Welcome to the Q&A Forum

I will look in to this. But it sounds like its a simple matter of spammy comments / and or BOTS linking to your site.

Thanks for the link, however, it only brings me to some XML page. A trackback is generally this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trackback. Its used by blogs to give a mechanism with which to allocate responsibility as it relates to people linking to your blog. Could you let me know which CMS you are using please?

trackback errors? Could you elaborate a little, is it a wordpress site? Are you using a CMS to manage the content? Drill down a little bit and hopefully I (or any of the multitude of talented SEO's) can help.

Cheers,

TODD

any other help you need give me a shout!

It might have been covered but it does seem that google is ignoring iframes in relation to commets code posted on sites.for instance: our text cached version.: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8IZ95GICp7AJ:gaveltek.com/seoblog/&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1

compare the page title to (use headers it easier)

www.gaveltek.com/seoblog the list "comments" and despite there being some the are  not posted. However, I do believe general wordpress comments hold some weight. That is not to sayt that facebook comments do not, its just done via different metrics, like social, and trust, and egngagement.

Cheers

TODD

I am pretty familiar with the challenges with machine learned list generation. There are so many quality indicators that can be faked.  headed up some similar projects to make these exact things viable. I feel your pain. I appreciate the one on one. Dont be a stranger. exchanges like this are what make seo what is.

P.s. one thing we did is look for any directory, scrape its categories based on their listings, rank them based on PR, and multiple other strength indicators. Then filter through the list by seeing who charges, who doesnt, and who exists

and the amount of outbound links on pages with less than 100 links, are they blog rolls, are they etc...

todd.

I wish you the best.

TODD

Rand,

Well thought out reply. I am very sensitive to time constraints when apportioning time to give attention to the step children of our projects.  Pehaps leveraging some of your existing clientele with a value added proposition(free time, part time contract, t-shirt), would take that task of your hands and give someone a little extra moz pride, without sounding needy of course It would certainly not make anyone feel that the product they pay for is only going to be updated if they do it themselves. The double win is super valuable as it clears up the time constraints for you and really steps up a a simple, but valuable product, and updated and frequently.

Thanks Rand.

TODD

HI!
I am generally not a fan of saying "one is better than the other"  so in the tradition of my style of communication I offer you this:

http://code.google.com/mobile/analytics/docs/#highend

Google goes on to say "You can use Google Analytics to track traffic to your regular website that comes from high-end mobile devices like iPhones, Android devices, and the Palm Pre. All traffic from high-end mobile devices can be viewed by device or carrier under the 'Visitors' section in the 'Mobile' tab of your Analytics account, or in he 'Mobile advanced' section."

Suffice to say (while i am sure there are other methods) the majority of the heavy lifting can be done directly through the vanilla old analytics.  Here is a brief overview of what you are trying to do.

http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/beginners-guide-to-mobile-seo-11793

Here are a list of 3rd party analytics provider: (I put not stock in their offering, nor do I endorse it)
http://www.flurry.com/product/analytics/index.html

And one last piece of GREAT data from our friends at google about setting up exactly what you need:

http://www.project83.com/blog/installing-google-analytics-on-a-mobile-website/

At the end of they day it depends on what you are most comfortable working. For me, its whats best for the type of data we are looking for. I really hope this helps. I can understand you have a lot to read, but ultimately its which suite offers you exactly what you need. in m y experience google analytics is by fare the most customizable by far. Please let me know if I can help, or you would like to drill deeper into some of the subjects covered. it can be overwhelming at least. Happy Thanksgiving!
TODD

Great post, appreciate it.  However, I was surprised by your request / recommendation that those paying for this service ( i believe its listed as a perk) should be responsible for policing it. The fact is the list needs constant updating as sites like these come and go so quickly. I am hoping to shed light on that fact, not just to simply bandaid the problem. Furthermore a lot of the directories listed do not correspond with the best practices espoused by those involved in this organization... paid links, bad neighborhoods, etc... etc...

Thought it was noteworthy.

Cheers

There are a lot of levels here, but I will address only the URL format. It is accepted practice and generally considered more effective to:
http://www.blahblahblah.com/blah as opposed to a subdomain(blah.blah.com).

the part that will be up for debate is the sitetowndirectory.com questions. I feel its a great idea for you to build a brand around whatever name you choose. This takes a lot of good old fashioned SEO but with the help of the community here you will be just fine. At the end of the day its up to you to make your domain work for you. There is some benefit to keyword rich domains, but these days we see a real trend towards brand, brand recognition and brand trust.

Feel free to shoot me a message if you need more specific information.

outdated site directory found here:http://www.seomoz.org/dp/seo-directory

not that directories are amazingly useful anymore, but with all the updates and vitriol thrown there way an update is in order. Its one of those "layup" link building tools but in its current state its less of perk and more of a boon.

Thanks

Awesome response Ryan. In particular the part about google not existing.

absolutely true about throttling your linkbuilding. Slow, steady and relevant.

