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I was about to say the same thing that Matt said, is there a reason why you're looking at a mobile site and not a responsive site?
Responsive sites give companies the flexibility of only managing one site and usually are very SEO friendly. (You don't have to worry about issues like duplicate content.)
Tom, has a great point. If you're just writing a press release to write a press release you're being spammy. There's no point in that, however if you have relevant content that will get shared and liked then us, I would definitely recommend writing a press release then.
I agree with Spyder, but I also want to ask what is the goal of the client. Do they want to rank well? If that's the case cituations might be the way to go, but if they offer a cool service or have some form of content that you can use you might want to think about social.
Fabrizio,
Obviously it would be a concern if another company thought you were stealing their content and infringing upon it, without at least a link back, so you might want to reach out to those companies before you post any of their content.
My suggestion would be to look at what, GDGT.com is doing it sounds like what you want to do is what they're doing in the electronic space.
I seem to agree with everyone else. You definitely want people to remember you for what you are and who you are. That's why you want to use the same image across all networks.
Pedram,
No worries. By packaging, the process in which we are sending content out their to get viewed.
For example: A picture can be optimized for a variety of social networks including Flickr, Google+, Facebook, and Twitter, which is great, but you need to plan how you are going to send it out there for people to see. Is it going to be an album as part of an event or is it just going to be a simple picture upload, because it's something funny that your audience will enjoy. Twitter you can't create albums, so simply taking pictures "live" during an event is great but then you can upload a 100 photos later on to Facebook/G+ as part of an album. You can even on Facebook create that album as part of a historical event and add it to your timeline.
The overall point is that each social network is different so just because you have one piece of content, doesn't mean that you can't use it in different ways.
I hope that explanation helps out.
Cheers,
Richard.
Echo,
"You hope to increase CTR." Is this if the search engines? If so you need to change your meta descriptions and meta titles, this might be able to be done without creating a completely new website.
As for a few questions here you go:
Those are a few questions that come to mind right off the bat.
+Julian, hit the nail on the head. If the directory is actually quality Google will not see it as a directory and you will not get penalized for it.
Remember when finding content like this, you have to ask yourself does it add value to people? If it passes that test, more than likely you will not get penalized for it.
Pedram,
We've never heard of someone getting caned for duplicate content, for sharing things on multiple social networks. If you do have one piece of content, that you are sharing to multiple networks what you are going to want to do is repackage that content. You can deliver content in different ways in social networks so play around with that.
As per your "followed" vs. "no-followed", the majority of social networks these days are "no-followed", I would suggest starting with where the audience of your niche is. Find out the demographics of your product and then find what social networks they use.
Hope that helps!
Tim Ellis,
I will start this message by saying, that we have built a lot of custom WordPress sites lately, so we are a bit partial.
Saying that though, we have found that a lot of people like WordPress, because they have found it as an easier to use(content management system), especially once you start utilizing some of the advance features such as Gravity Forms.
From an SEO perspective, Wordpress allows for you to easy create pages and posts easily, as well as optimize each one of them for search. There are tons of SEO plug-ins such as Yoast, head-space, all-in-one SEO, and so on.
However, I tend to agree with everyone else on here if you are using Joomla and have no problems with it, why switch? If you're simply talking about making the switch from one CMS to another, just because someone said so...I would not do it.
As pointed out it depends, on a variety of factors. It can take hrs or either months for Google to crawl something. One thing that we always suggest is that you can use social signals, in particular Google+, on the page that has the link to get it crawled faster.
For example if you are a gun company, and you want the link that you got on NY Times to be crawled faster tweet out the NY Times article.
In the end you want that page that has your linked to get crawled faster. Here are a few tips that we wrote about a few months ago, that might help you: http://www.theedesign.com/blog/2013/raleigh-internet-marketers-index-your-website-for-you
It all depends on what your overall goal is. If you have no problem promoting others in your company, feel free to do it, however if you don't want to promote your individuals you are not going to want to do this. (We always suggest promoting the faces within the company, but that's our humble opinion and not always acceptable depending on the company/field. )
As others have said if you are having "high profile individuals" write on your website/blog we would definitely suggest applying authorship to these pages, however if Joe schmo is writing the blog posts I would not worry about it.
