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SEO Website Review

Q&A

Twitter Question of the Week

March 10, 2010
Which Parts of SEO Do You Outsource? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Advanced Forum Thread of the Week

March 10, 2010
Forum member "Becs" is concerned because some automated SEO software told her she had too many URLs on her home page. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Twitter Question of the Week

February 24, 2010
If you had an extra 20 hours a week, what would you do with them? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Twitter Question of the Week

February 10, 2010
Do you build links for the traffic or for rankings? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Advanced SEO Forum Thread of the Week

February 10, 2010
Have Big Companies Taken Over the Internet? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

SEO Copywriting Tomfoolery

January 20, 2010
Do you have any info on the issue of spamdexing – specifically the practice of adding keywords into text unnaturally and then emphasizing just the keywords (for example, boldfacing and/or italicizing them)? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Same Article on Blog and Website

January 20, 2010
Is it OK to have the same articles on your site as you do on your blog? And, if not, is it better to have a blog with a link back to your site, or to put the article directly on your site? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

SEOing a Live Site

January 20, 2010
When you begin optimizing a website, does it have to go down while creating meta tags – title, description, keyword? OR do we need to back up the website first? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

XML Site Maps

January 20, 2010
Is an XML sitemap mandatory if you have a CMS? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Many Domain Names for SEO

January 20, 2010
I own many domain names related to my business. Would I have a problem with Google if I made one-page websites with good related copy on these domain names and linked the one-page websites back to my main website? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Difference Between SEM and SEO

January 20, 2010
I was wondering what the differences are between SEM and SEO. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Inbound Links

January 20, 2010
Inbound, good-quality links are a struggle for me. I can sort though all sorts of tech stuff resulting in a good-looking, professional website, but link building is a real challenge. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Twitter Question of the Week

January 20, 2010
What (if anything) will you be doing differently with your SEO strategy this year? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Advanced SEO Forum Thread of the Week

January 20, 2010
Forum member "krisflex" wants to know how to increase his or her PageRank. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Twitter Question of the Week

January 6, 2010
What has changed most in Search Marketing since 2000? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Twitter Question of the Week

December 16, 2009
How often do you think most websites should be redesigned? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Twitter Question of the Week

December 2, 2009
The easiest part of SEO is... Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Advanced SEO Forum Thread of the Week

December 2, 2009

10-plus SEO Questions - Google Rules

November 11, 2009
This morning I woke up to someone having submitted a pile of SEO questions using our newsletter question form. At first I thought, "Yikes, that's kind of pushy to think I have time to answer all those questions!" But then I remembered that this was a newsletter week and I still had no idea what I was going to write about. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Twitter Question of the Week

November 11, 2009
What are your Twitter pet peeves? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Advanced SEO Forum Thread of the Week

November 11, 2009
Meta Description – Beyond 155 – Still Alive? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Twitter Question of the Week

October 28, 2009
Will you care if Google turns off toolbar PR? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Advanced Forum Thread of the Week

October 28, 2009
SEO Best Principles for Local Service Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Twitter Question of the Week

October 14, 2009
Do you think SEO is undervalued by most companies? Why or why not? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

TQW: Does registering at a site to post a comment...?

September 30, 2009
Read the responses to the Twitter Question of the week. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Website Traffic and Its Effect on Rankings

September 16, 2009
Advanced Forum Thread of the Week: New forum member "wsajay" was wondering if and how the traffic to a given website affects its search engine rankings. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

SERP Description

September 2, 2009
I've been asked to provide some info on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) description of my site, and how to manage it. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Adjusting Domains

September 2, 2009
My plan is to move all the home decor products from the old site to the new one AND change the products of the old one back to selling the jewelry, perfume, wallets, etc. – that is, the "gifty" stuff. What is the best way to make this change? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

SEO for a Swiss Site

September 2, 2009
I have a corporate client that is planning to purchase a company in Switzerland and they are wondering if I can do the SEO. But then it dawned on me, checking their rankings with a U.S.-based IP address might deliver different search results…do you think? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Any Good SEO Books?

September 2, 2009
I am new to SEO. I am writing my first website and would like to get a better understanding of building a great website that will attract my target market to my site. Can you suggest any good books that can help me achieve this goal? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Do you give ballpark SEO quotes...?

