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Hey there, Garrett!
Haven't heard of Linkredible, but I'd put my caution lights on any time I run across a company that offers "link building" services. Besides creating good, honest content, I can't think of a more natural way to "earn" links.
If you go down that road, I'd investigate heavily.
Best of luck!
Hi Matthew,
Great question. And your hunch is correct. If you already have links from the other domain, and you're confident that the DA 30 is a credible site that isn't engaging in bad practices, then do the work to earn that link!
Best,
Wayne
Hi Gang,
We are a multi-state law firm (Indiana, Michigan, New Mexico) that is looking to increase ranking for Michigan and New Mexico for 2015. (Michigan and New Mexico used to exist as subdomains under 2keller.com but have now been incorporated as pages under the main domain.)
The question is whether or not we link directly to what we call the "main state pages" from various accounts like G+, FB, Yellow Pages, Yelp, etc.?
For example, should we link from our New Mexcio G+ page to our New Mexico main page, or should it be linked to the main domain at 2keller.com where our general branding is on display?
I seem to remember somewhere seeing a Whiteboard Friday or some other forum in which Rand had spoke to something similar. I believe he advised AGAINST trying to control the "user experience" for instances like these, but I can't locate same.
I understand that clients/customers are looking for our main brand, but it would seem to be the better experience to get users in state specific locales to their state specific page. Am I thinking wrong about this?
Thanks in advance!
Wayne
Hi Frank!
That term "paid directory" can send shivers through an SEO'er. The reason? Directories were long exploited by--_TA-DA!--_SEO'ers!
That said, there is absolutely nothing wrong with employing the use of a directory paid or non if it's relevant and carries authority. This is especially true with regard to niche categories and the need for citations. These citations often help with local listings and are obtained by way of directories.
A great tool you can use to illustrate same is MOZ's Top Local Citations by Category page. As you scan your client's industry and look at the results it provides, you'll quickly see that not only are there a host of directories, many of them are paid. Paid directories aren't always a bad thing, but you certainly want to be careful and selective.
Hope this helps!
Wayne
Hi Kevin!
ABSOLUTELY you want to link to authoritative sites that provide additional resources and/or source information. The reason is simple, it creates a better user experience, and that's what Google wants to foster. 
In the past it was the belief of some that you might dilute pagerank or authority by linking out to external sites. That's not the case today, if it ever was.
There are, of course, good practice to linking out:
Wayne
Friends, am ready to launch an infographic campaign for a client and received an email from a resource I consider very reliable that said, "don't include an embed code on the webpage that is hosting the graphic. That's being seen as bad practice by Google these days." I responded with, "Say what?"
Can anyone confirm or deny that affixing embed code to an "infographic page" is indeed vile? Thanks!
Despite not knowing the user's interest level in these larger sites, you may want to consider the implication of potential link acquisition and the benefits of having them point to pages under a singular URL.
Better yet, would having all the portals under one URL be a better experience for the user? If yes, you'll want to seriously consider this option regardless of the content aggregation.
If you want to provide more specifics, I'd be happy to offer up more concise thoughts.
Best of luck!
Wayne
Thanks, Kevin! I had envisioned a 1-2 sentence disclaimer, but I actually like your idea of putting an expanded blurb on an About Us page.
Hi Gang,
State requirements mandate that our law practice (Keller & Keller) properly display their distinct business entities on all advertising materials, including our website.
Specifically, our offices are set up in a way that makes Indiana's law office an LLP, New Mexico's an LLC, and Michigan's a PLLC.
All 3 offices/states are represented on a single domain, but I want to be careful about mixing the different registration titles (LLP, LLC, PLLC) throughout our site when we commonly refer to ourselves simply as Keller & Keller throughout the main pages and in our content. I worry it may negatively affect our local listings?
(One idea is to place a simple 'disclaimer' in the footer throughout our site that identifies the business entities, however, I'm still concerned this too might affect/confuse our local listings?)
