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I have a mixture of on-site and off-site blogs, which were all set up in the last 9 months. Time and time again I've seen upward SERP movement for keywords recently targeted in on-site blog posts, but I haven't seen comparable shifts for sites which just have an off-site blog.

It really annoys me when off-site blogs attract organic links which I would prefer went to an on-site blog. That said, I can't quantify whether it is more appealing to link to a blog which refers traffic to an eCommerce site rather than to a blog on an eCommerce site - I think it would influence the choice to give a link in some cases, but I can't prove it.

We may find over time that the off-site blogs attract enough links to pass decent link juice. We do know from customer feedback that some people are buying from us rather than competitors specifically because they found the blogs helpful, even when the blogs were off-site only.

Although I lean towards predominantly using on-site blogs, I think there is a place in a marketing campaign for having a presence in other places whether through external blogs or careful article placement.

I think what's really important here for SEO is that you've got an on-site blog, and the blog is on a decent platform. And what's the alternative to your Wordpress blog - a Magento blog module?

I've been asking our technical team for ages to change the blogs on our Magento sites from a Magento blog module to a Wordpress platform (should be done in the next few weeks :D). I've found our current blog module such a pain to work with that I would cut off my arm and eat it before I would use it on any site of my own.

When you have to update a blog regularly you need a comfortable and flexible user interface, and Wordpress gives you this. When you need to present articles in a professional and attractive way on a commercial website, Wordpress makes this easy. When you need to make SEO tweaks like global changes to a tag name Wordpress makes this easy.

If you have good content and the blog is accessible you should be fine.

Can it cause cannibalism? It depends on the words you use.

We don't currently use short descriptions but it's a proposal that's on the table. I think that when it's done well it can add real value to site users, with potential to improve click-through from category pages. If we go ahead I won't be keyword stuffing those short descriptions - I'll be using them to differentiate different (but similar) products within a category and trying to work in references to the benefits and advantages of products. It's like the poster campaign for a movie - ideally you want a good image, a memorable title and a catchy strapline that gets you interested in finding out more.

We've had this on a move from osCommerce to Magento. We had a scary drop in rankings and traffic then everything gradually picked up again. I'd say we were back to normal within 2-3 weeks. We made the move at our quietest time of year - this was a good decision as the impact on cash flow was minimised and we had plenty of time to deal with any problems. We'll be going through it again in a few months for one of our other sites, but again we will make the change during our quietest period. Unless there is some urgent reason for them to make the change now I would advise them to hold off until a quieter time - this sort of project can throw up unexpected delays and technical issues, and you want to prevent consequential financial losses as far as possible.

Answering this question "to be found in search engines" is not the right way to go with a client who is concerned about their bottom line. The answer they need to hear is "to make more money", so you need to answer in terms of financial benefits such as

• Reduction of PPC costs
• Increased revenue from long tail search
• Increase in unpaid traffic
• Increased revenue from unpaid traffic
• Increase in Per Visit Value
• Improved conversion rates

SEO doesn't just improve SERP performance - it can also improve website usability and make a better impression on site visitors, thereby having a positive impact on conversions. When our original SEO specialist, who I had been assisting, left the company I had to make a solid financial case for continuing in that role myself. A trawl through Analytics provided an abundance of evidence of financial benefits on all the above points.

Quality content is great so long as people see it. Quality content will attract links effortlessly so long as people see it. People are more likely to see your great content if you rank well in the SERPs. SERP performance improves when you build links. Essentially, spending time link building will make it easier to attract organic links because more people will see your content in the first place.

When asking if link building is worthwhile try looking at the full keyword difficulty reports for any important keywords for which you are outranked, and do a point by point comparison between your site and your competitors for each keyword. If you find you are being outranked by sites whose main advantage over you is stronger link profiles that tells you it is worthwhile to build links.

People won't be able to access the data using the link you gave - it's within your secure user account.

How to fix the problems (and even whether they are fixable) varies depending what platform you are using. Also, multiple issues can cause the same warning or error. You have to look at the pages generating the errors and warnings to work out what the problem is and choose the right solution.

You're more likely to get the help you need if you focus a single question on a single type of warning or error and make sure you mention what platform you are using as well as giving a couple of URLs for affected pages. That way people can help you go through the problems one at a time and give you answers relevant to your situation.

No, but I found this very helpful for getting started http://www.seomoz.org/article/the-professional-guide-to-link-building-2011

Other than the general issue that it can take weeks for the changes you make on site to have an effect on rankings, I've found with Wordpress that a large batch of tweaks seems to have a negative effect for a couple of weeks (trial and error is such fun!). Wordpress is really good about pinging the search engines, so more than a handful of tweaks at any one time can look like ping spam even if you're actually improving your site.

