Ask the SEO Guy Anything!

[Kristi61]

SEO Guy,

Here's a tough one for you! Look at my thread on this forum:

Emergency! SEO Experts! My horses lives are depending on me!

I need all the help I can get!

Thanks,
Kristi

[kyhawk2]

I have 20 sites I am promoting using a cpa offer for car insurance in a coaching program I am in.
An example is Free Automobile Insurance Quotes for Missouri
The others are similar...see the very bottom. I bought some articles and I am basically just subbing in the key word name of each site and domain
(automobileinsurancequotesmissouri) in each article where insurance is named. I swapped my domain insurance keyword for insurance about 3 times, including the article title.

One of first thing I did was put in keywords. Each site has the same keywords pretty much,just changing the state or city for each domain. I just did a copy from source below.

After I put in my articles, should I now change my keywords to equal the articles titles and make my tags the article titles also? I am not too sure what my tags are for. I have a software called blogfinder and I need to name my tags.
Thanks in advance for any advice.

meta name="keywords" content="automobile insurance quote missouri,
missouri automobile insurance quotes,missouri free automobile insurance quotes, missouri online automobile insurance quotes,missouri automobile insurance rate quote,missouri auto insurance quote, missouri auto insurance company,missouri automobile insurance rate quotes" />
<link rel="canonical" href="http://automobileinsurancequotesmissouri.com/" />











4
carinsurancesmissouri.org
carinsurancesohio.net
carinsurancesphiladelphia.org
carinsurancesrichardson.net

9
budgetcarinsuranceatlanta.com
budgetcarinsuranceflorida.org
budgetcarinsurancelosangeles.net
budgetcarinsurancemissouri.com
budgetcarinsurancemiami.com
budgetcarinsuranceohio.net
budgetcarinsuranceohio.com
budgetcarinsurancetampa.com
budgetcarinsurancetexas.com

4
sportscarinsuranceorlando.com
sportscarinsurancephiladelphia.com
sportscarinsurancetampa.org
sportscarinsurancetexas.net


3
automobileinsurancequotesmissouri.com
automobileinsurancequotesnewjersey.net
automobileinsurancequotesphiladelphia.com

[LookItsMeTerryG]

pixelcrafter - You've done a good job so far, but you really need to go after links from authority sites. The links you're getting right now.. basically anyone can get, Google knows that, thus they don't do very much. Here's a few tips for finding and getting better links:

1. Create an industry resource. Depending on your niche, there's probably an opportunity to create a resource for buyers or sellers... something like an overall "industry news" site or association you can start. Shoot for customer advocacy if you can, as these seem to get a lot of natural links. If a company is reviewed well, they'll likely highlight that on their website gaining you a link from them to your resource site, strengthening it. Likewise, you'll see consumers recommending people check your site before purchasing... good, essentially free backlinks. After you've done this you essentially have created your own authority site, link to yourself and you'll see a good boost.

2. Create a photo site. If your niche is product based you can create a website around images of that product (herbal supplements are good for this, cars...etc) and license them through CC where in order to use the images they have to attribute the source. You'll get a lot of "free", quality links generated this way. Some clever things to do would be to disable right click so people absolutely HAVE to copy/paste the code you've given them and keep the link intact. Doesn't work 100% of the time, but most of the time it will. People have been using this tactic with smiley websites for years.

3. Crawl through the relevant categories in DMOZ and the Y! directory and email the content sites there. To take this a step further, find sites that have dead links pointing to non-existent websites and let them know and ask that they replace the dead link with yours. Xenu link sleuth is great for this, and free!

4. Offer yourself for interviews. Great way to get some coverage, generate a few sales and/or traffic.

These should get you started

[LookItsMeTerryG]

califmike2003 - I'd submit the rss feed to several rss directories, get some listings from blog directories and make sure to post useful, se-friendly content on a regular basis. When you DO post, try to syndicate the post through email to other like-minded bloggers in your niche in hopes they'll publish it as well with a link back.


rimam1 - Regarding fresh content my thoughts are this: If it makes sense in your niche (news or something) that content is posted frequently then do so. If it doesn't (most ecommerce ventures) then don't. My suggestion for ecommerce sites to have a blog isn't for fresh content, it's to help them get links that aren't normally available to commercial pages. For link building with an ecommerce site I'll just do a lot of interviews, try to get links from manufacturers, join related industry associations, create resource sites, etc.


3Darmory - They give you an undisclosed percentage of the revenue generated from the click. So if advertiser x is paying $1.00 per click, Google will then give you x% of that price. CPM is handled similarly.

[Sowemimo Oladele]

Hello TerryG,

Thanks for what you have shared so far, and please always expatiate on your IM terms a litle bit, it seems to be vocabularies for some of us that are not IM expert yet

I have 3 questions for you.