September 2, 2009
The Twitter Question of the Week is: "Do you give 'ballpark' SEO quotes to companies if/when they won't tell you what the website is? It's kinda necessary, no?" Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Competitor Running PPC Ads on My Brand Name - Advanced Forum Thread of the Week

September 2, 2009
What's your take on competitors who run paid search campaigns using your brand name as trigger words? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Is there such a thing as white hat or black hat social media...?

August 19, 2009
The Twitter question for this week was: "Is there such a thing as white hat or black hat social media? Why or why not?" Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Determining Keyword Competition

August 5, 2009
I'm a Keyword Discovery subscriber, and I use the tool for organic SEO purposes. I've recently discovered that the keyword analysis information (competition and thus KEI info) is based on exact match search instead of partial match. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

The hardest part of SEO is...? - Twitter Question of the Week #TQW

August 5, 2009
My Twitter question for this week was:

"The hardest part of SEO is...?" Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Traffick.com Interview - Stuff You Might Like

August 5, 2009
In response to my "Most of SEO Is a Boondoggle" article, my buddy Andrew Goodman from Traffick.com had some very interesting follow-up questions for me. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Keywords in Domain vs. Volume of Content - Advanced Forum Thread of Week

August 5, 2009
Forum member "jsp1983" wondered which might be better, "Essentially, a very localised domain, but with less content vs. a less specific domain, but with lots of content." Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Do you do keyword research for...? Twitter Question of the Week

July 22, 2009
Do you research keywords before writing a blog post or article? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

What are you not doing on your website? - Twitter Question of the Week

July 8, 2009
I asked my Twitter peeps, "What are you not doing on your own website that you often recommend your clients should do?" Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Methods for Showing Specific Content Based on Referrer - Advanced SEO Forum Thread of the Week

July 8, 2009
The other day I stumbled across Google's 1-click for free program, which is a way of indexing content that can normally be viewed only by registered users. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Anti-Reputation Management - Twitter Question of the Week

June 24, 2009
Recently, an individual asked us to solve a problem for him. A member of his family had dealt with a certain company and, he said, was harmed as a result. This individual wanted to know how he could get high rankings for his blog when someone typed in the company's brand name. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

New Optimized Page vs. New Site -Advanced SEO Forum Thread of the Week

June 24, 2009
Forum member "taterchips" (great name!) is interested in tackling a specific niche within their profession and was looking at the most effective way to play to that niche. Their question has to do with whether they should add a new page or section to their existing website or start a new website for this particular niche. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Publishing Text Ads

June 10, 2009
We are being contacted more and more by companies asking if we will add to our websites and/or clients' websites a short paragraph of text that includes a link to one of their clients' sites – i.e., a text advertisement. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Video Elevator Speeches for Websites

May 27, 2009
Do you think a positioning video has value on a website, or does it interfere with the structure and architecture of the website? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Twitter Questions

May 27, 2009
I have a few Twitter questions in terms of right or wrong ways to tweet, if there even is such a thing. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Blog Post Metadata

May 27, 2009
Are the Title, Description and Keywords (the metadata) always the same for each blog post? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Calendar for Long-tail SEO

May 27, 2009
We want to put a calendar of events on our website. Google Calendar appears to be a great product but since it is not hosted on our website the long-tail SEO value (which is one of the main reasons we want to do the calendar) is lost. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Redirecting Website to a New Domain

May 27, 2009
We have a website of which the home page has 5 PageRank. This website has 5,000 pages that are indexed in Google.com and many of the pages have good PageRank. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Multiple Keyword-rich Domains

May 27, 2009
I have a series (15) of keyword domains (3 to 5 years old) that are related to my site. Currently most of them are mirrors with just a slight content differential. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Page Title Question - Advanced Forum Thread of the Week

May 27, 2009
Forum member "vanzist" asks what the best Title tag for a page would be. While my first response was the usual "it depends," additional comments make for a very interesting forum thread. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Is Link Buying Gray Hat? - Advanced SEO Forum Thread of the Week

May 13, 2009
What's your opinion on the purchase of links for SEO? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Blogs and SEO

April 15, 2009
My question is: How does Google know that the blog is part of my website if the address isn't under my website address or hosted by my server? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

All-Graphical Home Page

April 15, 2009
I realize that Google picks up Alt text data (aka Alt tags), especially if the graphic acts as a link; however, I am a bit puzzled on how Google ranked a particular site. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Embedded YouTube Video Vs. Self-hosting – SEO benefits? Advanced SEO Forum Thread

