Interesting SEO WP Question

6 replies
  • SEO
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OK, I have an offline client that has a great looking flash site...but obviously absolutely no SEO. He doesn't even rank on any of the SE.

I built a test wp blog and put up some keyword rich content, good title, headers, metas, allinone seo, sitemaps, the works. i then stumbled and digg the "blog url"...which is located at "site.com/blog".

Now....is the fact that his actual MAIN domain page so terrible for SEO going to completely make what I did for his SEO wordpress blog useless?

I am targeting very local keyphrases. Normally I would just do a full site redesign and what not, but I wanted to see if it would work for now this way.

Thoughts appreciated.
#interesting #question #seo
  • Profile picture of the author Paul Ashbrook
    That is an interesting question - and I'd be particularly interested to hear your results as I have a similar situation myself. I can't see any problems with you putting a blog on that domain if the reason he is not showing up is because of flash being difficult to read by the search engines.

    If he's not in the serps because of using blackhat techniques...that's another matter.
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  • Profile picture of the author ehicks727
    Experiment with some internal linking.

    In the blog, put some keyword rich anchor text pointing to the home page.

    Here's the trick... DON'T DO SITE-WIDE LINKING! Drop your links to the home page in content.... and further... in contextually relevant content. Do it strategically.

    Site-wide = footer, nav, sidebar, etc.. links that appear on every page of your blog.

    This advice is not the be-all, end-all.... this is just one thing to try. SEO is about experimenting, change one thing, wait for the results to kick in. Be patient. Don't do everything all at once or you'll never know what worked!
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  • Profile picture of the author irving
    Very interesting answer. But still i am confused ehicks727. Can you explain it in a more simpler way as i am not an seo expert.
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    • Profile picture of the author ehicks727
      Originally Posted by irving View Post

      Very interesting answer. But still i am confused ehicks727. Can you explain it in a more simpler way as i am not an seo expert.
      There's external linking (links from other domains) and internal linking (links from the site to other pages on the same site)

      If your home page is all flash, you don't have a lot of good text content that Google can latch onto to determine what this page is about.

      So, you can "suggest" to Google what this page is about by adding links from other pages in the site to the home page.

      The key is keyword-rich anchor text. An HTML anchor looks like this.

      Code:
      <a href="http://www.example.com">Some text here</a>
      The actual ANCHOR TEXT is "Some text here". The anchor text is what you see linked.

      If you put keyword-rich anchor text in your link, this "suggests" to Google what this page is about. So if your site is for a Dallas, TX Plumber named Bob's Plumbing, then you might want your anchor text to be this...

      Code:
      <a href="http://www.bobsplumbing.com">Dallas, TX Plumber - Bob's Plumbing</a>
      On a side note... this is why putting "click here" in your anchor text is so bad. You're telling Google that your page is about "click here", which is meaningless.

      Ok, onto internal linking.

      One of the many, many strategies of SEO is internal linking. It's one of those "last mile" things that separates the men from the boys. Most "SEOs" just chase external links and don't do anything with internal links. This is a mistake, in my opinion.

      Or, the so-called SEO simply puts their link in a SITE-WIDE page element. A site-wide link would be a link from somewhere like your footer, your navbar, your sidebar.... essentially, a link that is on every page of your site... hence, site-wide link.

      Instead, you should drop the site-wide link, and place the link to the home page (with keyword-rich anchor text) in the content of some pages. So, if you have a blog, somewhere in the middle of the blog post, drop the link to the home page. You should do this contextually.... meaning, do it in a manner that makes sense, and put it somewhere where you have other text that supports the keyword phrase in the anchor text. So you might have something like this....

      This is a post about plumbing... If you're trying to find a good plumber that you can trust, look no further than <a href="http://www.bobsplumbing.com" title="Dallas, TX Plumbing">Dallas, TX Plumber, Bob's Plumbing</a>! Bob is a great plumber. His service area is the Dallas/Ft. Worth, TX area. blah, blah, plumbing, blah, blah, Dallas, TX plumbing, blah, blah.
      I hope that helps clear that up a little.
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  • Profile picture of the author irving
    Thank you so much.. you are really fast in answering.. Got the point
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  • Profile picture of the author jsherloc
    Thanks for the idea about internal linking, I will have to implement that.

    I am hoping that the blog will rank alright regardless because it is HEAVILY optimized for local terms, but the actual home page is not optimized whatsoever.

    Any other insights would be greatly appreciated!
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