Got SEO Questions? Ask me Anything.

Hi Guys,

I've got a couple years experience doing SEO for an agency. I've got a few more years consulting and working in-house SEO for big biz as well. I've had some pretty good success with websites in the past and so if you'd like my 5-cent recommendation for driving traffic to your website and crushing search engines, ask me a question.

I'll be happy to provide the most detailed answer I can.

I'm just getting started with internet marketing and working on my own product as well. So if you're an expert in product launches or list building, I'd really appreciate hearing from you as well.

Let's do it.

 

What the heck is "search engine placement" anyway....as if you can 'place' something into a search engine like parking a car in a garage. The term sounds ridiculous and is some kind of morphed concept.

 

when i submitted my site for a review in another forum, a guy asked me to Optimize the permalinks for se, i don't know how to do it, and he didn't replied for my question, can you explain how to optimize permalinks

 

I assume he means optimize the anchor text on the permalinks to reflect your keywords you're optimizing for.

This site says that one of the functions of permalinks is to allow the post or content to be bookmarked.

 

It means you have to set up your web address to your post into bot friendly keyword. Default the wordpress will generate month and date in numbers and post id which are not understandable by bot. Search Bot only identified it as numbers. You have to change your permalink in wordpress setting in to '%postname%'.

So it will create a post name as with your title post. Next time you're posting you can access easily with 'hxxp://www.domainname.com/your-post-name

Hope it help why you need permalink (keyword friendly for bot).

 

Okay Mr. SEO Expert:
Tell me what am I missing in the list below:

On-Page Optimization
• Keyword Analysis on your site & keyword improvements throughout the site
• Competitors Analysis
• Content Analysis and re-writing
• Meta Tag Analysis
• Title,H1 Tag Analysis, Description etc
• Alt Tag Analysis
• Website Architecture for SEO friendliness
• HTML & XML Site Map Creation
• Value added service would be Custom keyword rich blogs (4-6 articles per month) created and submitted to press articles.

2. off-page Optimization
• Directory Submission
• Article Submission
• Blog Submission
• Press Releases Submission
• Blog Directory Submission
• Social Bookmarking
• Link Building
• Forum Posting & Creating Community in different social network sites

 

Here's my question: How valuable are link exchanges (or reciprocal links)? My theory is that exchanging links with a relevant and high PR site (using your keywords in and around the anchor text) is better than no link at all. However, I know some would disagree and say that swapping links is now worthless (except maybe for visitors). What do you think?

 

My question is:

What happend to the guy that was going to answer the SEO ?'s

Where's Waldo?

 

@seoexpertservices I feel like there should have been a rim shot after your statement. Search engine placement refers to where the search engine ranks your page. Like page 2, position 3 for example.

Your advice is duly noted however: Stop using morphed concepts... Start writing on a fifth grade level. Rim Shot!

 

Hi @ Rajesh.ejob... Sorry about the delay on this response. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you're talking about a wordpress blog when you're talking about permalinks like @williamfelix suggested. And I completely agree with him, set up your links with %postname%.

This will allow you to plug additional keywords into your URL and it's better for user experience as well since it helps the user understand what the blog post might be about.

If you need more step-by-step details about the implementation of these permalinks let me know and I can try to break down the process here.

 

Hey McBrett,

I’m looking for help on the following issue and I would appreciate your input:

We are moving our non-profit organization website (only 3 months old) from a .ca domain to a .org domain. For the move we have updated the site structure quite a bit, and revamped almost all of the content of this 12 page, wordpress website.

Is a 301 redirect the best method for this type of change? Is there anything else I should take note of, or do other than the 301 redirect, considering the content and the site structure have changed quite dramatically?

Your input is most appreciated.

 

@Champion510 Nice list. I'm assume you're looking for a some overall big picture client analysis thoughts? I think you've compiled a pretty solid on-page analysis that will allow you to quickly analyze any webpage. Your brief analysis here is a lot better than many SEO companies out there. If you want to get really hardcore though you could look into a few things like this:

- robots.txt - Check to ensure important sections of a website haven't accidentally been noindexed. That actually happens believe it or not.
- source code analysis - Is there anything that could be externalized? Too much CSS or Javascript on a page can slow down page load speeds and even prohibit SE's from indexing some pages if there's too much junk like that.
- This might be unrelated to what you're asking, but I'm big into testing or optimizing the user experience once traffic lands on the website. Is there some kind of free content you can exchange for a name and email address? Test different headlines, buy now buttons, etc. This is probably covered in your content analysis portion.