April 15, 2009
Forum member "cswilliams" wonders if hosting your videos on your own server rather than on YouTube would provide any SEO benefits. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Dynamically Generated Pages and Dynamic Titles

March 4, 2009
I run an apartment search website. The sites search results pages are dynamic and pulled from the database. If these dynamic pages also have dynamic page titles, will they be search engine relevant? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Duplicate Content Via Press Releases

March 4, 2009
I disseminate news releases for clients using online wire services. Additionally, the releases are posted on my clients' websites, usually as PDFs, and on my firm's website, the same PDF. My programmer just told me that unless I make these releases different I am causing search engine apoplexy. Please let me know the facts and, more important, what I should be doing. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Measuring SEO Services

March 4, 2009
My question is, how should SEO services be evaluated? In other words, what measurable objectives beyond landing above the fold are appropriate? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Fixing Duplicate Content

March 4, 2009
We have a travel website where people can enquire about beautiful small hotels we offer. Even though each hotel has a unique URL with unique content, the categories pages have a duplication problem. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Discontinued Products Showing in Google

March 4, 2009
I would like to ask a question too, please. Our website is geared to sell GPS equipment. Many of the products have a life of about 6 months to a year. Google indexes these very well, and we rank highly. However, some searches display discontinued products (I guess because they have been around the longest). Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Determining a Site's Competitive Index - Advanced SEO Forum Thread

February 28, 2009
Every website is different in terms of how competitive they can realistically shoot for with their SEO efforts. I typically use a combination of factors to decide on this... Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Same Content, Different URLs

February 4, 2009
I have a new website selling children's eco friendly toys. The site was designed to enable customers to search for toys by age, by type of toy, by brand, and by country of manufacture. A given toy description would be in each of these categories as well as in multiple age categories and multiple toy types (i.e., in puzzles and wooden puzzles). Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Submitting to Directories and Search Engines

February 4, 2009
I'm writing now because a colleague and I have some questions on search engine/directory submission and we are hoping to get your expertise on the subject. We currently submit new sites to major SEs once they go live, but are wondering if some of the services are worth pursuing or if you advise against these? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

SEO Non-compete

February 4, 2009
What do you think about a potential SEO client who asks you to agree not to work with any related company for 2 years after the conclusion of the business relationship? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Can Lots of Clicks Equal Higher Rankings?

February 4, 2009
If I hire people through something like crowdsourcing just to Google some keywords from various areas of the globe to click through to my site and stay there for 5 minutes, will it improve my rankings? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Absolute Links or Relative?

February 4, 2009
I've been researching absolute vs. relative links and there seem to be two camps -- one that advocates absolute as better for SEO purposes and the other that says that absolute links won't improve your rank. My site is set up with relative links, so is it worth the effort to change them to absolute? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Effect of Navigational Content on SEO

February 4, 2009
I'm redesigning my website using CSS for the layout. In the HTML code the navigation information comes before the actual page content. What worries me is how I have my navigation set up. I use CSS and span tags to make neat little information boxes appear when my navigation links are hovered over. These boxes will tell the visitor more about what to expect from that particular link. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

How Many Keywords Is Too Many? - Advanced SEO Forum Thread

February 4, 2009
Forum member "anne999" was wondering how many keywords she could target on her website. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

When Should Site Sections Be Separate Sites?

December 3, 2008
"I'm just about to launch a new site. It should really be 3 sites but the client talked me into making it one or the deal was off. It's for private sales of cars, property and boats. It also has a business directory for each section. The sections are in subdirectories rather than domains for easy maintenance." Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Organic SEO or PPC?

November 19, 2008
If organic SEO is so important, why are we being sold on PPC as most important by PPC trainers? Why is there less about organic SEO? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Penalized for Buying Links?

November 19, 2008
In Google's Webmaster Tools there is a section where you can submit someone you think is buying links. Here is what I don't understand – can Google really penalize you for purchasing links? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Shutting Down a Site

November 19, 2008
I work for a nonprofit that since 2000 has been operating an e-commerce website to provide emerging artists with a web presence. It has earned a toolbar PageRank of 5, thanks to some decent inbound links. Due to a variety of things, the parent company of the website has decided it's time to shut the site down. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

How to Prevent Affiliates from Driving Up PPC Costs - Advanced Forum Thread of the Week

November 19, 2008

"Our client has affiliates that want to bid on many of the same keywords that we are bidding on. How can we manage this so that the affiliates don't drive up our cost on PPC?"

Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Pages Indexed, Descriptions and Title Tags

October 22, 2008
How important is it to have a large number of indexed sites through Google? If so, how do we increase the number, and how do we edit what text appears under the link?
Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Keywords, Traffic and Link Popularity

October 22, 2008
I performed a keyword analysis for one of my projects, picked several powerful "traffic juicy" keywords and optimized the landing pages for those keywords. My site went to the first page in the search engines, and yet we've got no more than 100 unique visitors per month. Have you any idea why? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

1 Site Plus 4 Subdomains: Advanced SEO Forum Thread of the Week

October 22, 2008
Forum member "bobmeetin" explains how a business he's evaluating has a main website plus 4 subdomains and seems like one big organizational mess.
Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Can Google Follow Non-www Links?

August 27, 2008
For purposes of discussion, let's say my main URL is www.example.com. I have a plethora of links in my site for indexing purposes between pages. The page links all go to their respective pages properly, but are linked to example.com (without the www part). Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Blog on Different IP

August 27, 2008
I'm wondering if there is more link value provided by a new blog if it is hosted on an IP with a different C block than the IP address of the web site itself. The owner of the business would be writing the blog and sharing business expertise with the idea of building the brand of the business.

Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Getting Search Engines to Re-crawl

August 27, 2008
I recently set up a new site, which isn't something I often do, and forgot to set up the meta title and description. Now what is called up on Google for my site is HOME and a sentence from mid-page. Now that I have fixed the Web problem, how do I get the search engines to do another crawl of the site?
Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Top Search Engine Ranking Software

August 27, 2008
I'm about to renew our contract with our search engine ranking optimization software, but thought I'd check out other options before committing. What do you folks use?

Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Stuff You Might Like: Recent Interviews With Jill Whalen, CEO High Rankings

August 27, 2008
I had the pleasure of being interviewed recently by a number of online marketing folks and thought you might enjoy learning more about me and my thoughts on a plethora of search marketing issues.
Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Are Websites Ranked as a Whole?

July 16, 2008
I recently signed up as an advertiser with [a blog review website] so I could purchase blog review postings for one of my clients. After enrolling, I purchased a PR5 blog review posting at the standard PR5 price of $40. Eventually my offer was picked up by a blogger, but the review posting only stayed on their PR5 home page for one day as the next day it was shifted from the front page of the blog to an archived page that had a PR0. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Jill's Interview on SEO Myths and Scams

June 11, 2008
In preparation for next week's SES Toronto, I was interviewed by Manoj Jasra at Web Analytics World. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

2 Domains, 1 Website

May 14, 2008
I have a client who has 2 domain names: namehere.com and differentnamehere.us pointing at the same IP address. Is it bad SEO to have multiple domain names for the same site? And will this negatively impact search engine results for each? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Lost Toolbar PageRank

May 14, 2008
The front page of my website has a [toolbar] PageRank of 4 and most of my inner pages had a PageRank of 3. After this quarter's Google [toolbar] update, my homepage remained a 4, but most of my inner pages went down to a 2. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

SEO Consequences to Adding a Sharing Button

May 14, 2008
While this question may not be directly SEO-related, I'm wondering if there might be any negative SEO implications to including a social bookmarking and sharing button to the more popular pages on our website to leverage some of the popularity of social networking? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Optimizing Articles for Long-tail Keywords

April 30, 2008
Regarding long-tail keywords, I often find it difficult optimizing them in an article, mainly because it can look unnatural if you include them too often. How do you recommend I deal with this problem? Apart from in the headline, at what density do they need to be mentioned in an article in order to maximize our chances of getting good listings? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Same Tags and Keywords But No High Rankings

April 23, 2008
If I have the same title tags and keywords as the company listed first in Google, Yahoo, etc., why don't I get a high ranking? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

9 Websites on 1 Server

April 9, 2008
Here is the scenario: I had a Virtual Private Server (VPS) with 9 websites on it that were all interlinked. It worked great for awhile. Then in Nov. 2004, Google did a big adjustment, and all 9 of my sites dropped out of sight. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Different Results in Different States

April 9, 2008
Search engine results seem to vary for US states. For instance, one of my clients gets top results while one of my clients from another state doesn't get the same results. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Which Is More Likely to Be Clicked?