1. What is the meaning of having keyword bold like url, keword density, title tag etc in onpage optimization and how can I make sure it is done on my site to have a better onpage optimization??

2. Is it a spam to have links from a no follow site that is niche/content is totally different from ones targetted niche e.g A digital system niche site having an external links from weight loss site ?? and If we notice a spamy link, how can we delete or remove it linking to our site ??

3. You said you have of late been using xsitepro, how do you see the learning curve and how easy it is to add monitization methods be it adsense,affiliate links, images etc. I would appreciate if you can share what type of monitization you have use on a xsitepro design site and its success.

Thanks in Advance

[NTN]

Hi Terry,

I posted before but maybe you missed.

Thanks for all your input, really helps us newbies. I have a question, it probably seems stupid to you. Let's assume I have 200 Keywords or Phrases. I understand Title Tags, Meta, etc... but how do I utilize those Keywords? Where do they go? Keyword stuffing on page, hidden in the Footer of the site in same color background, etc...

Thanks so much.

NTN

[LookItsMeTerryG]

Originally Posted by NTN

Hi Terry,

I posted before but maybe you missed.

Thanks for all your input, really helps us newbies. I have a question, it probably seems stupid to you. Let's assume I have 200 Keywords or Phrases. I understand Title Tags, Meta, etc... but how do I utilize those Keywords? Where do they go? Keyword stuffing on page, hidden in the Footer of the site in same color background, etc...

Thanks so much.

NTN

Just use them naturally within your content. I'd put a keyword in your h1, title tags, meta data, etc, as necessary. Here's an example:

Poison Ivy Cures | Cure Poison Ivy

I'd never recommend keyword stuffing or any other "tricks" like that, G figured these out years ago and they simply don't work for long if at all.

[HeSi]

Hi Terry,

I have an old site with alot of backlinks pointing to it.

According to Majesticseo its about 18000, but according to Google wbmaster tool it is only about 5000.

I am now running the Majesticseo URL through a backlink checker and see that most of the pages do exist and seem to contain links to my site, I have not finished this yet but a guess is that 10-12000 pages would link to my site.

So it seems I have a large number of links out there which are not indexed by Google.

1) Is this really so or is Google hiding links in their webmaster tool?
2) What would be the best way to alert the search engines that these pages linking to me exist and should be spidered?
If I put up a directory on my main site it might look like a reciprocal link exchange so I guess that would be less effective.
3) Is there any tool which can take a list of URLs and somehow notify the search engines that these URLs should be spidered?

Thanks

[LookItsMeTerryG]

Originally Posted by HeSi

Hi Terry,

I have an old site with alot of backlinks pointing to it.

According to Majesticseo its about 18000, but according to Google wbmaster tool it is only about 5000.

I am now running the Majesticseo URL through a backlink checker and see that most of the pages do exist and seem to contain links to my site, I have not finished this yet but a guess is that 10-12000 pages would link to my site.

So it seems I have a large number of links out there which are not indexed by Google.

1) Is this really so or is Google hiding links in their webmaster tool?
2) What would be the best way to alert the search engines that these pages linking to me exist and should be spidered?
If I put up a directory on my main site it might look like a reciprocal link exchange so I guess that would be less effective.
3) Is there any tool which can take a list of URLs and somehow notify the search engines that these URLs should be spidered?

Thanks

1. Google doesn't give all of the data, for sure. Y! site explorer is more accurate, but MajesticSEO (which you're using) is my absolute favorite for this.

2. Try pinging them and building a few links towards each backlink... it's called a "link backrub" and I highly suggest using it.

3. Same as number 2, I'd just do it by hand with link building or pinging/bookmarking.

[LookItsMeTerryG]

Originally Posted by threatlevelorange

How can I improve the website in my signature?

Is there software that can do SEO work for me?

What is the easiest way to build backlinks?

How important do you think Google Maps and Yahoo Local are to attracting customers in your immediate are? Compared to adwords and organic listings?

How can I bring huge traffic to a blog that is presenting adsense ads?

Do you know how to post links to yahoo answers?

For onpage stuff I'd recommend changing your meta desc tag, it's a bit spammy at this point. Also, try to use full url paths instead of just "bathroom.html" or something.

The easiest way to build backlinks would be to just produce very good, useful content that others will naturally link to.

I personally love and utilize google local/maps whenever/wherever possible. It definitely has its part in an overall marketing campaign, especially for local business.

SEO will get you the traffic to the adsense site and also participate in communities, digg, stumbleupon, etc.. Good linkbait will do wonders for SEO and traffic.

Yahoo answers seems to (as of late) only show links for the answers that were chosen as best answer. Although, this isn't always the case.

