Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Thank you sir for the pointing me in the direction of this material.

Cheers!

I have a website which has been up and running for around 7 years.   It contains relevant content, receives somewhat timely content updates and has not been involved in any poor marketing activities.

http://www.aleutianadventures.com/

That said, it has a very low domain authority and bounces around quite a lot in search results.

Any  thoughts on how to improve the sites current state.

Thanks a bunch!

Thank you, I have not been keeping up with things, so, nice to hear I am somewhat in the right track

So, I am using Wordpress and the seo by yoast.....  I have heard that meta keywords and descriptions are no longer recognized or used by search engines with respect to page rankings in the serps.  Is this true?  If so, why do people still recommend using these?  I thought content is  king these days?

Good point.  I did not know that.  I will look into it.  Thanks again!

Good point.  I did not know that.  I will look into it.  Thanks again!

Thank you for your insight.  This does happen to be a WordPress site and does run a little slow at times.  As I mentioned I have just come to know this site; I will keep and eye on it.

Thanks again!

Is it possible to have to many 301 redirects.  I am currently looking at 156 of them.

Does this create any quality issues with regard to site performance or any other issues.

Thank you for your consideration!

OK.

Got it!

Thank you!

Is is neccessary to use

in order to have pages crawled and indexed.

Thank you

I hear ya.

Thank you!

Its a simple fix, just have to go up the chain of command w/out ruffling feathers..... I am the new guy.

Thank you.

Thank you for the responses... kinda what I thought...

My thoughts exactly thank you sir!

all pages

So, Im working in house with a large company.  They have a number of sites which are in need of content up dates etc.  In looking around, I noticed

meta name = 'robots'content='noindex,nofollow'

The IT person here who has influence as to what is or is not done; says it should stay that way.

It is my understanding and please correct me if I am wrong..... we generally would like pages followed and indexed.

I'm pretty sure by optimizing on page and making this change it could help the site.....

Thanks for your consideration!!!!

I have had good results with SEOMoz and find the tools easy to use and the information provided to be easily interpreted.

I would say the most recent issue by far was the outstanding problem to date.....

I have had a word press site hacked in the past......

Once we eliminated the issue.  I installed some additional security and changed passwords etc.

This seemed to take care of it.

I am not sure, but I want to say a plugin the customer had called Akismet may have played a role....?

Still not working for me either......

Yep, me too.

Seems like things are a mess right now with a number of tools.  Its not unusual for one item to be on the fritz, but multiple at the same time is a bit frustrating.

Just a quick thought for you; I am sure you will more!

Seems to me that many times that is the case:

-- if the url is  thebestchickensoupforthemeatloverssoul

-- and you search for "the best chicken soup for the meat lovers soul"

the site containing the keywords seems to have quite a leg up.

Another example:

a friend of mine has a website.  blackfootriveroutfitters....

he has pretty good content now and deserves a good rank.

But, it was not long ago his content was crap and still ranked first.

"Except changing up the robots.txt, adding meta descriptions to everything and more...."

Seems like there could be a correlation to your changes and how your site is ranked to me..........  Not knowing exactly what changes were made its tough to say.

Can you provide more info or a link to your site?

Was this drop out of the blue or has there been some recent changes?  Sometimes when there are significant changes made there are equally drastic changes in SERPs.

I do know that keyword stuffing is BAD and have seen it negatively impact pages on one of my sites in the past.  Has this Key Word density always been high?

Not having any more information about your site, I would have to suggest addressing your KeyWord issue at hand and see if that moves things in the right direction for you.

If you can provide more information or a link to your site, I will bet many people will be happy to provide some great insight to your issue.

Yes indeed, the purchase of Twitter followers as with Facebook is very very common.  It's a bummer!

This may help.

http://www.seomoz.org/q/h1-tags

I agree with RankSurge.  I just re watched a WBF video from not long ago which should help greatly defuse worries you may have.  Hope it helps!

WBF Video

I second Alans comment!

Nothing is stopping someone from doing it........... although paybacks could be rough.

I think 6 drops of Visine in their food would be a good start.

At the least, it would keep them off the computer for a while.

Hi Chuck,

Along with what Johannes mentioned, I noticed that you have two websites.

• Akins Plumbing
• Akins Plumbing and Septic

While these sites are different, the content is very similar and so, you my be beating yourself up with the two.  Also, I noticed you have many many  links to a tattoo parlor, that may not be helping much either.

