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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

Hey Ruben! Great question as I recently posed a similar question to the community, since we're getting ready to take over an medical practice website and they have 3 office locations. Our goal is to touch up their existing website with improved navigation. One of the key takeaways is that each location has their own independent page.

Within each page, we are going to be accomplishing a lot such as:

• Build the location pages off your root domain as noted above, domain.com/Office1 and domain.com/Office2 so that you can work to build links to those individual pages going forward
• Create and implement Schema markup to let Google quickly identify the NAP (Name, Address, Phone #) to the respective office and make sure it's consistent with the G+ pages information that you verify as noted below
• Provide 100% original and non-duplicated content which talks about the practice, the eye care services, products they offer, and which doctors at that specific office
• An interactive Google map pin marketing their exact location (this also links to their G+ page)
• A slideshow to display only that office's pictures
• Internal links to/from the Home page and some inner pages like the Dr bios, an eye care service, etc
• And most importantly making sure that the office location pages are linked to only their respective G+ pages (you will need separate verified G+ pages as a note)

There are other items we'll tackle for the website, but remember, you can "optimize" the G+ pages, so our focus will be to populate those individual G+ pages with as much content, images, videos, and links to the site page and site Blog as Google will allow. Another tip I learned was to do a Review Acquisition Strategy to obtain more reviews to your G+ pages and other sites by potentially using a service like GetFiveStars.com.

You will also want to build local citations, so we're looking into the new Moz Local service to assist our efforts. Link those to the location pages and if you have a blog, like we'll be doing for these eye doctors, then you can also write articles specific to an area/their location and build more relevance and inner links to the location pages.

I know you were asking about getting ranked in local and feel I went on a tangent, however, all of that will assist in getting the local listing in G+ more relevance and more exposure over the competitors who may only have a G+ page with a description, an image and a link back to the site.

Hope this helps! And all the best! - Patrick

Rachel,

The gimmicks I've heard are countless. The clients feared into buying a product/service are countless. Yet, this is a new one I haven't heard about. I'll put it this way, if you are promoting a service which is "KILLER" and "WILL GET RESULTS" then you had better just show up for the service name in Google, at the very least, right? I wouldn't worry about this "company" and/or "service" and be upfront with your clients about how these types of solicitations will be frequent and annoying.

I'm sure you already did this, but I wanted to do it also and share with the community. First, begin typing in "Autocomplete Engagement" into Google. You can clearly see you have to type out the whole phrase and yet you don't get one single "Instant" result in the drop down menu. Unfortunately, I already entered and searched the whole phrase, so that's why you see it in my search history AND also this post in my screenshot. No results for their SUPERIOR SEO TRICK

Second, when you do search the entire phrase, you get nothing about any mention of an SEO service. Hell, this question is already ranked on 1st page for that term. Scratching my head. Show this to your clients and then let them know it's just another scare tactic to get them to spend some money... I mean waste money.

Hope this was a helpful response! - Patrick

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Bradley,

David is right in terms of your time vs your return if you sell. I had the same idea about buying up domains (lots of them) in hopes to build a few, rank them, generate leads for businesses, then sell them or continue to build leads. It was a mess, expensive, time consuming and something I won't do again. Our return was low, if any on most. We just sold a bunch of the domains last year. Out of sight. Out of mind.

EGOL, the way you responded to this question is amazing. I enjoyed reading it and agree wholeheartedly with you.

All the best, Bradley. - Patrick

We just finished dealing with this exact scenario last week. And we have dealt with it a handful of times when dealing with inexperienced developers or those who just do not know how GA works.

The developer set up our now new client as a User in their account. When we requested access, we got the same answer you did. As we expected. We explained in great detail to the developer that all he needs to do is add our @gmail.com email to that individual client's Profile as an Admin and we will only see that individual client's Profile data. No other clients of his will be seen on our GA account. Every Profile is separate from each other in all GA accounts, so like Bill and Paddy and now I'm saying... Developer is not correct in his explanation to you. Feel free to share these responses with them and also check out more about it in Google Analytics support boards/FAQs. All the best and hope you get the data you need, so you don't have to start over with a new GA account.

