Common FAQ’s in SEO of Webmasters/Clients Answered – 2013
Q: I want to target two different countries through my website. Should I use different ccTLD? Or a different domain or a subdomain?
Ans:-Most of the webmasters are still confused what to do in international seo. And this totally depends upon clients’ time and infrastructure.
Creating a subdomain is same as that of using a different domain. It’s same like working with a new website.
Google bot treat ccTLD as a different site and have to build all the reputation activities from the start. And you won’t get any credits like Page rank PA, DA etc. of your present website. But ccTLD is still considered as the best signal for geo targeting (website explicitly for a specific country).
As mentioned you are presently having a website which will be having some amount of PA and DA. I will recommend not to use the above three modes for geo targeting (ie; ccTLD, Different domain and subdomain) and go for sub directories so that the website gets all the credits.
| ccTLDs
eg: example.de, example.fr |
Subdomains with gTLDs
eg: de.site.com, fr.site.com, etc. |
Subdirectories with gTLDs
eg: site.com/de/, site.com/fr/, etc. |
URL parameters
eg: site.com?loc=de,?country=france, etc. |
| pros (+)- clear geotargeting- server location is irrelevant- easy separation of sites- legal requirements (sometimes) | pros (+)- easy to set up- can use Webmaster Tools geotargeting- allows different server locations- easy separation of sites | pros (+)- easy to set up- can use Webmaster Tools geotargeting- low maintenance (same host) | pros (+)(not recommended) |
| cons (-)- expensive (+ availability)- more infrastructure- ccTLD requirements (sometimes) | cons (-)- users might not recognize geotargeting from the URL alone (is “de” the language or country?) | cons (-)- users might not recognize geotargeting from the URL alone- single server location- separation of sites harder | cons (-)- segmentation based on the URL is difficult- users might not recognize geotargeting from the URL alone- geotargeting in Webmaster Tools is not possible |
For multiregional and multilingual websites, you can use rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x”
Example if you are having a website www.example.com and also www.example.com/en-au then you can use
<link rel="alternate" href="http://example.com/en-au" hreflang="en-au" />
Q: I am submitting three articles and two pr’s a week. I am not ranking well. Why? More content = Better SEO Myth or Fact?
Ans:-SEO has evolved a lot and Google uses more than 200+ signals as search ranking factors.
Even if you submit 100 articles or 100 press releases a week, you may not get into higher rankings.
Rather than going for quantity of content you should concentrate on the quality of content and try to distribute your content in social media websites like Facebook, Google plus, twitter , and linked in and bottom line is to get conversions from visits.
Q: After penguin update 2013 what are the important facts to keep in mind?
Ans:- Penguin was first rolled out on 2012 fighting against the black hat techniques like keyword stuffing, cloaking, duplicate content, thin content and violating the link scheme guidelines.
Penguin 1,(April 24, 2012)
Penguin 2, (May 26, 2012)
Penguin 3, (October 5, 2012)
Penguin 4 (May 22, 2013)
Penguin 5 (Oct 4, 2013)have been launched in order to take down the spammers.
Important thing to remember are link schemes, avoid thin content, duplicate content, less over optimized anchor text, anchor text diversity, irrelevant backlinks.
Q: Should I still use anchor text for targeting keywords?
Ans:-Using anchor text is not considered as spam unless it is not ‘over optmized’.
The primary thing to consider before keyword targeting is to diversify anchor text*. Try to mix up your anchor text for links which ultimately should look natural. When doing a link audit you should check for the following types of anchor text variations.
*Keep in mind that Correlation, Causation & Coincidence plays an important role now a days since Google search algorithm has evolved, deepening the understanding of search queries
Branded: Which includes your site name, company name, or product name.
Example: Amazon, Nokia, Dell
Exact Match: Exact match anchor text targets the exact urlthat contains the keyword to generate more visibility for search engines. Too much of this type can really hurt website since penguin is looking out for these spammers.
Example: [cupcakes] targeting the link www.example.com/cup-cakes
Partial match: This type of anchor text contain targeted keywords as well as other words.
Example: [I love cupcakes] linking to www.example.com/cup-cakesit
No Match: No match as the name says it won’t be having any relation with your brand or keywords.
Example: click here, learn more
Q: Recommend a best SEO tool
Ans:-Google webmaster tools
Google Analytics
Bing Webmaster tools
Q: Disallowing through robots.txt or rel=”noindex” which is the best way to block a webpage? Explain the difference?
Robots.txt and noindex tags comes under Robots Exclusion Protocol.
The recommended method used to remove a url from search results is to use noindex tag.
Robots.txt is used to block search engine bots from entering the blocked pages.
But even if a page is blocked using robots there is a chance to appear it in search results with a message “A description for this result is not available because of this site’s robots.txt” This is only because of the other sites are still linking to it.
Never use confidential pages to block using robots since every one can access robots.txt
Q: Things to be remembered while choosing a domain
This totally depends upon your business, where to market, and the targeted audience.
Either you can select brand name as your domain name like www.crumbs.com or you can select domain which has a very slight influence of your targeted keyword/business like www.nycake.com
Try to attract audience by building an amazing user friendly website that is most important. So that people start linking your website naturally.
Q: I am having higher page rank than my competitor. But I am not ranking well. Why?
The short answer will ‘You may not’. Page rank of a website primarily aids the crawl rate. Don’t obsess over PR too much. But it still has got some relevance to some degree in SEO.
PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + … + PR(Tn)/C(Tn))
Q: Since no follow links do not pass any value, how important it is in link building?
No follow attribute indicates search engines not to follow a particular link. But search engine still index these links while they won’t passing linkjuice (page rank) or anchor text across them.
No follow links can still bring traffic which leads to conversions.
As per Google’s updated link schemes, no follow links are used in advertising links and press releases.
Q: What should I do when I receive an unnatural link warning?
Case 1: Low quality links points to your site
If you get an unnatural link warning, where you are having low quality links, you can check the Links to your site section in the webmaster tools and check for the shady links that points the website.
You can remove the links by contacting that webmaster or ask to add no follow attribute so that it doesn’t pass any page rank signal.
Or you can use Disavow link tool in webmaster tools. Learn more about disavow links here.
Case 2: Links violating guidelines found on your site
Check for the paid links or any link exchanges on your sites that violate google guidelines causing page rank alteration. Either you have to remove the links or put rel =no follow attribute.
When you are done with all these steps you can submit for reconsideration request.
Q: Presently having a website with good number of backlinks and DA and PA. I want to migrate to another domain. What should I do? Will my search rankings drop?
Q: Giving a 301 redirect from old domain including all the pages to new domain is the best option to indicate search engine the domain migration.
This helps to pass the domain as well as page authority of your old website to the new one.
There won’t be any immediate rank signal migration for any 301 redirection. You will get the credit over time.
Nothing to worry about the search rankings when it is properly redirected using 301.
Some very large websites like nuts.com during domain migration Google algo took some time to understand the new content.
seomoz.org to moz.com was one of the ‘clean’ domain migration happened recently.
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