Masbro, sounds like a bait and switch tactic, which stinks. However, you can now approach it from 2 additional angles for your client: 1) Have them pay for 1 month of cPanel access at that $45 rate, then get in there, take a complete back up of the website files and database file (if a CMS like WordPress) and then create a new web hosting account in HostGator or GoDaddy or anywhere feasible to your client and a server you're used to working in. Or 2) Just request from that company a full, most recent backup copy of the website files and DB and then you can upload those files to a new host as noted above, then change the DNS records for the domain to point to the new server. I'd find out that cost and see which is the cheaper alternative, however, either way, I would get your client away from them and cancel any monthly fees. Move on and with you by their side!

NOTE: Careful with the email hosting. So make sure you know where their email is hosted if using the same domain. If setting up a new host with their backup copy, then you can figure out the Mail settings/MX records as needed to make any modifications necessary.

Hope you get things resolved! It sounds like they are willing to play ball, so that's a huge plus for you and the client.

• Patrick

To answer your question bluntly. Nope!

For $10K, you could get a lot more for your money and would be a longer term investment. Your link on that PR9 site wouldn't be on the Home page the whole time, which I assume carries the highest PageRank. You would eventually fall into an inner page carrying much lower PageRank OR, worse, you get bumped from the site altogether.

Better ways to invest that same amount in organic SEO efforts. Fun question to start my day!

• Patrick

Masbro,

We run into this issue all the time working with small business owners. They have a friend's cousin's nephew from down the street get them a website and don't tell them anything about what really is going on with their domain purchase/renewals, where they bought the domain, where they bought the hosting, the login for hosting, where they are hosting email, or logins to WordPress/Drupal/etc if using a CMS. The list goes on.

Unfortunately for us, we have to figure all of that out for them. Although, fortunately, we also get to build a great rapport with the client and educate them on making sure they maintain control over all of their property. I would educate them about all you know for consolidating their domain, hosting and email if you wanted and make sure you keep a login record and you share that with them as well. If they lose it, then you have it.

Now, to answer your question. Many folks are very hesitant to provide direct cPanel access because they may be in a shared environment with many other domains and websites being hosted. So, once they give you login, then you may be able to see ALL of their clients or websites and, to me, that is a big security vulnerability. I'd never allow just anyone into our shared server.

They may also just want to validate who you are in representing your mutual client on their behalf. Usually a phone call to them, with the client on the line is a good starting point, or an email from the client to the host provider.

It really all depends on the level of work you have to do. If it's minor, then you can ask them to provide FTP or SFTP login OR if it's something major or a brand new website, then another alternative you could request is for them to simply provide you a full backup of the website/database files (if any) and you can move the hosting to another provider where you have a little more control.

I believe they are simply looking at this from a security viewpoint. Allowing you access, wouldn't be beneficial to their other clients in the server, putting them at risk potentially.

Again, there are several ways to get to the end point based on your goals and needs for the client. We see it all the time and sometimes it goes smoothly, and others, it can be a long-drawn out nightmare. I hope it's not that latter for you And I hope this was a helpful answer!

• Patrick

Hi bchilders22,

Great question and hope I can add to the discussion points. I'd like to approach from 2 angles:

1. To answer your question directly, assuming your goal is to optimize the website (no matter the industry), then yes your SEO ranking will suffer with a lack of content on the Home page. Just like everyone else has stated. If your goal is to optimize the site for other keywords outside of the brand/company name, then the content on the Home page becomes extremely important. If you are seeking to optimize the brand, then you may not be in so much trouble. BUT, if that is your goal, then I would recommend a couple minor items to implement to help. Create a paragraph on the Home page which hits the branded name, maybe placed just above the Footer under the Slider. Use that as your foundation and then create your Title and Description to be relevant to that content, again tagging/referencing your brand and location to coincide with your Schema markup. If you want to hit more keywords, then you'll need more content and maybe focus to section off the content. For example, if this is a restaurant, then hit on sections of the menu or meal time frames ie: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Drinks, etc. Then link to those inner pages.

2. I'm only stating this because we have several clients with ZERO content on the Home page. It's exactly as you mentioned. Social media buttons, logo, large slider, address and navigation tabs. This is all great because these clients do not care a thing about SEO and investing in SEO. They are shopping centers and their brand is very strong, so keeping the Home page clean and simple and directing their visitors to their Directory and Map and Events is their main focus.