I was just about to post the same as Jesse. Get Moz Pro and you'll get a whole bunch of data for all pages, errors, duplicate content, warnings, can do keyword ranking, etc, etc... Definitely worth the investment.

Tony,

Miriam NAILED it! Take her advice and run with it and tackle this large project by chipping away little by little as she mentions. We're in the midst of starting this process with a client who wants/needs to rank in several very small towns in NC, but also 2 bigger cities nearby and the one they are headquartered. It's a daunting task, but planning it out, setting those expectations with the owner(s) and executing items from the plan in a way that doesn't overwhelm you or the business owner or their staff/customers will get you some great results in the end, while playing nicely with Google.

You won't rank locally as NAP (Name Address Phone) won't be apart of each page since there is no physical office location within each of the cities/towns you mentioned. So, don't count on your local listings with Google Maps, however, get some great content in the pages, design them a little differently too and another item I'd like to add to Miriam's task list, would be to create some blog articles around the coupons or specials you are running, which you can link back and forth from the company blog. Google will see you aren't just trying to slap up 40 pages and leave them, rather, they will see you are building the pages and content for your searchers/potential customers, then developing some ongoing content around a specific landing page. You would be creating value and more relevance for you searcher and Google is now seeing this.

All the best in your project! - Patrick

Jeanette,
You'd want to create 2 separate pages around those keywords as someone who is a cat lover looking up info about cat allergies will want a crystal clear, very relevant answer or solution for their cat. Same for a dog lover/owner. When you create 2 pages, just be mindful that your content will need to remain 100% unique (hint: write the content and submit through Copyscape.com to check uniqueness). You can make your secondary keywords the plural variation which will add some more relevance to the pages.

Target your content for what are some allergies most recognized, the signs & symptoms, the treatments, the potential meds that help, etc.... Create a lot of good solid content and section it out appropriately including some paragraphs, bullet points, call to actions and you will have more success than just putting it all on 1 page.

Next, write content around those subjects for both cats and dogs as blog articles or social media posts or guest posts and link it all back to those pages for relevance.

All the best!
An avid dog lover and internet marketer

That is a strange occurrence. I just searched "jimmie Daniel road georgia" in Google and hit enter. The results ALL show "Jimmy Road" and even Google offered up "Did you mean "jimmy road..." as an option to search. Even Zillow has "Jimmy" as the street name, not like they help your localized search, but Zillow is a massive real estate site, so you'd think they would have it right or at least updated as well in their database. Check out the screen snippet I pulled.

For now, I wouldn't change anything you are doing. Just keep an eye on it as from a searchers perspective, Google is still trying to show them a relevant result option of "Did you mean jimmy road...". Hope this was a helpful answer! - Patrick

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In WordPress, you have a couple options.

1. Do not have any reference of "rel=author" for the Home page or sub-Pages, which lets Google know these are non-related pages to any Google+ business profile or individual profile. You only want the "rel=author" reference with the Blog Posts.

2. The other option you have is to create multiple users, so the 1st user creates and publishes the Home page and any "Pages" if you want, while the 2nd user, 3rd user, 4th user, etc... the ones with the Google+ profiles associated with the WordPress website/blog creates and publishes all of the "Posts" in the website as "Authors". This will tell Google to display the blog posts with the Author's image in the SERPs.

You are going in the right direction to have your website synced with a G+ profile, especially for Author image display for search results!

Ben,

You can check a couple things:

1. Have you submitted your XML site map to Google? If not, create one and get it submitted so you tell Google what pages you want indexed.
2. Submit your domain and all pages through Google Webmasters Tool as well (Login > left side bar > Crawl > Fetch as Google
3. Screaming Frog is an awesome software, so yes, if you have it, use it to scan your pages
4. Try and do a simple "site:domainname.com" search in Google to see what is being indexed from your domain

Cross reference it all and you will then have a better understanding. I do believe, your sitemap is crucial in telling Google exactly what pages you do and do not want indexed. They will follow that. You're on the right track and hope my input was helpful! - Patrick

Vince,

Go with the Disavow for that link and any links which could be misconstrued as spammy. Even though GWT is telling you not to take action, you should do it anyways as it can't hurt to have that link removed from your profile.

