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how do you guys do onpage seo now?

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  • Hopefully some of you are still on this...

    Just a quick question. How would you throw a blog into this mix?

    Like an actual blog. Does it matter? Do you try to silo blogs in a similar way with categories? 
  • edited December 2013
    You can silo in Wordpress just like any other website or CMS. If you want really strict siloing just noindex/robots out your main archive pages and only let Google index your category pages. If you want to get really strict, only have one category per post and no tags. One thing I haven't found (looked for) which would be nice to have is a plugin that does the navigation to the previous and next posts but only in that category. Also get a recent posts/comments plugin that also does only the same category.
  • There are several ways to silo:

    1. Submenus - you need a theme that has submenu functionality. The one we use is Avada from themeforest.
    2. Posts - there are several free plugins, Category Posts and Widget Logic, to name a few. I combine Category posts with Widgets on Pages. 

    #2 is the easiest once you get it set up. 

    Silos get your parent pages ranked, but also can get your children pages ranked as well. And yes, you can silo children pages.

    @kajzer - no, you can't. Each item in the header menu is a link, and it defeats the purpose. The home page only links to the parent pages. 
  • grax1grax1 Professional SEO, UK | White Label SEO Provider
    @Satans_Apprentice thank you for sharing so much valuable information! :x It really helps a lot when you can see some clear tips written by users how to use something in practice and not long articles where so much about theory but eventually you still don't know how to use certain things
  • Satans_Apprentice - what do you mean by submenus funcionality ?
  • googlealchemistgooglealchemist Anywhere I want
    7. Make sure to use Alt Attrib. for the home page logo. Big link juice drain. Also use Alts for pages in the menu where you can't use keywords.


    whats meant by that? the first part i assume is just having alt tags so its kw optimizted for search engines? but the second part i dont understand
  • I assume the alt attribute means alt="keyword". I assumed this was old school i.e. 2005 SEO logic. But for some reason Google uses my ALT tag for my logo image in the page title, sometimes. I'm literally not using the same ALT tag anywhere else.
  • @Satans_Apprentice I am trying to rank for 2 keywords: "best product","product reviews" Would it be better to use "best product reviews" as anchor text from the child pages or use the hash tag trick and link from the same child twice?
  • ronron SERLists.com
    Yeah, the alt appears on hover in IE, and the title appears on hover in Chrome, Firefox, Safari. I always use both when tagging an image. Old school and still part of onpage seo. Every image deserves a tag imho. It's a chance to work in LSI and anything else you want to do.

    What was meant above where @Satans_Apprentice said to use alts for menu items - what he was saying is that sometimes you can't use the keyword you want as the actual menu name - maybe because it looks stupid, or it just doesn't fit, etc. Or say you choose to use 'home' for your home page. Alt-Tagging it in the menu gives you an opportunity to carry the keyword you want for that link in the menu and the system architecture. It's a very smart seo play. The option to alt tag a menu item isn't some kind of coincidence. It was meant to be used for situations just like that. 
  • Solid on page seo has never gone out of style, and with panda and hummingbird is more important than it's been in years.
  • @Satans_Apprentice @ron How would you go about adding alt tag traditionally in WordPress Menus? Because as far as I know, it won't easily allow me to add alt tag but just the title?
  • Go to appearance=>menus in Wordpress

    For each item in a menu, there is a down arrow next to "page". Click it.

    There is a field for "title attribute". Put your desired keyword in it.

    When you hover over the menu item in the live website, the keywords should appear.

    I'm not sure if this works for every WP theme, but it's always worked for me.
  • @Satans_Apprentice Oh, right as I speculated, it's title tag that you guys were talking about. I was wondering as because alt tag is generally use to tag images.

    Btw @ron's advise is spot on. Use alt tag on every image. It's a little pain for every image to do and might feel a bit of old school but it's a nice little factor to complete your onpage SEO.
  • edited December 2013
    As far as on page is concerned, I'd say the definitive white hat resource would be Moz and Rand Fishkin. This would be the "Bible" for those interested http://moz.com/blog/visual-guide-to-keyword-targeting-onpage-optimization

    image
  • Rand is great. Check out the blog at www.seodesignsolutions.com. Jeffrey is a genius. His writing is a little cryptic, but he is the man.
  • I will check out SEO Ultimate, sounds useful for silo structured sites. Anyone else familiar with it?
  • edited January 2014
    Great content, thanks for sharing.