All thoughts, advice, and theories are welcome!
Thanks, everyone! (And to my fellow Yanks, enjoy a safe Memorial Day weekend!)
W-
(Wow... thanks, Miriam. I'm on my way out the door and scanned what appears to be an incredibly thoughtful answer. Look forward to digging into it when I get home! Thank you very much!)
Hi Gang,
Background: We're a multi-state personal injury law firm with offices in IN, MI, and NM. Michigan and New Mexico used to have their own individual subdomain under 2keller.com, but we recently combined them so that all of our locations were represented in one mega-site.
Problem: Our practice areas include the usual array of plaintiff's law categories, e.g., Car Accidents, Defective Drugs, Motorcycle Accidents, etc. We want to write honest, useful content for each practice area in each state, but it becomes a bit challenging not to duplicate some of these pages. In many instances there are minor differences between the states with regard to things like what we can offer clients, what a client's rights are, how a client is compensated, etc. Even individual state laws are also very similar in most cases.
Question: Any ideas how we can avoid sounding duplicitous? Or does anyone have a suggestion about an effective way we might go about tackling the three states in a manner different from the one we have chosen? Or does it matter?
Any input would be appreciated!
Wayne
Hi Guys/Gals,
We do a lot of work in a very competitive space (personal injury) and are having an internal debate on the best way to implement title tags for new sites. We understand that keywords, title tags, etc., don't possess the power they once did, but we have yet to see conclusive proof of this in our space. The vast majority of competitors still rank very well for keyword focused content, title tags, etc., while having average link profiles and little content.
We write a lot of content for our clients and want to know if someone can offer their opinion on the question that follows this example: "Top 5 Injuries Caused by T-Bone Collisions | Indiana Accident Lawyer"
Would it seem repetitive or manipulative to construct title tags as shown, always placing "Indiana Accident Attorney" or "Indianapolis Accident Lawyer," or similar of at the end of each title tag?
Thanks, gang!
Hey gang,
My client's keywords have recently taken a header...
We've owned the top 3 spots in the SERPs for several keyword phrases for several years. In the past 3 months we've watched all those keywords and local results fade...
Examples of the types of terms we were consistently ranking for included things like:
and several other similar keyword phrases.
Was hoping someone would be kind enough to give me a second opinion about what the cause(s) may be.
The site: http://www.2keller.com/
Love and peace to all of you!
Wayne
Thanks, Oleg! I was thinking along the same lines, but it's a bit difficult to reproduce a person's biography, as it is such specific information, e.g., Schools they graduated from, where they worked, experience, etc. And since that's the only information on that page, it makes it a bit tough, indeed!
Hey Gang,
We've built a niche specific, manually edited legal community that is full of unique content. (While it's ultimately a directory, and that is often viewed as a bad word in these times, ours is a curated source that doesn't allow anyone and everyone to join.) We feel comfortable that it passes the sniff test post-panda/penguin, etc., and its doing rather well to date.
The question we have is do we really need to create unique biographies for each of our legal members? Some of our competitors simply use the same bio information that the lawyer has on their own website and copies that to their site. The competitors I'm talking about are LARGE, well-respected, extremely successful folks, like FindLaw.
Here's an example:
Both rank, etc., and the FindLaw code doesn't place any restrictions on their content regarding the bio., and it's an obvious exact match.
I get that duplicate content is primarily a concern among one's own URL and the pages across a specific domain, using rel-canonical, etc., but what about two different domains that need to supply factual information that can't be altered? Is it anything we should worry ourselves with? Any tags we should insert in our code with regard to the bios?
Thanks!!!
Wayne
Our company (FindMyAccident) is an accident news site. Our goal is to roll our reporting out to all 50 states; currently, we operate full-time in 7 states.
To date, the largest expenditure is our writing staff. We hire professional
journalists who work with police departments and other sources to develop written
content and video for our site. Our visitors also contribute stories and/or
tips that add to the content on our domain. In short, our content/media is 100% original.