[dgarlock]

Terry,
from all I've read so far, you're quickly becoming the go-to guy for SEO...

here's my question:

I've developed an "authority site" using Drupal, which is currently in the sandbox, but near to going on a live server. I have a ton of PLR content that needs to be re-written and my thought was to do a few articles a day.
I don't think it's wise to let the SE's see this nascent site until I can add more content and continue to build it out, so...
I'm thinking I should exclude them with my robots.txt for a short period of time with:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

thoughts?

best regards,

Dave

[LookItsMeTerryG]

Originally Posted by dgarlock

Terry,
from all I've read so far, you're quickly becoming the go-to guy for SEO...

here's my question:

I've developed an "authority site" using Drupal, which is currently in the sandbox, but near to going on a live server. I have a ton of PLR content that needs to be re-written and my thought was to do a few articles a day.
I don't think it's wise to let the SE's see this nascent site until I can add more content and continue to build it out, so...
I'm thinking I should exclude them with my robots.txt for a short period of time with:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

thoughts?

best regards,

Dave

I'd say keep it in a staging environment until you're ready, or simply put the site up without content, then add as you go.

"What the standard “Disallow” directive cannot still do is to make Google drop the page out of the index. So you may end up seeing those blocked pages in Google SERPs – Google won’t know what they actually contain, so it will make judgements based on both internal and external references to that pages."

[gtrplyr]

Just a question about domain length..

I knwo that if my main keyword is not available as a domain name, often its ok to ass a suffix to it in order to get the domain...ie "purplewidgetinfo.com" if "purplewidget.com" is already taken.

But what if adding a suffix makes the domain real long...example:

"professionalgreenwidgetsonline.com" if I am trying to rank for "professional green widgets"

What negative impact, if any, will that have on me getting ranked and using articles to get backlinks, etc..?

[LookItsMeTerryG]

Originally Posted by gtrplyr

Just a question about domain length..

I knwo that if my main keyword is not available as a domain name, often its ok to ass a suffix to it in order to get the domain...ie "purplewidgetinfo.com" if "purplewidget.com" is already taken.

But what if adding a suffix makes the domain real long...example:

"professionalgreenwidgetsonline.com" if I am trying to rank for "professional green widgets"

What negative impact, if any, will that have on me getting ranked and using articles to get backlinks, etc..?

Ha! A bit of a freudian slip there, "ass a suffix".

These seem to rank fine, though, I wouldn't want to be a position where google is truncating my domain url.... so I'd keep it under 70 characters or so, at most. Also, shorter is better for type-ins and people linking to you, in most cases.

[MacFreddie]

Originally Posted by threatlevelorange

How important do you think Google Maps and Yahoo Local are to attracting customers in your immediate are? Compared to adwords and organic listings?

Don't want to interfere with Terry, he is the go to guy for SEO, I can personally attest to that.

But Google Maps is HUGE for local organic, especially when combined with LBC.

A must for any small business.

Mac

[aniebee]

First - thank you so much for offering this great advice for free! I've read the entire thread and learned a lot!

1: For Mac in the link above, what is LBC?

2: For Terry or others "in the know" I understand the power of linking web 2.0 sites to my money site. But, recently I read some material that emphasized the importance of creating your own blog farm and to build up the authority of these. Then to link these to your money sites.

The idea is not new, but it hit me for some reason. They said to have a multi class-C hosting account. Then to add 10 blogs per C-class. Make these blogs with generic topics and to NOT connect them in any way. They are to look like stand-alone sites or wordpress sites.

After building up the individual blogs, you can use the power of these sites to help boost your money sites. The goal is to eventually have 1000 of these blogs, all created over time. Obviously you want to create some links to your money sites, but to do the bulk of your link building - promoting to these blogs.

What's the consensus on this? Do you know where I can get more information about this?

Thank You!
Ann

[VladWorks]

Lots of great info in this thread.....

Thanks for all the help so far Terry. You solved more than one of my issues so far.

Cheers.

[LookItsMeTerryG]

Originally Posted by aniebee

First - thank you so much for offering this great advice for free! I've read the entire thread and learned a lot!

1: For Mac in the link above, what is LBC?

2: For Terry or others "in the know" I understand the power of linking web 2.0 sites to my money site. But, recently I read some material that emphasized the importance of creating your own blog farm and to build up the authority of these. Then to link these to your money sites.

The idea is not new, but it hit me for some reason. They said to have a multi class-C hosting account. Then to add 10 blogs per C-class. Make these blogs with generic topics and to NOT connect them in any way. They are to look like stand-alone sites or wordpress sites.

After building up the individual blogs, you can use the power of these sites to help boost your money sites. The goal is to eventually have 1000 of these blogs, all created over time. Obviously you want to create some links to your money sites, but to do the bulk of your link building - promoting to these blogs.

What's the consensus on this? Do you know where I can get more information about this?

