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