Hi there,

The bad news is that there's no "right" answer to this question. Search engines only reveal so much about what goes into their ranking algorithms, so it's hard to say what strategy is the best one.

One thing that's for sure, though, is that you want to avoid Google viewing your keyword optimization as keyword stuffing. I would strongly advise against the second option you mentioned (optimizing for several different keywords), because that would mean you'd mention three or four different keywords multiple times, which Google might view as keyword stuffing and/or providing a poor user experience. Both of these things could result in lower rankings.

The safe, and generally effective, bet is to choose one primary keyword that's as specific and relevant to your page as possible while still averaging a decent monthly search volume, and back it up with a secondary keyword that's also extremely relevant but isn't your primary keyword because it doesn't have as high a search volume. That way, you'll draw relevant search traffic to your page without it feeling spammy.

Hope that helps. Happy optimizing!

If you do decide to add schematic markup to your website for reviews, ensure you are following the guidelines. These were recently updated and you want ep avoid being penalized for featuring third party reviews incorrectly on your website.

Instead of featuring the reviews themselves, you could features your overall google rating. But if you do this, we recommend making sure you include a link to your Google profile to verify that the rating is correct.

Let me know if you have any questions about implementing the schem correctly!

Hi Taylor,

When working on SEO in a small, local area, it's likely that (depending on the size/population), Google won't have enough data to generate a local pack. This proves to be both good and bad for you because 1) you don't need to fight for the space in the local pack, but 2) now you need to dominate the organic search engine results.

In order to dominate these results, you need to focus both on on-site SEO AND off-site SEO.

Your on-site SEO should focus on targeting the local area. What can you do to really localize the content? Build out local blogs about events in the community? Build out even more localized pages based on areas within the town? The options are endless.

Here are some suggestions for successfully tackling off-site SEO:

Link building

• Create linkable content – If you have relevant, authoritative content on your site, it’s more likely that other sites will want to link to it.
• Ask for links and be generous with your links – That’s right, just ask for them. Nicely, of course. When you come across other sites whose readers might benefit from your services or information, ask that site to link to yours. And you can also increase your link karma by linking to other sites whenever you can.
• Comment on blogs – This method can be tricky; some blogs don’t allow links in their comments, and you never want to come across as spammy. But if you have something relevant to say about a blog post on another site, commenting and adding a link to your site isn’t a bad idea.

Social Channels

• Optimizing your “about” info on every site – Make sure your contact info is consistent and correct, and create a description that uses words your potential clients would search for to find you. Customize your social media site URLs—this is also called creating a “vanity URL.” For example: facebook.com/bluecorona.
• Creating high-quality posts – Pay attention to grammar, tone, and content. Make sure what you’re sharing is relevant to your target market. And use high-quality photos when you have them. Remember, every post is a reflection of your business. Always put your best foot forward.
• Measuring your results – How do you know if your social media strategy is working? Track your reach, conversions, and sales! Find out what works, what doesn’t, and never stop fine-tuning your strategy.

Local Listings / Citations

• Citations are another critical part of offsite SEO. A citation is any mention of your business on the web. For example, if you are quoted in a local newspaper story online, and you are identified as the president of your company, that’s a citation. Even if the mention doesn’t include a link to your site, it’s still valuable. There are many ways to increase your citations. This is another ongoing strategy that you’ll have to devote some care and attention to, but it has a high return on investment!

Hope this gets your started in the right direction! Let me know if you have additional questions.

The most important thing to remember is to make the meta description relevant to the specific content on the page, since the point is for the user to be able to see it in search results and decide whether the page's content will provide the answer for their query. So unfortunately, using a templated meta description may be detrimental (though it would be a lot easier when doing a find + replace sequence!). Your best bet is to, over time, write individual meta descriptions that serve as an explanation for the content on the page. Good luck!

Hi onurcan-ikiz!

Moz has a great blog post that discusses how many links is too many. I would check that out for advice—while there isn't an exact number of links you should not exceed, many people suggest having fewer than 100 links per page.