January 31, 2008
Is someone more likely to click on my organic or paid search result if they appear side by side? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Measuring B2B Conversions

January 23, 2008
You briefly hit on ROI and basically described perfectly a dilemma I have. We are a B2B manufacturer of machinery that costs anywhere from the 10's of thousands to the 100's of thousands each. We sell a handful of these machines each year. Consequently, the buying cycle can take up to a year or more. How would you suggest we figure ROI and conversions for this kind of business? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Number of Words on a Page

January 16, 2008

I have a customer who is convinced that for maximum SEO, the page length must be between 450 and 625 words. He has a software program that tells him this. Is there any truth to it?

Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Duplicate Content Within Shopping Cart

January 16, 2008

I have plain html pages that describe the various health-related products that I recommend. If one of my readers wishes to purchase a product, they click on an "order now" button, which takes them to the desired product at my shopping cart.

Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Are SEO Conferences Worthwhile If You're Already #1?

January 16, 2008

I really would like to go to a SEO conference someday, but which? I'm not an SEO novice and PPC is not my strategy. Plus being #1 what could anybody teach me, anyway? Now, I know that is a very stupid and dangerous statement. ;-) Future trends or expert hints very specific to my site are what I think I need. What do you think?

Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Data Feeds and Duplicate Content

January 2, 2008
A lot of my clients pull data/products from semi-public databases to populate their websites, similar to how real estate agents show listings of homes on their sites. I've been ensuring that each client has unique valuable and professionally edited content whenever possible on the rest of the site, but I’m afraid that if I make the portions of the site that use the semi-public data accessible to the search engines, they will find duplicate information on other sites and my client site(s) would not be indexed. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

SEO Software

December 19, 2007

I am coming across a lot of offers for software for SEO.  A lot of them are
offering different sorts of analyzers, etc. — which I’m not sure are
helpful.  Is there any sort of software that is real SEO software and
actually does some actual SEO work to your site?

 

Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

VP Got Rid of PPC -- How Will This Affect Us?

December 19, 2007
Forum member "NeilPertRocks" tells the other members that the VP in his company completely removed their paid-search program, and is wondering how this will affect their business. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Changing URLs

November 28, 2007
I am in the process of changing all my URLs from things like news123.html to OurCompany_Announces_New_CEO.html Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

PR Popping

November 14, 2007
Two weeks ago, my Google PR was still at 0/10. We have a 6-month-old site, for which I've been doing many of the "slow growth" SEO tactics as my time allows. This week, I find that my Google PR is now 5/10. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Charging for SEO Services

October 31, 2007
One of my biggest headaches is working out how to charge and how much to charge my clients for my services. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Adding New Content to an Existing Site

October 3, 2007
I have a question: I created a site (read a book on HTML, a book on SEO, and a book on globalization of websites). After about 10 months, the site is doing very well and I am pleased with its rankings. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Unoptimized Site Ranks #1

October 3, 2007
I am currently looking at doing SEO work for a [generic type of alcohol for drinking] industry-related website. I have come across one problem though. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Multiple Informational Sites

October 3, 2007
I have a plastic surgeon client who specializes in many procedures and has spent a fortune on developing a very nice site that has been done in Flash. In efforts to get him some traffic, we are doing a double campaign, one with pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and one using SEO tactics. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Article Submission Services

October 3, 2007
We have an information site which sells nothing. Our site consists of about 140 articles. I have authored several, and I'm wondering about submitting a couple of my articles to certain type of sites which claim to boost links to your site. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Follow-up: Paying for Ongoing SEO Services

October 3, 2007
To gain credibility, I often send my clients to sign up for your newsletter to show that I am not the only one telling them whatever it is I am telling them at the time. With that, the answer to a question from your last newsletter could severely hurt my (our) business. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Where Your Site Is Hosted

October 2, 2007
I wonder if you can help me. We have a website in New Zealand and it is hosted here too. We are expanding our business to Australia and building a new website for this. My web company has said that the new site should be hosted in Australia as we would get a good start with Google.com.au. Do you agree with this? Does Google take into account where your site is hosted for rankings? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Is a FrontPage Website Search Engine Unfriendly?

September 26, 2007

I am a small business owner with a circa 2003 website that needs an overhaul both in terms of SEO optimization and visual appeal. I have no time or talent to do this and want to hire a company.