    Satans_Apprentice  and anyone else that knows silo architecture

    Taking the main example, do you think it's ok to have "duplicate" words in the url like

    example.com/dog-collars/steel-dog-collars/
    example.com/dog-collars/iron-dog-collars/
    example.com/dog-collars/copper-dog-collars/

    or have it clean like

    example.com/dog-collars/steel
    example.com/dog-collars/iron
    example.com/dog-collars/copper

    while keeping the page title and anchor text as "Steel dog collars" but keeping the url/slug trimmed
  • Satans_ApprenticeSatans_Apprentice SERLists.com
    edited January 2014
    It's ok to have the keywords repeat. Here's a BIG TIP for everyone: google only looks after the last slash for keywords. Ex: www.fubar.com/wagons/red. You are optimizing for "red". Google takes clues from /wagons/ but your keyword is "red". The right way to place it is www.fubar.com/wagons/red-wagons. Your keyword is "red wagons". Just don't go crazy with it. Google bot is fairly stupid. You need to spell it out.
  • @cefege: stay away from SEO ultimate. I love Jeffrey, but the plugin has issues, and is a performance killer. If you want to silo a wordpress site, there are videos for sale on Network Empire. They show you how to use free plugins for Silos. This is a demo site for silos: http://www.credit-help-info.com. Sue Bell from Network Emoire built it. I will say it again: silo architecture and link juice sculpting without "nofollow" is the secret sauce for SEO. If you architect your site correctly with great content, and perfect on-page SEO, you can rank more easily with fewer links, and the links you build will have greater impact. In the age of penguin, fewer links=less risk.
  • Satans_ApprenticeSatans_Apprentice SERLists.com
    edited January 2014
    @cefege - I have a lot of compound keywords "IT Support", "IT Services", "IT Support Services". I optimized one of my pages for IT Support Services Company. I get it ranked for a lot of combinations. My suggestion is to mix your child page anchors, for each keyword you want that page to rank for. The most anchors go for your most valuable keywords. The easiest way to take down a keyword is to optimize for just that keyword, and focus the page entirely on that keyword. The more keywords you try and rank on a page, the harder it is to get any of them ranked.
  • @satans_apprentice - example you gave for perfect silo structure seems to be built on joomla. Do you have any example for wordpress site ?
  • Quality advice @Satans_Appentice - Nice one.
  • Thanks! I had a hunch it might have been this way.

    @RayBan, it really doesn't matter if it's Joomla or Wordpress. The way I did it was using Stephen Cronin's advice (his link is posted in the first page of this thread, the second one), modifying my category.php page and functions.php. He gives an example site there: www.jobsinchina.com but it's just one example and I don't think the url structure is ideal but the other advice in this thread it follows almost to a T.
  • Satans_Apprentice - thanks for all the great info on silos, really appreciate it. I do have a question about what you said above:

    "Here's a BIG TIP for everyone: google only looks after the last slash for keywords. Ex: www.fubar.com/wagons/red. You are optimizing for "red". Google takes clues from /wagons/ but your keyword is "red". The right way to place it is www.fubar.com/wagons/red-wagons. Your keyword is "red wagons". Just don't go crazy with it."

    I'm working on some local/regional sites with the city name in the domain, but trying to rank for kw + city.  I've been advised that making the page url include the city PLUS the domain having the city is a bit overkill and risks "over optimization" issues.  I wonder what your thoughts are on this. 

    For example, if you were doing your IT services in Dallas and had www.BestITServicesDallas.com.  Would you go with (a) www.BestITServicesDallas.com/it-support-dallas or just (b) www.BestITServicesDallas.com/it-support (since "dallas" is already in the domain)?

    My initial thought was the former (a), but have switched to the latter (b).  I'm getting to positions in the mid-20's pretty easily (following all the rest of the SILO advice you've provided), but having a hell of a time getting much higher than that.  And these are keywords that *should be* pretty easy.  No... VERY easy. 

    Thanks man, I appreciate all the help! :)
  • goonergooner SERLists.com
    @mexiken - Option A for the reasons @satans_apprentice said. I rank local sites with the url format you mentioned (and no silo'ing to date tut tut).
  • gooner thanks.  I'm kind of leaning that way too now.  In fact, of the handful of sites that I have, the first one where I used "option A", it's ranking beautifully. Then I started listening to some recommendations to NOT do it that way, and... I'm stuck in the 20's!  lol

    Just made some changes to my newest one, back to the original format, and hopefully this will be a great 'accidental experiment'.  It's encouraging to hear you're having success with yours.  If these adjustments don't work, I may bug you a bit for some more details on what you're doing. :)

    Thanks again!
  • goonergooner SERLists.com
    @mexiken Lol but yea it's a good experiment. I always try and test things and sometimes you find some nuggets accidentally.

    No worries, give me a shout if need anything.
  • I would go with "A".

    The problem you may be running up against is Google's local algorithm. If your business does not have an address with citations in Dallas, it gets a lot harder to get ranked. I am seeing this in my neck of the woods. Locally, within 15 miles of my office, we are killing it. As you search from farther away, our rankings start to slide. This is for generic keywords like "IT Support". For keywords like "IT Support NYC", we are having a hard time beating companies with a local address in NYC. We are on the first page, but companies with what I consider to be worse SEO (Worse PR, DA, etc) are beating us.
  • The friggin' whims of Google, eh?  Because none of my sites have "real" locations - centralized call center, so it's a virtual office address that gets used.  Still, some rank fine (one currently doing very well, and others in the past), while some just can't quite get there. 

    I've tweaked a couple of the sites to go with option a, as mentioned above.  If I see anything significant change in the near future, I'll be sure to let you know.
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