Alternatively, you could message/email the specific site owners or managers to request the link to be taken down. It may take a while for this though for them to respond and schedule that task. Keep that in mind also.

Hope this helps! - Patrick

Greg,

Great question. Because I have been asked this very same question many times by clients, the answer, to be short and sweet, is Google shows you the data per individual keyword as Exact Match. There are some other threads in this community discussing this same idea. The new keyword planner is showing exact match, as of now at least. So we don't have to go through all the "Broad" or "Phrase" data and as SEOs can focus on this new tool to help our businesses and client's businesses.

Hope this helps!
Patrick

Hi Courtney,

Kudos to you in not trusting everything you read online Reviews can always be skewed, so asking around has been what I do a lot of as well. Thanks for posing the question.

Let me answer your comment about seeing their Yext ads everywhere... You see them everywhere because they are heavy remarketers. So, when you visit their website and browsed around, they dumped a cookie on your browser, essentially tracking you and wherever their remarketing campaign could place an ad to bring you back to their site with an ad graphic, they will make sure you see it. Big money spent on that type of online marketing! If you delete your cookies, then Bye Bye to their ads. Or you could disable cookies on your browser altogether if you wanted.

We've used Yext before and referred clients to them or helped clients go through their service. There were issues with some clients and others went flawlessly. It is a time saver for sure, but know it's automated and their support lacks big time. There are resources out there to find the best, most relevant directories and sites which Yext and other services like them build profiles for links, so create that link in XLS and work on them manually, unless you have a ton of clients who need listings created. Keep track of all logins in the XLS file for each client so if they ever move, you can provide to them or have easy access to info if things need updated. Yext won't make updates unless you are a paying customer as well and things tended to take a long time for those updates to occur. Same for UBL out of Charlotte... I knew some people who worked for them when I started my business.

Hope this was helpful and a solid answer to help you make a decision! - 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

Beth, hit Google for this to find out where and if webinars are being promoted regarding Link Building. Just my thoughts. - Patrick

flcity15,

The answer could be as simple as "plano" may be wrapped up into so many other variations like "visit plano" "plano cvb" "plano city" "plano, texas" and so on. So, to Google or any other search engine, the keyword "plano" may not be properly segmented out as what you are specifically targeting. Looking in Open Site Explorer, your anchor text is hitting on "plano" for a link, but you have so many others also. This is good, but could be more effective with better links built to that site for that anchor text.

Also, your Home page tagging isn't really saying "Hey, rank me for Plano!". Your title could have another LSI mention and your meta description is extremely long. Work on getting that down to proper character length hitting you main keyword and some variations.

You already can determine who is ranking for "plano", so do a little research on where they are linking to. What content they are using, how they are tagging the site or the page ranking for the keywords and reverse engineer what they are doing to help your efforts.

Hope this was a good answer! Cheers, 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.

No worries and good idea to toss the question of concern out to the Moz community. In the future, if it's anything having to do with Google or any new "up and coming" solution or search criteria change, then check with Google first, then check the Blogs here at Moz or elsewhere because I'm sure content writers would LOVE to be the first to hit on a new idea for how to rank in Google.

Hopefully you can put your clients at ease

• Patrick

Federico is exactly correct. G+ and the Website/Blog need to be tied together through the reciprocal links. G+ needs the website's link in the "Contributor" field in the Links section of the profile. This link should be the www.domainname.com/author/yourname link to be more specific. Then, on the website the G+ profile URL needs to be "rel=author". If using WordPress, AuthorSure is a great plugin we like using, but there are others to test around with.

Patrick McCoy

Great question and something I bet a lot of other SEO's deal with, but don't always know what to do, nor ask the appropriate people for their take. Kudos to you for looking out for your client's best interests.

That being said, I agree with Ryan. Hit on your Google tools and G+ page to mention those geo-specific keywords. Also, there is nothing wrong with working to optimize a business which resides/operates out of one location while focusing their marketing in another location.

Two examples of this...

