What is Google's minimum desktop responsive webpage width?

Fetch as Google for desktop is showing a skinnier version of our responsive page.

Delete everything under the following directives and you should be good.

User-agent: Googlebot

Disallow: /*/trackback

Disallow: /*/feed

Disallow: /*/comments

Disallow: /?

Disallow: /*?

Disallow: /page/

As a rule of thumb, it's not a good idea to use wild cards in your robots.txt file - you may be excluding an entire folder inadvertently.

I'm not sure to what extent your website is being blocked with the robots.txt file but it's pretty easy to diagnose.  You'll first need to identify and confirm that googlebot is being blocked by typing in your web browser ~> www.mywebsite.com/robots.txt

If you see an entry such as "User-agent: *" or "User-agent: googlebot" being used in conjunction with "Disallow" then you know your website is being blocked with the robots.txt file.  Given your situation you'll need to go through a two step process.

First, go into your wordpress plugin page and deactivate the plugin which generates your robots.txt file.  Second, login to the root folder of your server and look for the robots.txt file.  Lastly, change "Disallow" to "Allow" and that should work but you'll need to confirm by typing in the robots URL again.

Given the limited information in your question I hope that helps.  If you run into any more issues don't hesitate to post them here.

Hello Knut,

Below are a few articles and White Board Friday's to give you a quick primer regarding SEO.  There's definitely more of these out there so don't hesitate to ask Google!

WBF - International SEO: Where to Host and How to Target
YOUmoz - International SEO Part 2
mozBlog - Geolocation & International SEO FAQ

I've had a little experience SEO-ing websites in Japanese and the landscape is completely different.  For starters, Yahoo is actually the dominant search engine but they use the Google algorithm - so just focus on Google's main ranking factors.

Since you don't know any Japanese you'll need someone VERY fluent in the written language so that you can account for both Kanji AND Chinese.  You'll need to make a business decision on whether you want to write it in one form or the other - keyword research would definitely help here.

Don't be surprised if most of your visitors are coming from mobile - that's just how the technological culture is in Japan.  Most people surf the web using their cell phones (since they are light years ahead of us) and not so much from their computer.

Last but not least, create great content to attract links.  Your easiest links will come from those your website/business already has a relationship with.  It comes from the Chinese concept of "guanxi" which literally means "relationships" and is an extension of the culture.

I hope that helps you get started and good luck!

Hi Rick,

Great job taking the initiative in trying to fill this information gap at a (unfortunately) commonly overlooked disorder.  It's good to know that you are pushing out some quality content on the web.  Now, let's talk about SEO.

Before you make ANY changes I would strongly urge you to first check out your web analytics and get a good grasp of your inbound traffic.  You'll need to create some advanced segments and do some deep dive analysis to address some important questions...

1. What percentage of your organic traffic is coming from branded keywords?  Non-branded?
2. What are your top 10 pages?  Bottom 10 pages?
3. What (inbound) keywords are driving traffic to each of your top 10 pages?
4. Do the inbound keywords match your target keywords for that page?
5. What are the rankings for your inbound keywords?  For your target keywords?
6. Do your inbound keywords have any search demand?  Check the Google Adwords Keyword Tool.
7. What keywords have the highest bounce rate and what page did they land on?
   • Why do you think they bounced?  Did the landing page match the keyword intent?
8. Etc.

Essentially, what you are doing with this in-depth analysis is to determine what you already do well in and where you can improve.  Your website is already live for 6+ months so you don't want to lose any traffic for something you already have traction in.  From there, you can make a smart data-driven decision on what pages need to have their title tags changed, add on-page copy, what new videos/content you should create, etc.

As for your question about the video categorization, I would keep the videos under Noah's Minute and sub-categorize them.  The main reason is NoahsDad.com is associated with the name Noah's Minute and in essence brands your website.  Maybe you can even ask your existing followers to see if they are okay with this?

Regarding mis-spellings, I do not think that is a good idea.  If you want to portray your website as an authoritative source to not just search engines but users as well, everything should be written correctly.  Search engines can auto-correct mis-spellings so you don't have to worry about that.  Here is an example for "downe syndrom videos".

