I am participating in an invite only webinar tomorrow afternoon…they want to know what HARD SEO questions I would like answered during the event. I have a few fun ones, but I thought I’d open it up to anyone who might be struggling with something? I’d be glad to ask in your behalf and post the answers they give me here on the forum.
So c’mon - FREE SEO ADVICE!! Gimme your toughest questions! 
[MENTION=10702]ambservices[/MENTION]
Hey Anya!
I dont have any specific questions… But please keep us posted on anything cool you learn…Id love a site analysis for on of my sites by a super pro… If there offering that 
[MENTION=10702]ambservices[/MENTION]
Also if you guys are looking for web design services… Anya is pretty much the only person I would be comfortable referring you to… She does insane work and is highly reliable.
PWRA members get a generous $300+off here services:
Pressure Washing Resource Members Only! | Web Design Raleigh NC | National Award Winning Web Design
Thanks for the kudos Chris! I’ll definitely post my findings here later this afternoon.
They aren’t offering any site-specific details during the webinar, it’s more like a professionals ‘get together’ so we can keep up on the latest and greatest. This is the first time they’ve offered to answer specific questions, so I thought I’d take advantage of that!
We do have a marketing agency tool that runs a FULL seo tech spec scan. It’s pretty detailed, and will probably shock you with some of it’s findings. PM me the website url you’d like to check and I can email you the report.
I’ve got one.
How to set up a mobile site in GWT so big G doesn’t see it as duplicate content. Mobile site is on a m. subdomain.
Tapatalking
Okay, here we go. It was a great webinar; they should be hosting another one in the next few weeks, so if I didn’t get your answer this time (or if you missed it and have a question you’d like me to ask), I’ll do my best. There are also a few pointers in here that you might want to review since SEO as a whole is changing big time.
Also, these are just my notes; I’ve tried to clean it up and organize it as best as I could!! 
[B][U]1. Are back links dead? [/U][/B]
The short answer: NO. However, they do mean different things now than they used to.
[I]It used to be[/I] that you could create as many backlinks as possible, with as many keywords as possible, in whatever location you could put them; and that would HELP your rankings.
[I]Now it is different[/I] - the biggest factor in a backlink is “Is it natural?”. In other words, did a computer make it? Was it generated by a blog? Did you, the owner of the site, strategically place it somewhere? Those are NOT natural backlinks. A natural backlink is when someone likes your content, and links to it. Period. This does not mean that you, as a site owner, shouldn’t create backlinks. Just do so judiciously. Ask yourself, “Will this link help a customer or prospect?” If not, then don’t do it. It is ridiculous that search engines can tell the difference, but they can.
– SIDE NOTE – Many have questions about putting keywords in backlinks (aka <link>Pressure Wash Power Washing City Name<link>). Again, make sure it makes sense. Keywords are okay to put in a link, but make sure it accurately describes the page you are linking to (NOT what you wish it was instead). Here’s an example:
What I would do is:
Link to the ‘home page’ = On your site: Home / Off your site: ARC Powerwashing
Link to the ‘estimate/instant bid page’ = On your site: Get An Instant Bid / Off your site: Get An Instant Powerwashing Bid
Link to the ‘contact page’ = On your site: Contact Us / Off your site: Contact ARC Powerwashing
What I would NOT do is:
Link to the 'home page = Home of the Best Pressure Washers Anywhere for Raleigh Power Washing ARC Powerwashing 919-827-4376
Link to the ‘estimate/instant bid page’ = Get A Free Instant Bid Online in Raleigh For Pressure Washing That Will Rock Your World
Link to the ‘contact page’ = Contact ARC Powerwashing in Raleigh for Pressure Washing Today!
Also, it is also ‘Natural’ for your secondary pages to have just as many, if not more backlinks, than your home page. A quick peek at your Webmaster Tools report can tell you which pages have the most links, and from where. YOU CAN BE PENALIZED FOR HAVING LINKS TO YOUR SITE FROM SITES THAT ARE NOT RELEVANT.
[U][B]2. How much weight is a keyword/service in a page title of a site?[/B][/U]
This again, is more about being ‘Natural’. Keyword stuffing is no longer a good practice. Many of you are finding that the pages that did well before, are slipping in rankings for no apparent reason. This is because [I]it used to be helpful[/I] and even good practice to put all your keywords in your page title. Search engines have caught on to this game and have no longer given positive impacts on rankings for doing it. In most cases it isn’t penalized, but it won’t help you either.