You don't say anything about off-site work. If you are being beaten by competitors with better link networks then the on-site tweaks simply won't be enough. If you haven't already done some competitive analysis for your most important keywords I would do that next to see where your weaknesses are.

If you take the premise that the most valuable links are acquired by forming real relationships with people the strategy you propose seems short-sighted as you would be building relationships on a basis of deception.

As you haven't provided a URL I can't make any evaluation of how off-puttingly commercial your site appears. However, there is an alternate approach open to you, albeit one which requires more work.

My instinctive response to this problem would be to look for a way to make my site more attractive to the non-profits rather than hoping to get away with deceiving them. Perhaps this could be accomplished by dedicating part of the site to provision of free resources. Perhaps there are ways you could help the non-profits, or natural ways to show that you are about more than just the bottom line. There are many ways you can get what you want by giving people what they want - the non-profits may have a different agenda to you but there are probably ways to foster relationships by serving their needs http://www.seomoz.org/blog/99-ways-to-build-links-by-giving-stuff-away-and-improve-your-brand-too-14029

Suppose you use your "neutral" page to get links and it works. What happens when a potential customer clicks through to your neutral page? You miss the opportunity to convert engagement with your free resource into awareness of your product offering. It's like inviting people to the opening of a store with the offer of a free buffet then covering up all the products.

Although this strategy could bring some link juice to your root domain, it would be directed to a page you really don't want to rank or even for normal visitors to see. Seems like a waste to me! Personally I would be reluctant to devalue a linkbait page by "neutralising" it or to employ deceptive practices to promote a website. People don't like deception, search engines don't like deception, and if linking sites realise you've deceived them you are likely to lose the links.

You need to comply with UK consumer law - the main laws which apply are the Sale of Goods Act and Distance Selling Regulations. This page has links to guidance on both issues http://www.tradingstandards.gov.uk/advice/advice-business.cfm

Local Trading Standards offices, who deal with customer complaints in their areas, can be very helpful in making sure your Terms & Conditions comply with UK law. As our business developed we liaised with our local Trading Standards team on these issues, but I'm not sure who you would deal with if you don't have a UK office.

VAT is at a flat rate with the exception of some offshore areas where there is no VAT, and a lower rate applies to certain products/situations. I'm no expert on this but some of our customers have mentioned lower VAT on heating appliances for newbuild properties. You're best off going direct to the UK tax office for information on VAT - http://www.uk-tax-office.co.uk/

Also the European law on cookies is just coming into force, so you need to make sure you're okay on this front as well http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/privacy_and_electronic_communications/the_guide/cookies.aspx

I had a quick look at your site and I think you could do more to show who you are - you talk about your offers but you don't really talk "about us". There aren't any immediate signals that you offer secure shopping - this in combination with a more personal message might make it easier for customers to cross the trust barrier and buy. That said, if you know that people are getting onto your site and browsing then stopping short of conversion then have you done some test orders yourself to make sure customers aren't encountering something offputting as they approach the checkout?

If I were you I would include prominent testimonials from satisfied customers as well as making the brand less faceless. You might want to look at some general info on conversion rate optimisation as well to see if that gives you some more ideas - http://www.conversion-rate-experts.com/ is worth a look.

Well written content introduces the main topic within the first few sentences, so should contain the most important keywords anyway. Emboldening those sentences will add a little weighting to their content so this should help your SEO rather than hinder it.

I was looking at competitors to see why they were outperforming us in some areas. We convert  mostly from returning visitors who have either searched for variations of our brand or searched for a specific brand or product we sell. We rank well for those terms, but also need traffic from some high-volume competitive generic terms to bring customers into our conversion funnel. Our sites don't yet rank highly enough for some of these funnel-entry terms due to weaknesses in external link networks. I don't have time to replicate the quantity of links some of our competitors have, so am looking to beat them on quality instead.

The term extractor tool is very useful, and I use semrush.com if I want to check what a competitor ranks highest for.

Just another thought. Do you send out questionnaires to people who have got as far as registering their details but then not bought? This can occasionally give some useful insights (bearing in mind response rates are low), as can a quick survey immediately after an order is placed to find out why people chose to buy from you. One of our sites presents an order confirmation page which incorporates a survey - when people tell us what we're doing right it makes it easier to do more of it!

It's annoying when this happens. My first step is to make sure the target page is optimised well and that internal links are signalling that it is the most relevant page to the keyword. Next I reinforce this with blogs linking to the target page and social media signals. If the keyword is on my priority list I will spend additional time on link building to the target page as well. If I've done enough the target page pops up in the SERPs within a few weeks. If it doesn't work I go back to square one and see what more I can do.