I cant believe people are still using services like this. The interesting thing is that they do seem to offer great customer service, but that "service" seems to only spin comment spam and back profile backlinks. Id love for our community to discuss more sites like this so that Junior SEO's or people just starting dong get wooed by the promise of AWESOME links.

Cheers,
TODD

I took a look at this site, and while I am not completely finished seeing if there is any value. You can check your analytics / webmaster tools and see if that site refers traffic, brings users, or the link is valuable enough to show up in any number of linkbuilding tools. That being said, any link that is contextually valid, and brings ANY users to your site is a win. Given that DIIGO's deal is to tag and annotate pages it would seem valid as the context is definitely related to the site it will link to. The next question would be are the links follow? can google see, crawl and index the pages?

Cheers,

TODD

sounds great, can you let me know?
TODD

I apologize for #3 completely unrelated advice. Ill edit it

in regards to your last comment I would say be careful with duplicate content that is available to the google crawlers, blocking them is not recommended any longer and they will choose one version to index as opposed to all version on all sites. You (perhaps) could change the content to include the keywords but be re-written. I am sure this is a huge undertaking, and my experience is with the same content translated, not the same content posted to different CCTLD's.

Ive done a really quick search for HP Computers in the UK, USA, and New Zealand. Here are the results:

1. US: http://welcome.hp.com/country/us/en/prodserv/computers.html
2. UK: http://www8.hp.com/uk/en/home.html

3.  NZ: http://www8.hp.com/nz/en/home.html

while the UK and NZ share a very similar result (essentially no content and the same title tag + the country)
the USA returns a different result, it brings us right to the product page with lots of content. It appears that they have mastered the art of making very similar content appear fresh to the crawlers while providing a very similar and regional user experience.

I have some experience in translation and duplicate content, for what its worth:

1. I have not seen duplicate content for Country Code Top level Domains where the content is delivered in multiple languages
2. Keep in mind, while duplicate content is a concern Google does distinguish between useful and malicious:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66359

I am sure most of this isnt terribly helpful, but in the off chance it is, glad it helped!

• These are the results I get, any of them yours?

  X-GLOO Eventzelt

  X-GLOO ist das aufblasbare, mobile, individuelle Eventzelt. 2008 mit dem reddot design award ausgezeichnet.

  <cite>www.x-gloo.com/News/?newlang=en</cite>

• X-GLOO Eventzelt | The inflatable Event-Tent

  X-GLOO ist das aufblasbare, mobile, individuelle Eventzelt. 2008 mit dem reddot design award ausgezeichnet.

  <cite>www.x-gloo.com/Content/86/?mnid=1660&set=yes</cite>

• X-GLOO Eventzelt | Products

  X-GLOO ist das aufblasbare, mobile, individuelle Eventzelt. 2008 mit dem reddot design award ausgezeichnet.

  <cite>www.xgloo.eu/Content/85/?mnid=1623&set=yes</cite>

• News: x-gloo

Maybe this thread will get the gears in motion. Time will tell.

For sure, keep me posted. I am curious to see what happens. Did you try rank tracker?
TODD

Good Morning Nick!

I have attempted to replicate the error you are having (as I have a few clients in GB) however, my bing results were accurate to the last crawl date. That being said my rankings had moved up since the last crawl, but the lack of reporting is no fault of SEOmoz software, simply an issue of when the site was last crawled. Obviously the Mozzers are going to field this one, however, it might be advisable to wait it out until the next crawl is completed. You can even use Rank Tracker to see if that might be more accurate.

Hope this helps while you wait for the appropriate response from MOZ central.

**** EDIT ****

Using rank tracker delivers extremely accurate results, and you can choose to actively track the keywords for the URL via that avenue. Its not a fix, but it will at least give you the data you are looking for.

Nice work, I had noticed something similar. Not to mention the fact that if you are logged in to twitter (which everyone always is) it automatically logs you into and creates an account on their site. Bad Ju Ju.

As you said it was a generalization, not necessarily directed at you. The quote you are referring to (mine, not Rands) is a simple caveat to anyone who might be reading this question and thinks that alt text will save the day. Optimizing alt tags is a great way to get the job done and accurately describe the images attached, my point was that stuffing, etc... is not. Again not a direct attack on you, just overall advice for people who might want to go down that road.

If I am understanding you correctly you want to know how many links are going to different folders within your site structure, or to different pages within your site structure. Either way, use webmastertools, although the link counts tend to be off and not nearly as accurate as open site explorer, it will give you the ability to see links built to each level via the "your site on the web" section look for the "links to your site section". \

here is an example:

folder                                                                            links             linking domains

| /lawyer/Pennsauken_New-Jersey |      458 |                    2 |

the folder in question was /lawyer/

There are also a number of hosted analytics solutions you could put on your server that will give you more detailed info.

one more thought is to count the links to pages that reside in that folder by filtering in your analytics, i am not sure of the scale of your site, but it might do the trick as well.

Easy as that!