Thank You!
Ann

LBC is Local Business Center. Do a local search in google and you'll see the map popup with results next to it.

Link farms are still effective.. but I wouldn't recommend them on any long-term business website. The problem is they leave a very big footprint (increasing of course with amount of spokes in the farm). If you're clever it'll work for a while, no problem. Just be a bit "googlenoid" as another member here puts it. Use different whois info, no interlinking, do them over time and don't setup more than a few at a time pointing towards you.

[actionplanbiz]

Is a SEO'ed youtube channel useful?
if so how can i fully benefit from it?

thanks

[Sowemimo Oladele]

Originally Posted by Sowemimo Oladele

Hello TerryG,

Thanks for what you have shared so far, and please always expatiate on your IM terms a litle bit, it seems to be vocabularies for some of us that are not IM expert yet

I have 3 questions for you.

1. What is the meaning of having keyword bold like url, keword density, title tag etc in onpage optimization and how can I make sure it is done on my site to have a better onpage optimization??

2. Is it a spam to have links from a no follow site that is niche/content is totally different from ones targetted niche e.g A digital system niche site having an external links from weight loss site ?? and If we notice a spamy link, how can we delete or remove it linking to our site ??

3. You said you have of late been using xsitepro, how do you see the learning curve and how easy it is to add monitization methods be it adsense,affiliate links, images etc. I would appreciate if you can share what type of monitization you have use on a xsitepro design site and its success.

Thanks in Advance

Hello TerryG,

You haven't answered my question

Anyways, I have an addition:

4. What is the different between www.keyword.com and keyword.com with respect to SEO?

[josephalford]

hey LookItsMeTerryG

i m new in this field...i need ur help pls guide me i want 2 start seo work but i want 2 know from a to z.also tell me shall i create blog for seo or u prefer website?

[superassassin]

Can a shared account vs reseller account effect SERP?

I've read a couple accounts where people have stated it was easy to rank for the primary domain, but add on domains were a struggle (not only when ranking for clients but also their own sites), and that google sees the domains in this format:

www-primarydomain-com/www-addondomain-com -vs- just www-addondomain-com

And this brings me to question #2, dedicated ip. Does it matter if you put all your sites on a shared ip (that is exclusively yours) or is it better to have a dedicated IP for each domain (as far as SEO is concerned)?

Thanks

P.S. changed the dots to dashes since I can't post links (even though it's not really a link anyways)

[marketingjitsu]

I know that when you first start out with your website you should try to rank for the less popular keywords first. I have already been able to rank pretty well for these less popular keywords and I was wondering what was the best way to transition to ranking for the more popular ones? Because if I immediately change my title tags, H1 tags, etc. I will stop ranking for the less popular keywords that I already rank highly for and I will probably not yet be able to rank highly for the new more popular keywords leaving me with no keywords to rank for and no organic traffic. How should I reconcile this?

Thanks,

[stefan16]

Hi Terry,
Currently I have this blog on blogger platform and I've been building links to it for the past 4 months, it is not doing too well in term of search engine ranking. These are my questions:
1. Is it more difficult to rank good using blogger platform? I'm planning to publish it on my own domain but that way I'll lose all the backlinks, alexa rank, and being indexed by google. Is it worth it to publish now?
2. Is it doable to change my focused keyword now? Or is it easier to just drop this one, focus on other main keywords and use my current articles to start another campaign?
3. If I am going to start a campaign, which one do you suggest? a regular website or a blog?
4. I've heard alot about using linkwheel; does this method really works?
5. I've tried Angela's backlink and have doubt about it. Do you think that create link in your signature at a high PR forum will really do the trick? The forum doesn't even has anything to do with my current niche.

Any suggestion will be really appreciated

[jsanderz]

Hi,
Quick question, in your opinion what is the best keyword software?
Many thanks.

[LookItsMeTerryG]

Originally Posted by actionplanbiz

Is a SEO'ed youtube channel useful?
if so how can i fully benefit from it?

thanks

I'd focus on the individual videos as they tend to rank higher than the profiles do. However, a good link from a profile isn't hurting anything.

hey LookItsMeTerryG

i m new in this field...i need ur help pls guide me i want 2 start seo work but i want 2 know from a to z.also tell me shall i create blog for seo or u prefer website?

Both are fine, the biggest tip is just to get going and try things!

Can a shared account vs reseller account effect SERP?

I've read a couple accounts where people have stated it was easy to rank for the primary domain, but add on domains were a struggle (not only when ranking for clients but also their own sites), and that google sees the domains in this format:

www-primarydomain-com/www-addondomain-com -vs- just www-addondomain-com

And this brings me to question #2, dedicated ip. Does it matter if you put all your sites on a shared ip (that is exclusively yours) or is it better to have a dedicated IP for each domain (as far as SEO is concerned)?

