mOxby Design

The only concerns I would have are: 1. Are the pages doing the linking on authoritative sites - i.e. is the site quality doing you good? 2. How much text are they copying? Just because you don't want your content duplicated across the web 3. What anchor text are they using to link to you and is it consistent with the subject matter of the page they have linked to? Otherwise, even a nofollow link has value (just not for page rank, but that's only one consideration so never mind) and a more natural link profile has nofollows in it anyway. So long as the site doing the linking is not likely to harm your reputation I wouldn't worry too much.

Have you checked in Google WMT or robots.txt that you're not excluding certain query strings? There's nothing innately wrong with your URL construction and still has keywords in it so is helpful for search and humans. So check 1. WMT 2. Robots.txt 3. Also check the links between the pages are fine and followed 4. Sitemap.xml? Are they in there? 5. Finally - make sure you haven't canonicalled incorrectly such to remove URLs accidentally from search. Hope this helps.

Any time you are treating search engines (not just Google) differently from human visitors you are getting into the realms of a potential penalty. You may see a short-term gain but it is not worth the risk of a long-term penalty/ As has been said above Google isn't stupid and their algorithms get updated so often you cannot assume you can get away with stuff like hidden links, hidden search-engine-only-content etc. And why do you need to hide a 'high quality' link or good content anyway. If you're providing a great page and have a link to a helpful resource for your visitors, then why hide it in the first place. Wanting to hide it suggests you shouldn't have that link to me.

With the right amount of keyword research and focussed page topic/content text you can have one 'company' website and then each of your services as a 'department', to use that analogy. Renaissance-Design makes a point about similar services etc, but equally if your website has a clear message and each page has the right focus, then when people search for your services they are delivered the appropriate page in the search results, which is what. Separate sites may also multiply your work when it comes to link building as a good link gives value to the page and the overall domain, so if you have one domain you are serving all pages well with every link you can build.

What do you mean by 'selling SEO services to the trade'? We work with a Social Media guy whose client we are working on THROUGH him, so I don't get direct contact with the client. If that's what you mean then we fulfil that criteria. In terms of your reports, we do our own website analysis report without automation based on some manual research and output from a few tools, a good report takes a couple of hours to be useful, practical to the client and provide a good method of knowing what to do against the competition.

If the two sites have different purposes and different content then there's no reason they should be adversely affecting each other. If the two sites are related but have different content then you could do one site some good by linking from the other. Sites fall and rise in search in ebbs and flows depending on 1. Algorithm Updates 2. How you change your own website 3. The quality of the content and links to your website 4. Your keyword strategy 5. What other sites are doing ... etc etc so the simple ownership of two unrelated sites won't be a problem. The only thing that comes to mind was if you had www.my-blue-widgets.co.uk AND www.my-blue-widgets.com then depending on how well optimised both addresses are, you may find the .com ranks better for 'my blue widgets' just due to exact match. But all in all, I wouldn't worry and keep focussing on your organic, ethical SEO activities and making sure you don't have duplicate content.

When did you last change the TITLE tag? You say it's never been just 'Ferret Beds UK' - how long as the website been live and what other things have you done to increase the frequency Google/Yahoo/Bing re-index the site? e.g. 1. Re-submitting XML Sitemap 2. Share on social media 3. Link on a more frequently crawled (and high quality) website ...for example?

Hi there, I'm hoping this is going to be a short answer! We can hope I guess... I'm sorting out some mess that problems our own website had ages ago created, which means we now have loads of duff URLs appearing in Google Webmaster Tools. Long story short - old website was based on /index.php and used query strings. New site is pure HTML, however there's still some query string mess in GWT. I have done 301 redirects in htaccess for any requests using /index.php however, some of the pages appear like this: /?page=search_engine_submission So there is a query string but no reference to the old index.php, making this technically a valid URL, therefore not 404-ing. The following haven't worked. RedirectMatch 301 ^/\?page=$ new-url-here RedirectMatch 301 ^/?page=$ new-url-here RedirectMatch 301 ^page=$ new-url-here RedirectMatch 301 ^page$ new-url-here All I want to identify is if there is the querystring page ANYWHERE in the URL then redirect to root, but it's not playing ball. Any ideas? Thanks in advance!

Can you post the URL and I will look to see if I can spot problems?

Any information that people will find interesting and are happy to share is worth adding to your website. Don't add anything unless it adds value to the site and to your visitors' experience. If you can do a blog and add to it regularly (everyday, once a week, once a month... whatever but be consistent) then you can increase the likelihood of repeat visitors, yes. And make sure the content you are adding is related in some way to what you do or the area you work in.

iFrames are bad full stop really. Moreover if the page that's INSIDE the iFrame is indexed, then visitors can get to that page without even seeing the containing page, which can make you look bad. If you have a valid internal link in an <A> tag and that loads in the iFrame, then any search engine will jump from that link to the relevant page and then any links thereafter. And yes, keywords in your URL do make a difference. It's only one factor, but it does affect your rankings.