 

I have received a reply from one company that said the problem with my website is that it was written in FrontPage. They implied that that was a problem both from a design perspective and for SEO. Do you agree? And if so, does my website need to be recreated in HTML?

Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Submitting to Google or a Sitemap?

September 25, 2007
I submitted our website sitemap to Google a while back, but I was reading a forum this morning where somebody was saying you have to submit every page to Google. What is the real procedure and are sitemaps important? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Will Site Drop Out of Engines if Not Paying for SEO?

September 25, 2007
I have a really quick question I hope you can help with. There is a small business in town that is paying $200 a month to have another company make sure it stays at the top of the ranking lists in search engines. Now if there is no new competition, except maybe a new office every few years, is it necessary to pay them, or could they do it themselves with the guidance you offer on your website? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Search Engines and PDFs

September 19, 2007
I came across your site on Google while trying to find some information and found it very helpful. However, I did have a question that was not covered. Will the search engines be able to find text in a PDF document, or am I better where possible to include the information in a web page? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Getting Into Google - New Unavailable_after Tag and More!

July 11, 2007
Last night was our third SEMNE event (Search Engine Marketing New England), and we were humbled to have Dan Crow, director of crawl systems at Google, spilling the beans about how to get your site into Google. He talked for a half hour or so, and then proceeded to answer audience questions for at least another hour. As I sat there listening to him (yes, I actually listened to this one!), I was struck by what an awesome opportunity it was for everyone in that room to be provided with such important information — straight from Google. It was clear that the 100 or so people in the room agreed. In fact, at 7:30 on the dot, everyone spontaneously stopped their networking activities and simply took their seats without being asked to. These folks definitely came to hear Google! Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Interview with Jennifer Laycock - Viral Marketing & Social Media

June 14, 2007
Pauline caught up with Jennifer Laycock, editor-in-chief of Search Engine Guide, in order to find out her thoughts on viral marketing and social media. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

“Wide-net” Keyword Research for PPC (Part 2 of 2)

June 5, 2007
In Part 1 of my article, I said that we need to have an entirely different mindset when researching keywords for PPC vs. SEO. When compiling keywords for SEO, you’re looking for phrases that get a good bit of traffic. But for PPC, you can use all those longer queries that are impossible to work into your page copy. Plus, you’re trying to get a feel for all the different ways people have of phrasing their queries. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

File Names and SEO

May 23, 2007
Does what you name a page (not the “Title” but the file name) matter to search engines when they crawl a site? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Best Place for a Blog

May 23, 2007
Our site has a blog which is www.blog.domain.com — should it really be www.domain.com/blog ? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Keyword Competition

May 23, 2007
When I am searching on terms that apply to our website or our specific products I’m finding that the perfect phrases or keywords have tons of competition. And the more obscure phrases that don’t have a lot of competition are not searched on much. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Display: None

May 23, 2007
I have to create some pages for a client. They are full of images and little to no content and have no title tags…however, they still want SEO services…*groan* Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Lost Rankings Due to Site Redesign or Spam?

April 18, 2007
I started answering this question with the usual answer, but as I looked at the site in question, I realized there was more going on than meets the eye. Please read through the entire question and my response to see what I mean! Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

6 Newbie SEO Questions

April 4, 2007
Someone emailed me with a list of quick questions about some SEO terminology they didn’t understand. I figured if one person was looking for these answers, many of you would be, too. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

What’s Important to Search Engines and What’s Not

March 21, 2007
I recently had an inquiry from someone who was looking for some possible SEO consulting with me. He was in the process of a redesign and wanted to be sure not to make any mistakes along the way, which is super-smart! The time to be looking at SEO is definitely in the beginning stage of any design or redesign project. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Expanding Services and SEO

February 28, 2007
Your email newsletter is one of my favorites, and I get a bunch of them from SEO “experts” and others. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Adding a List of Keywords

February 28, 2007
Great newsletter. My business partner is developing our site and wants to put a list of keywords at the bottom of some of our shop pages (i.e. below the text) in the hopes that this will get the search engines to notice us slightly more. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Talking SEO/SEM on the "Duct Tape Marketing" Podcast

February 21, 2007
Recently I had the pleasure of speaking with John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing about search marketing for small businesses. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Landing-page Dilemma

January 31, 2007
I work for a nonprofit retreat center for which our main offerings are (you guessed it) retreat programs. Until recently, whenever we sent out email flyers about our programs, we had the link go directly to the program’s unique page on our website. Our marketing director has been trying to make a case for sending the clicker to the landing page that would then direct the clicker to a list of programs, including the one on which he or she clicked. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Redirecting Non-www to www Version

January 31, 2007
I am surprised to see that your own website still has both the www and non-www version in place — no redirect to get the “link juice” from the non-www version. Do you consider this a not so important issue? Both versions have good PR. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Meta Tag Includes

January 31, 2007
I have a question relating to Meta tags and the head document. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Why Use Keyword Research Tools?

