Welcome to the Q&A Forum

I agree with laellester. I rarely get a link sending an email but I do get links if I call people first.

I would recommend majestic seo. It cost a few bucks but it catches missing links from OSE. Both are great tools.

We have used firms overseas for seo work and they are great. The only negative working with a company not in your time zone is when you need answers quick.  I really like using a seo company as more like financial advisor. We do most of the seo work but it is helpful to have someone agree or disagree with your efforts.

If you can hire someone internally and use great forums like seomoz may also be a great way of building a good seo person in house. In the long run it maybe cheaper.

We use hyphens and non-hyphen keywords for seo. We have used it for quite some time and we have seen no negative effects.

Here is an updated list from our nice friends.  http://www.seomoz.org/dp/seo-directory

Tough decision but if the price of the website is affordable I would purchase it. You have to remember it is important to analyze the site and do research but your other competitors may pick up underneath you too. If it is in your budget it maybe best to buy it and hold onto it.

Tough call but I think I would pass on the 301 re-direct. If google doesn't like the links what advantages would it to add it. I would start fresh and build your new site with good quality links and forget all the bad ones from your old site.

Age of a domain registered seems to be a factor. I have been working on a newer site and our new site is ranking higher than our competitors in all seomoz factor but not over taking the older sites. All I can say is keep up the good work and one day you will catch up.

In the US your website is not showing up as #1. You may have to log out of your google accounts and clear your history. I sometimes ask my friends to google my company to see their results because they never search my keywords. Good luck!

We have had great success running a facebook sweepstakes/promotions with www.sweptin.com. We increased our fans and had a lot more interactions. There a few companies that offer this type of service. just google facebook sweepstakes. When running these kinds of promotions you will have to do some marketing on your own end. Like sending out an email blast to customers/vendors and maybe doing a press release. good luck!

I would have to agree with Dimitar and say social media should be used as a way to engage your audience and create new networks. We try to use our social media to grow interest in our business and I also have found out increasing facebook fans have not helped in ranking so far.

I think it is very important to keep the post unique across your social media. I follow a lot of companies and the last thing I would like to read is the same post in your blog and your facebook wall. For a consumer I  enjoy reading unique content.

For seo purposes that unique content across social media is up for debate.

I have a few blogs and bots seem to be leaving most of my comments. Leaving some comments do offer some nice juicy links. I do like to read through the comments making sure my human friends are engaged with my site.

I would include at least one main blog to your site. Not only are you putting out fresh new content on your website but maybe one day you will have a huge following of people interested in what you say in your blog. Blogs are great in helping your potential clients but sometimes really fun to read.

I found a pretty basic SEO book called SEO secrets by Danny Dover. Gives you basic ideas and terminology. Sometimes it is nice to read a book. Old school but I still like reading my newspaper that has been printed.

I believe the link directories are fine within reason. Don't rely only on link directories but submitting to them I have found did any harm. I think if you have a good mix of link directories and natural links you will be fine. I would avoid low page rank directories.

I have a friend in the SEO community and he  tried getting some bulk links for his site and it did more than good. When testing this strategy he saw his site drop from the first page of google to the fourth page. It took him nearly half a year to get his site back on page one of google.

If you are worried about competitors adding bad links to your site than I think the best strategy is to get the best natural back links to combat the bad ones.

I would stick to one internal blog instead of focusing on two. I have tried it before and writing blogs and getting links is super time consuming for even one site. I would put my best effort on one site and give it a 100% effort.

If you ask the question that it may do more harm than it probably is not worth it. I think if you can do it yourself, I would take your time and do it yourself (not worth the risk).

Sometimes OSE cannot pick up all the links like Shelly mention. To double check to see if google has picked up on your links. I usually set a google alert in my email for the exact term I was targeting. You will most likely see your PRWEB link when google does their crawl but pick up some helpful links and news what your competitors are doing at the same time.

Personally, I think there is certainly some value in having a domain name with some age and would lean towards investing your money in that direction.  Your client certainly doesn't want to abandon getting some links to this page so I would encourage them to keep some budget open for that but if I had to recommend one over the other I think I would recommend getting the domain name with 9-10 years of history.

Good luck!

The directory looks ok with a decent PA. I would just make sure you submit your site to the appropriate category.

I agree googles searches are easy to use to find links and sometimes I will set up a google alert for keywords.

I prefer writing a short blog for a link. They can either post it in their blog or your own. We all know sometimes coming with ideas for blogs for your own site is very tedious.

Im with IanTheScot, I have been successful getting a link with DMoz, but I have also been trying to get one for 3 years with another client.

You can see what kind of re-direct you have set up by looking at the .htacess file.

A 301 redirect from t-chek.com to thchek.com would be your best bet, it will pass through the link juice from links pointing to t-chek.com

You would need to edit the htaccess file for t-chek.com

Next update looks to be around the 20th of Sept.

http://apiwiki.seomoz.org/w/page/25141119/Linkscape%20Schedule

Well it is obviously out-dated, most links are from 2007-2008. While DMoz is hard to get, if you can get a link from that directory it is worth the time and effort. Some are also expensive, like BBB, but there have been posts on SEOMoz about the worth of a BBB link.

I guess the whole list is out-dated because there are not that many trust-worthy link directories in general. It is also an older tactic, whereas finding and earning natural links seems to be the better way to get links pointing to your site.

You could use an SEO plugin so that the meta description is the same formula (ex: "category" | "blog post" etc...), several are available for WordPress.

