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3 short questions from an SEO beginner...

by John Henderson
11 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hi everyone,

Although I dedicate 2 or 3 days per week to starting up my own IM enterprise, I still work for a small engineering company on a part time basis. I've been entrusted to update the company's website which is looking a little dated -- OBE Fabrications - Metalwork solutions, Chichester, West Sussex -- and at the moment I'm making decisions about the structure and content of the new website. But I'm stumped on a few SEO matters, and I wondered if you guys could clear up 3 questions that I have...

1) I've read that the links from your Facebook or MySpace page to your website are "no follow" links and therefore don't boost your site's pagerank. If this is true, is there any point in having a company Facebook page?

2) The company regularly completes engineering projects, both small and large. I want to create a new entry on a company blog for each completed project -- together with a background story and photographs. Most of the advice that I've read recommends that I set up a WordPress blog on the company website, with a domain such as "mycompany.com/blog". But wouldn't my blog posts get instantly good results in the SERPS if I hosted it on an already-established platform, like TypePad?

3) Would uploading the photos of our past projects to an image hosting site like Flickr (rather than to our own hosting space) give some kind of SEO advantage?

Thanks in advance for your time and trouble,
JH.
#beginner #questions #seo #short
  • Profile picture of the author edgray
    1) A company Facebook page can be a great way to promote your business. Useless in SEO terms, but it can generate exposure.

    2) WordPress gives you more control, but I can totally recommend Blogger for getting some quick results - Blogger obviously has good domain authority.

    3) Hosting your images elsewhere won't necessarily help at all because if they are hosted on Flickr, in Google Images search it will most likely index the original posting on Flickr, as their domain has better authority. I would put the images on your own site, but maybe have duplicate gallery in Flickr - you could get some traffic from there.

    Hope this helps!!
    Signature

    Ed Gray
    A Business Opportunity in Travel with Personal Travel Group
    Macintosh Training, Repair and Support
    Modern Zen Watch

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  • Profile picture of the author rockstar99
    1 - Pages are extremely beneficial. You should make one for your company, but also consider actually making a page for each product you sell. That way people can become a fan of it.

    What do i mean? So, lets say you were working for a company called "Mayers and sons" and the main product was soup. Maybe you should target Keywords on facebook like "Grandma's Soup" or "Soup" or "Chicken Soup". This way people can become a fan of each of them...you throw your link on the different pages. Even though this will give you little SEO value, it will give you tremendous social media value.

    2 - wordpress.org blog (no doubt). It is way more flexible, not to mention the developers and support forums are god like.

    3 - Your better off hosting images on your own site rather than flicker. Or if you do upload them on flicker include a website in the corner. There is not much SEO advantage to this, but maybe a bit.

    All the best

    -Paul
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  • Profile picture of the author John Henderson
    Ed & Paul, thanks for your replies.

    1) After reading what you've said, I'll put a Facebook page together eventually, but it doesn't look as tho it should be a top priority.

    2) I've just remembered that I can create a TypePad account that's free for 2 weeks. If I take advantage of the offer and create a few posts that are optimised for certain keyphrases, I'll be very interested to see how well my blog posts do in the SERPS -- and it won't cost me anything to find out. If it doesn't work well, I'll just go the WordPress route.

    3) As for Flickr, it seems that the website won't get much SEO advantage from linking to/from it, other than mentioning the URL in the corner of images. So, I'm not sure whether to bother with that or not.... :confused:

    But thanks once again fellas, you've been really very helpful.
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    • Profile picture of the author taccomc
      with over 300 million users on Facebook I would absolutely recommend putting a company page, personal page and product page on there. Don't get hung up on the nofollow thing, you want both dofollow and nofollow links to your site. If you only had dofollow links to your site that would be very suspicious to google. you want your results to look natural.
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  • Profile picture of the author lloydy14
    Hi guys

    I would be interested to learn how to link a wordpress blog to an already established website.

    Is this possible.

    John
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  • Profile picture of the author nosnow
    1) Facebook links won't really help you SEO wise. They can however help by the traffic that they get from clicks.

    2) I would recommend taking the time to use something like wordpress and your own domain if you are looking at the long term / big picture.

    3) Uploading pictures to some other hosting service provides no SEO benefit that I am aware of.
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  • Profile picture of the author Kurt Chrisler
    1) Facebook pages are more for interaction with your customers than they are for SEO benefit.

    2) I would set up a WP blog on your companies domain. You always want to own your properties.

    3) Again with Flickr it is more about interacting with others than it is about SEO
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  • Profile picture of the author iketz01
    1. I think Social media like Facebook will only help you in marketing or advertising. Yes, it will not boost the pr of the site but this is a big help regarding internet marketing..

    2. Wordpress is really the most popular so it's the most recomended on you. But there are really lots of them..

    3. I don't think this would help in SEO..
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  • Profile picture of the author John Henderson
    Thanks for the replies, guys. I'll remember the recommendations that you've made for Facebook, although I don't think that the typical customers of a small engineering company are big social media users...

    I've contacted the web admin at our hosting company -- it looks as tho we're going to go the WordPress route.

    And the lingering feeling that I have about Flickr is that by using optimising the "Title" and "Tags" of each image, I might be able to rank well on Google Images. But I'm not sure how useful that will actually be.....

    Thanks again guys,
    JH.
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    • Profile picture of the author Grapho
      Originally Posted by John Henderson View Post

      And the lingering feeling that I have about Flickr is that by using optimising the "Title" and "Tags" of each image, I might be able to rank well on Google Images.
      Yes, depending on the kind of images, GI can give you extra traffic. That's why it would be better to have this traffic land on the company site rather than on Flickr.
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  • Profile picture of the author John Henderson
    Good point, Grapho!
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