Q&A

If organic SEO is so important, why are we being sold on PPC as most important by PPC trainers? Why is there less about organic SEO? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

In Google's Webmaster Tools there is a section where you can submit someone you think is buying links. Here is what I don't understand – can Google really penalize you for purchasing links? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I work for a nonprofit that since 2000 has been operating an e-commerce website to provide emerging artists with a web presence. It has earned a toolbar PageRank of 5, thanks to some decent inbound links. Due to a variety of things, the parent company of the website has decided it's time to shut the site down. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

"Our client has affiliates that want to bid on many of the same keywords that we are bidding on. How can we manage this so that the affiliates don't drive up our cost on PPC?"

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How important is it to have a large number of indexed sites through Google? If so, how do we increase the number, and how do we edit what text appears under the link?
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I performed a keyword analysis for one of my projects, picked several powerful "traffic juicy" keywords and optimized the landing pages for those keywords. My site went to the first page in the search engines, and yet we've got no more than 100 unique visitors per month. Have you any idea why? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Forum member "bobmeetin" explains how a business he's evaluating has a main website plus 4 subdomains and seems like one big organizational mess.
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For purposes of discussion, let's say my main URL is www.example.com. I have a plethora of links in my site for indexing purposes between pages. The page links all go to their respective pages properly, but are linked to example.com (without the www part). Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I'm wondering if there is more link value provided by a new blog if it is hosted on an IP with a different C block than the IP address of the web site itself. The owner of the business would be writing the blog and sharing business expertise with the idea of building the brand of the business.

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I recently set up a new site, which isn't something I often do, and forgot to set up the meta title and description. Now what is called up on Google for my site is HOME and a sentence from mid-page. Now that I have fixed the Web problem, how do I get the search engines to do another crawl of the site?
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I'm about to renew our contract with our search engine ranking optimization software, but thought I'd check out other options before committing. What do you folks use?

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I had the pleasure of being interviewed recently by a number of online marketing folks and thought you might enjoy learning more about me and my thoughts on a plethora of search marketing issues.
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I recently signed up as an advertiser with [a blog review website] so I could purchase blog review postings for one of my clients. After enrolling, I purchased a PR5 blog review posting at the standard PR5 price of $40. Eventually my offer was picked up by a blogger, but the review posting only stayed on their PR5 home page for one day as the next day it was shifted from the front page of the blog to an archived page that had a PR0. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

In preparation for next week's SES Toronto, I was interviewed by Manoj Jasra at Web Analytics World. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I have a client who has 2 domain names: namehere.com and differentnamehere.us pointing at the same IP address. Is it bad SEO to have multiple domain names for the same site? And will this negatively impact search engine results for each? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

The front page of my website has a [toolbar] PageRank of 4 and most of my inner pages had a PageRank of 3. After this quarter's Google [toolbar] update, my homepage remained a 4, but most of my inner pages went down to a 2. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

While this question may not be directly SEO-related, I'm wondering if there might be any negative SEO implications to including a social bookmarking and sharing button to the more popular pages on our website to leverage some of the popularity of social networking? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Regarding long-tail keywords, I often find it difficult optimizing them in an article, mainly because it can look unnatural if you include them too often. How do you recommend I deal with this problem? Apart from in the headline, at what density do they need to be mentioned in an article in order to maximize our chances of getting good listings? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

If I have the same title tags and keywords as the company listed first in Google, Yahoo, etc., why don't I get a high ranking? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Here is the scenario: I had a Virtual Private Server (VPS) with 9 websites on it that were all interlinked. It worked great for awhile. Then in Nov. 2004, Google did a big adjustment, and all 9 of my sites dropped out of sight. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Search engine results seem to vary for US states. For instance, one of my clients gets top results while one of my clients from another state doesn't get the same results. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Is someone more likely to click on my organic or paid search result if they appear side by side? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

You briefly hit on ROI and basically described perfectly a dilemma I have. We are a B2B manufacturer of machinery that costs anywhere from the 10's of thousands to the 100's of thousands each. We sell a handful of these machines each year. Consequently, the buying cycle can take up to a year or more. How would you suggest we figure ROI and conversions for this kind of business? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I have a customer who is convinced that for maximum SEO, the page length must be between 450 and 625 words. He has a software program that tells him this. Is there any truth to it?

