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Posting this for Dave SottimanoI Here's the scenario: You've got a set of URLs indexed by Google, and you want them out quickly Once you've managed to remove them, you want to block Googlebot from crawling them again - for whatever reason. Below is a sample of the URLs you want blocked, but you only want to block /beerbottles/ and anything past it: www.example.com/beers/brandofbeer/beerbottles/1 www.example.com/beers/brandofbeer/beerbottles/2 www.example.com/beers/brandofbeer/beerbottles/3 etc.. To remove the pages from the index should you?: Add the Meta=noindex,follow tag to each URL you want de-indexed Use GWT to help remove the pages Wait for Google to crawl again If that's successful, to block Googlebot from crawling again - should you?: Add this line to Robots.txt: DISALLOW */beerbottles/ Or add this line: DISALLOW: /beerbottles/ "To add the * or not to add the *, that is the question" Thanks! Dave

Hi  Spencer, I only have experieince with 2 CMS's. I was an early adopter of Word  Press so I wouldn't know my way iaround n it at all anymore as it's changed so much. I currently use Joomla 1.5 . It's relatively SE friendly, but then again so is WP theses days (so I've heard) I've also heard the current WP is much easier to customise than the older versions.

What is the purpose of your website going to be? (eg. blog, ecommerce, etc.)

What I'm about to add is more philisophical than hard data oriented. Don't be afraid to link out to relevant pages. Yes, you will lose some "juice", but you gain goodwill and "link karma" See, I tolld you it was philisophical

Seriously though, if there is a natural fit for a link out, I'd include it.

Feel free to throw this advice out the nearest window if you are in a tightly competitive space. then hoard all the link juice you can.

As far as being a Pro member,  the web app, OSE and the mozbar.for Firefox.

THe community rocks! but it's open to non Pro members as well so I didn't include it in the Pro benefits.

Hi y Kerem:

I can personally recommend three for you. as I own and have read all 3.. If you have to get just one then make it "The Art of SEO. It's written by a few co-authors, and our vey own Rand Fishkin is one of them m

Hi Brent.

My answer is geared more to "General thoughts to approach"

If you are building a site from scratch, then you need to be clear on your goals for the site, and build out  the site from there ( (SEO, content, design, etc.)

You had mentioned the following as your goal  [being] "a little different than typical.  What I am looking for in my web site is not sales, but viewership.  I want people to find my site, then keep coming back to my blog to follow what I do. So your goal is to build viewership.

From this point on you need to be in the mind of potential viewers. What kind of photos will they want to see? What will they be interested in reading about? The reason this is important is that you need to be able to get a handle on their intent. This will drive your keyword research, your content choices, etc.

As an important aside, you need to do more than just put keywords in your copy to accomplish your goals. You need some stunning photography and compelling copy. In other words, you need to create a site that is world class. So it deserves return visits from those that stumble across it.

Finally, if I were in your shoes, I would look for a niche within the world of photo blogs and start out trying to dominate that niche. This is just my personal preference. If you want to take on the whole photo blog universe right out of the chute,  then go for it.

Good luck and drop back in when you have your site and give us the URL. Good luck!

Hi Debi:

This is strictly my opinion, not backed up by any research, but if you have an ecommerce site  geared towards sales in English speaking countries, you want to get rid of any barrier in front of your customer. Poor grammar would definitely be a barrier.

I were a prospective customer I would be asking myself, will they get the order correct? If I have a problem with the order will I be able to  communicate it easily with them or will there be a language barrier?

I think it would be an important trust issue.

For that matter, I think poor grammar negatively affects native English sites.

Richard makes a great point Jan (no surprise there eh?)and it makes me realize that I completely neglected addressing user experience in my answer.

I was assuming that you would  redirect to an appropriate page. To give you an example of good and bad (from a users perspective), Let's say you had a page dedicated toa yellow 6 man camping tent. It would be acceptable to redirect that to a page listing all your camping tents especially if the yellow 6 man tent was included among them.

It would not be OK(again, from a users perspective) to redirect that yellow 6 man tent page to a page dedicated to sleeping bags.

