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Yes, I thought that's what you meant ... thanks!

Could you say more about what kind of link building you plan to do? I can't imagine that you need a landing page, unless you want to track the traffic from the campaign and/or the links obtained ...  then a landing page would make sense.

The robots.txt file DOES contain

User-agent: Msnbot
Crawl-delay: 120
Disallow: /key-west-blog/*?*
Disallow: /key-west-blog/*.rss
Disallow: /key-west-blog/*feed
Disallow: /key-west-blog/*trackback
Disallow: /key-west-blog/*wp-
Disallow: /key-west-blog/*login.php
Disallow: /key-west-blog/tag/
Disallow: /key-west-blog/search/
Disallow: /key-west-blog/archives/
Disallow: /key-west-blog/category/
Disallow: /key-west-blog/2009
Disallow: /key-west-blog/2010

But you are saying I should remove the lines with noindex? 

The SEOMoz crawl tool is telling me that I have a slew of crawl errors on the blog of one domain. All are related to the MSNbot. And related to trackbacks (which we do want to block, right?) and attachments (makes sense to block those, too) ... any idea why these are crawl issues with MSNbot and not Google? My robots.txt is here: http://www.wevegotthekeys.com/robots.txt.

Thanks, MJ

I love SproutSocial, but the only other Twitter platform I've tried was Tweetdeck. I might never have looked beyond, but TD stopped working on my desktop and it wouldn't uninstall correctly ...blah blah.

I've used Sprout for a while now, and love a lot of the features. The ability to post to Facebook or not for any give post is nice ... and I like the clean up feature. Search tools are great and I find it easy to find new folks to follow.

I played with it a little last year, but I didn't make any connections for link exchanges. It hadn't occurred to me to use it like that ... I do like to exchange with highly relevant, quality sites ... shhh, don't tell. ;D.

What keywords are you already targeting?

I assume your title tag should give me a clue:

Changing Limiting Beliefs | Belief Change | Create the Life You Want | Practical Skills to get what you want"

And are you already using Google's keyword tool? If so, and you are targeting changing limiting beliefs, Google's tool offers these:

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Keyword ideas (8)

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How about 'law of attraction' and that related group of phrases?

I don't believe they have any SEO  value in Google (or elsewhere). Why would they? The Open Graph tags are used to control how a link appears in Facebook when a page is shared or liked there. So they have a value in FB, but none in search engines to the best of my knowledge.

Christopher is correct; the link juice is divided between all the links on the page whether the links have the nofollow attribute is lost. So, the suggestion that you can tell Google where to send the link juice (called PageRank sculpting) is erroneous.

You can block those pages from being crawled and indexed via your robots text, but again, it will not mean more link juice is passed to the crawled pages.

The concept of "too many links" was fostered by A Google Webmaster Guideline of some years ago that advised against more than 100 links on a page. Google warned that not all links were likely to be crawled if there were so many.

Google now says that is no longer an issue. However, that many links on a page can present an issue with usability for your site visitors and that should be your guiding light on the number  of links per page.

Bruce Clay's site is a great place to start.: https://www.google.com/#sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&source=hp&q=silo+site:bruceclay.com&pbx=1&oq=silo+site:bruceclay.com&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=11392l11854l8l12152l3l3l0l0l0l0l160l403l1.2l3l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=27bb19e28ec96caa&biw=1333&bih=624

I am inclined to lead toward some type of siloing with a high content site. There is the very purest silo architecture which I feel Bruce Clay presents very clearly in his site articles. You can certainly vary it to be less rigid and still be an effective SEO tool.

I generally agree that MOST content should not be too many clicks from the home page, but drop down menus can go a long way to keep a lot of content close without it being unwieldy. Perhaps it will help to look at it this way: the way your structure your navigation tells Google what you believe your most important pages are - if you tell them ALL your pages are equally important, you dilute the ability of your top pages to rank better than your lesser pages.

If that makes sense to you, I hope it helps.

301 redirects are the very best way to redirect and retain the most link power. Within the site, you have nothing to worry about if your new structure has better SEO. 301 redirects do not always pass 100% of external bank link juice, but it's still the best tool we have to keep what we have already achieved.

Agreed. It's called the web for a reason - a web of links. To my way of thinking, when I link out I am saying to Google: this is my neighborhood, and I am linking to it.