A site that often appears alongside us in the SERPs in the markets where we work full-time is accidentin.com. They are a site that syndicates accident news and offers little original content. (They also allow users to submit their own accident stories, and the entries index quickly and are sometimes viewed by hundreds of people in the same day. What's perplexing is that these entries are isolated incidents that have little to no media value, yet they do extremely well.)
(I don't rest my bets with Quantcast figures, but accidentin does use their pixel sourcing and the figures indicate that they are receiving up to 80k visitors a day in some instances.)
I understand that it's common to see news sites syndicate from the AP, etc., and traffic accident news is not going to have a lot of competition (in most instances), but the real shocker is that accidentin will sometimes appear as the first or second result above the original sources???
The question: does anyone have a guess as to what is making it perform so well?
Are they bound to fade away?
While looking at their model, I'm wondering if we're not silly to syndicate news in the states where we don't have actual staff? It would seem we could attract more traffic by setting up syndication in our vacant states.
OR
Is our competitor's site bound to fade away?
Thanks, gang, hope all of you have a great 2013!
Wayne
Hello Mozzers!
Our company (FindMyAccident) is an accident news site. The goal is to roll our reporting out to all 50 states; currently, we operate full-time in 7 states.
To date, the largest expenditure is our writing staff. We hire professional
journalists who work with police departments and other sources to develop written
content and video for our site. Our visitors also contribute stories and/or
tips that add to the content on our domain. In short, our content is original.
A site that often appears alongside us in the SERPs in the markets where we work full-time is accidentin.com. They are a site that only syndicates accident news and offers little original content. (They also allow users to submit their own accident stories, and the entries index quickly and are sometimes viewed by hundreds of people in the same day. What's perplexing is that these entires are isolated incidents that have little to no media value, yet they do extremely well.)
The link profile is virtually non-existent. There are approximately 6 linking domains.
I don't rest my bets with Quantcast figures, but accidentin does use their pixel sourcing and the figures indicate that they are receiving up to 80k visitors a day in some instances. Not too shabby for the Flying Dutchman of accident news sites.
I understand that it's common to see news sites syndicate from the AP, etc., and traffic accident news is not going to have a lot of competition (in most instances), but the real shocker is that accidentin will sometimes appear as the first or second result above the original sources. What the...!?
The question: does anyone have a guess as to what is making it perform so well?
While looking at their model, I'm wondering if we're not silly to syndicate news in the states where we don't have actual staff? It would seem we could attract more traffic by setting up syndication in our vacant states.
Should the Panda updates have any effect on their site?
Thanks, gang....
Wayne
Hi Shara!
Good question, and it's my opinion that this is not a good idea.
A more practical approach would be to optimize individual landing pages for specific keywords. If it sounds like more work, it likely will be, but done properly you'll increase the user experience, Google will favor it, still be able to achieve desired organic listings, and hopefully see an improved ROI with regard to your SEO efforts.
Can you give a specific example of a product that needs 15 keywords? It might help to examine this a bit more closely.
Thanks,
W
Sounds like you might be sweating a bit too much.
Also sounds like you're thinking with the right intentions: keep close tabs on your competitors; eek out the links that they have garnered from "good neighborhoods" and make sure you're using best practices with regard to anchor text.
I can tell you from experience, if you continue to stress over the "unexpected" in the SEO world, you may find yourself drooling into a paper cup at your local mental health facility! 
It's actually what most of us (the good ones, anyway!) thrive on with regard to SEO: THE RAPID CHANGE!
The entire premise of SEO, at least for me, has been about rolling with the tide and realizing you'll never be ahead of the curve, or even caught up. It sounds as if you aren't a coder, etc., so just do your best to recognize the standards and best practices set forth in Webmaster Guidelines, and you're going to be ok.
Now, quit losing sleep
Hi there, Catherine!