I see leaving comments relating to the content on relevant blogs as being a valid part of a link building plan - this is a natural way of connecting and engaging with your target audience. As such it improves your chances of getting qualified traffic and organic links, and adds to your link diversity regardless of whether the link is no follow.

I think it would be unwise to focus too much on this approach as an excess of this type of link would look unnatural, and would steer clear of anything approaching comment spam. The test I use when leaving a blog comment is

• Do I have something to contribute to this conversation?
• Can a link to my website add value to this page?

I'm importing traffic data for several websites from a single Analytics account which contains most of our profiles. I just followed the normal procedure for setting up Analytics access then selected the correct profile within the Analytics account.

PR is related to your link profile rather than being a direct measurement of site quality (although better site quality makes it easier to get good links). It sounds as though you have either lost links or some of your links have reduced in value (either by linking domains losing links themselves or by their outgoing links being devalued because the domain has been identified as spammy). Try this for an explanation of Page Rank http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank

When I comment on blogs I try to contribute to the conversation and look at it as an opportunity to make contact with potential customers as well as expanding our link profile. I would feel really uncomfortable entering anything other than a name - depending on circumstances either the brand name or a personal id - in the name field as I think this would be repellent to the people I want to connect with.

In terms of link acquisition, blog comments are a low effort, low value option. I don't see why people would expect using exact match anchor text to give a huge boost to the value of the link - of course the search engines are aware that user generated content is a magnet for spammers and I'm sure they have ways of discounting those links.

I think the best approach to blog commenting is contribute to a community and form real relationships. That way you have the immediate benefits of engaging with your market, with the added bonus that people who trust you and value your contribution are more likely to link to you. I've spent too much time deleting comment spam on our blogs to think much of anyone using that tactic - it's a good way to guarantee I won't check your site out!

I agree, I think this would be a great feature.

I use Wordpress and recommend it to clients. As well as the advantages already listed you will find it very easy to set up author/contributor accounts for your regular writers in order to streamline the publishing process.

There are different viewpoints on outbound links. Reliance on link exchange is outdated, and Google is known to frown on anything resembling a link farm. However, I have seen people cite Matt Cutts (sorry, don't have any links to back this up) as saying it is beneficial to have some outbound links to reputable sites.

To be honest I recommend you focus on site performance rather than PR - are you ranking/getting traffic/converting? PR may slightly increase the likelihood of you ranking but it doesn't guarantee it and it doesn't put money in the bank. I recommend this Whiteboard Friday from August to help you put PR into perspective http://www.seomoz.org/blog/what-is-googles-pagerank-good-for-whiteboard-friday

I think you just have to try to get a feel for what is more or less natural then take a common sense approach. For example

• A link which you don't control looks more natural than a link you do control (such as a directory with a non-refundable review charge vs a directory which charges for inclusion)
• An editorial link from a blog which links to many sites looks more natural than an editorial link from a blog that only links to your site
• A moderate selection of comment links on relevant blogs looks more natural than a huge amount of comment links on random blogs
• A moderate selection of links from quality directories looks more natural than a huge amount of links from spammier directories
• A link from a relevant site looks more natural than a link from an irrelevant site
• A link given in an editorial context looks more natural than a link originating from a links page
• A link from a relevant professional organisation looks more natural than a link from a random club
• A link profile with a broad mixture of link types looks more natural than one heavily skewed towards one link type

The easiest way I can think of is to go into the rankings section in a campaign for which you have already added all the keywords then export the rankings report as a CSV. Once you open the CSV in Excel or similar you can copy the keywords column and paste them in bulk into the "manage keywords" section for your new campaign.

Sadly the total keyword limit is 300 for the Pro account - it is restrictive, but on the other hand you can look at it as an opportunity to prioritise your keywords and make sure you are monitoring the most important ones.

I'm concerned about this issue. I use this data not just when doing keyword research and deciding on strategy but also to measure the effectiveness of my work. I work not just to improve SERP performance but to improve site performance by better serving visitor needs, and to do that effectively I need to know what brought them to us.

I think it would be fair enough to give people the option to protect their search results when they are signed in to a Google account, but also think people should have the option to allow their search data to be available to the sites they visit without having to sign out of their account to do so. It's not an immediate problem for us as we are based in the UK, but I expect it to hit us in due course as Google roll this out to other areas.

I find it hard to believe that the loss of data will be as low as Google are saying. And the explanation they have given for continuing to provide that data to paid advertisers sounds like b*$^#@%£ to me.