Thanks

I personally prefer a dedicated IP for each site, especially since I tend to focus on ecommerce. Your question though brings into mind the whole "bad neighborhoods" theory... I'd really not worry about it yet though. If you find you're doing everything else perfectly and you can't seem to move then perhaps look into it.

I know that when you first start out with your website you should try to rank for the less popular keywords first. I have already been able to rank pretty well for these less popular keywords and I was wondering what was the best way to transition to ranking for the more popular ones? Because if I immediately change my title tags, H1 tags, etc. I will stop ranking for the less popular keywords that I already rank highly for and I will probably not yet be able to rank highly for the new more popular keywords leaving me with no keywords to rank for and no organic traffic. How should I reconcile this?

Thanks,

I don't know why you'd change the pages to target a different term, just create new ones around that specific phrase or keyword. That should solve both problems.

[LookItsMeTerryG]

Originally Posted by Sowemimo Oladele

Hello TerryG,
Thanks for what you have shared so far, and please always expatiate on your IM terms a litle bit, it seems to be vocabularies for some of us that are not IM expert yet

I have 3 questions for you.

1. What is the meaning of having keyword bold like url, keword density, title tag etc in onpage optimization and how can I make sure it is done on my site to have a better onpage optimization??

2. Is it a spam to have links from a no follow site that is niche/content is totally different from ones targetted niche e.g A digital system niche site having an external links from weight loss site ?? and If we notice a spamy link, how can we delete or remove it linking to our site ??

3. You said you have of late been using xsitepro, how do you see the learning curve and how easy it is to add monitization methods be it adsense,affiliate links, images etc. I would appreciate if you can share what type of monitization you have use on a xsitepro design site and its success.

4. What is the different between www.keyword.com and keyword.com with respect to SEO?

1. Generally those are elements where you'll put the keyword the page is focused on. So if you're going after "blue widget store", you'll have that term appear in your title, h1, alt text, bold, in the beginning of the copy, at the end of the page, etc. This is going a bit far for most sites, but is often what people are talking about when they say on-page optimization. To me onpage optimization pertains to internal linking, ensuring the content is spiderable, content quality and usability.

2. Technically, yeah, it's probably spam. If you weren't trying to manipulate your search placement would your site naturally acquire links from that other site? I wouldn't delete them, just build more and better ones.

3. I love XSP. It's super easy to use, hardly any learning curve and adding monetization is copy/paste type stuff. I've used adsense extensively for this and done well.

4. None, as long as you stick to one and don't use both in your url paths or backlinks.

[Andy1750]

Hi SEO guy,

Have two questions for you. Have outsourced some back linking recently with a company that offers blog commenting. However, looking at what's been done so far they have only commented on nofollow blogs! Are they any benefits of nofollow blog commenting or have I wasted my money? Was some discussion recently about whether Google is now ignoring nofollow.

Second question. Can you override a site's no follow settings with rel=”follow” in the html in your backlink?

Thanks,

Andy

[Jay Rhome]

First of all Terry, thanks for this thread, your time, and your precise answers. I picked up many good tips.

Here are my questions:

#1 Subdomains
ex:
kitchen.homestuff.com
toilets.homestuff.com
vomitroom.homestuff.com

You said above that if we consider them from the perspective of SEO, there'd be no difference between the above and taking different URLS for each one? If so, are there any benefits to doing subdomains compared to simply using keywords in the title tags, H1, etc.? I know it'd help for PPC but for pure SEO purposes?



#2 How quickly can we build links to our own new or fairly new domain in a non spammy (acai, etc.) niche? In other words, is the "Google Sandbox" real?


#3 As a follow up to point #2, could you critique my plan:

Let’s say I get 60 articles on 20 different keywords written for me - 3 versions per keyword. I use version 1 on my site; version 2 on EZA; version 3 on hubpages or squeedoo. Then I spin them to be put on 2.0 sites. Plus I bookmark them, RSS, the whole 9 yards.

Basically, with a totally brand new site, in about 2 weeks I’d have lots of content on the site, plus LOTS of outside content, links and linkwheels pointing to the different pages on my domain. Is that too much too fast, or since the links are spread throughout the pages of my site, it’s a great plan?


BTW, do the link juice from the different pages help drive them all up the ranks? (I guess that's #3B )



#4 How can we know if a Wordpress theme is “SEO friendly” or not? I’m not talking about permalinks, SEO plugins and whatnot, but about the theme itself. How can we measure this, if it’s relevant at all. I see this come up often but I don't know how to gauge this.


Thanks a lot Terry!!

[l23bc]

good question on the seo theme links with so many blogs using the same themes does that mean more blogs get put to googles sandbox faster

just curious to know that answer

[josephalford]

Hello TerryG,

after create website or blog what is the next step???? pls guide me.thanx

[divengrabber]

What type of keyword research i follow to promote site. Tille or Conetent which i place on my site. Which is the most important first.