Hi Jan: You can definitely redirect the pagesby using a 301 redirect for the pagesyou desire to swap out.

If you need help with implementing, this SEOmoz guide can help.

If you need yet more help, just post your question here in the Q&A again. It should get answered a lot faster on the weekdays.

Thanks Thomas. I'll give two of them a shot (already follow Pete who's quite funny)

Hi Mike:

Keyword capitlization  makes  a difference is in the URL's. (Personally I recommend sticking to lowercase.)

As far as elsewhere on page  as far as I can tell, the search engines don't differentiate.

Hi Alexa:

While strictly speaking, SEO is a separate discipline from CO (conversion optimization) it is possible to use  CO in conjunction with SEO.

Via your analytics, determine which terms are converting better or worse. When you get a handle on the jigher converting terms, start doing keyword research with those termsreplacing your targeted keywords in your SEO campaign with them.

To use  Montanna's example, you may find that the term "golf clubs" doesn't convert well, but instead the term "TX-90 does.

I use them mostly for my own study ofclient sites and competitors sites Casey. My current stable of clients tend to still dwell on  SERP rankings and numbers of visitors, while the metric I'm trying to train them in is conversions.

But if I had to explain mozRank, mozTrust, Domain Authority,and  Page Authority, I would tell them that the numbers are an approximation of what the Google algorithm assigns to pages, sites, etc. and since Google isn't sharing, it's the best method od ascertaining Google's values.

Hey Steven: Rather than try to tackle this by myself, I'm going to bring in some heavy hitters. Since you are a Pro member, you have free access to the Pro guides, but unfortunately I can't seem to find the Pro Guide to Link Building on the SEOmoz site at the moment to be able to give you a link.

I can however share an absolutely awesme YOUmoz post from by Scott.MClay that got promoted to the main blog:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/link-building-101-the-almost-complete-link-guide 

Hahah! My favorite answer these days is...it depends.

, if you have a mortgage company to push, then find your white flag now.

But if you have a niche industry, then yes, it is possible. But like everyone else has said. make the on-page rock solid and work on links.

Hi Brent.

My answer is geared more to "General thoughts to approach"

If you are building a site from scratch, then you need to be clear on your goals for the site, and build out  the site from there ( (SEO, content, design, etc.)

You had mentioned the following as your goal  [being] "a little different than typical.  What I am looking for in my web site is not sales, but viewership.  I want people to find my site, then keep coming back to my blog to follow what I do. So your goal is to build viewership.

From this point on you need to be in the mind of potential viewers. What kind of photos will they want to see? What will they be interested in reading about? The reason this is important is that you need to be able to get a handle on their intent. This will drive your keyword research, your content choices, etc.

As an important aside, you need to do more than just put keywords in your copy to accomplish your goals. You need some stunning photography and compelling copy. In other words, you need to create a site that is world class. So it deserves return visits from those that stumble across it.

Finally, if I were in your shoes, I would look for a niche within the world of photo blogs and start out trying to dominate that niche. This is just my personal preference. If you want to take on the whole photo blog universe right out of the chute,  then go for it.

Good luck and drop back in when you have your site and give us the URL. Good luck!

Hi Debi:

This is strictly my opinion, not backed up by any research, but if you have an ecommerce site  geared towards sales in English speaking countries, you want to get rid of any barrier in front of your customer. Poor grammar would definitely be a barrier.

I were a prospective customer I would be asking myself, will they get the order correct? If I have a problem with the order will I be able to  communicate it easily with them or will there be a language barrier?

I think it would be an important trust issue.

For that matter, I think poor grammar negatively affects native English sites.

Hi Derek:From the Moz manual,  "Meta refreshes do pass some link juice but are not recommended as an SEO tactic due to usability and the loss of link juice passed"

Also, some SEO's feel that Google looks askance at their use.

There's no way to talk them into a 301 redirect, huh?

Hey Mike: From what I read, it was a simple case of buying links and when the NYTbrought it to Matt & Co's attention, they manually delisted them.

Vanessa Fox had a great write up on it at  Search Engine Land.

Hiya Craig:  This post from YOUmoz might help you to be able to wrap your mind around it better.