I found this really helpful for getting started with link building http://www.seomoz.org/article/the-professional-guide-to-link-building-2011

For judging site quality I find it helpful to look at domain level metrics such as mozRank, mozTrust and domain authority, and I also use Alexa to check traffic levels. I also physically look at sites to see if they seem professional/trustworthy/usable.

I'm fairly new to the SEO industry so I can't give you an authoritative answer, but I can share some of my experience which seems relevant to your situation.

We have multiple retail websites with varying degrees of overlap of products on sale. One of our oldest domains specialises in fireplaces, but a couple of years ago we set up a general home products site which has a fireplace section featuring the same products as the specialist fireplace site. We wrote unique descriptions for all the fireplaces on new site.

When the time came to re-build the specialist fireplace site we ended up using the same Magento back-end as for our more general site. For the last 18 months both sites have been showing the same content for fireplaces, but with some differences in the content hierarchy. Currently the general site has a slightly higher domain authority and more external links, while the fireplaces site has links from a slightly higher number of domains.

The fireplace site took a nosedive in rankings for a couple of weeks after the re-launch, then not only recovered but gradually achieved higher rankings than before. The general home product site has never ranked as successfully for fireplace keywords, even though it was the originator of the content.

The difference in domain age may have a little to do with the difference in rankings, but other factors are pretty equal. From our experience it seems that where two related sites are sharing content Google prefers to show content from the site most relevant to the search rather than the site which originated the content.

As I write blogs for my company I am often in the position of having to come up with ideas on subjects which I don't have a huge interest in. I found it helped to come up with a list of types of post to use, then go further and work out paragraph by paragraph what should be in each type of blog. One of the blogs I manage is about wood burning stoves, so some of the types of post I do are:

• Woodburners which have been featured in the interiors magazines
• Comments on news stories relevant to the stove industry
• Posts built around questions I was asked repeatedly by customers before I moved from sales to SEO
• Buyers guides

Taking it a step further, I can break each of these down paragraph by paragraph so I have a template to follow. For example if I write about a stove I saw in a magazine I follow this format

• Introduction - includes magazine name, issue and page number for the article with the stove; a little bit about the homeowners; either identifies the exact model featured or says I will be talking about similar stoves to the one featured
• Main body - I give my opinion on the way the stove was used in that setting and/or talk about relevant practical issues
• Conclusion - further resources or suggestions for readers thinking about doing something similar

In your position I would look at the other office interior blogs as an ongoing discussion and work out what you can bring to the party. What knowledge or experience do you have which could be of value to a reader? How can you present your views so they get people's attention and invite participation?

There's a big difference between publishing your own picture of a great interior and re-using someone else's without consent , but there are some open source image sites out there which just require credit when you use their pictures. If it's practical you could contact designers and companies with great interiors asking about writing about them or if you can visit to take your own pictures. Once your blog has been going for a while you could even approach other blogs about doing some guest writing for them.

We have different websites for our different brands. It's a lot more work, but gives each brand its own separate internet presence. From a search viewpoint each website can be tailored to different groups of customers, and links between our sites are well travelled with good conversion rates.

While it is a lot more hassle to run multiple websites, remember that trying to address multiple markets from one domain presents its own set of challenges. You have to think about the impression you make on both suppliers and customers (are you a kitchen specialist, or a furniture retailer dabbling in kitchens?), as well as whether your brand is easy for customers to remember.

People expect different levels of retailer expertise for different products, and I think your customers would need more help with kitchens than with furniture. While you could demonstrate your kitchen expertise in a sub-folder of a single domain through great content, a separate domain more specific to the kitchen market would send a powerful message that you are a kitchen specialist (thereby implying that you are a kitchen expert before they even click your link).

I think the answer is to do what's best for the brand. It seems to me that you have a great name already with Love Furniture, and developing a separate Love Kitchens brand could work very well.

Just for the record, my personal preference is for single domains where possible.

The change in platform required a lot of redirects, partly because we took the opportunity to improve our catalogue structure. We had a couple of good programmers in-house at the time, and they set up a script to do the redirects on all the important pages as well as a catch-all redirect which caught anything which hadn't been specified and redirected it to the new home page. Excuse me if I'm a bit vague about this - I came into SEO dealing with on-page issues and have expanded my skill set into other areas, but I don't play with the code myself! Getting the redirects right is critical to make sure the re-built site can be indexed quickly and that users don't encounter lots of error pages. I know they also did a lot of work on the new new site in a testing environment so they could find and fix as many problems as possible before launch.

For detailed information about how to create this kind of content you are probably better off looking for answers on the various blogging support sites and developing relationships with bloggers who work in this field. SEOMoz users are helpful, but there may not be many of them who blog about office interior design!