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I have plain html pages that describe the various health-related products that I recommend. If one of my readers wishes to purchase a product, they click on an "order now" button, which takes them to the desired product at my shopping cart.

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I really would like to go to a SEO conference someday, but which? I'm not an SEO novice and PPC is not my strategy. Plus being #1 what could anybody teach me, anyway? Now, I know that is a very stupid and dangerous statement. ;-) Future trends or expert hints very specific to my site are what I think I need. What do you think?

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A lot of my clients pull data/products from semi-public databases to populate their websites, similar to how real estate agents show listings of homes on their sites. I've been ensuring that each client has unique valuable and professionally edited content whenever possible on the rest of the site, but I’m afraid that if I make the portions of the site that use the semi-public data accessible to the search engines, they will find duplicate information on other sites and my client site(s) would not be indexed. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I am coming across a lot of offers for software for SEO.  A lot of them are
offering different sorts of analyzers, etc. — which I’m not sure are
helpful.  Is there any sort of software that is real SEO software and
actually does some actual SEO work to your site?

 

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Forum member "NeilPertRocks" tells the other members that the VP in his company completely removed their paid-search program, and is wondering how this will affect their business. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I am in the process of changing all my URLs from things like news123.html to OurCompany_Announces_New_CEO.html Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Two weeks ago, my Google PR was still at 0/10. We have a 6-month-old site, for which I've been doing many of the "slow growth" SEO tactics as my time allows. This week, I find that my Google PR is now 5/10. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

One of my biggest headaches is working out how to charge and how much to charge my clients for my services. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I have a question: I created a site (read a book on HTML, a book on SEO, and a book on globalization of websites). After about 10 months, the site is doing very well and I am pleased with its rankings. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I am currently looking at doing SEO work for a [generic type of alcohol for drinking] industry-related website. I have come across one problem though. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I have a plastic surgeon client who specializes in many procedures and has spent a fortune on developing a very nice site that has been done in Flash. In efforts to get him some traffic, we are doing a double campaign, one with pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and one using SEO tactics. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

We have an information site which sells nothing. Our site consists of about 140 articles. I have authored several, and I'm wondering about submitting a couple of my articles to certain type of sites which claim to boost links to your site. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

To gain credibility, I often send my clients to sign up for your newsletter to show that I am not the only one telling them whatever it is I am telling them at the time. With that, the answer to a question from your last newsletter could severely hurt my (our) business. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I wonder if you can help me. We have a website in New Zealand and it is hosted here too. We are expanding our business to Australia and building a new website for this. My web company has said that the new site should be hosted in Australia as we would get a good start with Google.com.au. Do you agree with this? Does Google take into account where your site is hosted for rankings? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I am a small business owner with a circa 2003 website that needs an overhaul both in terms of SEO optimization and visual appeal. I have no time or talent to do this and want to hire a company.

 

I have received a reply from one company that said the problem with my website is that it was written in FrontPage. They implied that that was a problem both from a design perspective and for SEO. Do you agree? And if so, does my website need to be recreated in HTML?

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I submitted our website sitemap to Google a while back, but I was reading a forum this morning where somebody was saying you have to submit every page to Google. What is the real procedure and are sitemaps important? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I have a really quick question I hope you can help with. There is a small business in town that is paying $200 a month to have another company make sure it stays at the top of the ranking lists in search engines. Now if there is no new competition, except maybe a new office every few years, is it necessary to pay them, or could they do it themselves with the guidance you offer on your website? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I came across your site on Google while trying to find some information and found it very helpful. However, I did have a question that was not covered. Will the search engines be able to find text in a PDF document, or am I better where possible to include the information in a web page? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Last night was our third SEMNE event (Search Engine Marketing New England), and we were humbled to have Dan Crow, director of crawl systems at Google, spilling the beans about how to get your site into Google. He talked for a half hour or so, and then proceeded to answer audience questions for at least another hour. As I sat there listening to him (yes, I actually listened to this one!), I was struck by what an awesome opportunity it was for everyone in that room to be provided with such important information — straight from Google. It was clear that the 100 or so people in the room agreed. In fact, at 7:30 on the dot, everyone spontaneously stopped their networking activities and simply took their seats without being asked to. These folks definitely came to hear Google! Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Pauline caught up with Jennifer Laycock, editor-in-chief of Search Engine Guide, in order to find out her thoughts on viral marketing and social media. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