Keep in mind as well, Google+ authorship doesn't improve rankings, it does however improve click through rate.
Great question. For a team that does both on-site SEO and off-site SEO we like to think ourselves as scientists.
We see things that most people don't ever see or even notice. We are both creative and analytic, wordy and mathematical, dorks and geeks.
Underscore,
Without knowing your brand or your signal, it's kind of hard to answer that question. However one suggestion we would have is control the social signals as much as you can. Google Authorship and Google circles don't have an SEO impact currently, but they do affect click through rate so make sure that you are on these channels and own them.
Also don't forget about Twitter and Facebook, these services are private and closed off from Google for the most part, however they do still show up in search for your brand name and definitely can be used to crowd source your other keywords.
While you're link building, I would also check out your local directories and make sure that your address/link/phone number is updated on all of them. You can check out GetListed.org... an SEOMoz bought company to see if your information is accurate everywhere.
Larry,
We would take a look at what Amazon is doing and try to copy it to the utmost...as they are obviously an e-retailer that has the most successful.
Here are a few thoughts after visiting your website,
Let customers know how much they're saving. Amazon lists every price as 23% off list price, why don't you do the same?
Your checkout now button is buried on the bottom of the checkout page, at first glance I couldn't find it.
Speaking of not finding your checkout button, your cart page has waaaay too much information. You ask for me to edit quantity, enter credit card type, sign up for newsletter, and choose shipping all on the same page. I'd break this down a little bit. and maybe use multiple pages or at least get rid of "sign up for newspaper on every page".
Tina,
Great question...of course it matters on the social media platform and the link you have. For example, I'm sure a New York Times link would give you more value than a link on Manta.com, however a link from buymylinks.com would get less value than a Google+ link.
You also need to remember that a lot of these social media channels are currently blocked by the search bots as well as most social media accounts are no-follow, but this doesn't mean that you should give up social. entirely. A lot of people still use social media and high follower counts and URL's can sometimes be crawled by the Google bots. Also if you've shared an article, link, or story on G+ more than likely if you have strong authorship and a high level of interaction your update will show up in the search engines.
It depends on a variety of factors. You will notice that some people say that it takes hrs while others might say months. I recently highlighted these in my own blog post, but if you want something crawled and indexed faster you need the trust of that website to be increased. So feel free to share it on social media sites, build links to that page, or connect Google+ to it.
You can read the full article here: http://www.theedesign.com/blog/2013/raleigh-internet-marketers-index-your-website-for-you
I know that a lot of these links are no-followed, however one thing that we always stress with all of our clients if they are going to be on any network from Manta to Facebook, is that they have a clean and accurate profile and actively update them at least once a week. This show's not just Manta that we're using it for value but it shows users that we're actually on the social network and not just a spammer trying to get links.
Remember the one core thing to Google is they like fresh content and they like content that is not spammy, so the goal should always be to look as if "human" as possible. We believe that social profiles that are updated regularly do factor into the algorithm and increase the positioning of that social account, thus giving more value to it's links. Again, no scientific research has been done...but it's a general belief that we have.
It depends on the purpose. Remember the Golden rule of Google, is to think like a user. So if you think your content is spammy, Google will probably think it's spammy.
If you're listing words just for keyword purposes I would say yes, however if you're listing the cities you serve probably not.
I agree with Mark. The question should be based on what kind of content you're putting there.
If you're wanting to make a community, why don't you use it to highlight users of your product or service? This way they can share it as well and help you create your content.
Purple Indigo,
I'd look to see reach out to the " thought leaders" in your field. Talk to them and get them involved. Become friends and slowly promote their work, and then let them know that you think you have something that would be of interest tot he community if they can help promote it, it would be beneficial to everyone in the industry.
Avraam,
Can we get some more info on what a "Product Page" is? Is this an actual product or a landing page for products. Maybe creating some original content for this page in the form of videos, tutorials, and manuals wlll help it rank higher.