What I would do is:
Home page title = Raleigh’s Most Recommended Pressure Washer | ARC Powerwashing
What I would NOT do is:
Home page title = Pressure Washing Power Washing Window Cleaning Gutters Roofs Decks Raleigh ARC Powerwashing
[B][U]3. BING has been doing some serious advertising for their search engine lately, how do we maximize our ranking with them? Can we do that without hurting our google ranking?[/U][/B]
One issue with trying to optimize a site for a specific search engine, is that you may lose your ability to rank on another. A simple solution to this is to just provide good, unique, quality content and an easy user experience. That’s my ‘official’ answer. 
With THAT being said, Bing & Yahoo have joined forces. But really, they JUST WANNA BE LIKE GOOGLE. Microsoft has been left in the dust with Google’s algorithms (or the tech behind the search rankings). They simply watch and copy. You can push the boundaries more with Bing/Yahoo, however, it doesn’t seem like a good choice to make. Google still holds 87% of ALL US SEARCHES. That means Bing/Yahoo and all the others share 13%. If you push your site to do well on Bing/Yahoo, and get penalized on Google, was it worth it? No. Give Bing/Yahoo some time, they’ll implement the same things Google is doing at some point.
[B][U]4. How to set up a mobile site in GWT so big G doesn’t see it as duplicate content? Mobile site is on a m. subdomain.[/U][/B]
This can be solved by:
- Making sure you have a mobile site map
- Submitting that sitemap in your webmaster tools as a MOBILE sitemap
That’s it. Google and other search engines are reading the trendlines, they know that mobile is on the rise and is overtaking desktop searches. If you properly submit your sitemap you won’t get penalized or dropped for duplicate content.
[B][U]5. How do I make my site more “local”? (Seems like google really likes “local”)[/U][/B]
This can be accomplished simply, but CAREFULLY. It is easy to say that you are simply listing your service areas, but get penalized for ‘spam’. Include your primary city name in your page titles (see #2 above). Tell your customers in logical places around your site that you service these particular areas. Don’t get too general, listing a few counties won’t suffice. But don’t get too detailed, no one wants to see a zillion zip codes either.
What I would do is:
Add a bullet point list in the sidebar or footer that says:
We proudly serve the following ares: 1)Raleigh 2)Cary 3)Garner 4)Knightdale 5)Wake Forest 6)Durham 7)Morrisville
What I would NOT do is:
Add a huge paragraph in the footer of each of my pages that lists every city, county, and zip code within a 100 mile radius.
[B][U]6. How does one increase their google places ranking?[/U][/B]
Google Places has a lot of smaller signals than your website, and it depends a lot more on REAL stuff, not so much on SEO. A lot of Google Places listings got suspended or put on eternal “[B][U][I]Pending Review[/I][/U][/B]” for being too spammy. They are looking for real photos, real reviews, real videos, real websites, real services, real categories. Make sure your listing isn’t duplicated somewhere, it is 100% complete, and has a real address. DO NOT stuff keywords into your descriptions, categories, additional info, etc. Add items, photos, descriptions that will actually improve your business. ASK for reviews.
[B][U]7. The easiest cheap way to record how your website is doing on search terms?[/U][/B]
I did NOT get an answer to this one!!! But I have submitted it…there are some tools out there to track rankings, but Google is slowly shutting them out of their API’s. They aren’t cheap either. Searching yourself is haphazard and can be completely inaccurate. Localized searches are also affected by a person’s search history/social interaction, previous visits to other sites, on & on. This is Google’s goal, to make search PERSONAL. So I am assuming this problem will not only not get solved, but get more and more elusive…sorry Trey!
Here are a few notes I took that didn’t have to do with anyone’s questions:
The New SEO
Depends more on natural links, creation of good content, providing a good user experience. It’s also lot less technical. You no longer need to know php, html, asp, and all the other coding languages. Just make your page/site a better answer to the search query than the rest. It’s also a lot more about not shooting yourself in the foot - don’t break the rules, don’t keyword stuff or use ‘spammy’ techniques.
Rankings are no longer: “If you build it, they will come.” You have to engage your audience, network, blog, social interaction.
That’s all I’ve got at the moment. Hopefully I’ve given you enough to digest for the moment. To be continued…(said every marketing person, ever.)
Post of the year!
Thanks for the helpful info Anya!
Here’s a good one Anya…
Lately 2 New York City based window cleaning companies have been dominating all of NJ and portions of NE Pennsylvania in the Serps.
There are no mentions of “New Jersey”, “Pennsylvania” etc in their sites, and the sites are chock full of keywords (window cleaning… over and over and over again). Ironically, when I search the term “window cleaning” when physically in NYC, they dont show up.