In Part 1 of my article, I said that we need to have an entirely different mindset when researching keywords for PPC vs. SEO. When compiling keywords for SEO, you’re looking for phrases that get a good bit of traffic. But for PPC, you can use all those longer queries that are impossible to work into your page copy. Plus, you’re trying to get a feel for all the different ways people have of phrasing their queries. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Does what you name a page (not the “Title” but the file name) matter to search engines when they crawl a site? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Our site has a blog which is www.blog.domain.com — should it really be www.domain.com/blog ? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

When I am searching on terms that apply to our website or our specific products I’m finding that the perfect phrases or keywords have tons of competition. And the more obscure phrases that don’t have a lot of competition are not searched on much. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I have to create some pages for a client. They are full of images and little to no content and have no title tags…however, they still want SEO services…*groan* Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I started answering this question with the usual answer, but as I looked at the site in question, I realized there was more going on than meets the eye. Please read through the entire question and my response to see what I mean! Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Someone emailed me with a list of quick questions about some SEO terminology they didn’t understand. I figured if one person was looking for these answers, many of you would be, too. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I recently had an inquiry from someone who was looking for some possible SEO consulting with me. He was in the process of a redesign and wanted to be sure not to make any mistakes along the way, which is super-smart! The time to be looking at SEO is definitely in the beginning stage of any design or redesign project. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Your email newsletter is one of my favorites, and I get a bunch of them from SEO “experts” and others. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Great newsletter. My business partner is developing our site and wants to put a list of keywords at the bottom of some of our shop pages (i.e. below the text) in the hopes that this will get the search engines to notice us slightly more. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Recently I had the pleasure of speaking with John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing about search marketing for small businesses. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I work for a nonprofit retreat center for which our main offerings are (you guessed it) retreat programs. Until recently, whenever we sent out email flyers about our programs, we had the link go directly to the program’s unique page on our website. Our marketing director has been trying to make a case for sending the clicker to the landing page that would then direct the clicker to a list of programs, including the one on which he or she clicked. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I am surprised to see that your own website still has both the www and non-www version in place — no redirect to get the “link juice” from the non-www version. Do you consider this a not so important issue? Both versions have good PR. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I have a question relating to Meta tags and the head document. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Keywords. I have been designing web sites for 5 +/- yrs, so I am aware of what they are and how they are being used / can be used. I’m not saying I am an expert, just that I’m not a novice. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Our web site has been around for many years and we are switching over to a content management system coded in JSP, but with extensions ending in .do as opposed to what we currently have, .asp. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I notice you also hold a lot of seminars which would be incredibly beneficial to someone in my position. I also notice that all your seminars are held in America. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I am working for a Flash site that is brand-new. How can that be indexed and come up in the SERPs? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I notice you always promote both KeywordDiscovery and WordTracker. I am trying to decide which one to subscribe to. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I don’t understand how search engines list dynamic sites. For example, this site has a whole bunch of products. Every single product page calls up the same url: www.example.com/products.php. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I recently met with a company that provides SEO as one of their services and I was told point-blank that our site is written with the “wrong code,” and therefore the search engines can’t read it. I use FrontPage and have nothing more fancy than text, tables, pictures, and some links to other industry sites. Should I be suspicious? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I recently SEO-ed my site. Yahoo started re-indexing my website: they already showed 37 of the new links (internal URLs) within my site. This morning I had another look at these links within Yahoo and got an unpleasant surprise: they showed the links from the previous version of my site. I’m wondering if you have an explanation of why this happened. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I am continually frustrated with web sites that provide a link, but when I click on it, it takes me OFF their site and onto another. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I have better backlinks than my competitor and my site is also optimized, but why is my competitor’s ranking better than mine? Our backlinks are around 90 and the competitor’s backlinks are around 55. What can I do for better rankings than the competitor? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