It shouldn't; search engines can isolate strings without separators. However, how many people do you think actually type 'girls pink yoga capri' or are you just being hypothetical?

Okay. That page has quite a few links .... a quick count says 91 .... but many are nested in menus so I don't see a problem from a user standpoint. Of course, if you are hoping this post and others like it will help boost the SEO of other posts, then I would say you are diluting any power it might have.

Without addressing your specifics, I can guess yes based on my experience with campaigns in one of my client's Adwords account. In talking with an adwords rep about an issue with one campaign, he repeatedly referred to the influence of a separate campaign within the same account.

May I suggest you call an Adwords rep yourself and inquire directly about the problem?

I don't see enough information to answer you; but it might help you to know that, traditionally, more than 100 links was considered too many. More than 100 links is now okay, but only (IMO) if it really benefits the user.

I have never heard that - and I have never experienced it on my sites or those I manage. On the contrary; I think it helps rank a site for a phrase. I do know some people are afraid of linking out, but I am not. When I link out with my target text, one of the messages I am sending Google is " this is my neighborhood, and I am linking to it."

I don't think you will have trouble getting your articles accepted within the directories if you are writing unique, quality content. Ezinearticles.com is probably the best know. I have also used morestar.ca; it's a nice PR4 article directory. I do find most of them are a little too full of 'how to whiten your teeth" articles, but if YOur article is read and gets picked up and syndicated, that's all that matters, right? I would try ezinearticles.com first.

I have never heard of anyone being penalized for inbound links, site wide or otherwise. If one could lower the rank of a rival site by linking to  a competitor with the site wide links or  "bad neighborhood" links, well, we'd all be buying links to the other guy's site, wouldn't we?

Here's what SEOs seem to believe about site wide links; they aren't worth much, if any, more than a single link from a site. I am not quite sure that's true, but 1,000 links from 1,000 domains is certainly worth a great deal more than 1,000 links from a single domain.

Google doesn't have the x-ray vision some of us fear.

The ONLY reason to nofollow a link, IMO, is because you have sold the link and want to be compliant with Google Webmaster Guidelines. To use nofollow in most other cases makes no sense to me.

I know it was developed to prevent blog spam - and if you don't have time to moderate comments, then nofollow might make sense.  But, IMO, it's better to have a clearly stated followed, moderated blog comment policy; when readers know that substantive comments are approved and followed, it encourages participation.

No reason too worry, as others have said. I  don't advise nollow, actually - in general, I believe comments should be moderated; if they are spammy they'll never be followed because they won't be approved. But a clearly stated moderation policy that lets readers know that substantive comments are appreciate - and rewarded with a followed link - encourages good contribution, IMO.

Gyi's suggestion to analyze your crawl rate is spot on. The SEOMoz warning is out of date - Google used to advise that you not have more than 100 links on a page, but Cutts would tell you today that G no longer prefers a limit BUT that the question you should ask is: does it benefit my website visitor?

I concur with Ressler.  You are better off thinking of the end user than SEO on the finer points of navigation, IMO. You certainly don't need to repeat the category keyword as you drill down.

Widgets/red-widgets/cool-red-widgets/<< might be too many widgets.

Just as "beste SEO practice" suggests we only use the keyword phrase 1-2 times in a title tag, I would probably not overuse it in a path.

Widgets/red/cool-red-widgets/ might be less 'keyword stuffed."

Gotcha! I say those pages should be excluded via robots.txt. Build static landing pages for any keyword term you wish to rank for and optimize those. Or rather than build a new page, take the top result of a search for keyword site:yourdomain.com, which will tell you what page already ranks highest for that target phrase, and and use that for your landing page for a term; optimize on page and build internal and external links to the page for the term.

To the best of my knowledge, no.This SearchEngineLand article may provide a lot of clarity for you: http://searchengineland.com/facebooks-open-graph-for-local-seo-52098.

Ryan is correct; you cannot control the flow of PageRank or link juice around your site using the NF attribute, and, in general, it is not a "best SEO practice" to use the nofollow attribute on your own site links. If you would prefer the search engine to not index a page, it is far better to prohibit the crawl of that page via your robots.txt file.

