State-of-the-Art

Thanks for the comments guys. I guess from the mix of answers that there is - as is so often the case - no single best strategy. Cheers.

Hi everyone, I am working on some SEO for a website I built and have a question. When building backlinks to my site (using appropriate anchor text), should I be linking to the home page or deeper into the site? For example: Method A. Build backlinks to the homepage, thereby boosting its PR and then have anchor text links on the homepage to keyword optimised pages deeper within the site. Method B. Build backlinks directly to the keyword optimised page, boosting its PR (but by less as I am targeting more than one phrase and the potential PR would be spread across these) It has been suggested to me that method A is better, but I've also heard something called a 'Deep Link Ratio' that implies that a site with balanced backlinks i.e. Method B, is better. What do you all think? Thanks.

No comments? Either i'm doing it right, or so wrong that you don't know where to start Any constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Hi everyone, I have recently finished designing my first website from the ground up - am I’m quite pleased with the result. It is a simple CSS based layout with no JavaScript (except Analytics). I've tried to SE optimise as best I can for keyword phrases (pencil portrait, portrait drawing, etc.) and used a '.htaccess' file to remove all html file extensions from the URLs and canonicalise the root address. Please tell me what you think and where I can improve - the URL is below: http://www.pencilsketchportraits.co.uk Thanks in advance.

Bingo - i think i've cracked it. using your .htaccess code 1. I've changed all the links within the site to point to "/home" instead of "/index" for the home page. 2. Changed the .htaccess redirect to go from "/home" to "www.example.co.uk/". 3. I can keep the file "index.html" as my editable home page (which is what is displayed when the redirect to "www.example.co.uk/" occurs. This seems to have avoided the endless loop between "root" and "/index". Functioning .htaccess code is now: Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.co.uk$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.co.uk/$1'>http://www.example.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteRule ^home(\.html)?$ http://www.example.co.uk/ [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}\.html -f RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.html [L] Thanks so much for your help Jay.

Yes - index.html

Huge thanks for the help. Unfortunately, that didn't work. The browser just hangs when trying to display either www.example.co.uk or www.example.co.uk/index Sorry to be a bother - any other ideas? Thanks.

Thanks for the help - Unfortunately I have zero knowledge with this type of code. Can you help me with what the code should be? Thanks.

Hi Folks, I am a beginner whose built my first website and I would like to do the following using the '.htaccess' file and need some advice: 1. non-www to www redirect for entire site 2. remove (.html) extensions for all urls (all pages are .html only) 3. redirect from www.example.co.uk/index (.html removed) page to root www.example.co.uk/ I've tried to cobbling together some code from web searches and I've managed 1. and 2., but 3. eludes me. See my .htaccess attempt below Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.co.uk$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.co.uk/$1'>http://www.example.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}\.html -f RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.html RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index\.html [NC] RewriteRule ^index\.html$ http://www.example.co.uk/ [R=301,L] Can anyone help me? Many thanks.

I appreciate your comment, obviously this is not all I am focusing on regarding SEO and content and links will be my major focus. I just want to get this bit optimised as best I can. I own the various versions of the keyword filled domain names (with and without dashes, plural and singular) and since going live on my first choice of domain (plural without dashes), I’ve become aware that there could be some search engine confusion over the keywords without the dashes and also that the singular version gets more hits. I just thought that this would be a simple changeover to make that would make some improvement to the SERPs performance. Am I barking up the wrong tree?

Thanks for your comment. Another reason I am considering this change is to go from a plural version of the keywords to a singular as my research has shown higher search for the singular forms. I believed when I sent up the website that Google and other SE's didn't differentiate between singular and plural, so I went for the plural version (as it made more sense as a company name grammatically), but since going live I’ve found that Google obviously does differentiate based on my 'Webmaster Tools' results and I’d prefer to try to optimise for the singular form (which makes more sense as a search phrase). Would this make the change more worth while? What doe people think? Thanks.

Hi folks, Can you help me with this dilema? I have set up a website under a domain name as below; [A] www.keywordkeywordkeyword.co.uk The site has been live for about 3-4months Shortly after buying the first domain, I also bought; www.keyword-keyword-keyword.co.uk Which is currently set to forward to the first domain. I am trying to improve SERPs performance, and i thought might do better for 'search' as there would be less potential confusion over the keywords. So i plan to move the site to and set up a domain forward to it from [A]. I have also built some new pages which i would put in place of the old ones when i moved the site across which have better SEO'd urls. I have two questions, 1. Is this a good idea? 2. If so what is the best way to re-direct from [A] to and not lose the links to the old domain (and not lose and SERPs performance)? You help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Thanks Dizi - yes she did do the sketches, I just hope I can do them justice with the site.

Hi All, This forum looks fantastic! I'm a marketing manager for a medium sized manufacturing company, so I do a bit of everything. Mainly desk top publishing, but I’m also managing the development of a new company website (through a web design company) which launches shortly, so I’ve been learning some html, CSS and of course SEO, so that I can talk their language a little better. I'm also trying my hand at designing websites myself - my first attempt being www.pencilsketchportraits.co.uk, which I did for a small business idea my wife is trying to get off the ground. I'm hoping to learn as much as I can here about good site-design, SEO etc. so any comments or advice would be gratefully received. Cheers, Simon.