http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/421/SEO-Report-Card-Escaping-the-Google-Sandbox/ User submitted comments to Practical Ecommerce's article entitled SEO Report Card: Escaping the Google Sandbox en-us Copyright 2007 Confluence Publishing Mon, 12 Mar 2007 08:12:36 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/rss/ Practical Ecommerce v2.0.1 Ecommerce kmurdock@practicalecommerce.com bgetting@practicalecommerce.com 60 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/421/SEO-Report-Card-Escaping-the-Google-Sandbox/#comment776 Did you guys do a test on Buyautomotive.com ? Mon, 12 Mar 2007 08:12:36 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/421/SEO-Report-Card-Escaping-the-Google-Sandbox/#comment776 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/421/SEO-Report-Card-Escaping-the-Google-Sandbox/#comment703 The redirect to make sure that your site either has a "www" or not can be done using a .htaccess file with mod_rewrite, if your hosting server is running Apache and has this enabled. Contact your hosting company or server admin to find out if this is possible, and if not another alternative should be available (depending on the web server). In addition, mod_rewrite should be able to handle your dynamic URLs as well. Changes will need to be made to CandyPress in order to make sure that it is outputting the correct URLs. However, all of the actual URL mapping can be done with mod_rewrite. If your hosting company does not allow mod_rewrite (as it may be Windows-based hosting) there should be an alternative available to you. If not, switch hosts. Wed, 07 Mar 2007 18:25:10 -0700 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/421/SEO-Report-Card-Escaping-the-Google-Sandbox/#comment703 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/421/SEO-Report-Card-Escaping-the-Google-Sandbox/#comment584 We have similar issues at TrueRenu.com, and I was would love advice on how to fix problems identified: 1) Dynamic Product Pages. We are using CandyPress (asp based), hosted on a shared box at CrystalTech. I have found a couple of solutions that change the dynamic pages, but these all require software loaded on server which is not allowed in my shared server environment. Are there other ways around this? 2) We have a 5/10 page ranking on www.TrueRenu.com, but a 0/10 on TrueRenu.com. I've Googled "301 Redirect" so I know the code for .asp, but where do I put this? TIA --Eric Fri, 02 Mar 2007 06:56:40 -0700 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/421/SEO-Report-Card-Escaping-the-Google-Sandbox/#comment584 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/421/SEO-Report-Card-Escaping-the-Google-Sandbox/#comment490 That would change the nature of those links to one-way. Sun, 25 Feb 2007 13:08:35 -0700 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/421/SEO-Report-Card-Escaping-the-Google-Sandbox/#comment490 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/421/SEO-Report-Card-Escaping-the-Google-Sandbox/#comment429 Thanks for the tip on the Safari screen shot site. I was wondering if such a tool existed. I wrapped the H1 around only the first sentence (to shorten it) and display it inline so it still appears to be a whole paragraph. I'll crack away at getting Safari to cooperate with my CSS. If I nofollowed the links out to some of the other blogs on our blogroll who mind me doing so, would this force Google to count incoming links from these sites as one-way? Thu, 22 Feb 2007 10:10:36 -0700 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/421/SEO-Report-Card-Escaping-the-Google-Sandbox/#comment429 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/421/SEO-Report-Card-Escaping-the-Google-Sandbox/#comment420 Hi Brady. That's great that you've already started implementing my recommendations. Wow you're fast! :-) Please keep me posted of the resulting impact on your rankings and traffic. To answer your questions... 1. It's good to keep an H1 tag (I'd make it shorter though), for SEO purposes. You have the right idea, but the div tag didn't fix it. It still looks bad in Safari. Use the free Safari browser screenshot generator at http://www.browsrcamp.com/ to do your troubleshooting. You'll be able to see when you got it working. 2. Traded (reciprocal) links don't count for much from an SEO perspective. So if you linked back to your dad's blog, then that would discount his link to you. You'd be connecting up the link neighborhoods and the link wouldn't look like a vote that you had earned anymore. 3. Your time in the TrustBox might continue for weeks or for months. I don't anticipate that reciprocal links will shorten your time in the 'Box. One-way links from trusted blogs and... Thu, 22 Feb 2007 06:58:36 -0700 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/421/SEO-Report-Card-Escaping-the-Google-Sandbox/#comment420 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/421/SEO-Report-Card-Escaping-the-Google-Sandbox/#comment414 Thanks very much for the article reviewing our site, Stephan. Here are a couple questions for you. #1 I hadn't seen the site in Safari, yet, and was shocked to see how large the home page text appeared. I used the H1 tag as I read it was treated with more importance by the SEs. Using IE, Opera and FF the text appears much more appropriately sized as I have redefined the H1 tag with CSS. I have changed the code to this. Will this work in Safari as well and help with SEO? index.php: Two Hands Worldshop offers beautiful fair-trade-certified arts and handcrafts from the world's artisans. Fair trade means fair wages, safe working conditions and long-term, stable business partnerships for disadvantaged artisans and producers. Your purchase makes a difference. Read more about Fair Trade here. css: #fronttext { font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: bold; text-align: justify; margin-top: 10px; } #fronttext h1 { font-family:... Wed, 21 Feb 2007 18:21:18 -0700 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/421/SEO-Report-Card-Escaping-the-Google-Sandbox/#comment414 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/421/SEO-Report-Card-Escaping-the-Google-Sandbox/#comment403 I think another important decision when designing a website is the choice of keywords. A website chasing the keyword "cars" or "used cars" might have better luck and better qualified leads if they choose "used acura" or "used toyota tundra" on its website and pages within the site. Knowing which keywords are the most popular and how easy or difficult they are to rank using SEO tatics can save you lots of wasted effort and gain faster results, too. Great article though! Tue, 20 Feb 2007 19:34:44 -0700 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/421/SEO-Report-Card-Escaping-the-Google-Sandbox/#comment403 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/421/SEO-Report-Card-Escaping-the-Google-Sandbox/#comment391 Got some valuable insights, but much of it was beyond my somewhat un-techie self. Tue, 20 Feb 2007 10:21:25 -0700 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/421/SEO-Report-Card-Escaping-the-Google-Sandbox/#comment391