Free SEO Advice
- Started
- Last post
- 227 Responses
- ********0
my brain hurts
- lol... yup thats SEO for you... its like the best game of warcraft evertrooperbill
- trooperbill0
@moth writing your response now :)
- nocomply0
Hey Trooperbill. Thanks for your generous offer. I got one for ya that I think a lot of others also suffer from:
duplicate content on wordpress/blogs
I know there's already been a lot written about this (believe me I've read it). But I haven't found a good answer to my problem.
Here's my main problem: The homepage shows 5 complete versions of the most recent blog posts. The 5 posts are also available at their own post-permalink URLs.
Now I can shorten the posts on the homepage to only an excerpt, but this is not something my client is willing to do.
I'm pretty convinced this duplicate content is hurting my client's rankings.
WWTBD? What would trooperbill do?
- lol...WWTBD, man i need a tshirt with that on it lol.trooperbill
- trooperbill0
hmmm... any chance you can post/email me the link to look at?
would probably require some php additions but the easiest thing off the top of my head is to check if the article page is in the top x posts and REL="canonical" it back to the home page... i'd then nofollow all links to archive posts except ones based on category (YES including keyword/meta pages)
i'll have a think about this more.
- trooperbill0
check:
/template_permalink.asp?id=312and
/template_permalink.asp?id=311
for pointers
- trooperbill0
@nocomply First thoughts emailed back to you dude.
- dconstrukt0
ok here's one for ya...
we've got a site that was ranked pretty high for many of its keywords, all of a sudden the site seems to have dropped out of search.
when you type in site:(url) the site shows up.
but not in search.
whats the deal?
and what can we do to fix this??
Thanks
- trooperbill0
Sounds like youve incurred a penalty
how old was the site?
Did you buy links?
What does webmaster tools say?
does it show when you search for Company Name
- lambsy0
what's a penalty?
- trooperbill0
it where a google engineer manually tweaks the factors in your ranking. you rarely get banned nowerdays, what usually happens is you get a penalty of varying scales.
- read other peoples experiences http://www.webmaster…trooperbill
- Stugoo0
TrooperBill,
Thanks for this btw. Just read through the posts and you have answered most of my SEO questions. Much appreciated dude!however I have a couple.
I heard that img Alt attributes take less precedence than text for SEO? EG, if I was to use an image as my h1 as oppose to text. Is this true?I saw you directed a few people to your blog about certain things and one debate I raised before was this :
http://www.qbn.com/topics/571586…How would this effect SEO?
cheers buddy!
- trooperbill0
@stugo yes alt is marginally less 'weighty' than anchor. anyhoo why'd you put an image in a h1, it doesnt make semantic sense?
regarding content first - if you accept the following statements to be true then you'll understand why this is best practice:
* google gives more weight to links with good anchor text
* google gives more weight to links surrounded with on-topic text
* google only attributes weight to the first link to a page in your content (sometimes it uses the second but thats rare)so as a result having your content first gives you the opirtunity to use better anchor text from links that are inside paragraphs of content that override the links in your menus i.e. intead of 'products / services / about your links would carrt more weight as you coudl link ' our range of widgets' / ' learn about our wodget finding' / 'company name is...'
hope that helps!
- Stugoo0
That is helpful trooperbill thanks mate.
re the h1 query.
I was building a site that had to be tip top on SEO. As a degree of argument and saving the design we looked at hiding the h1 under a banner or using the banner image to nest the H1 alt text... which was a cheat. so that was bad.... I just wanted a second opinion!In the end I used css to actually flip the h1 and h2 tags on the display but have them appear correctly on the code.... very niftly little trick i f do say so myself :)
- use text indenting and a background image!trooperbill
- was a bit more complicated than that! :D http://bluewing.chel…Stugoo
- ********0
This is all very helpful stuff trooperbill and I thank you for offering your time for free.
I'll likely email you about doing something in a more profession capacity for People's Music Store at some point.
- trooperbill0
no worries... glad to help... keep asking :)
- blaw0
I notice you use post numbers vs. pretty URLs on your blog. Don't pretty URLs have a positive affect on SEO?
- trooperbill0
@blaw, in MSN and Yahoo, yes, but they all now index querystrings which used to be a brick wall to SEO. just make sure that your querystrings are search friendly i.e. include product names, not just numbers.
my blog works on querystrings with zero negative effect.
- ********0
Hold on. Isn't SEO considered by people with um... brains to be complete Bullshit?
Anyone who knows their onions and has in fact worked with the scum that are SEO consultants know what a load of twaddle they come up with. If you want to spend all day thinking up ways of gaming the system feel free, but you'd be better off learning how to make proper websites and producing decent content.
Ironically also isn't this very post a feeble effort at SEM?
- 23kon0
websuperhero
in a sense you are correct, there are a lot of companies out there who will bamboozle you with SEO marketing b*llshit, in the same way there are a lot of big design/branding companies out there who will promise the earth and give you the knowledge and experience from over the years then end up giving your expensive project to some junior to knockout and end up with very dissapointing results.
The key to getting good SEO optimisation or advice is to find a good and trustworthy company who can actually prove results based on case studies and NOT based on b*llshit by their marketing guy who has come in and spouted off his script that he verbally diahorrates to everyone. (yup i know thats not a word).
Trooperbill seems like a genuine guy, especially for giving such helpful information out for free.
One of the guys who used to be project manager here left and setup his own company. He's a really straight-talking no-b*llshit guy and worth getting in touch with for SEO jobs.
http://www.mackerelmedia.co.uk/
He's also got some free tips on his site too.
- ********0
my problem stems from the fact that basic common sense, good coding practise and good content will provide you with all the "SEO" you'd ever need. i've met and worked with a lot of SEO "experts" and faced the consequences of their meddling when they panic clients into ridiculous, costly changes based on unproven and unprovable theory. thats the beauty of it for the SEO consultant because there is NO provable way of measuring which particular "enhancement" made a difference - or whether it was just dumb luck.
attempting to influence search is pointless, unethical and actually dilutes the value of search. do you want to find the most genuinely relevant content for you or find a site that does a better job of gaming the system?
- if you think that then you're doomed..trooperbill
- experience and results would prove otherwise********
- oh and how do you sleep at night?********
- forgot to say - prove me wrong********