Both companies ONLY serve Manhattan, and one of the sites (the one that ranks #1 seemingly everywhere) is only one page.
Now, these seem to have come out of nowhere. My questions are as follows:
Do you think Google gives preferential treatment to “new” websites, as in recently designed sites?
Are the search engines just oblivious to geographical boundaries such as state lines?
Is keyword stuffing a temporary boost for some sites?
Are geotags actually obsolete, or could misdirected or too-far-spread geotags cause something like this?
From what I have learned over the past year about SEO is how to manually track your back links to websites. I use my Facebook Fan Page link as “the what is your website” link on a local listing to Google, Bing and Yahoo search engines for my company listing. The search engines provide categories for how your listing shows in local search, ie gutter cleaning, window cleaning and pressure washing. Facebook provides all the code for the heading and description, key areas in which words like gutter, window, and cleaning help search engines locate your existence. I also use my linkedin profile to provide top page rankings for search like #1 or 2, or 5. All being on the first page. There are a lot of fascinating ways to use these two sites as a free website to create back links to analytical programs, Like Google Places, which will give you a summary of the words listed within these two sites. Facebook fan page also has a free analytics and LinkedIn will tell you who has looked at the profile. Or buy a website, the analytics program, or whatever anyone else may say to get you to spend a little extra cash.
I’d love for you to pm me the urls so I can peek. Sometimes it’s a matter of perception on local searches. Like I said before, local SERPS are going to be hard to track, and you mentioned how their rankings changed drastically depending on the locality of your search.
Here’s what I can say without comparing your sites to theirs: Sometimes people do ‘game’ the system. There will always be people who do. The question is, when will they get busted? Do you, as a business owner, want to focus on ‘out-gaming’ them for the short term traffic, and run the risk of getting penalized when they do? What I would do is focus on providing quality content and a good user experience. Your consistency in traffic, loyalty and reputation will go farther, longer.
In the meantime, on the technical side of things, uncomplicated it. Stop over thinking.
As far as local/ego targeting goes: if you get too specific, then you inherently exclude people. Google could care less about state/county/city lines. They pull longitude/latitude on a searchers location, which could very well be close to any number of cities, counties, states. Someone who lives near the state line is going to be used to seeing search results in both states. Me, on the other hand, I live in the middle of a state. So a search result in another state is automatically off my radar. So much depends on the searcher themselves its hard to tell who is seeing what.
Anya Curry
Ambidextrous Services
Thanks Anya for the answer.
Here’s what I did…
I have my regular, desktop site set up in GWT normally and added a xml sitemap which is on my desktop root folded.
I built my mobile site in dreamweaver and put it on m.mydomain.com. Now, my mobile sitemap is on m.mydomain.com/mobilesitemap.xml.
Since my mobile sitemap is not on my desktop site root I couldn’t add it to the desktop site in GWT. What I did was add my mobile site in GWT as another site and was then able to add mobile sitemap to it.
I also put a link to mobile sitemap in head section on index.html page on desktop.
My question now is should I delete that mobile site site from GWT altogether and upload a mobile sitemap to mydomain.com root folder?
I searched all over internet and the answer is add a mobile sitemap in your GWT account but the only way that’s possible is to upload a mobile sitemap to desktop root folder in first place since you can’t change mydomain.com to m.mydomain.com when adding a sitemap.
I think I am going to delete my mobile site from GWT account and do it as I explained above but wanted to get you oppinion on it.
Thanks Anya
Tapatalking
Upon further research, I had it right the first time.
Tapatalking
Thank you @Anya
How do I get my google places off of Pending review? Its been two months. I keep emailing them and they say they are working on it.<link><link>
I would try making some changes and re-submitting. Are you using all pre-determined categories? Do you have a description that isn’t chock full of keywords? Do you have a real address? How complete is it showing, percentage-wise?
Well what they told me at first was that I needed to hide my address. It was already hidden in the first place I have no idea why they asked me that, so then they told me to just click update anyway. I did that, and they still would not bring it back up. No my description is short. Yes I have a real address, but it does not show on the map listing because I go to the customer. It says it is 86% complete.
If you’d like me to take a look at it, pm me your google login details and I’d be happy to let you know what I see.
You need a pin# to activate the listing. Google sends you a code within 3 weeks. If you are having trouble getting the pending to activate, you may want to create a new google places listing with a new gmail account. Click the button for confirmation pin to be sent to your address,
First off you want to show your address. And even though you go to a customer, you can still list an area or miles in which your service covers. Oh and by the way, you need to create a separate listing for the google maps so that google places listing can recognize the address. I have my google listing sitting here in front of me if anyone needs help tweaking their listing.