In conclusion, it's all about what your client wants. If they want to rank, then get some good, original content on the Home page and tagged appropriately. If they are focusing their efforts on having a cool Home page to highlight their logo/brand and some nice images, then having content may be "too much clutter" for their tastes. Looking at it from both perspectives, it's asking those questions upfront before the design and development begin are highly important.

Hope this was helpful! - Patrick

Hi Ruben! And Happy Friday to you, too!

It's never a bad idea to republish or update a blog post. We done it before and not really seen any adverse affects to anything we are doing. Before we went through that process (and before we had a Moz account) we hit the search engines and read articles about how to handle old content or to add to older posts.

As some references and reading enjoyment, take a look at Hubspot's post here "The Complete Guide to Updating and Republishing Outdated Blog Content" and also Entrepreneur.com had a recent article I bookmarked on this subject a couple months ago, "Your Blog's Secret Weapon: Old Content". As many industries change, so will the content, so going back to republish or update an article is a wise decision to keep your content as relevant as possible AND with Google being keen on displaying the best results, your old content won't have a chance if the information isn't accurate to the times.

Hope this was helpful! Cheers - Patrick

Hey Federico! Thanks for your note about the images linking from a site to the author's site with a NoFollow link. We thought that was the answer, but wanted to get confirmation and appreciate you reassuring our gut feeling.

I may have not been too clear in my question, but we aren't trying to rank images for SEO as we know the original authors will get top priority (hopefully).

Per the stock photo accounts, we have spoken with the copyright teams from iStock/Getty and 123RF and they are of the same nature. If we, the company, buy images on behalf of our clients, then we are not allowed to send the client the raw file or a copy of the raw file, as that would break their copyright rules. However, we can use that said image for any number of websites or blogs as we choose since we have the royalty free rights to that file. It really is such a grey area, but when we talk with clients we inform them that if they want any images for the website/blog and wish to use those same images for any print material (brochures, magazine ads, flyers, etc) then we ask them to open an account with the respective site and purchase the images, so they hold the rights. We then upload the images and then delete from our systems. It's too much of a hassle.

I will review the link you shared for the FlickR CC images. Thanks for sharing that! - Patrick

I've been looking at large image packages through iStock, Getty, Fotolia and 123RF, but before spending a bunch of money, I wanted to get some of your feedback on Creative Commons images.

Should be worried that something found on Google Images > Search Tools > Usage Rights section can be used without issue or legal threats from the big image companies so long as they are appropriately referenced?

AND will using these types of images and linking to the sources have any affect on SEO efforts or make the blog/website look spammy in Google's eyes because we need to link to the source?

How are you using Creative Commons images and is there anything I should be aware of in the process of searching, saving, using, referencing, etc?

Patrick

It is a good product and I'm sure they are working to get all the exposure they can, especially from someone who's so well respected in the web world as Rand is. I would be doing the same thing with graces from an individual of his level

I second what Tom said on all accounts, Virginia. We've turned down a couple projects for clients wanting to use SquareSpace or helped convince them we could do the same work with a self-hosted WP site using cool parallax features.

Tom, thanks also for the link to ThemeForest. I haven't seen those parallax designs yet, so going to take a peak now!

Courtney,

I agree with Bradley. You and your client shouldn't worry about it too much. Write the Title to be the best for your searcher to help provide the best explanation for what that specific page consists of. This will also be to Google's liking, especially with the Hummingbird update to show relevance and human readability.

Avoiding stop words can be considered an older SEO tactic, much like placing your brand name at the end of the Title. We now see Google taking the brand names, if placed at the end of the Title, and moving them to the beginning of the Title at their discretion. Also, educate your client on other SEO focused articles and checklists rather than GoDaddy. GoDaddy's SEO content and advice is sub-par at best compared to the plethora of content out there for SEO best practices for proper optimization.

Hope this was helpful! - Patrick

Ian, the use of bold and italic text within pages or articles is so minute to the SEO ranking factors that your best focusing on what really matters for getting ranked. This article can help you see that bold and italic text doesn't even make the list http://moz.com/search-ranking-factors. Even the H1 tag is 3/4 the way down the list.