What about your traffic? Have you seen any reduction in organic since the "slump"? This might tell you a bit more than your Domain Authority (DA). (Not dismissing DA by any means, but sometimes it's not a clear-cut indicator of how well/poor you're doing in the SERPs.)
I wouldn't remove the footer links if the sites are reputable and its done in an honest/non-spammy fashion. I'm sure you can look at it and determine if it's "creepy" or not Keep in mind though, footer links are certainly not given the weight they perhaps once carried! Also, if you're asking whether or not to keep building links from the same two sites, my suggestion would be to set your sights on different domains.
Glad to help....
With regard to rel="nofollow", you'll likely find people divided on this issue.
I personally believe it is worth gathering these links if they are offered to you, as I believe they do hold value. In other words, Google may not count the nofollow link as a weighted backlink, but your anchor text and the domain and page authority of the site you acquired the link from is not being ignored by Google. (And rel="nofollow" will certainly never hurt you if all the other standards are acceptable and in line with good practices.)
That said, I'd certainly target the sites that pass value before I concentrated all my efforts on a link from a site that uses rel="nofollow".
No problem, Gareth.
Yes, Domain Authority is certainly an important element when targeting links, but you also want to keep in mind:
Make sure there is a defined relationship between the person you are requesting from and your business vertical. In other words, if you sell Accounting Services, don't go after links from a gambling site. It just looks fishy.
Look at the Page Authority. You want to make sure your link is coming from a page within the domain that also has appeal.
Check to see if the page has a rel="nofollow" tag associated with it.
Ensure that your target source is not plagued with a lot of links from questionable sources. (remember, just becuase you see a domain with high authority, something questionable could still be occurring to which the engines haven't caught up yet. rankings are not necessarily reflective of day-today activity.
Ultimately, there are always exceptions of which you want to be aware, but if you stay on the straight and narrow, develop a good acqusition strategy, and target reliable sources, you should do just fine.
It's a lot of hard work, so don't get too discouraged if you find yourself not getting responses from a high ranking site
Gareth,
You've asked a fairly general question, but I think the best place to start would be familiarizing yourself with a reliable tool such as Open Site Explorer. This tool is going to allow you to research a websites backlinks, explore reputation in terms of "trust," aas well as the types of neighborhoods the site is assoicated with. It also gives you additional linking targets based on who is linking to your competitors.
REMEMBER: finding trusted sites is not the challenging piece. You need to develop a sound strategy for obtaining these links in an honest, respectful, time efficient manner. I think you'll find that to be your struggle, as we all do
More specifically, can you tell us what type of industry with which you are associated? There are a lot of variables that you'll want to define before you just begin pursuing a link from a website.
In short, start with OSE, it's going to give you a lot of trusted information on potential link sources.
Best of luck!
Wayne
Mark, are you hosting the vids on your site, or are you referring to tagging on sites like YouTube,/Vimeo, etc?
Gareth, I think that the hyphenated URLs have been commonly associated with spammers for so long that Google, more or less by default, wised up to the game. Our personal site findmyaccident.com is without hyphens and we've managed to rank rather well, yet when we did A-B testing with a subsite that had hyphenated URL, the results were not as promising. Granted, all the variables were not the same, but it was enough evidence to persuade us to avoid hyphens, if possible. Hope this helps!
Echo, this won't be a problem at all. There will be no penalty, etc. In a perfect world it would be great to have unique video for the releases, but you should be fine. By chance, are you using PRWeb or PR Newswire?
Hi Marc,
I'm a bit confused by your post. Are you stating that you believe your membership to SEOMoz would increase your rankings based on membership alone?
You're right in that creating authority, building links, and gaining knowledge will take time. It takes lots of time! In short, it's my opinion that SEOMoz is intended to supplement your efforts, not be an elixir.
Unfortuantely, if you don't believe you have time to do the work to get rankings, there's not much that SEOMoz or anyone can really do to help you achieve same. If that's the case, I would suggest hiring a third party or reputable consulting service to do these tasks for you. It'll save you a lot of frustration!