• 1st, our company is located in Cary NC, a smaller, but fast growing town outside of Raleigh, which is the major metropolis around here. However, we target a lot of SEO and keyword research at Raleigh. We've got a great presence for lots of terms relating to Cary, so Raleigh was our next goal and some of the smaller towns around us. It is possible, when done correctly, even for a highly competitive service like "SEO" and "Web Design" and "WordPress" in any major city. Burlington for you, would be nothing less.
• 2nd, we're about to work with another small carpet cleaning business who operates outside of his home yet travels to about 25 mile radius to service customers. Yes, his address on his website and G+ pages and his listings will be in Wake Forest NC, but that doesn't mean we can't go after organic searches/results in Cary, Durham, Raleigh, and the like. He is actually pretty exited to potentially get traffic and customers from all over the area.

Take 1 well written and optimized blog article targeting a specific keyword and going for a smaller market, we'll say Youngsville NC with little to no competition for my client, we see we could gain him a few customers a month potentially when that blog article ranks.

Incorporate a blog and article writing into your campaign and I'm sure you'll see success for your client.

Hope Ryan's, Miriam's and my responses were good and helpful! - Patrick

Conor,

Yoast is a good plugin and I know a lot of people use it, but honestly, I find the All In One SEO Pack to be awesome! We use it on almost every website we develop. Check it out and install it to play around with the setup. Here are some resource links to review. We love it and hope this helps in your search! - Patrick

https://wordpress.org/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/

http://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/users-guide-for-all-in-one-seo-pack/

ryanryan,

In our experiences, building dedicated mobile sites is still something a lot of companies still want. Yes, responsive is the new trend and will continue to evolve, but when it comes to mobile... people want their info fast. Who you are, what you do and how to get in touch asap. We have mobile sites on both subdomains (m.domain.com) and also in folders from the root domain (www.domain.com/m) and all sites optimized. We haven't seen much of a difference to be honest, however, we aren't optimizing huge, national websites on those set ups either. More local companies, dentists, contractors, etc.

Go with what is easiest for you to setup for your clients/yourself, BUT, when you talk anything SEO with your clients, your content all needs to be unique. Can't stress that enough. Google sees all. Quickly rewrite whatever is on your main mobile site to be different from your main website, yet provides the same message. Target your keywords as you would normally with on-page best practices in the mobile site. Integrate social media into, especially Google+ and install a separate Google Analytics tracking ID into your mobile sites too for more Google points and measuring! Implement, test, analyze and modify as needed to meet your expectations.

Hope this was insightful. 
Patrick

M,

You have thrown out such a vague question here and hope you aren't spamming the Moz forum as I see this is your first and only post.

That being said, I'll try to answer in short if you are looking for serious help... Can you provide more information in order for a Moz member to provide guidance. How long has the page been online? What keywords are you optimizing for? What SEO tactics are you doing specifically for this page? Let's start with that.

Hope this helps and we look forward to your responses. - Patrick

Thanks for the link, Bryan!

Hi Matt,

We were having some issues yesterday with getting logged out while browsing the Q&A and Moz Blog which was really weird. OSE was working normally for us and everything seems normal today. It may be a temp server glitch, but if you continue to have problems, I'd hit up support. My guess is what we experienced with a temporary issue only.

Hope it pans out for you soon though as OSE is awesome! - Patrick

Hi Edmond,

Unfortunately, you are correct about it being a pain in the butt to get customers/patients to submit POSITIVE reviews on those mentioned websites, including a ton of other review sites. Isn't it funny, people have no problem going to those sites, creating an account, and then leaving NEGATIVE reviews?

We see it all the time. I'm guilty of it, however, I do try to leave positive reviews when I'm truly amazed at the service or product I receive.

We work with dentists and eye doctors and other categories where it is mainly B2C, so we've implemented in many of those businesses a process to create small business cards which have direct instructions about how easy it is to leave a review online and how much we appreciate it OR our clients offer an incentive. "Leave us a review at Google and receive a free X-rays at your next dental exam." It does work really well as the patient is able to hear the offer at the office and then take home instructions about how to do it.

We have an eye doctor who keeps their iPad open to Google the whole day and his front desk staff asks patients to leave reviews on their Google+ page if they have a Gmail account. If not, then the staff offers to walk them through getting them a Google account.

It's a combined effort on the business owner, his staff and the internet marketing consultant/company to work together to figure out the best plan and educate their clients/patients.