Per using bold and italic text for your readers, absolutely! Use it appropriately as it seems you have been doing. Also, consider breaking up content with bullet points or using call out sections in the page (if using WordPress, they have plugins and widgets for these call outs to highlight important content snips).

I'd stray away from bolding singular keywords or italicizing a keyword as those are old, out-dated SEO tactics which were never proven to have any affect, positively or negatively. Keep doing what you're doing and always keep your readers' best interests in mind for them to have a nice experience on your site(s)... Google will see this in the Analytics as they remain on the site/pages longer.

Hope this was helpful. - Patrick

Masbro,

We run into this issue all the time working with small business owners. They have a friend's cousin's nephew from down the street get them a website and don't tell them anything about what really is going on with their domain purchase/renewals, where they bought the domain, where they bought the hosting, the login for hosting, where they are hosting email, or logins to WordPress/Drupal/etc if using a CMS. The list goes on.

Unfortunately for us, we have to figure all of that out for them. Although, fortunately, we also get to build a great rapport with the client and educate them on making sure they maintain control over all of their property. I would educate them about all you know for consolidating their domain, hosting and email if you wanted and make sure you keep a login record and you share that with them as well. If they lose it, then you have it.

Now, to answer your question. Many folks are very hesitant to provide direct cPanel access because they may be in a shared environment with many other domains and websites being hosted. So, once they give you login, then you may be able to see ALL of their clients or websites and, to me, that is a big security vulnerability. I'd never allow just anyone into our shared server.

They may also just want to validate who you are in representing your mutual client on their behalf. Usually a phone call to them, with the client on the line is a good starting point, or an email from the client to the host provider.

It really all depends on the level of work you have to do. If it's minor, then you can ask them to provide FTP or SFTP login OR if it's something major or a brand new website, then another alternative you could request is for them to simply provide you a full backup of the website/database files (if any) and you can move the hosting to another provider where you have a little more control.

I believe they are simply looking at this from a security viewpoint. Allowing you access, wouldn't be beneficial to their other clients in the server, putting them at risk potentially.

Again, there are several ways to get to the end point based on your goals and needs for the client. We see it all the time and sometimes it goes smoothly, and others, it can be a long-drawn out nightmare. I hope it's not that latter for you And I hope this was a helpful answer!

• Patrick

Courtney,

I agree with Bradley. You and your client shouldn't worry about it too much. Write the Title to be the best for your searcher to help provide the best explanation for what that specific page consists of. This will also be to Google's liking, especially with the Hummingbird update to show relevance and human readability.

Avoiding stop words can be considered an older SEO tactic, much like placing your brand name at the end of the Title. We now see Google taking the brand names, if placed at the end of the Title, and moving them to the beginning of the Title at their discretion. Also, educate your client on other SEO focused articles and checklists rather than GoDaddy. GoDaddy's SEO content and advice is sub-par at best compared to the plethora of content out there for SEO best practices for proper optimization.

Hope this was helpful! - Patrick

102drive,

Develop a website (or continue working on your current website) to develop a great user experience through navigation and how content is presented across the Home page and inner pages. Google doesn't necessarily see websites targeting multiple niches in one domain as a bad thing. Actually, they are getting better at making sure all websites put to the web are providing valuable, quality content for the searchers/your visitors. When talking about niche websites and only one domain, you'll need to have a strong strategy of not only high quality content development behind the niche and it's pages in the site, but also how and what links are being built to those pages. Targeting multiple niches on the Home page is going to be very tough because you don't want to risk over-optimizing your Home page or any page for that matter. On page SEO can only take so much and trying to hit many niches which don't compliment each other is going to be almost impossible by shear relevance of the keywords you are going after, the content you have on the site and how and where you can optimize those keywords within the page/source code.

Build out your website like www.domain.com/niche1... then pages off of this and blog categories and articles linking to relevant pages and your off-page SEO linking to the /niche1 main page. www.domain.com/niche2 and so on. This way you can properly optimize each of these niche pages while referencing through from the root domain Home page or navigation and internal linking. It's like a client of ours who has many offices in different cities... we didn't build out a lot of sites for them, rather we are building authority to their main, older domain name like www.client.com/city1, www.client.com/city2 and so on. Then building their service pages with original content and blog articles off those folders for relevance.