A few years ago, I had two sites in a situation such as yours.  I got rid of one to save the other.  Worked out great!  Thats just my two cents.

Best of luck

Funny, I just checked it out and found 5.  Weird!!!

Is this an e commerce site?

What are you trying to get visitors to do? Come to the site, the specific page, make an online purchase, submit for an online or hard copy catalog.  Its hard to give you the correct answer with out knowing more about  how  you are using your website.

Do you actually need to have each and every page perfectly optimized for search.... what about long tailed search?

Hi HFranz,

I have found its good to have each item set up individually.  That way you do not have multiple pages fighting over the same search results.

Hi,

OSE is great and can provide lots of information.  Check out the link below, for info on checking out your competitions links and much, much more.

I hope this helps!

http://www.seomoz.org

Here are a few thoughts,

From a visitors point of view as it relates to someone looking for yoga poses..........

When landing on your competitions website, I see information about yoga poses, with descriptions and images.  It shows me what I was looking for.

When visiting the url you provided for your site, right out of the gate, I see information about course outline development and no "yoga poses".  I see a description saying "Designed  Specifically for Yoga Teachers" So, I did not land on a page with the exact content I was looking for, so, I bounced.

I would consider developing some more yoga poses related content for the page.

How about this one?

http://www.classicjourneyoutfitters.com/

Is this something you are looking for?

If this is the case, at this point the updates are good for the sites I have looked at so far.  Hopefully your sites settle into good google graces.  Its a bummer to have to live in in update fear.

To me it seems like the requirements of google have sort of become more really basic rather than technical.

The SEO industry seems to be a target of  Google these days.

I have tried to peel back the layers of all the sites I work with to the most basic.  That has resulted in most all sites increasing in the SERPS................ atleast for now.

Good Luck!

I agree, the site does not give the feel that you are a  company looking to provide consult or services.  The site does not clearly give a directive to the viewer that you are there to help in their Marketing. You do however have some articles about the topic and lots of ads........  It might be a layout and content issue.... hard to say with out spending a bit of time checking it out.

This is a good question.

Before answering, I would be good to know which perspective your are thinking of.

That of the SEO business/person or that of the customer?

Hi Margaret,

Sorry to hear you are having issues with this.  You are not alone.

Its difficult to tell what is going on with your website w/out a link to it.  If you wish to keep the site under wraps, that's fine.

So, moving forward, what steps have you taken so far in order to rebound from a Panda Attack?

Hmmm,

I really cant see how I could be using it wrong.... its kinda basic.  Thanks, I will await a response from the admin.

Cheers!

Hi, just wondering if I am the only one who is not having much luck lately using the Competitive Link Finder .

In the past it has worked pretty well.  But as of the past week or so, it has only returned on link.  I know there are many of them which should be found.

Anyway, just curious if I am solo with this issue.

Hi Ken,

This is an overarching issue with lots of sites which sell several products in each catagory.

Expertlaunch has some good ideas for you to run with.

You may also give some thought into using:

<meta < span="">name="robots" content="noindex, follow" />  on the duplicate content pages .  It will help the remaining pages in the SERPS.  </meta <>

I read this tip in a thread a while back and it worked!  Here is the thread below EGOL mentioned it.  He seems to provide high quality feedback which has helped me in the past.

http://www.seomoz.org/q/avoiding-duplicate-content-with-national-e-commerce-products-and-localized-vendors

Just a few thoughts.

No knowing what you are currently sitting with in regard to links, it is tough to say, but, I would certainly consider obtaining some links, just be a little picky.

That said,  some of those in this list are not going to do much for you as they are very large and often you will be simply one business on a long page of competitors.

Its valuable to see lists such as this to see where your competition has aquired links and of what quality, but I really like to see where your competition is not; then make a run at some of those location.

I am more and more a fan of getting the links via networking and personal communication rather than submissions.  They take can take some work to get, but are more than likely very much worth the effort.

Cheers!

Hi, Harry

Have you use the tools within Google Analytics?

I have found that simply using google analytics and the keyword tool(s) offered there provide more that enough insight into this for me.

Good luck!

Oh, yes, I see. These folks are just wondering simply should; where to host and be done with it.  Nothing more elaborate.  Thank you for your input.  I never thought of doing that!!  Cheers

Do you mean have /ca as well; such as John's link mentioned?

Cool thanks, I will also add that into my knowledge bank...... I'm a sponge.  Always like to hear thoughts and ideas from others!