Here's a GREAT article in whole which I recommend you read, but more importantly to your question, read this section http://moz.com/blog/top-20-local-search-ranking-factors-an-illustrated-guide#nineteen. You will see that Google gathers the other major review sites' reviews (you'll see in the 2nd screenshot of the review site links). So, yes Google is very important to get reviews, but they are also pulling from many other sites.

I hope this was a good answer and that you find these ideas helpful in your efforts! - Patrick

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!

Christopher,

I was having the same issues the past several days with being logged in and out while trying to get into the QA sections. It kept redirecting me to the Moz Home page and logging me out. I emailed support and they told me it may be a cookies issue on my Chrome browser. I cleared cookies a few hours ago and haven't had the issue arise, so far.

Hope your situation turns up, but understand your frustrations! - Patrick

Hey Mozzers,
I received a call on Friday from a 6 attorney law office who have been my client for a long time. They have an established brand/domain in their market which isn't very big, but has a lot of competition.

2 of the attorneys are leaving to start their own firm and they want to remove a letter from their name abbreviation, thus their domain name as well. So, the other partners want to change the domain to reflect this.

They want to buy a EMD [city]lawyers.com for about $1,600 along with some others to protect their new brand and name.

I have a good idea as to what I need to do, BUT would love to hear advice from the community for this type of drastic change. 301 redirects? New Google Analytics code or same just different profile? Webmasters verifications? Content from old site? Old domain forwarding or keep active for a little bit? Is not the time to get them an SSL?

Also, what should I prepare them for in terms of website traffic expectations and Google authority drops or remains the same? I know their Moz DA/PA will drop to 1/1, but anything else to look out for?

Thank you in advance!
Fellow Pro Member - Patrick

That is great to hear, Keri! You are right. They are showing for Google, so ultimately, that is what is important

Michael,

Another avenue you could consider is to create and print out a simple business card sized instruction note (cheap from VistaPrint). You keep these at your counter/front desk and when a customer is checking out, you can simply provide that to them and ask after they check out. We have worked with dentists and a party rental shop with 4 locations who had some decent success with this strategy.

_EDIT: You can also create the same card and offer an incentive on there for their next trip into the store or office, sort of what Jed was getting at above. _

You are merely asking them for a review and handing them a card with some simple instructions to follow at their leisure from the phone or computer. You also avoid any potential "red flags" which a large email blast could generate with lots of people simultaneously leaving reviews on a given day or week. Google sees this as "solicitation" in their terms for receiving reviews. Google wants you to EARN reviews, so stick with more natural approaches to this process and you'll see results and steer clear of any Google mishaps

Hope this was helpful!! - Patrick

Hey there! Their pages are pretty cool and built really well for content flow. In looking at the source code, they are using WordPress, but seems to be custom design and coding to display the graphics, colors, buttons, tabs, links, content, etc. It would be no different than designing an HTML web page the exact way you want it to look and function, then convert it into a WordPress page.

I don't see they are using any specific plugins to build those pages, and if they did, it is hidden from the source. Get a good graphic/web designer to make your pages similar and then have a WordPress programmer work to on the design to convert and make functional.

Hope this was a good answer Cheers! - Patrick

Hey Ruben,

Like FCBM stated, there is no difference besides cost. I know you are a law firm, so that may not be an issue, but as web company, we get asked all the time about hosting and where clients can save money. A TON of money. Many smaller businesses don't need a managed service provider "watching over" their server environment. They just need a website that will load fast and be up 99.9999999% of the time.

We host with GoDaddy and have not had 1 issue in over 4 years, even when they had that huge takedown a couple years back. I can call them on a Saturday night 4am and speak with someone in Arizona or their other US based call center if I need, which I can't say the same for HostGator or BlueHost or many others, especially a local host provider.

Hope this was helpful! Good luck! - Patrick

Alex,
I agree with EGOL. Many of those domain extensions aren't being used or promoted at this time. They may in the future, however, they are very new to the marketing world and people may get confused or think they are spammy. I'd stick with a .com, .co, .net at this time, if available.

