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This might not be exactly what you are looking for but here is what I've done to get noticed. At my company we aren't trying to do get guest blogging opportunities but have high quality people guest blog for us. For us we are are a ninche specialized market and the people who are experts and influence don't blog and told us no no no when we approached them to guest blog.

But when we asked for an interview..it changed everything. So we asked to do an interview over email. A simple INTERVIEW REQUEST in subject line did wonders. But remember if you are asking for an interview never send form email. It must be personal and show you know subject.

Remain calm.  You should be just fine.  It just takes time for Google to digest the new robots.txt.   I would be concerned if things didn't change in 3-4 weeks.  Adopt a rule to not freak out on Google until you've given the problem 14 days to resolve.  Sometimes Google moves things around and this is natural.

If you want Google to crawl your site faster, build some links and do some social media.   That will encourage Google to speed it up.

Absolutely a bad idea.  You should be using that h1 tag to promote the current page only, not the same keywords over and over.

I highly doubt that there's any benefit in SERPs by donating money.  However, if the site were to list the websites (in a link or otherwise) that have donated money it might give you a tiny, tiny, tiny boost.  Doubtful.

Where I work the big cheese decided we had to rank high for 'custom benchmarking' search volume is about 110 per month. Once the page was built and launched it took three weeks to reach #1.

I won't get into the whether it's worthwhile to focus so much on keywords with search volume you can fit in a large bathroom but in my experience it took 3 weeks or so.

I've seen this done on a project I worked on before.

First, we logged every query that returned 0 results with a little bit of PHP code. The code wrote to a .txt file that was easily readable.  After a month we had a significant amount of data.

The data was used to track what products were being searched for that weren't returning results. Then we used the data to decide if we should add those products or if our search wasn't returning proper results.  What we found was that many people searched for products that we did carry, but the search didn't return the proper results.  For instance, the search might not return a result if a search was for the BRAND of the item.  Though it should have, it didn't.  Also, a user might search for "widgets", but all the products were named "$brand $size widget". Because of the "s" at the end of the word our search would return 0 results, but we carried hundreds of widgets.

First we improved the search to pick up results of one character off.  Then we included any manufacturer / brands. We also had the search display results from the title of articles on our site.  This significantly improved the user experience and sales.

We then took the data left over and decided what the user was searching for and how to use that to our advantage.  Many users are too lazy to use the navigation on a website to find what they want.  If they search for "blue widgets" and 0 results display the users often assume we don't carry them - though we do.  So, this is a very good tactic to use to increase conversions.

It worked very well for us.   I hope this helps.

I don't understand why you insist on cramming SEO and Kingston in the title of every single page you make.  It isn't necessary.  I would suggest stepping back from SEO mode and going into functional mode.  Ask yourself what would really make your site the best site for information on SEO and SEO services in Kingston.   Build that site. Forget about Google and keywords.  Build a variety of pages related to SEO, but not necessarily about SEO.  You can break it up with information useful to readers like how to optimize a landing page, what UX converts buyers, etc.  And for Pete's sake, don't put SEO and Kingston in EVERY title or on every page.  Get as much information as you can and make each page informative and useful.  Don't focus on SEO at all - just build the site for people.   When you're done with this and you have a functional and informational site that people like to use, you can then go back and edit it for SEO.  It looks like you're obsessed with rankings and keywords.  This is going to get in the way of your overall goal - ranking for your keywords.

That's the best advice I have for you.  Good luck!

sigh

First, short-term changes aren't something to worry about.  Google could be reevaluating your site, topic, and niche to see where you should fit in.  It does this with high ranking pages.   It happens. Relax.

Second, deleting pages that Google doesn't know about isn't going to affect your rankings.  Especially if they were relatively useless pages. You might want to block these pages in robots.txt or with a htaccess password so it definitely isn't an issue in the future.

Third, why did you buy a URL to simply forward it over to a specific internal page?  That looks suspicious. It's obvious you purchased the URL in order to boost your rankings for that keyword.  If Google isn't on to you already, it will be soon.  A better solution would be using the URL to build a small micro site (10-12 pages) about the topic, make the micro site rank, then link out from the micro site (1-4 links) to the specific pages on your main site.

I'm not sure there would be a problem, but why would you NOT want your prices in the Google results? The customer is going to eventually find out what your price is aren't they?

