On-Page SEO Blues

[tonejunkee]

Hello I have a site that was created before knowing what my future target keywords would be.

Let's just say dog101.com is the domain and it has a page called dog101.com/stuff.html - That page is ranking ok for "dog collars" but I would like to optimize it more. Is it bad to change the on-page navigation link text from "dog stuff" to "dog collars" ??? This page is ranked PR4 and I don't want to blow it. Also curious if adding links elsewhere on the site will help (pointing to the /stuff page with 'dog collars' as anchor text.

thanks!
TJ

[julien731]

Sure you can change the navigation links anchors! You can also build external links with this anchor, it will be even more efficient. Internal links can also bring you a "plus" if your anchors are well optimized.

And why not to change the page URL "stuff" which is not really optimized for "dog-collard.html" with a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one!

[tonejunkee]

thanks! not sure what you mean by external links - do you mean 'backlinks' ? I've paid for several backlinking packages here on the site which have done well. Also, my site is only 14 pages deep so should I add this new link with 'dog collar' anchor text to the bottom of each? That would be 14 PR4 backlinks! I'm not up to speed on how to do a '301 redirect' - Is that a godaddy thing?

[julien731]

By external links yes I mean backlinks.

About including a "dog collar" link in the footer of each page, it's not the best idea as the link won't have any context (and footer links are devaluated). The best would be to insert "dog collar" links in the other pages' content.

For the 301 redirect, you can do it by adding a few lines to your .htaccess file (you can find tutorials with a Google research).

[tonejunkee]

ahh i see. Should all future backlinking efforts be for the new url? Also, should the existing on-page links w/anchor text of 'dog collars' have their corresponding url changed to the new one?

thanks again - this is becoming more and more clear to me

[julien731]

Yes, the best would be to change the existing on-page links to point to the new URL.

[julien731]

If you want to start backlinking to your new URL with you new anchors, you can submit on my press release site! It's 100% free and very well optimized: http://bestfreepressrelease.com.