In terms of separating the products page form the home page. That's going to be a little bit hard, to explain without knowing the site. Is the home page going after the same keywords as the product page?
Frederick,
Can you give us some more information on what you are looking for?
Are you looking for "the number of tweets" a hashtag appears in or just something that you can use to view a #hashtag as it's in action.
Have you taken a look at your Google Webmaster Tools? Among the various things it will give you a list of all the crawl errors that you have on your website. That might be of help.
I agree with Tom. When it comes to keyword density, ask yourself if it comes off natural, then ask a friend to read the copy. Ask him or her, does it come off natural and would they accept this for copy on a website.
We tend to agree with Moosa, "local results" and "organic results" are not linked in anyway. If your local results seem to have fallen off quite a bit, I'd suggest taking a look at your link building activities.
Also run your competitors through opensiteexplorer.com or ahrefs.com, see what they're doing from a link buliding perspective that might have caused them to jump over you.
Have you tried reaching out to Google local support yet? We'd give them a try.
I'd also recommend going into Webmaster Tools and taking a look at your search queries, this might help you as well.
All of the responses here are good, but we also want to throw out the fact that as a company, do you know if your brand is a successful brand. We can all come up with ideas for companies but are they really money making worthy.
We have people who have worked on both sides of the coin, agency and in-house and I can say as an agency person, I see a lot of people who are afraid of really doing what they need to be doing to win the online battle. How are you marketing to your clients currently? Are you knocking on doors? Is your business even really marketing online?
Ternit,
I would ignore a blog.wordpress.com. This isn't giving you any natural traffic. You want the blog on your site.
I seem to agree with everyone that your goal should be to focus on optimizing your current website with keyword rich titles, h1s, meta description, and meta tags.
If you have any pictures on these pages, I would also look into title tags and alternate title tags.
Also if you don't have any social media accounts set up, do this now and make sure that you have plug-ins in place, to make your content is easily shareable.
Nightwing,
I like the name. 
I'd say take a look at RavenTools. They recently dropped their SERPs report data that was part of their reporting tool, but they still offer some valuable insight into their reports.
There's always Google. If you use the right search operators you can find almost anything that you want without having to crawl through the junk that's often in the serps: http://www.googleguide.com/advanced_operators.html
A quick search with the following words can often help find the top guest posts in your field or industry, as well:
"submit guest post"
"guest post article"
“guest post by”
“guest post guidelines”
All of these are great options.
If I can add a great chrome extension is "Web Developer" by Chris Pendrick. It doesn't do everything you want, but it can gives you a few easy to use SEO tricks right in your browser.
We agree that Facebook posts are seeing less and less featured time on people's walls, but it's important to note that interaction with your posts does increase Facebook's EdgeRank.
Are you interacting with your viewers and engaging with them? Creating great content and posting it is a quick way to get more views with your posts.
If your content is changing it will definitely affect your SEO positioning. Though there's no way of telling if it will have a positive or negative impact.
One thing I would suggest is make sure that you are using the proper keywords in your content(no keyword stuffing) and that you use the proper keywords in page titles, meta, etc.
Beyond that it's all up to the content you put in place.
It depends on how you define success? There are a variety of tools out there that use the Google AP. One that we are particular fond of is RavenTools, but for some companies Google Analytics can simply do it all.
Google Analytics has a variety of tools that can help you out, including:
You name it and Analytics will probably do it. So again, it depends on what your goal is with your SEO campaign. If it's to increase site traffic, maybe Analytics can help you or if you're simply monitoring the growth of keywords we would suggest something like Raventools.
Ouch! Our first thought is that having a lot of choices sounds ugly and frustrating, from a user experience side. Remember you don't want to give your customer too many options, you want to guide them through the process and watch them through a conversion funnel.
Why don't you just create landing pages and add those to the header?
I believe you're actually referring to Google's Knowledge Graph that is tied in a bit to G+.
Is your G+ account active? Are you actively posting using it? If not Google might not see it as a valid account. You also need to get it verified.