Dr. Pete,

I just ran across one of your webinars yesterday and you brought up some great ideas.  Earned a few points in my book

Too often SEOs see changes in the rankings and react to counter-act the change.  Most of the time these bounces are actually a GOOD sign. It means Google saw your changes and is adjusting to them.  If your changes were positive you should see positive results.  I have rarely found an issue where a user made a positive change and got a negative result from Google.  Patience is a virtue.

It really depends on the page and the website.  But, as a rule, I think it's always smart to write a meta-description to gain the trust and attention of your potential visitors.   As you probably know, the meta-description usually shows up under the Title and URL in a Google result.  This bit of text could potentially set you apart from your competition.

It's true that Google will grab a bit of text and use that for a description of the page by default, but Google is a robot and probably isn't going to grab the most important text in the article. It will simply grab some text with the related keywords usually.  It certainly isn't going to put together a catchy sentence / summary for searchers to read.

To make this as clear as possible, let's take a search for "cheap headphones":

We have the #1 site that uses a meta-description -
"Cheap headphones and discount headphones, Get information on all types of headphones and find the secret to getting the best deals and what website sells them for the best price."

Then we have the #2 site that is letting Google choose its meta-description text.  It looks like this:
"20 results – Our top picks for the best cheap headphones around in 2010.

| $19.95 | sugg. retail price: $22.95 | Kidz Gear Headphones | Excellent ... |
| $19.99 | sugg. retail price: $19.99 | Koss KSC 75 |

Surprising high ..."

|

These aren't great examples because the #1 site has a description meta-tag that is too long.  But I think it gets the point across.  It's a lot nicer to read something that is concise and grabs the searcher's attention than to hope Google is going to pull the best information for the user.  Human wins vs. Google this time.  (for now).

I'm a Moz member, mostly just lurk, and love the Moz community. I work at a non profit company that does benchmarking data and helps school districts improve process in education.

Our building flooded and our site is currently offline, is there anything we can do to stop/lesson any SEO page rank drop between now and when we are back up?

We have worked very hard to get these rankings. I know it is minor compared to all tragedy in Houston, but we have worked hard to get these SEO gains (YEAH MOZ!) and I'd hate to lose them because of Harvey.

Any suggestions, assistance appreciated!

Ralph

Our direct traffic dropped 50% in October. Is anyone else seeing a drop in direct traffic in October in G4? It hasn't shifted to another source or unassigned it's just gone. Has anyone else experienced this and what might be the reasons?

I can't tell you what the best approach is for you.  For me, I look for domination of a niche when it comes to local search.  The above posting is how I do it, but it might not be the best method for you.  I haven't had success with simply redirecting a domain name.  I have had great success with the method I've mentioned above - linking from the keyword domain to a page on my main site with the exact keyword phrase after the keyword domain has been established in Google.  In fact, what I often see is the #1 ranking for the keyword domain (exact match keyword) and a #2 or #3 ranking for the page I link to from the keyword domain on my main site.

Hope that makes sense. lol.

Jim, this just goes to show that there's no sense in freaking out over a change in rankings based on 3 days' time.  I can't even count the number of times I've seen a site drop after link building - only to come back to the same place or a higher placement a week later.  This is typical and almost expected when I'm doing SEO.   As long as you're not doing anything blackhat your site will be just fine.  There's no way Google is going to single your tiny site out among billions of others.

In the future, give your site a minimum of 2 weeks.  I think of it like this:

I do solid SEO. No blackhat. No crap.  Because I do solid work I should be rewarded by Google and never penalized.  With that in mind, if my site starts moving around in Google I know its a GOOD thing because it means Google is reevaluating my site.  I also know that because I only do good work a reevaluation by Google is always going to show me in a favorable light.  I want to see fluctuations in my rankings. It can only mean good things for me.

I believe the meta description is a hugely underrated and valuable tool you can use. Especially once you get your on page SEO and link building set on a good course.

An example would be my company wanted to be on first page of SERP for benchmarking. and the change in Meta Description in title tag allowing me to mention member names has improved click through rates dramatically and gotten us to page #1.

I always try to tie in my company's biggest selling point in the title tag. I talked to the sales staff and asked, "What's your closing move to sell so you don't finish second and win a set of steak knives?"

It's been huge help.

I completely agree and as a general rule I only focus alot of energy and time on meta description if a keyword ranking has shown a significant increase in ranking but has hit a wall. Say you have gone from 45-19 in Google but the extra links and social media don't seem to be helping. Then it's time to really focus on Title Tag and Meta description because the click through rate is going to really help you get that last mile to get on page one