Off-page: @Champion510 Again this is all solid stuff. Here's an additional popular one and a couple more obscure methods:

- Video submission via YouTube, Viddler, or better yet TubeMogul.com
- Offer up a Testimonial in return for a link. Everybody wants testimonials for their product or service. Offering to write a testimonial in return for a link to your website underneath your name. This is a very fast way to get a few additional links.
- Create a free pdf eBook and start submitting to free eBook directories and other sites like DocStoc.com. In addition to backlinks, this is a great way to obtain relevant traffic.

I'm sure we could both riff off another 5 - 10 on and off-page optimization techniques easy. What other steps do you suggest?

 

@JasonVan Good question. I can't give you a black and white answer on link value. I mean... Anyone that tells you they understand the exact value of any given link is full of ****.

But with that being said, I do agree that some strategic link exchanges can help your site a lot. I mean, I'll take a PR 8 link for my PR3 site all day and absolutely it will help me.

Where you can get into trouble is when you join these link rings where everybody in the same group links to everybody else. Reciprocal situations like this... not as good. Back in the early 2000s though this strategy used to crush it in the search engines from what I hear. Does that answer your question sufficiently?

 

@GraphicDesignGuy Interesting question. As you've probably heard from most SEOs, yes a 301 redirect is def the way to go. Without knowing the website though, it's hard for me to get more specific than that on the 301 advice. Also, since your website's only 3 months old and only 12 pages in size, you probably don't have a whole lot of organic rankings to lose. It's much better to make a switch like this early in the game before your website gets bigger and complicates a transition like this.

I would pose this question to you, however. Is your organization strictly for Canada or is it more of an international non-profit website where you will be casting a wider net to the US or globally?

The reason I ask is that strictly rankings wise, I've been seeing 50% - 75% more search engine traffic with a local ccTLD (country-code top level domain)--These are will massive e-commerce websites though so a little different than your situation.

So if you're just thinking about search engine rankings, it might be wise to keeping it a .ca if you're targeting only Canadian traffic. But, being a non-profit I can understand why you might want to use a .org for branding purposes... obviously it makes sense to have a .org in that situation but just some food for thought.

 

Mcbrett, thanks for the prompt reply.

The reason for the switch from .ca to .org is because we now plan on targeting both the US and Canadian markets for our service. And yes, as a non-profit the .org is much better for branding and we hope the .org domain together with our non-profit designation helps instill confidence to our potential clients. The website is temporarily hosted at www.jaiwebtech.com/demo/ritu_autospy while it is being finished. The old domain was AutoSpy.ca and the new one is going to be AutoSpy.org

Other than the 301 redirect, is their anything else I should be doing to ensure a smooth transition?

Again, thanks for your help

 

dear mcbrett, im newbie in seo, and i've just installed all-in-one seo pack wp to my site, and the question is what can that pack done?can it bring lot traffic or what? and what should i do with it. and i've submit my site to many url directories but only a few directories give a reply to my request and even if my site has been listed to some directories but alexa nor google have indexed it. how can that possibly happen? sorry for my stupid question and my bad english . hope u can help me increase my pr

 

Here is my question.

Which is better backlink?

PR3 dofollow ?
or
PR5 nofollow?

for now only one question.

Please try to be precise as I hvnt find perfect answer for this question on google.

 

Hey then can you provide me with some of the new techniques used in SEO.

 

Thanks for such good deal as anwering questions.


Could you call the best service or services for SEO?
Or the best one for each point that was listed above:

Directory Submission
Article Submission
Blog Submission
Press Releases Submission
Blog Directory Submission
Social Bookmarking
Link Building

Thanks a lot!

 

PR3 dofollow - link with nofollow attribute will not pass any link juice to any link present on the page.