[zankee]

use google wonder wheel to start with your keyword research, or googles external keyword research tool. just google "keyword tool external"

once there what better person than google to tell you what your keywords are?

[LookItsMeTerryG]

Originally Posted by Andy1750

Hi SEO guy,

Have two questions for you. Have outsourced some back linking recently with a company that offers blog commenting. However, looking at what's been done so far they have only commented on nofollow blogs! Are they any benefits of nofollow blog commenting or have I wasted my money? Was some discussion recently about whether Google is now ignoring nofollow.

Second question. Can you override a site's no follow settings with rel=”follow” in the html in your backlink?

Thanks,

Andy

Nofollow is fine. The trick is emulating a natural link profile. Sites will get nofollow links naturally. If you have 100% dofollow links, that's not natural. As for overriding, nope. I'd recommend (if you're not already doing this) to do more than blog comments though.

[LookItsMeTerryG]

Originally Posted by Jay Rhome

First of all Terry, thanks for this thread, your time, and your precise answers. I picked up many good tips.

Here are my questions:

#1 Subdomains
ex:
kitchen.homestuff.com
toilets.homestuff.com
vomitroom.homestuff.com

You said above that if we consider them from the perspective of SEO, there'd be no difference between the above and taking different URLS for each one? If so, are there any benefits to doing subdomains compared to simply using keywords in the title tags, H1, etc.? I know it'd help for PPC but for pure SEO purposes?



#2 How quickly can we build links to our own new or fairly new domain in a non spammy (acai, etc.) niche? In other words, is the "Google Sandbox" real?


#3 As a follow up to point #2, could you critique my plan:

Let’s say I get 60 articles on 20 different keywords written for me - 3 versions per keyword. I use version 1 on my site; version 2 on EZA; version 3 on hubpages or squeedoo. Then I spin them to be put on 2.0 sites. Plus I bookmark them, RSS, the whole 9 yards.

Basically, with a totally brand new site, in about 2 weeks I’d have lots of content on the site, plus LOTS of outside content, links and linkwheels pointing to the different pages on my domain. Is that too much too fast, or since the links are spread throughout the pages of my site, it’s a great plan?


BTW, do the link juice from the different pages help drive them all up the ranks? (I guess that's #3B )



#4 How can we know if a Wordpress theme is “SEO friendly” or not? I’m not talking about permalinks, SEO plugins and whatnot, but about the theme itself. How can we measure this, if it’s relevant at all. I see this come up often but I don't know how to gauge this.


Thanks a lot Terry!!

1. There's evidence that Google treats subdomains differently than pages, in that a domain can pass a penalty to a sub domain but generally not vice versa, unless interlinking is taking place. It seems this exception is in place to protect free site providers from incurring penalties based on user content. I'd recommend just using good category structure and placing everything on the main site. i.e.: domain.com/category/page.html

2. Don't go overboard. I know that's a relative answer, but the idea is to "ramp up" instead of "die off". Whatever you do, make sure that you can increase long term instead of slowing. Is the sandbox real? I don't know. Probably not. There are so many ideas about what the sandbox actually is.. If sandbox = age filter, then yes. I'm positive that exists.

3. Good plan, but you'll need more and better links in the long run.

4. Make sure the theme validates and remove as many dynamic queries from the code as possible. Hardcore urls using full paths, make sure text is displayed correctly (use a text browser such as lynx to view this).

[LookItsMeTerryG]

@ l23bc - No, you're not being penalized because of a common theme unless there are problems with the theme structure or coding.

@ josephalford - Build links, integrate yourself into the niche community.

@ divengrabber - I'm not sure I understand your question. Title and content are relative to each other.

[Jay Rhome]

Originally Posted by LookItsMeTerryG

2. Whatever you do, make sure that you can increase long term instead of slowing.

I never though of that one. Though it seems a given that some sites go through surges "naturally" and then slow down

3. Good plan, but you'll need more and better links in the long run.

Such as? Links from 2.0 sites, EZA, bookmarks, RSS feeds are what I know to do. Going back to point #2, I see my strategy is a bit of a initial burst and then it slows down. Mmm.

As you keeping adding sites, you continue outsourcing the backlink building for your older sites all the time? I don't see doing that myself as my network of sites grows over time.

4. Make sure the theme validates and remove as many dynamic queries from the code as possible. Hardcore urls using full paths, make sure text is displayed correctly (use a text browser such as lynx to view this).

I don't really know how to check for that. I'll Google that one. Unless there's a SEO Theme Checker software out there

Thanks

[bus4bus]

I have a question. I am currently using Google Adwords and just started using it 3 days ago. So I am completely new to this.