In the scheme of things, do you think it is important to add outbound links from a web site? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I’ve been told that adding a site map to our website increases the chance of search engines linking to other pages in our site. Any truth to this? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I have a client who has a website in England for his English branch. He also has a branch in Turkey that doesn’t have a website yet. He would like to use the template for his existing English website for his new Turkish website. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I recalled some advice you gave on redirecting multiple domain names from a while back and to my surprise I was actually able to locate it on your site... Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I have been using Overture’s “Keyword Selection Tool” for a long time. Lately I have experienced problems with it. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I have a client whose web site has been created in Cold Fusion. I am not all that familiar with these types of pages but right now most of their page text and metas are being pulled from another document and are not actually part of the “live site code.” Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

At the beginning of October we regenerated our entire site and ran into a very strange problem. All of a sudden all our search results were showing up under one of our old domain names. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

If my pages are in a table, and if I add a header to that table for a caption, put my main keyword for that page in it, and make it a bold and big h1 tag, will it help? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

As you know there are a lot of so-called SEO/SEM experts/gurus claiming all
sorts of things. The analogy to me is like "quack" doctors compared to the
genuine article.

Are there 6 or a dozen questions that would expose those purporting to be
experts? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

My CEO has been forwarding me your newsletters for some time now. I am in need of advice, and I am hoping you might be able to help me out. We offer online services and have been online since 1997 with our websites. I know a little about SEO because I was once a junior SEO rep for my former SEO manager but my primary skill set is not doing SEO but more managing those who do it. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Sixty-year-old newbie here with his first e-book! My site is unlinked --
just "up there."   I teach project management for a living -- but ill health
is forcing early retirement, and I have an urgent need to keep paying the
mortgage! Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

In cases where a client is smarter than you are about SEO, insists on saturating his keyword pages (10 per 200-word page) at 5% (which includes the keyword phrase in two header lines), and currently (without keyword saturation) consistently hits in the top 20 on his Google searches. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Here's a question for you to answer in your newsletter. I was recently quoted a job by an SEO consultant, and he kept using the term "organic" to describe the methodology. What does this mean? And do I want it? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I have been receiving your excellent newsletter for more than 3 years and find it an invaluable help to understand the ins and outs of SEO. Indeed I am sure that your advice has been instrumental in achieving a top 5 listing for the last 3 years in Google for my London site. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

How many characters are allowed in the keyword Meta tag? How will the crawler treat a page that goes over this limit of characters? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I wonder if you can give me a steer on a particular SEO problem. I have a client who specializes in acupuncture and other alternative remedies in London We would like to optimise for the conditions she treats such as back pain, insomnia, headaches, etc - about 40 different in all. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I have been a regular reader of your newsletter for some time. I hope you have time to give me your thoughts on the following comment that I received from a website designer. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I represent a golf accessory manufacturer considering doing some serious SEO/SEM. We are interested in determining the real efficacy of SEO/SEM as it translates into online unit sales growth or online revenue growth. I have searched through many, many sites and haven't been able to come up with any good stats that demonstrate B2C improvements in eCommerce sales after applying SEO/SEM. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I have an interesting case of a client who is wanting to do a “soft launch” of his site. The client wants to make the landing page or homepage a login section with little to no information about his product on it except for the name of the product and login details, as he wants to keep […] Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I’d like to thank you for the great information that you make available. I read it and implement it — and it works. Thanks! Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

The following is an email exchange I had with someone who was wondering whether he would benefit from attending our High Rankings® Search Marketing Seminar in Dallas on Oct. 19-20, 2006. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Push the button of every SEO expert and he/she will start talking about the importance of links for high rankings. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I'm looking for some advice on the impact of natural search on two companies that have merged so I can advise on how best to proceed. They currently have two sites that perform well in the SERPS and have different content but are obviously competing on the same keyphrases and are now one company. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Do the search engines see the addition of this character: | in the title tag as words/characters, thus reducing the amount of words you should put in the title tag? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I have a question for you. Do extensions have any bearing on search engine return? For example, are sites with .com extensions returned at a higher ranking than a site with .net or .org? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

I have found some great information on 301 redirects, but nothing which exactly answers my two questions. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Do you know if repeating keywords in the URL will help increase rankings within search engine results? If so does it have a big impact? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Thanks for the tip on using Basecamp. I've tried it and love it! I've uploaded all of my projects into it now. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

You were talking about robots.txt files and how you want to use them to prevent the search engines from indexing duplicating information. I use a Miva cart and custom Miva pages. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>