If you have to ask that  question, I would say you are using too many.

The on page tool looks for one instance of a keyword in either a strong, bold or em tag so if you are doing this for SEO, the prevailing common sense  would be that any more than that one is too many.

If the highlighting provides some kind of benefit for your users then you can do more but if you are looking at bolding lots of text for SEO - then forget it.

The best  answer is to just use common sense and create something that is readable with the important keyword highlighted if you can do so in a natural way.

Hope it helps. 
Marcus

If the client is okay with it, then a footer link to credit the designer is okay, but it should always be nofollowed else you risk problems. You could do it branded but if you are not looking to manipulate the results, then nofollow it. If you want some SEO benefit from this then you are trying to manipulate the results.

Give this a read:

http://wpmu.org/wordpress-penguin-google-matt-cutts/

Then this:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-wpmuorg-recovered-from-the-penguin-update

Then nofollow your credit links.

Additionally, footer links are now listed under Link Schemes in the Google Webmaster Guidelines as follows: "Widely distributed links in the footers of various sites"

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66356

As an alternative, if your client is happy with it, you could always have a credit page on the site or a blog post where you get a link from the site owner and the nofollowed footer link could point to this blog post or page but I would not assume this was always okay with your clients.

Hope this helps you resist those dark link building urges that will only hurt you downstream!

Marcus

When I set up my initial site, maybe 10 years ago (shudder) I bought BowlerHatSolutions.co.uk - the solutions means absolutely nothing, nothing, it's just a tired, horrid cliché in the same vein as every design shop using SomethingCreative.com so when we got the chance to go after www.BowlerHat.co.uk we wanted it, we wanted it bad.

So, I set a price in my head, and haggled with the domain owner for nearly a year and eventually, he came around to my way of thinking. It was a good deal more than £200 but was very valuable to me and to my brand - for a UK based SEO and Web Design the Bowler Hat icon is a really strong identity so... Well, I wanted it and eventually got it.

What are your other options?

www.I-wanted-whitby-jet-but-this-was-all-that-was-left.com?

Marcus

Hey

I agree with Michael in that largely, directories are dead. However, the evolution of directories and sites that add value to the listings are alive and kicking. Yelp (not so much in the UK) is one but TripAdvisor is really a a directory of sorts and that provides boatloads of additional value.

In the UK we have several directory types that are alive and well:

• TripAdvisor
• Trade Directories - plumbers, electricians etc
• Care Homes

My father is actually working on a directory at the moment - it is a list of all pubs in the UK that are dog friendly. It will detail everything for dogs, walks in the area etc etc. It will allow for

So in some respects it is the wrong question - Google does not punish wholes categories of sites. Rather they demote sites that have no real value and don't add anything (or that are set up to help other sites rank and for no other reason).

To make this work you have to ideally have a USP and provide a level of value that makes it desirable for folks to look at your site rather than the sites of the businesses in this category and to build up enough traffic so the business owners want to pay to be listed and get a preferential listing etc.

Hope that helps
Marcus

Hey,

There is a general consensus that 300 words or 500 characters is enough but I tend to think that is borderline useless advice here. How long should a blog post be? My answer would be long enough to fulfil the promise of the title and short enough to not be boring and overstay it's welcome.

Some great blog posts may be 100 words, some fantastic posts may be 10,000 words. It really depends on what you are talking about and how long it needs to  be to accurately do what it says on the tin.

There is a tendency in search to try and do SEO by numbers. We want 300 words. Well, 300 words does not denote quality. Quality denotes quality. If your main criteria when writing blogs or hiring writers is to hit 300 words then you have already failed. If your main criteria is to provide high quality answers that don't already exist or to do things way better than they are already being done then you are on the right track.

That's a somewhat philosophical answer but a better one than any general advice you may get re word or character count. If you want a more specific answer tailored to your situation then look at the blog posts that do well in the niche you are targeting. How long are they? Could some of them benefit from more detail? Could some of them be trimmed a bit to provide a more succinct answer?

The only caveat to this advice would be to avoid going too long and if you have something that is thousands of words long consider making it part of a series and having several posts that make a greater whole. Think of them as chapters of a book or report and that these parts can then more accurately fulfil the promise made by the whole. A great strategy can be to write up a series like this and then to create an overview or summary that links out to the more detailed sub posts and you then target the high level and more detailed keywords within your topic.

Hope that helps!
Marcus

Competitions are always good but really, you want to have a rich social presence that is driven by your content strategy.

So, you post great content on your blog - people read you and follow. They may even then tweet it through your social plugins and you may pick up more readers / followers.

You have a strong presence on twitter, post interesting things, interact with other interesting people to build relationships and ultimately pick up more followers like that as well.

Then, you have strategies for getting followers like competitions where  people have to follow you.

Really though, get some good content on the site and tie in twitter very closely with your content strategy and be active on twitter and you will start to build followers.

No silver bullet really, like everything else, the real answer after all the bluster is simply - hard work.

Marcus

The simple answer is... forever, unless you have some pressing reason to remove them. Certainly, I would keep them there till I knew there was no indexation of these other links and no requests for them for a say, 12 month period.

If you have external links pointing to any of these old pages, then again, that is another argument for keeping them in place.

Just leave them there, comment them as legacy in redirection script and forget about them and focus on something else.

Hope this helps.  
Marcus