If you main navigation as a lot of links I would be worried about the link juice. When your website receives a backlink from another website, hopefully with a high domain authority (YAY!), the link juice is being spread out to ALL the pages being linked from the page they are linking to.

This means if www.cnn.com (who has a domain authority of 96) links to your company's homepage, they would be spreading some of their authority to you through "link juice". But instead of retaining majority of that juice/authority on the homepage (thus increasing the authority on that page), you are going to be spreading fewer and fewer amounts of that authority through all 100+ pages linked from the main navigation.

Check out this link juice diagram to get a visual representation of what I am talking about.

Hope this helps!

Hi EPPD!

Google officially announced in 2009 that meta keywords was not a factor in ranking at all. I also believe that the description isn-t a ranking factor—the reason you need to focus on the description is to ensure that it has a strong hook that accurately reflects the content of the page to entice the searcher to click on the link.

We had a plastic surgeon client who had the exact same issues. What we did is we brainstormed the results. How the person would feel, what the person wanted to accomplish, etc. What we figured out worked best was to appeal to those end results and positive desires without trying to manipulate someone's feelings. For example, you could use the confidence angle, like "Walk into a room with confidence" and whatnot. You'll probably notice that there's always an underlying cause for people to wish to get cosmetic surgery, whether it's health reasons or a personal goal, or self confidence, so use that knowledge to better reach the people who are more likely to use your services. Hope this helps!

Hi Becky!

First, I would like to say this is it great you are being proactive in making sure your webpage doesn't have too many links on it! But, luckily for you, this is not something you need to worry about. 100 is a suggested number but not something that will penalize you if you go over.

Google’s Matt Cutts posted a video explaining why Google no longer has that 100-links-per-page Webmaster guideline—so be sure to check that out! It's commonly thought that having too many links will negatively impact your SEO results, but that hasn't been the case since 2008. However, Google has said if a site looks to be spammy and has way too many links on a single page—Google reserves the right to take action on the site. So, don't include links that could be seen as spammy and you should be fine.

Check out this Moz blog that discusses how many links is too many for more information!

Hi Brett,

Your confusion is understandable. "Button" and "buttons," for example, are so closely related that it seems strange that Google would identify those as two separate keywords. However, it is important to remember that Google search results aren't always based on a semantic understanding of the search, and Google can't always assume that a word modified with an s on the end always means the same thing as a word without an s on the end. Take the words "cosmetic" and "cosmetics," for example. So it has to treat plural and singular versions of a word as two separate keywords that rank differently based on competition for those keywords.

Here is an article that offers an opinion on how you should handle trying to rank for both the singular and plural form of a word - you may find it useful: http://www.business2community.com/seo/singular-plural-keywords-always-seo-0974028#DJv4kwHCfdUFBPG2.97

Hope this helped!

Any content below the fold will still be read. Are you trying to hide it but still get the SEO value? If that's the case, I would create a collapsible tab to keep the content on the page but hidden. If you want it to be visible, leave it as is and don't worry about Google not reading it—it will be read.

As long as you have a a sitemap XML included, I would not worry about having a sitemap page displayed on the actual website. It won't necessarily help you, but not having one won't hurt your results.

WE LOVE THIS QUESTION. Have you used your site for other content purposes like blogging? If you're a directory, you could reach out to reputable companies (or whatever you're a directory for)  and ask them to either guest post on your blog and then share it on social media, or you could use link building tactics to get people to link to your site. Make sure you add the value to your directory or aggregator, and make it clear what the purpose of your site is.

One thing you could take advantage of is social media. Since you're an aggregator, you probably have a niche or target, and you can reach that audience to funnel traffic to your website through social media. Other than that, we would just recommend making sure your backend is as tight as possible, and make sure it's optimized for mobile, since mobile is a huge factor. Another thing to look into would be to optimize for voice search.

Hope this helps, and looking forward to seeing other responses!