On the otherhand, there have been many case studies on this very topic. Even a post here on Moz. See them below as they are highlighting many valid points. In short, Google doesn't really care what domain you are using, so long as you are creating value on the web for their searchers and building authority for the domain and its pages. It's yours and your client's call to pursue that "builders" extension or not. I'd recommend a strategy to back it up, in order to justify the efforts needed.

• http://searchengineland.com/google-explains-how-they-handle-the-new-top-level-domains-tlds-225671
• https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/study/2433834/case-study-will-new-domain-extensions-provide-an-seo-boost
• https://moz.com/ugc/an-seos-guide-to-acquiring-new-gtlds
• https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/253408
• https://ceo.xyz/rank-in-google/

Hope this was helpful! - Patrick

Eric,

Sounds like you need Online Reputation Management (ORM) services or a company which can actually take on this project, since it will require the efforts to contact each of the websites, directories, social sites, etc to communicate with them that the Associate is no longer with the firm and may create more bad than good for the firm's website and reputation.

Unless you can get this Associate to login and remove their information from the profiles (if he actually created the profiles), then I would consult with some local companies who provide this service. We used to provide it, but it is a lot of work and not all the time beneficial and effective. Meaning, it doesn't always work as you need to get the site's owners/webmasters to get in and physically remove the links which are showing in the SERPs. It's a lot of work for you, the ORM company and the actual company who's hosting the link.

Hope this was helpful, but that's the route I'd go and recommend.

Patrick

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

Hey Courtney,

I'd recommend looking at WordPress for this, especially if it sounds like they want something up fast, which can be scaled easily in the future to support Ads, coupons, reviews, sub-categories, etc.

WordPress has tons of plugins for building nicely designed directories. Take a look at the below for WP directory reviews. Albeit, these are subjective to the author's point of view, but nonetheless, can help you with business submissions, maps display, features, and much more. http://www.wpvirtuoso.com/7-best-wordpress-directory-plugins/

Then, there are full blown WordPress directory themes. These are basically out of the box directory sites, such as this one http://www.appthemes.com/themes/vantage/ or this one http://themeforest.net/item/directory-portal-wordpress-theme/3840053.

Hope this was helpful! Sounds like it could be a fun project for you! - Patrick

Hey mag777! Happy New Year! Great question and one I'm asked a lot from my business advisory groups, clients and referral partners. It's one that undoubtedly always comes up in conversation when talking about either acquiring new domains or revamping a website... "Should we use the WWW or NON-WWW domain?"

In my 12+ years of web consulting and SEO, it has boiled down to a preference ideology. As mentioned by seoman10 in this thread, it could be seen as a shorter, easier to remember URL. When marketing the domain, you'd always want to confirm the WWW is redirected to the NON-WWW if this is the path you choose to take. And visa versa NON-WWW --> WWW.

As Gaston mentions too, check out your competitors URL structure. It's a quick glimpse up to the address bar while you are already doing your competitive research. Do some searches in Google as well for your website and competitors to see how much of the URL does or could display. Moz.com doesn't use WWW. They could get away with it because it's so short. I on the other hand almost need to with https://whiteboardcreations.com since it's a much longer domain. Keep this in mind for those domains you're working on, too.

From an SEO school of thought and how I now operate, I choose the NON-WWW simply because we can get just a little more of the URL to show in Google SERPs, if we're targeting inner pages to provide a hint more of visual for the searcher. The URL string matches more closely to the Title and Description. That is the way I look at this strategy.

Here is a quick video from Matt Cutts a few years back... should ease your concerns over redirects  
https://youtu.be/Filv4pP-1nw 

Either way, the websites you work on for yourself or your clients will be fine as long as you are consistent for the entire site and redirects are tested and confirmed functional.

Cheers to a successful 2018 for you and everyone else reading!

• Patrick @ Whiteboard Creations (Apex, NC)

Vince,

We have had several clients purchase domains owned by other companies, so I'll recommend to you what I told them... Visit http://www.sedo.com/us/buy-domains/domain-brokerage/ and get them into the mix of becoming your broker, especially if the company who owns the domain is a little tough to get in touch with. Out of the 6 clients who have had to purchase domains from others, 2 went at it on their own and the others used SEDO and enjoyed the experience.