I have made ads that are typically about home based businesses. I have used a number of different keywords and I use the keyword tool. When I make the ad and add keywords, Google says the keywords are a quality of 7/10 all the way to 10/10 and that is after the review. That's good.

But the very next day I go back to check the keywords and the second day it says, 1/10 and poor landing page. Is it a matter of changing the keywords every single day for each ad?

Thanks for your time.

[LookItsMeTerryG]

Originally Posted by Jay Rhome

I never though of that one. Though it seems a given that some sites go through surges "naturally" and then slow down

Such as? Links from 2.0 sites, EZA, bookmarks, RSS feeds are what I know to do. Going back to point #2, I see my strategy is a bit of a initial burst and then it slows down. Mmm.

As you keeping adding sites, you continue outsourcing the backlink building for your older sites all the time? I don't see doing that myself as my network of sites grows over time.

I don't really know how to check for that. I'll Google that one. Unless there's a SEO Theme Checker software out there

Thanks

You should target authority resource sites with high relevance to your subject matter. The first and easiest way to find these would be to go to dmoz and browse to your niche and try to get a link from every site there. Emails work best, phone calls if you can find a number work fine too. Don't be afraid to offer a donation for their time

When "I" build a site, I'll do some backlinking myself, but I design the site to be a link magnet.. with tons of linkbait content, so yeah, my links only increase for the most part. More links doesn't equate to harder work, just smarter work. You'll find that you'll get links just because you rank well for something often times. A boon to any site, for sure.

To check the code just open up the editor panel in wordpress and scout through it. Alternatively there are a lot of people out there than can do a 1 time SEO setup for wordpress, PM me for who I'd recommend. (heck, it may even be myself, I've done this for warriors in the past).

Edit: Just a bottom line thought here: Effective SEO oftentimes isn't actually "seo" in the common sense. It's actually just marketing 101. If you were trying to launch and promote a business on the internet without search engines, you'd go to high traffic, authority type sites to get plugs and links anyway. I'd personally want a link from any site that has a "resources" page or any targeted directory that has traffic and can establish visual trust for the viewers... often times these end up being the "golden" seo links. I tend to view SEO as a byproduct of a quality marketing campaign instead of a standalone initiative.

[Simo]

Hi Terry,

I have a question from a client of mine who is running both a website and a blog

Which of the following hosting scenarios (if any) would produce a better SE ranking:

(a) both sites are hosted with the same web company
(b) they are hosted at different web companies (i.e. they have different IP addresses)

Would appreciate your feedback.

Cheers,

Andrew

[vuedoolor]

Here's my question:

There are 3 articles on Ezinearticles.com linking to my mydomain.com/money-site.html

Article#1 links to mydomain.com/money-site.html with anchor text "make money"

Article#2 links to mydomain.com/money-site.html with anchor text "affiliate marketing"

Article#2 links to mydomain.com/money-site.html with anchor text "work from home"

Does Google see that as 3 different votes and give credits for all 3?

[tvanslooten]

Terry:

Great thread you've started here and thanks for taking the time to share your knowledge!

I'll make my question brief but then I'll provide some background why I'm asking...

What is the most reliable way to get a quick and dirty look at the real competition for any given keyword so we don't waste time targeting a keyword phrase that is impossible to rank for?

***********************************

Background:

Almost all the ebooks I've read regarding keyword research and SEO say to target keywords with low competition (duh). The recommended way to check the "real" competition is always the same in these books: do a search for the keyword in quotes.

They further go on to say that you should target for those keywords whose results show less than 100,000 (again, when searching using quotes). While some "SEO experts" have told me this method is silly to begin with, this practice is preached a lot and has actually worked very well for me so I'm not sure what to think.

At any rate, this method hasn't been working that great lately because it appears Google tweaked their algorithm recently in light of Google Caffeine rolling out. What I've noticed is that the results returned when searching in quotes has gone through the roof. For example, a keyword phrase searched in quotes before might have returned 9,000. Today, that same keyword phrase searched in quotes returns over 600,000.

Now this isn't ALWAYS the case, but I'm finding this a lot lately. Google has definitely tweaked some things because the results are not even close anymore. And this isn't a Google dance or data center updating thing either as these new higher numbers I'm seeing have been this way for weeks.

Travis

[stefan16]

Hi Terry,
I've posted before, but you probably missed it:

Originally Posted by stefan16

Hi Terry,
Currently I have this blog on blogger platform and I've been building links to it for the past 4 months, it is not doing too well in term of search engine ranking. These are my questions:
1. Is it more difficult to rank good using blogger platform? I'm planning to publish it on my own domain but that way I'll lose all the backlinks, alexa rank, and being indexed by google. Is it worth it to publish now?
2. Is it doable to change my focused keyword now? Or is it easier to just drop this one, focus on other main keywords and use my current articles to start another campaign?
3. If I am going to start a campaign, which one do you suggest? a regular website or a blog?
4. I've heard alot about using linkwheel; does this method really works?
5. -deleted- I've just read that you don't want to comment about A' and P' backlink.
Any suggestion will be really appreciated

[AbdulAzim]

Hi,

Thanks for opening this thread.
I would love to ask questions also.