January 17, 2007
Keywords. I have been designing web sites for 5 +/- yrs, so I am aware of what they are and how they are being used / can be used. I’m not saying I am an expert, just that I’m not a novice. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

New CMS Changing File Extensions

January 3, 2007
Our web site has been around for many years and we are switching over to a content management system coded in JSP, but with extensions ending in .do as opposed to what we currently have, .asp. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

London Seminar?

January 3, 2007
I notice you also hold a lot of seminars which would be incredibly beneficial to someone in my position. I also notice that all your seminars are held in America. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Optimizing Flash Sites

January 3, 2007
I am working for a Flash site that is brand-new. How can that be indexed and come up in the SERPs? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Wordtracker or KeywordDiscovery?

January 3, 2007
I notice you always promote both KeywordDiscovery and WordTracker. I am trying to decide which one to subscribe to. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Search Engines Indexing Dynamic Sites

January 3, 2007
I don’t understand how search engines list dynamic sites. For example, this site has a whole bunch of products. Every single product page calls up the same url: www.example.com/products.php. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Wrong Code

January 3, 2007
I recently met with a company that provides SEO as one of their services and I was told point-blank that our site is written with the “wrong code,” and therefore the search engines can’t read it. I use FrontPage and have nothing more fancy than text, tables, pictures, and some links to other industry sites. Should I be suspicious? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Now You See It, Now You Don’t

January 3, 2007
I recently SEO-ed my site. Yahoo started re-indexing my website: they already showed 37 of the new links (internal URLs) within my site. This morning I had another look at these links within Yahoo and got an unpleasant surprise: they showed the links from the previous version of my site. I’m wondering if you have an explanation of why this happened. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Links in New Window

January 3, 2007
I am continually frustrated with web sites that provide a link, but when I click on it, it takes me OFF their site and onto another. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Fewer Links, but Better Rankings

December 13, 2006
I have better backlinks than my competitor and my site is also optimized, but why is my competitor’s ranking better than mine? Our backlinks are around 90 and the competitor’s backlinks are around 55. What can I do for better rankings than the competitor? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Outbound Links

December 13, 2006
In the scheme of things, do you think it is important to add outbound links from a web site? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Usefulness of Adding a Sitemap

December 13, 2006
I’ve been told that adding a site map to our website increases the chance of search engines linking to other pages in our site. Any truth to this? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Translated Pages and Duplicate Content

December 13, 2006
I have a client who has a website in England for his English branch. He also has a branch in Turkey that doesn’t have a website yet. He would like to use the template for his existing English website for his new Turkish website. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Update on Redirecting Multiple Domains

December 13, 2006
I recalled some advice you gave on redirecting multiple domain names from a while back and to my surprise I was actually able to locate it on your site... Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Overture’s Keyword Selection Tool

December 13, 2006
I have been using Overture’s “Keyword Selection Tool” for a long time. Lately I have experienced problems with it. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Cold Fusion Pages

December 13, 2006
I have a client whose web site has been created in Cold Fusion. I am not all that familiar with these types of pages but right now most of their page text and metas are being pulled from another document and are not actually part of the “live site code.” Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Search Engine Using Old Domain Name

December 13, 2006
At the beginning of October we regenerated our entire site and ran into a very strange problem. All of a sudden all our search results were showing up under one of our old domain names. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Content in Tables

December 13, 2006
If my pages are in a table, and if I add a header to that table for a caption, put my main keyword for that page in it, and make it a bold and big h1 tag, will it help? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

10 Signs That Your SEO Is a Quack

November 29, 2006
As you know there are a lot of so-called SEO/SEM experts/gurus claiming all
sorts of things. The analogy to me is like "quack" doctors compared to the
genuine article.