Unless you are selling links (or trying to prohibit spam in blog comments, perhaps) I would not use the nofollow on a site. Why would I put a link on my site that I don't trust? I don't think I want to send that message to Google.

I would not be concerned with optimizing for internal search. You want to optimize for Google, Bing and Yahoo. The Learn SEO files here on SEOMoz should give you the basics, and you might find it very helpful to use the on page analysis tool to go over the basic onsite optimization factors.

Not sure I have ever used a page number on a site, though I do see sites that use them when they have a string of say, affiliate pages ... a way to answer this question is to ask: how will it help the visitor to my site?

I'm sorry, but your question is not clear to me even when I look at the graphic. Could you offer an example using one set of keywords to clarify, please?

What is your question? I hope I am wrong, but I get the impression you are promoting your contest, and not really asking for help.

Social media does have a direct impact on SEO - links in Twitter, for example, are fed to Google with Twitter's nofollow attribute removed. But the impact of a single link in Twitter is far less significant than a link from a website where is will be seen over and over. The value of a Twitter link increases, though, with the influence of the Tweeter.So, the object is, as others have said, to create a community or, circle of influence.

You could do it as a blog; I am guessing there is a wordpress plugin or theme to create a directory. But I would be more inclined to use something like PHP Link Directory. It is easy to install and they have a great support  forums.

You can also have articles on the site, which can add to content. I have a general, paid directory here made with PHPLD: Arabule.  Note the articles at the right, but you will find lots of better examples of directories.

First of all, the position of a website is not dependent upon adding content. If the site has relevant, original content and quality incoming links, the site's position will not slip if there is no new content. Promise.

Your idea sounds great! By all means, you can ask for an email if you like ... but why not put a "top ten site" list on the home page, with your site at the top to make sure everyone is likely to see that? You can also feature NoahsDad.com on every page in some way ... in the sidebar or at the bottom. It might say: this directory sponsored by NoahsDdad.com. Something like that.

Hope that helps.

Have you exhausted the Q&As here on the topic? And the whiteboards, etc.? SEOMoz is really full of a lot of excellent information on all aspects of SEO. I am not familiar with the book Brett recommended, but looking at the index and browsing it (in Amazon's search tool) it looks as though it would answer well for things like using the rel canonical tag, etc.

I also think you would do well to google the topics that interest you and scan the tutorials that pop up. You will find that some writers will speak more clearly to you than others.

For example, I think this site on .htaccess http://www.htaccess-guide.com/ is a great place to start ... but you will find many other sites and another may be more suited to your learning style.

I also recommend you read and follow the blogs of some of the more advanced SEOs. Personally I like to see what Mike Martinez has to say. http://www.seo-theory.com/ and http://seo.xenite.org ...

Matt Cutts recommends against using nofollow this way -- now, you might want to take anything Matt says with a grain of salt, but we do know that you cannot control the flow of PageRank in this way. Your other pages will not get more PR because you have nofollowed others; instead Matt says, the PR is lost. See the video

That said, a larger site might benefit indirectly from a judicious use of the robots.txt file to prevent the indexing pf pages that are not likely to end up in the SERPs and allowing more of the site's crawl time allotment for pages that have SERP value.

watch?v=4SAPUx4Beh8

Considering that keywords in domains no longer have the same SEO value they once enjoyed in Google, switching to a new domain might not be in your best interests. While a 301 will pass along much of the incoming link juice, it doesn't necessarily convey all of it.

Nor do you want to duplicate your site, but perhaps you could develop a second site as a blog or with other, unique content and use that to drive traffic to your main site ....

1. Yes, that's what many SEOs believe.

2. Use both plural and singular forms in your content, internal links and strive to obtain external links with both.

3. Make sure you aren't over-optimizing (I tend in that direction sometimes and am trying to break the habit. ) and be sure to use the keywords naturally on the page near the photos.

CafePress is right on. Your position may also benefit from links to your page with your target text nearby, so cafepress' suggestion of Boat Covers from [Company] or similarly   [Company] Boat Covers should be on the right track.

You're on the right track - Adwords willl give you the more  reliable assessment of how often a term is actually searched. Every tool I've tried has returned different numbers.

I advise extra butter on the greens.