1.Is link wheel can be considered as black hat seo method?If not, why?

2.Let say I have squidoo page, hubpages, blogspot blog that link to my main site,
I bookmark my squidoo pages,hubpages and blogspot blog.I also submit them to
top rss directories.And promote those three site with article marketing.
Can this be considered as link wheel?Or one of its kind? This method is not black hat right?

I read this article : Black Hat Vs White Hat Authority Web 2.0 Link Building | Internet Marketing Blog, List Building - ProIMer

Is that true that the second method is white hat?

Thanks

Azim

[Joshua McCoy]

Wow, quite an amazing thread you've stared here Terry!

Thanks for sharing.

[Joshua McCoy]

After all the great advice, I still got a few questions for you.

If someone is using blog commenting as one of their backlink strategies, does the authority of the page itself matter, or just the domain?

I know you said pagerank is bad way of judging authority. But for example's sake, let's say the link is on a site with a pagerank 9, like bbc (you gave that example earlier). Do you think a link from a pagerank 6 page would hold more weight than a pagerank 2 page?

This is assuming all other factors equal. (Age, relevancy, amount of links on the page, ect.)


I had another question about xsitepro. I have the software and have messed around with it a little bit, but never actually launched a site with it. It seems to me that it breaks a site up into modules, and then you edit each module individually. In my experience, this seems to make for a clunky looking site that doesen't flow well together and/or look very visually appealing to the visitor.

So I guess the few questions I had about xsitepro are: Do you buy custom templates/graphics ect. to use as a css base for the whole site, and put the site together from there so when you add the text, pictures and other stuff to each individual page the site looks professional?

Also, would you be able to give me a brief overview of how you form a site with xsite pro?

( I know that last question could take several pages and was very vauge. I'm not so much looking for help adding modules ect., I've thoroughly went through the tutorials and other guides. I'm speaking more from a perspective of making the site look visually appealing, layout, ect., so all I need to do to add a new page to the site once I've set it up is add text, images, links, ect. and publish it. [Which I know how to do already])

Last question:

Would you recommend a particular hosting service for uploading the site through xsitepro? Or maybe another way of putting that is have you noticed any servers or types of servers that don't work well for publishing the site within xsitepro? An answer on either side of that coin would work for me.


Any help on the xsitepro stuff would be very much apprecited, as I haven't took the time to learn most html code yet.



Thanks again for all your great posts, I've had alot of my questions answered already in this thread.

[robvegas626]

Hi Terry. Incredible thread. Quick question: if you shorten a URL (using TinyUrl or a similar service), and then post that link somewhere, will Google still count it as a back link to your site? Does shortening a link rob it of any "link juice?"

My blog posts have extremely long, ugly URLs and posting the full link makes it look like spam. But I want to make sure I get credit for a back link when I post it.

[rliddle]

This is a great thread, is there a methodolology to targeting Bing and Google simultaneously?

[LookItsMeTerryG]

@ - Joshua McCoy - "If someone is using blog commenting as one of their backlink strategies, does the authority of the page itself matter, or just the domain?"

Just comment on whatever is relevant. I wouldn't worry about this, at all.

"Do you think a link from a pagerank 6 page would hold more weight than a pagerank 2 page? This is assuming all other factors equal. (Age, relevancy, amount of links on the page, ect.)"

If all factors were equal they'd have the same pagerank. The answer is of course, but only because that's the only metric you're giving me in order to make my decision.

"So I guess the few questions I had about xsitepro are: Do you buy custom templates/graphics ect. to use as a css base for the whole site, and put the site together from there so when you add the text, pictures and other stuff to each individual page the site looks professional?"

No custom templates, just use the ones there. With the type of sites that I create in XSP I'm not worried about how good they look. I use XSP for speed and ease of generating quick MFA sites. As far as hosting, I like cpanel hosts, doesn't really matter though. They should all work fine.

[LookItsMeTerryG]

Originally Posted by robvegas626

Hi Terry. Incredible thread. Quick question: if you shorten a URL (using TinyUrl or a similar service), and then post that link somewhere, will Google still count it as a back link to your site? Does shortening a link rob it of any "link juice?"

My blog posts have extremely long, ugly URLs and posting the full link makes it look like spam. But I want to make sure I get credit for a back link when I post it.

I wouldn't try to "bandage" this issue. Honestly, I'd make the urls shorter to begin with. But, despite what some might say, I've never seen a shortened url show up in my backlinks.