Are there 6 or a dozen questions that would expose those purporting to be
experts? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Keep Current SEO or Take It In-house?

November 8, 2006
My CEO has been forwarding me your newsletters for some time now. I am in need of advice, and I am hoping you might be able to help me out. We offer online services and have been online since 1997 with our websites. I know a little about SEO because I was once a junior SEO rep for my former SEO manager but my primary skill set is not doing SEO but more managing those who do it. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Project Management eBook Site Questions

October 25, 2006
Sixty-year-old newbie here with his first e-book! My site is unlinked --
just "up there."   I teach project management for a living -- but ill health
is forcing early retirement, and I have an urgent need to keep paying the
mortgage! Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Clients Who Think They Know SEO

September 27, 2006
In cases where a client is smarter than you are about SEO, insists on saturating his keyword pages (10 per 200-word page) at 5% (which includes the keyword phrase in two header lines), and currently (without keyword saturation) consistently hits in the top 20 on his Google searches. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Organic SEO

September 20, 2006
Here's a question for you to answer in your newsletter. I was recently quoted a job by an SEO consultant, and he kept using the term "organic" to describe the methodology. What does this mean? And do I want it? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Same SEO but No Rankings

September 20, 2006
I have been receiving your excellent newsletter for more than 3 years and find it an invaluable help to understand the ins and outs of SEO. Indeed I am sure that your advice has been instrumental in achieving a top 5 listing for the last 3 years in Google for my London site. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Characters in Meta Keyword Tag

September 20, 2006
How many characters are allowed in the keyword Meta tag? How will the crawler treat a page that goes over this limit of characters? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Optimizing for Conditions

September 20, 2006
I wonder if you can give me a steer on a particular SEO problem. I have a client who specializes in acupuncture and other alternative remedies in London We would like to optimise for the conditions she treats such as back pain, insomnia, headaches, etc - about 40 different in all. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Tables and SEO

September 20, 2006
I have been a regular reader of your newsletter for some time. I hope you have time to give me your thoughts on the following comment that I received from a website designer. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Stats Demonstrating SEO/SEM Improvement

September 13, 2006
I represent a golf accessory manufacturer considering doing some serious SEO/SEM. We are interested in determining the real efficacy of SEO/SEM as it translates into online unit sales growth or online revenue growth. I have searched through many, many sites and haven't been able to come up with any good stats that demonstrate B2C improvements in eCommerce sales after applying SEO/SEM. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Will a "Soft Launch" Cause Problems?

September 6, 2006
I have an interesting case of a client who is wanting to do a “soft launch” of his site. The client wants to make the landing page or homepage a login section with little to no information about his product on it except for the name of the product and login details, as he wants to keep […] Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Redirected Links

September 6, 2006
I’d like to thank you for the great information that you make available. I read it and implement it — and it works. Thanks! Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Questions about High Rankings® Search Marketing Seminar

August 30, 2006
The following is an email exchange I had with someone who was wondering whether he would benefit from attending our High Rankings® Search Marketing Seminar in Dallas on Oct. 19-20, 2006. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Why Would Anyone Link to Some Sites?

August 16, 2006
Push the button of every SEO expert and he/she will start talking about the importance of links for high rankings. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Two Companies Merging

August 2, 2006
I'm looking for some advice on the impact of natural search on two companies that have merged so I can advise on how best to proceed. They currently have two sites that perform well in the SERPS and have different content but are obviously competing on the same keyphrases and are now one company. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Extra Characters in Title Tags

August 2, 2006
Do the search engines see the addition of this character: | in the title tag as words/characters, thus reducing the amount of words you should put in the title tag? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Domain Extensions

August 2, 2006
I have a question for you. Do extensions have any bearing on search engine return? For example, are sites with .com extensions returned at a higher ranking than a site with .net or .org? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

What To Do with 3 Domains

August 2, 2006
I have found some great information on 301 redirects, but nothing which exactly answers my two questions. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Keywords in URLs

August 2, 2006
Do you know if repeating keywords in the URL will help increase rankings within search engine results? If so does it have a big impact? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Project Collaboration Using BaseCamp

August 2, 2006
Thanks for the tip on using Basecamp. I've tried it and love it! I've uploaded all of my projects into it now. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Home Page Redirect

August 2, 2006
You were talking about robots.txt files and how you want to use them to prevent the search engines from indexing duplicating information. I use a Miva cart and custom Miva pages. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>