Shove a load of keyword combinations into the Google keyword tool http://bit.ly/t4KpDM This way you can put in the words you think work and Google can tell you what people are actually putting in. As henbast rightly says if you are niche AND people are searching for it then if you do the right SEO stuff you can be really strong in your rankings quite quickly. The important thing is to get the keyword combinations people are really using rather than what you would put in yourself.

The current rough guidance from Google is here http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=99170 and here http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=146897 basically, if a rich snippet is in any of the accepted methods then it will be beneficial and perfectly okay. The easiest thing is to choose a method of marking up your snippet and stick to that method rather than chopping or changing else you're just going to give yourself headaches (literal, not metaphorical!)

If your content is copied, firstly you have a right to complain and stand up against it. The main SEO impact of duplicate content is the weakening of the potential ranking factor for the copied page, as another will be trying to compete with you. If your site is authoritative, people love to share it and is well linked to, then as the original writer you shouldn't be penalised. And as a last resort you can always report the site who is copying you. Of course... you could see copied content as an opportunity to get a link crediting you as the original author

Sub-domain If you are trying to rank more than one page, especially on the same website (which a subdomain is) then you're weakening your ranking potential for BOTH pages - so it is not advised. Links I'm not sure what you mean by 'a couple of links went down to the second page' - but make sure your internal linking structure is sound and makes it clear which keywords you intend to target for the page you're linking to. Downtime Downtime can cause a temporary drop in rankings. However if your site's optimisation is strong and you're linked to from worthwhile sources then you should see this situation fix itself.

For PDFs what I would be tempted to do would be to ensure that you have a custom 404 page on which you say you've moved some files around and provide links to the new PDFs. The other thing is to make sure you've cleared your cache after you've uploaded your new htaccess file but before you re-try it in a browser. Sometimes I've found browsers work off the downloaded version rather than the new one.

A way of getting your site re-indexed quicker is to ping it out on Social media to people who may be interested in your site. Another is to get a link to your site from another one which is busier/more prominent which gets re-indexed quicker and therefore so will yours. Sitemaps You didn't need to have bought software. Just sign up free for each search engine's webmaster tools - e.g. http://www.google.co.uk/sitemaps And then generate a free XML site map here - http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ Upload it to your home directory using FTP and then submit using the search engine's tools. Broken Links Broken links will HARM your SEO so do upload the 'fixed version'. In all things remember you can't control search engines but you can help them to find your site quicker and to rank it better.

Indications are that Bing particularly are looking at using it with Google taking it into account. The real power lies if your SEO campaign is 1. Local (City/County/State) 2. Needs 'rich snippets' - i.e. pieces of information that search engines may find useful in ranking your site - e.g. menus, business reviews from customers. It doesn't take much to mark up an address to strengthen your local SEO campaign and increase consistency in your business location across websites, Google Places listings etc. So you may as well adopt Schema.org/Micro-formats where it's quick and easy to implement.

Don't buy links. Don't do it. If you need links in scale then couple your link-building with social media and create great content that people will want to share and link to. Part of the Google Panda updates is to detect and devalue bought links so I agree with Rallport on this one. With bought links, you may get short-term gain, but the likelihood is a penalty and long-term consequences that are hard to reverse.

There are ways to 'keep' your duplicate content for users but ensure there are no duplicate listings:- 1. Block the least important one using a Disallow command in Robots.txt 2. Ensure you have set the canonical to the page that matters. For example I have a client site built on WP. I have created a post which within WP I have then set to be the 'homepage'. This could have created a Duplicate Content problem because it would have created domain.com/article1/ and domain.com/ - all you have to do is ensure the rel=canonical is set to the preferred page. Ideally you do both so that the duplicate never re-appears in the SERPs. Hope this helps.

@slacky- You need to do research for quality, related links - volume alone will not do it...chances are some of those backlinks will not be targeted for your audience and therefore not positively affect your rankings at all.

I've just sent our clients, prospects and general business contacts e-cards. Yes it's cheaper and quicker, but our motivation is that we keep paper usage to a minimum. Each e-card was done individually with their own message, so still had a personal touch (no mass cards). Don't think there's any harm in e-cards, unless you know of a client/contact who really prefers real mail.

When I said remove it from web master tools, I wasn't implying you put it there. If you go into your domain in Webmaster Tools > Site Configuration > Crawler Access > Remove URL and enter in the web address containing the directory then within 24 hours or so it should be de-listed from Google. For it to have appeared in the first place, there must be a link to it... After digging around... the link is on this thread: http://www.webdesignerforum.co.uk/topic/41808-extreme-javascript/ I would remove that if I were you now the site is on its own domain. In future, if you're going to put temp addresses on here, then have the NOINDEX option and only let search bots index once you launch the site properly.

I've just been dealing with 301's for one of my clients, I'll have a dig and let you know. Are you prepared to e-mail me the robots.txt and any .htaccess file you may have in that directory? Thanks. P.S. Step one is to Disallow that directory in your robots.txt. The 301 is working. And then remove the URL in your Google Webmaster tools. I'll hopefully be able to help more if I can have the above files Thanks.

Not as yet, but looking at various options for future design work. If you have any issues to warn about in advance, let us know