This article might help: http://www.localseoguide.com/google-plus-takes-over-google-knowledge-graph-for-brands/
Article spinning? Really, as a long term strategy this doesn't work.
Your customers. Use google tools such as Google Analytics and Google Adwords to find out how they're getting to your site.
Never trust a website promising a quick and easy way to get links. Usually these links have no value and won't serve you any use in the long term.
It's effective for buying YouTube views not customers, which is what you want in the long term right?
Let's face it Marketing is hard and sometimes monotonous work, but when done right awesome results do actually happen. So don't trust any of the quick rich schemes you've mentioned. Do the work, put the hours in, and you will see the results.
What Bryan said. Who-Is is not a factor in the search algorithm.
Directories and Article Submission sites rarely count anymore. Also remember as a good rule of thumb, if it's easy for you to get I'm sure all of your competitors have got it as well.
If you're new to SEO check out the Beginner's Guide by SEOMoz, that might help you out.
http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo
Also it's worth pointing out that the guy who wrote the testimonial has a PR of 1, which is just one level above the 0 where all sites begin at.
I would suggest start talking with your current customers and see if a newsletter is something that they would be interested in. Maybe do a blog post on it, promoting what will be in your newsletter or even use your social media channels. It all depends on the level of conversation you are currently having with your clients.
Even LinkedIn offers you the opportunity to see people's emails if you wanna steal those. Also don't forget to use your email to engage customers, not just push your items. I recently saw an email that said in the header "first person to email me back with a reply to said question gets a $10 gift card", this will allow you to keep an idea of who is actually engaged with your email and reading it.
My first thoughts are there's no mention of Google+, which we all know is having an impact on SEO and click-through rates.
I think that SEO and social media have to survive together. If I'm looking for a new lawn-mower i'm going to search for one online, there's no way that I'm going to use social media to find one. Though I might ask a question to my followers, I would prefer to do my research online. There's tons of stuff not talked about in social media that I might have an interest in buying, so SEO is definitely here to stay.
One of our in-house marketers was in a similar situation about a year ago. Here's what we can say.1) Find out as much information about the company as you can and take a look at their analytics. Does one website drive traffic more than the others? Is one more important to the client? Find out what drives the revenue of the company and start there. It might be more important to invest money and time from in the top website and trickle down...
2) Subdomains would probably be the best, but that's not always an option according to the client, we understand.
3) Are all of these websites different brands or just different websites? For example Burgers.com and Hamburgers.com. If they're the same site, you definitely need to change them at least cosmetically. Make sure that they have different call to actions, etc. Think of it as an A+B test and go from there. Be creative. Make one website green and one blue, and always keep in mind duplicant content.
MailChimp seems to the preferred email client these days for small businesses, but there seems to be a new email client popping up everyday now.
i'm not that familiar with Joomla, but if you're looking to set up an email newsletter here are a few questions you should ask.1) Do you already have an existing email base? If you do that's awesome, if not you need to ask yourself what are you going to do to get these emails.
2) How many people are you looking to get signed up and how much are you sending? MailChimp seems to be the best and easiest email to use. It's free if you only send once a month and have a small fanbase, but once it gets over 1,000 users it can get pricey.
3) What email client fits your needs? Most email clients have plug-ins to use for most CMS' including Mailchimp, iContact, and Constant Contact
4) Do you have enough content? If you don't have enough content to share with your customers you probably should not be emailing them.
Anyways, hope that helps.
Depending on your business I would think less of mobile SEO and more of building your local citations. Remember that most people who are using tablets are using it for simple things such as finding a perfect restaurant or finding things to do. Even Yelp is tied to Apple's new Maps system.
Make sure that you're on every review site possible such as Yelp, Urbanspoon, Google local, G+, and all the social networks that are relevant to your niche.
It should always be a picture of you. Take it from a social media point of view or even a cock-tail point of view as I tell my clients, your brand doesn't talk to clients you do, so you definitely want to put your face/picture out there.
It's up to you, but I have to agree that using different emails might be the best way especially if you think you might be losing the accounts later on.
Handing them over might be an issue in the future if you only use one account. Who wants an angry and nasty client, after all?