Also, check out GoDaddy's Domain Brokerage services here http://www.godaddy.com/domains/domain-broker.aspx.

Hope this was helpful. - 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 Ruben,

You may want to clear your cache for your browser, then restart the browser and log back in to Facebook. This is just a thought based on my test. I threw your link in my FB page and it seems to be loading the content and you can select 1 of 2 thumbnails. Have a look at the screenshot below.

See if that helps! Hope it does  
Patrick

Hqrs7t6

If you want to be subtle about it, then just display a simple horizontal message at the top of the browser window as Cyto references. It isn't in your face, but it is noticable. Leave a small "X" for people to close the message bar and make the bar itself clickable to link to your new website(s).

If you want to really let everyone know, then create a slider image/graphic and place right smack dab in the middle of the Home page and have it scroll with your other images/graphics. Make the graphic clickable to the new website(s).

In my opinion, I would go with the more subtle approach as the visitors will see the site pushed down a little with the message bar clearly having an X to close and a text blurb about the new site and a CTA to click to visit. Also, this will show on all pages from where the visitor lands.

Patrick

Hi Federico,

I saw the title change too. I'm sure the social chatter was going nuts all over the world seeing something like that initially. Hopefully, SEOs and content marketers have settled down a bit, like I have.

Guest blogging will continue, I believe, so long as it doesn't look spammy and/or paid for. I mean, how else will we be able to distribute content all over and build relationships?

Building the brand with guest posts should be a focus, rather than linking out to exact keyword phrases as many do and have done. I'm guilty of it for our site and clients. Things now need to change and that's our goal. Adapt and improve and be as proactive as possible. Much like you keeping up on the latest from Google HQ

We'll be the ones adding value to our service offerings and ultimately for our clients. - Cheers! Patrick

All great answers here for you, Iris.

I agree with PixelKicks (I gave them a thumbs up) as we use WP Smush.it and love the plugin! WP Smush.it will help you moving forward to keep all your new images uploaded to the pages/posts to be of optimal size for increased page load times.

We haven't worked with Enable Media Replace plugin yet, but from the looks of it, this plugin should accomplish your goals and we'll be implementing for our sites now too.

Just be sure not to completely delete the original (larger) files until you have replaced them and created your links and even tags if they were tagged for SEO purposes.

Patrick

Great question, David.

Yes, feed your website's blog with content. We fell off for a long time on ours, but just yesterday I have put into place to have 2-4 articles posted to our blog per month and hired a great freelance writer to help with that. So, pumping more content to our site for Google to index. That is great and all, however, we are taking the approach of 'topical' vs 'keyword' driven articles due to all the latest Google updates. In doing this, we are writing for our viewers or people searching for solutions for the services we provide AND targeting some keywords and phrases along the way. 2 birds with 1 stone so to speak.

Per outsourcing your content, there are a number of sites out there, but like vzPro states, be weary of who you hire. If you are giving them full range to develop the content, then be sure to read through each sentence for grammar or spelling. For example: some writers use "optimisation" vs "optimization" and so on. We have used scripted.com before and it worked really well. I know some people use spinner software and such, but I wouldn't recommend that route at all. It looks spammy even though they promise it isn't.

Per coming up with content, have someone do your research and find all the articles and websites they can about the subjects pertaining to your client's products and services and industry. Then, from there, structure your blog topics, create your titles and begin writing.

vzPro, I like your idea a lot for some cheaper articles from iwriter.com, which you then rewrite and input your own verbiage, experiences and insight! May have to try that tactic

Patrick

Hey James! Yes, you can certainly track clicks from your email as Lynn explained and that Google link helps for the walk-through! I wrote an article almost 2 years ago about this very topic (http://whiteboardcreations.com/google-analytics-email-signature-click-tracking/), which we helped coach our clients on and we also implemented. It is very cool and you'll be surprised at the clicks you actually get from your email signature!

Great question and glad you're thinking outside the box. Many people literally forget the power of email and an imformative email signature with calls to action! All the best in your tracking!

• Patrick

Ahh, yes! No problem about pointing it out either. I loved that feature to see who else is out there in the Moz world

Thanks for the reply and passing along the note, Keri!