I hope everything works out!
Best,
Wayne
mulith,
ask to see a listing of current and former clients. if they give you a name or two, do a quick backlink check on them. you should be able to discern a couple of things rather quickly:
if they don't provide a list, well, could be reason to be suspicious on its own merit.
if they provide a list and the backlinks are full of zero value directories, blog spam commenting, and other low-levle link schemes, you have your answer.
By and by, it sounds suspicious on the surface. I've learned one thing for sure, link building usually sucks, is tedious, completely un-sexy, and can be downright frsutrating. With that said, get out there and build some links!!!
Best of luck,
W
Hi Paul,
I'm not 100% on the actual "size" of the image having any negative effects. In my experience it's directly related to how well the image is optimized. Yes, load time ABSOLUTLEY has an effect on rankings, and while some will say that it's a small effect, I contend that it's an important consideration.
While Google may not give it primary consideration in their algorithm, it can drive your users away as they wait for a page to load. People are going to wait a mere second or two before they back out of a page that is not loading. So bounce rate is the factor you need to weigh with regard to image size.
Other tips to optimize your image properly include, always add height and width to the image for faster loading, always add an Alt-attribute to the IMG-tag, always add a Title-attribute to the IMG-tag, etc.
Best of luck,
W
Hey Chris!
Great question, and since I work for a news organization, I'm happy to answer!
The good news is, depending on the stories you're covering, there may not be a lot of competition for your keywords. For instance, if it's primarily local news, you may only be competing with 3-4 major players, and at that point it really just comes down to the strength of your link profile, the unique content, and title practices (by title practice, I mean making sure your keywords are located in the title, etc.).
If you are working for a media source like the NY Times, the hard work is already done. The NY Times is a recognized authority and is included as a source by the aggregator monsters suich as Google news/blogs, Yahoo news, etc. The only issue you'd fac ein this instance is keeping up with best SEO practices and maintaining the site.
I guess the question is: are you working for an established source, or is this a new site? Is it a global news source, a national news source, or a local source?
Best,
W
Hi David,
Taking a shot in the dark here, especially without seeing your backlinks, etc., but is it possible that some of the previor link building tactics have been dragging down the rankings/traffic that you are trying o supplement with by using honest, more effective white-hat tactics?
Best,
W
Stephen, I think I'm following you, but I want to be sure... is there a way you can send a link to show an example of what you're referring to?
(If it's regarding the mega-links, there is way to exert some control of what site-links appear, or, rather, what you don't want to appear through Webmaster Tools.)
Thanks,
W
A couple of obvious ones that folks sometimes forget:
1. Update your XML sitemaps and resubmit to webmaster tools through Google, Bing, etc.
2. Update all your internal links! (This one can be a pain in the...)
Best of luck!
W
Richard, here is a document I would check out: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/11-best-practices-for-urls. It's from the man (Rand) himself and much of what is stated holds true today.
Hi Richard,
The short answer is, yes, domain names and URL structure are certainly key to positive ranking for particular keywords. Some would argue that domain names carry too much weight (I personally think so!), but it's a fact, so be careful when picking your domain name and also be sure you are properly formatting your URLs.
If you have specific questions regarding either, I'm happy to try and help.
Best,
W
Agreed, if you hire a third party, you can never fully be aware of the who/what you're getting for your dollar. I would point to the most recent mess involving J.C. Penny for an example of what can happen if there is poor oversight. Even if you do pay or hire a "reputable" company, there is still the potential for mistakes if the work is not closely monitored.
Unfortuantely, link-building is a tedious, tiresome, often thankless task!
Before you decide to hire someone, be sure to look at all of your personal resources for linking opportunities: customers, vendors, professional contacts, friends who blog, etc. These might be easier and more reliable sources for potential links than hiring a temp, etc.
Liam,
Are you referring to the site link results that appear when you search the two different versions (masterpieceinteriors & masterpiece interiors)? If so, it's my best bet that this simply has to do with Google picking up your url address 'masterpieceinteriors' with no spaces in one search, and 'masterpiece interiors' with a space in the other search.