Hope this was helpful, but it'll be much easier on pumping good content into 1 site vs 5 or 10 other websites, especially if your domain has some age and a little authority build up in Google's eye. New sites will be tougher to rank, depending on your content, your competition, and your main keywords.

Patrick

Hey Sarah,I can't speak for everyone, but I know and am hearing a lot of frustrations in using the new Google Keyword Planner. It's arduous and doesn't seem as flexible compared to the old Keyword Tool you mention, and we're all become so used to. Per Bings Keyword Tool, we have used it before, but I agree with Peter and his comments in that search is now going to be continuing this new direction of "relevance" for personalized search. Yes, keywords are still very important, but the data being provided these days is creating more headaches than solutions.

We look at Google Keyword Planner (still getting used to it) and Bing as well. We haven't used WordTracker in over a year, so per how they are working these days is a bit beyond me. They have been around a long time, so as long as they can update their platform to support the new Google search shifts, then keep with them. If they are not, then that is an issue and the data then becomes tainted. Google will be our go-to keyword research tool unless something else emerges.

Cheers! - Patrick

PS - We've been trying out a new approach where we are comparing sites' anchor text link profile for the competitors of the clients we work for. This somewhat helps us understand what they are wanting to rank for and then we go from there.

I second what Tom said on all accounts, Virginia. We've turned down a couple projects for clients wanting to use SquareSpace or helped convince them we could do the same work with a self-hosted WP site using cool parallax features.

Tom, thanks also for the link to ThemeForest. I haven't seen those parallax designs yet, so going to take a peak now!

Steve,

I second what Dubs states. Option C is your best option as you accomplish a lot with this strategy assuming you are protecting the page with a form submission to gain access. You capture their information, you are protecting your content on the site, provide them the downloadable PDF and could track both submissions and clicks to download in Google Analytics as "Goals".

Patrick

Good questions. First, anything which you want to rank in Google can be found in Google. Take for instance, I sometimes do searches for ebooks of certain topics I want to learn about for example, "how to write an ebook". I'd search "how to write an ebook filetype:pdf" and then I could potentially find direct PDF downloads from URLs and bypass any one looking to collect my email, name, etc. I don't check them all, but some may not have the PDF protected or blocked with a robot.txt file discouraging Google from indexing the page, but some do, yet their PDF can be found through a link, especially in WP sites. So, you raise a question about having your content indexed to aid your SEO efforts, right? If you're going to protect the PDF and want the content indexed then sneaky searchers like myself could find your content, otherwise, put the content on the page and the PDF and let Google index. I'd say majority of the people coming to your page would enter in their info to get the ebook(s).

I would, for the sake of saving your users more clicks and thinking, place the downloadable PDF on the Thank You page. Collect their info and eliminate any further confusion or clicks. "Thank you for taking interest in our ABC ebook. Please click below to download your copy now."

Hope this was a good answer! Cheers - Patrick

Hey everyone! What methods are best to use for SEO campaigns working with 1 website for a company which has 2, 3, 4, or more locations in order to get keywords for their services to rank well... in all their location cities?

I feel we know the answer could be any one of the below notes, however, it's always nice to learn more about what all you other SEO's are doing or have done which saw success.

Please note:

We have heard about building microsites on sub-domains example city.domainname.com/keyword-or-service
We have heard about building sections off the root domain such as domainname.com/city/keyword-or-service
We have heard about just pushing more content to the blog which can target a wider range of keywords and cities
We have heard about building a new site for each city location replicating the main website and swapping out content for 100% originality
We have heard about just building more and more backlinks with different anchor text using the cities in the anchor text

Thanks in advance and look forward to hearing from some other experts facing these same challenges!

Thanks, Francisco. I could've elaborated a bit more, you're right. We have several clients and prospective clients with multiple locations and most sell the same services/products across each location. However, some, take for example, a General Dentist we work with has 2 offices in different cities, one office does General and Cosmetic Dentistry while the other  does General Dentistry and Oral Surgery. So a little different in what we'd need to target. We always do Google+ verifications as well, so that's not an issue. However, your other points are pretty valid and we have them marked down to implement. Thank you again for your feedback!