Cheers,

Hola!

google has this to say about submitting sitemaps "Submit a Sitemap to tell Google about pages on your site we might not otherwise discover." ala Webmaster tools. I stand firmly behind your inkling to create a good standard issue sitemap and submit. Last week we had a client (attorney) who did not have a sitemap at all for the three years her site was up, google had about 22 pages in its index, after sitemap, 432 pages in its index.  Be sure to submit to BIng webmaster tools as well, cover all bases!

so I say create right away, its not going to hurt anything, and can quite honestly help a lot! as a footnote to this answer, if you are using videos, etc... on the site be sure to build a video sitemap as well we have been seeing a lot successful indexing of our clients media.

Hope this helps!

NO problem! Was it helpful?

301 will pass link juice all day long my friend. URL rewrite... not so much.

The plain old simple fact about deleting twitter accounts is that you will lose followers and potential opportunity to shed some light on your brand and service (no to mention build some pretty solid links to great content). The idea in having foreign twitter accounts is to be able to adequately represent the locals in their own language, destroying the language barrier and bringing everyone a warm fuzzy. So take a good look at your referral sources, conversions from twitter vs the amount of time and energy your staff is taking to manage all these accounts. That equation should spit out a suitable response.

That being said my two companies have 1 twitter account each and employees are able to create their own and tweet as they wish (within reason) we have been able to get followers from most developed countries and tweet entirely in english, with a smattering of foreign words here and there.

in the end your analytics and referral data should be more than enough to answer any questions of effectiveness you might have.

Raven tools (and soon SEOmoz) has some potent Social Tracking / Social Mention features, maybe take a look at those as well.

Anyone using this service? Its seems like some sort of really bad affiliate marketing, which we all know is a no-go in regards to acceptable use policy for twitter.

Just looking for some opinions, a client seems to really like, I seem to really not

someone wrote a pretty good article discussing the use of javascript in navigations, here is the link:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/working-with-navigation-in-seo

Hey Chris,

that is an excellent question. However, it is one with a lot of answers... in short:

1. A 301 should only be used when a page has been moved or deleted.

2. A url redirect should be used in the case of multiple instances, like your homepage. The only thing it does is rewrite your url to make it nice to read And gives the search engines a nice hint that the version you are re-writing to is the one you want associated with your domain.

I know this answer is short, but I hope it suffices.

You bring up a really interesting question. When you say dead links I assume they just lead to nowhere. Ideally you would 301 Redirect (which will pass most of its value to another page therefore keeping some of that SEO steam you have built up) to a page that allows the user to continue to search for similar or related products, keeps them on site with out scaring them away with a "File Not Found" error on their page, etc... I am not familiar with Shopify so I am not sure if its possible. Might be helpful if you were to post one of these links so that we can all take a look at it and work it out as a team.

I agree 100% with what Theo is saying. The use of CSS to replace images has gotten to a point (from a purely aesthetic standpoint) that you cant tell the difference anymore. It is effective and considered best practice to use text when possible. It compounds your pages SEO weight and can edge out your competition if they are using images as opposed to CSS to render text in its place. Style Sheets RULE!

are you using the H1 tag multiple times on the same page?

an Alt tag is wonderful for those with disabilities to actually understand whats going on in your site. Imagine going to a site that stuffs the same three keywords into their image alt tags? It must be super confusing and frustrating for someone with out the gift of sight. At least consider the purpose of the tag. The benefit of stuffing keywords is far outweighed by making your site accessible and easily understood by those with disabilities, or those trying to figure out what that picture might be. I am sure someone else in this thread has touched on the exact same thing I am saying, but if your site is coming down to over optimizing alt tags, chances are your not a very good SEO, you could easily accomplish more with a great description and title tag than all your alts combined.

We do the same, however, I am looking for a third party (other the GA) specifically for facebook that is friendly with some serious reporting.

Thoughts?

HOLA!

I need some questions answered by all the GREAT people here:

1. suggestions for 3rd party facebook analytics tracking (currently utilizing a custom API and raven tools)

2. who is using the open graph protocol  and how are you doing so?

I would mark this question as answered, it seems that a lot of great minds have come together and given a lot of really accurate responses. It just keeps others from re-answering.

It would seem everyone has a similar theme... "Keep pushing on" with the tools available to you on the SEOMOZ site you can quantify any data that is returned. That being said, try long tail keywords such as:

kitchen stoves (brand)

Kitchen equipment (brand)

through the use of good titles and descriptions ( non one cares about meta keywords) you will win. Regarding your linkbuilding, you heart is in the right place, but place your inbound links in more natural places like well ranked blogs, or industry specific review sites. Review sites could really lend a hand in getting your keyword issue licked. Remember, seo is a marathon, not a sprint.  Feel free to contact me, I am always happy to offer reports, etc... to those in need. WE are a community that supports our own.

This blog answers that question, barely  http://gaveltek.com/seoblog/seo/ranking-serp’s-finding-me-experiments-explanations-gaveltek-start-adequately-marketing-web-brand/

I have a very thorough report for you to review, would you like that? It has some interesting information that will certainly be of some help. Please be sure to redo your sitemap and submit to www.google.com/webmastertools. I think you should take a look at the report. We can go over it together if you provide me with a contact number. Talk about service

When was the content change, and how extensive. When did you change back to the content in its existing form?