It appears that Google simply recognizes both versions for the same brand, and that isn't necessarily a bad thing at all.
If this doesn't fully answer your question, please let me know, but I don't know that there really is a problem with what you have described.
All the best,
W
Hi Ben,
Some people will tell you that directories are not worth your time. I don't find that to be true in every instance. I think that listing yourself in a few of these industry-related directories (the most valuable and non-spammy ones) can not only yield minor influence in the engines, but more importantly it can serve as a great source for referrals, especially when it's in your niche market.
That said, if you're going to concern yourself with paid directories, I would make sure that you are listed in those like Yahoo and Best of the Web. I've seen positive influence from both of these directories, and they are trsuted by Google.
In whole, directories are not going to elevate your SEO campaign too terribly much.
Hi Peter,
Great question considering the latest Panda update. A lot of people have been scrambling to remove content that Google might deem "shallow" or of no value to users. We implemented a couple of practices to see which worked best with regard to moving content:
A: We simply added a 'robots.txt' command. This is designed to not allow Google crawl the content.
B: If you have the luxury of moving it to an entirely different domain, that could also be a choice. We found this to be the better of the two in terms of aesthetics. We simply didn't want to gunk up our site with a lot of "shallow" content. It also seemed that the engines responded better to this approach.
Your 404 is another option if you simply want to remove it from the indexes. However, I'd be sure to check that no link juice is flowing through the pages. If so, then a 301 re-direct might be appropriate. Depending on your intentions, each of the three could serve your purpose!
Let me know if I've confused you, or if you need additional opinion!
Best of luck
W
Hey Joe,
We syndicate content at our company and have faced this same question.
A very succesful method for us has been to arrange unpaid internships with local colleges. They often will have job boards online at the various universtities where you can post your listing by department, e.g., English/Journalism, etc.
Depending on your pay scale, you may also want to scan already-employed journalists in local papers. Indianapolis for instance (where we are located) has a free entertainment paper named NUVO tha tis distributed once monthle all across the metro area. Very popular paper and the writers for these types of places generally make very low income and are willing to make a transition. We have also had a lot of success with this approach. (The plus is that these folks are known quantities in terms of their talent and their commitment to writing!)
Lastly, do a search for blog communities in your city. There are often large communities of bloggers that are writing purely for the sake of writing. They are often very good, too!
Best of luck,
W
Hi Sunil,
If I understand you correctly, you're asking "how" to get the same backlinks as those of your competitors? If that's the question, then I'm afraid the answer is there is no sure-fire way to ensure you will ever gain the same links. Link attribution is never a guarantee.
My suggestion would be to approach the webmasters where you see your competitors are receiveing backlinks and offer them a "value-add proposal" that is unique form that of your competitor.
You can also always offer a widget, a partnership proposal, etc. The key is to provide value and personal thought to your link request. Just asking for a link because your competitor has one is not going to likely yield positive results.
A word of caution: make sure your competitors backlinks are coming from good neighborhoods. There are many posts on SEOmoz that speak to this. You don't want to waste your time or effort, or jeopardize your sites performance, by acquiring suspect links.
Link building is tough, but a little creativity and human touch can usually open the lines of communication!
Best of luck,
W
Hey Ryan... just a quick niblet of advice I wanted to share after reading your post: Don't get too hung up on your or anyone else's PR. It's a much better practice to study the backlinks on any given site. You want to be sure that sites you are approaching for links aren't harboring spammy links, or attracting bad neighborhoods. Sometimes a site might have a robust PR, but it's link profile is a horror show!
PR can be a bit of a mirage in many instances. So be careful!
Hi Beeneeb,
You are correct in your assumption--the reports are not real-time. In fact, I have had as much as a week go by before my changes were recognized by the report pages. I'm assuming others enjoy the same experience
All the best,
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