Lastly, ranking for highly competitive keywords is never impossible - you just need to create extremely valuable content and gains lots of links to them.  For example, you can create a category for "down syndrome facts and information".  Push out some high quality content that includes some myth busting then link to your Noah's Minute subcategory videos and you'll start building out a robust internal link structure.  From there, any incoming link equity would boost up your entire website.

At any rate, I hope this gives you a good head start on where to look first but there is a TON of other things we still haven't covered.  I apologize in advance if some parts don't make sense but please don't hesitate to ask if you have questions.

Good luck!  =]

Yes, you probably answered your own question.  In WordPress, there are two different settings under Settings > Privacy:

1. I would like my site visible to everyone, including search engines and archivers.

2. I would like to block search engines, but allow normal visitors

If option #2 was selected, WordPress doesn't create a robots.txt file for you but instead it automatically generates a tag on every single page.

I hope that helps!

Hi Rick,

Great job taking the initiative in trying to fill this information gap at a (unfortunately) commonly overlooked disorder.  It's good to know that you are pushing out some quality content on the web.  Now, let's talk about SEO.

Before you make ANY changes I would strongly urge you to first check out your web analytics and get a good grasp of your inbound traffic.  You'll need to create some advanced segments and do some deep dive analysis to address some important questions...

1. What percentage of your organic traffic is coming from branded keywords?  Non-branded?
2. What are your top 10 pages?  Bottom 10 pages?
3. What (inbound) keywords are driving traffic to each of your top 10 pages?
4. Do the inbound keywords match your target keywords for that page?
5. What are the rankings for your inbound keywords?  For your target keywords?
6. Do your inbound keywords have any search demand?  Check the Google Adwords Keyword Tool.
7. What keywords have the highest bounce rate and what page did they land on?
   • Why do you think they bounced?  Did the landing page match the keyword intent?
8. Etc.

Essentially, what you are doing with this in-depth analysis is to determine what you already do well in and where you can improve.  Your website is already live for 6+ months so you don't want to lose any traffic for something you already have traction in.  From there, you can make a smart data-driven decision on what pages need to have their title tags changed, add on-page copy, what new videos/content you should create, etc.

As for your question about the video categorization, I would keep the videos under Noah's Minute and sub-categorize them.  The main reason is NoahsDad.com is associated with the name Noah's Minute and in essence brands your website.  Maybe you can even ask your existing followers to see if they are okay with this?

Regarding mis-spellings, I do not think that is a good idea.  If you want to portray your website as an authoritative source to not just search engines but users as well, everything should be written correctly.  Search engines can auto-correct mis-spellings so you don't have to worry about that.  Here is an example for "downe syndrom videos".

Lastly, ranking for highly competitive keywords is never impossible - you just need to create extremely valuable content and gains lots of links to them.  For example, you can create a category for "down syndrome facts and information".  Push out some high quality content that includes some myth busting then link to your Noah's Minute subcategory videos and you'll start building out a robust internal link structure.  From there, any incoming link equity would boost up your entire website.

At any rate, I hope this gives you a good head start on where to look first but there is a TON of other things we still haven't covered.  I apologize in advance if some parts don't make sense but please don't hesitate to ask if you have questions.

Good luck!  =]

Hello Knut,

Below are a few articles and White Board Friday's to give you a quick primer regarding SEO.  There's definitely more of these out there so don't hesitate to ask Google!

WBF - International SEO: Where to Host and How to Target
YOUmoz - International SEO Part 2
mozBlog - Geolocation & International SEO FAQ

I've had a little experience SEO-ing websites in Japanese and the landscape is completely different.  For starters, Yahoo is actually the dominant search engine but they use the Google algorithm - so just focus on Google's main ranking factors.

Since you don't know any Japanese you'll need someone VERY fluent in the written language so that you can account for both Kanji AND Chinese.  You'll need to make a business decision on whether you want to write it in one form or the other - keyword research would definitely help here.

Don't be surprised if most of your visitors are coming from mobile - that's just how the technological culture is in Japan.  Most people surf the web using their cell phones (since they are light years ahead of us) and not so much from their computer.

Last but not least, create great content to attract links.  Your easiest links will come from those your website/business already has a relationship with.  It comes from the Chinese concept of "guanxi" which literally means "relationships" and is an extension of the culture.

I hope that helps you get started and good luck!