However, last week my page was #2 for "innovation conference" and this week you report "not in top 50."  My first thought was penalty, but when I searched and removed personalization, we were still #2 for that search query.  So, something must be wrong with the report - either we're 1 down or "not in the top 50 is wrong."

    Moz Pro | | KNect365
    0
  • craven22


    I have a PR 4/5 (it varies) blog with around 20-25k uniques a month. I'm wondering if anyone could point me in the direction of a half-decent place to hire blog writers? Basically I would want someone to crawl disability news (I can provide tons of it, it autoposts to my 'Drafts' section on wordpress right now.). So basically would just need someone to re-write it. I also see lots of places pay you to write reviews of their products on your blog. Is there any service which effectively take control of content on your blog? They can post whatever they want (as long as it's not spammy and it's relevant to my niche) sell those reviews, and in exchange rewrite disability news articles for me? Thanks

    Content Development | | craven22
    1

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