I don't believe that there is any onpage optimization to make it more likely that Yahoo vs. Google will index posts. There are things you can do to increase crawl rate, which will  makes it more likely to have more pages indexed. For example,  you can make sure you  have resolved any duplicate content issues on  your site - archives for example, should be excluded by robots.txt (there are WP plugins to help with this, btw).

Perhaps more to the point, I believe social media -- bookmarking, Tweeting, Facebook Page links, etc. -- can increase indexing of posts. I know it works in Google, perhaps someone else can it works in  Yahoo.

I have never had success in getting a link from or even an idea picked up by/through HARO. And I do think that I have offered some useful tidbits, etc, but there are a lot of others offering useful info, too.  The service is probably more effective for journalists than for SEOs or webmasters. I  am US based.

If you are going to make barberhartford your domain then yes, by all means 301 the old site, page by page to the new - in other words, do not simply redirect each page to the home page ... once that is done most of the link juice will pass to the barrberhartford domain,  but the wise move is to have the old links changed, wherever possible, to the new domain.

The email address is not important SEOwise, and I don't know what NAP means, but I strongly believe it is very important for branding to use your domain name. However, I also feel that it's fine to use a name such as DixieCutters as the 'print' and promotional domain name; whatever people will best remember.

That  might depend on whether the company name has brand recognition - and whether you are trying too build it; but in the age of social media, I would tend to favor a real name of someone who works or owns for the company.

What I do believe I know about link position is that the first link on a page has more value than the second, etc. The principle upon which Google's "link popularity / PageRank" algo was based on the 'random surfer model. So a link that is more likely to be clicked is more valuable. This is not to say that Google's PR algo has not evolved, but I am sure this principle is still in significant play.

I think most professional SEOs would also agree that footer links have less value than other links - though I am less certain of that than my first point.

I think Matt Cutts would say, try to think like the user. Is your visitor less likely to find and click on the link than if it were near the social media buttons? If so, it is likely to get less traffic.

Not all links can be the first link, but I would be sure to have any important link be "above the fold" and barring that, with a feature that would be likely to attract the eye of the user.

Hope that helps.

To your second question: . Would it be a good idea to add the word "yoga" to each term: "Yoga Mats, Yoga Bolsters, Yoga Gear and Yoga Accessories"

I just asked a similar question on whether a city name should be repeated in the title tag. You might want to review the responses: http://www.seomoz.org/q/effect-of-repeating-keyword-in-title-effective-or-diluting/.

FWIW.

My two cents on #1: I would rather work on optimizing your bolster page as a landing page by building internal and external links to that page than optimize the home page for bolster.

Well, that doesn't explain why traffic is being reported as from organic search .... but thanks for answering.

I know there are SEOs who will disagree with me, but I don't think duplicate content is quite the issue some people think it is. Yes, there is, perhaps, some dilution of internal link juice, but there is not a negative filter in Google's algorithm that counts against you if you have duplicate pages.

That said, would it work for you to use anchors on one page with a named anchor for the video for one URL and another for the photos?

I do often see anamolies in GA, but I am afraid I can't enlighten you on this one. But I am curious: is the GA code on those pages?

I do know that  in the past year Google has weakened the power of keywords in the domain name, however, I don't believe that applies to file names. In this video: Matt Cutts does point out that this would be a very easy thing to test.

And I believe from my personal anecdotal experience that using the name of the locality in file names is useful for SEO.

watch?v=971qGsTPs8M

I am  not sure what you are asking, but let me try ...

Let's take your home page and the "target page."  I would not use the page you specified above as that doesn't have the targeted content. Instead I would use

http://www.in2town.co.uk/news/soap-gossip which could be developed as an excellent landing page for the terms you identified.

On your home page, you might have a line that reads: Want the latest news about your favorite stars; check out our posts on <start link="">celebrity news <end link="">and soap gossip.</end></start>

Elsewhere on your site I would link to the target page with similar content and links, only you might use 'soap gossip' as the anchor text. Some SEOs believe that the content around the link has 'juice" as well ... so you don't necessarily have to use the trageted terms as anchor text.

Does that help?

Internal linking is an effective factor in SEO. Using your targeted phrase as anchor text in a contextually linked content from a strong page(s) is part of that strategy. Navigation links with the targeted phrase are also useful.