I have a similar problem with a client of mine.
While I feel on paper, their on-site SEO is below par. They are consistently ranking #1 and #2 for their keywords.

The one thing I have done was come up with a plan and structured it out in excel and word, just in case a large problem occurs.

The best solution would be to write out your proposed changes, and start small. If you start small and structure your plan in a timeline, you can re-structure the whole site over a long period of time without seeing any negative effects initially.

I have added it to the index page of a client because they requested it (a competitor started first).

A few people have clicked it, but not enough to really justify it yet. Basically its on a trial period for them.

I could see it being more useful for blogs, if the content is good people will click it, but I am not sure if they will share it on FB, Tweet it and THEN click +1. Seems to be a lot to ask.

Ive been seeing the same thing on and off, so its not just you. But I have no idea why it is happening.

Is the brand name affected? Id make sure that you rank #1 for your brand name, because Google is giving those site large site links that almost go down to the fold before the #2 listing.

Also, I would grab as many social media profiles that you can, so if a user searches for you then your twitter, facebook, etc... accounts should show up on that first SERP page.

I'm sure there are a lot of different ways of getting rid of bad press(you'll find a ton of ideas here), and hopefully your company doesn't assume you'll create good press for them, that's up to them to change the ways they currently do business for the future.

I have not seen that before, what does the code look like.

Is it possible to save the images and host them on your clients site? Or do they change dynamically over time? (by the retailer?)

Well the main article should be on its own page with its own value, so that could gain some steam if it is linked to or picked up by other blogs as reference.

I think in the end it depends on how good the content is, if its good content then it should stay relevant and help your website.

By looking at your site I still feel like you could be doing a better job with your on-page seo and also with the content on your index page.

I would start researching local keywords and work from there. "Website Design" is too broad, IMO. Maybe start with Website Design firm in Cork, Ireland, or something like that.

Also, by Googling your phone number I was able to find your old site/design, this could be resulting in some duplicate content.

What you are referring to are site-links. I find that they appear mainly when searching for a brand name, hence when you searched for SEOMoz, you saw those site-links. But if you searched for "seo", you will notice that they are not as dominant.

Also, they are generated by Google. You can go into webmaster tools to remove them (and kind of strategically select which ones you want to appear) , but you cannot create them yourself.

Use "-" instead of "+"

Here is an article I always have bookmarked for URL Structure, even though it is from 2006, it is a good source of info from Rand.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/11-best-practices-for-urls

Thanks for the link, I guess I was wondering if its normal to happen during any testing or caching. Everything is technically fine and SEO'ed properly.

I have noticed that some of my title tags have been altered (by Google?) on the SERP.

I am only showing the keywords on some listings, not the full title tags that I wrote, this is happening to our competitors as well.

Any idea what is going on, one of my clients is looking for answers!

Thanks

I would make your redirect a 301, not a 302.

OSE should treat them as the same, its just a secure version of your site, there is no duplicate content, its the same site.

I would write as much unique content as possible, even if there are feature sets that are the same, explain how they are applied to each different product.

Well stocktips.com doesn't seem to be a valid site, so there is no content to crawl.

If you're speaking in generalities (based on an exact match domain example), then if you do all your on page optimization, have decent content,  and start getting links, you should start seeing your site in top SERPs in a few months. If you do the work.

I had a client with an exact match, good on-page, a few natural external links and a couple blog articles and they were on the first page of the SERP after about 3 months.

Bottom line is that no one can tell you how long it will take, because it depends on the competitiveness of the term, if someone is doing SEO better than you, then they will out-rank you.

Do you have an editing software, or video graphic software to add a watermark? What about intros and outro's, even if it is just an image?

Correct, I would use a 301 re-direct from B to A

A client of mine wants to look into new areas of link building after convincing them that their current link building strategies (purchasing multiple links from god knows where) was not working well for them. Essentially I felt they were spinning their wheels.

Now, we are looking into content related blogs to get some honest links for their site. They sell sports equipment and we are looking at sports blogs to get links/partnerships. Most of these blogs want sponsorship fees or advertising fees.

From an ethical standpoint I understand buying links is not the best idea. But because these are blogs that earn traffic, have relevant content, and can be helpful for the advertisement aspect to link to people who might be interested in their products as well.

There shouldn't be a problem in acquiring a few of these links if the budget allows for it, correct? Also are blogs a good source to acquire links from?

I have a client who has a blog with a side bar on each page, in the sidebar there are various links to the site, as well as links to some of his partner sites.

I was looking at the recently updated open site explorer, and noticing that their domain authority is way down, a good amount below their competitors as well.

The total links compared  to the linking root domains is ~3000 to 200.

So my question is

1. How can I gain on the domain authority front? (more diverse links?)

And if so,

2. Should I no-follow the links on their blog so they don't have hundreds of pages with the same links (most internal) on there site

Thanks,
Nick

Well your first example would be referencing 2 separate directories, where the second example is one directory.

Here's a quick snippet of an article from Rand. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/11-best-practices-for-urls

These last examples have done nearly everything right:

• http://www.discoverohio.com/visitors/map.asp
  Brilliant - it's short, descriptive, static and obvious.
• http://web.mit.edu/is/usability/usability-guidelines.html
  Despite the subdomain, everything else is near perfect.
• http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/jk35.html
  I'm letting the White House off the hook for not using "john-kennedy" as the page title, because they've wisely also provided his number (the US' 35th President).