Submit webmaster video questions for December 2010

NOTE: This set of questions is now closed. We got 500 questions in less than a week, and taped 70+ answers. Thanks!

It’s that time again! Next week I’ll record some new webmaster videos. I created a Google Moderator page where you can post questions or suggestions and vote topics up and down. I won’t be able to answer every single question, but I’ll tackle several popular ones plus a few of the more interesting questions. Please submit questions that lots of people would be interested in, not just a question about your specific site.

Just a reminder: please leave your question on the Google Moderator page, not in the comments here. When you leave a question on the moderator page, people can vote for the questions and I can see which questions people are most interested in.

30 Responses to Submit webmaster video questions for December 2010 (Leave a comment)

  1. Just a reminder: don’t leave your questions in the comments here. Leave them at https://www.google.com/moderator/#16/e=3f6fe

  2. I am new to SEO and have just hired and SEO expert who will start January 10, 2011- full time.

    My website is very messy however I have chosen to design the front page myself without help from my design team to understand how to rank on Google…. coffee after coffee I am learning SEO way into the small hours of the night. Then I saw the light- I have not many back-links to my website thus building no trust with Google. I have now began to manually build back-links over a period of time- about 1 per week.

    Then I began to wonder if the links going from my website (my portfolio) to the websites we are building for our clients were penalising me with Google because they are not websites with relevant content pertinent to my business. So I have changed the link on my client’s sites from my company name to relevant keyword anchor text- my key words: web design Byron Bay.

    Does this strategy make any sense Matt?
    My new strategy should be interesting- this may shift me from the second page to the front page.

    My strategy has worked for the keywords I have optimised however their is 1 keyword I cannot shift from the second page of Google to the front page (as previously discussed- web design Byron Bay). My SEO strategy has prompted 2 of of my competitors to use my my website name in their own title tag of their Website… hence clients searching my name are seeing competing websites above me with my company name attached to it- a very good tactic from my competitors indeed!

    I have just realised (doh) that the keywords on my left-side menu do not match the page title of which I should rectify this in the next 24hrs.

    My question…

    With Off-Page optimization in mind- should I be tweeting the keyword inner-page title links and transfer these tweets to face-book for that competitive edge over my competition as Google will be showing Social results as I understand in the near future?. Maybe this will help move me to the front page! I will be interested what my new employee next year suggests.

    Regards
    Todd Johnson

  3. From the Title I thought the topic is related to video, entirely video(Youtube) but to my surprise it was about your explanation on various questions from webmasters via Video ;). Got it. 🙂 Have bunch of questions I haven’t found elsewhere from your earlier video suggestions, will see if someone else have had few of them in the video questions.. Thanks for the update!

  4. why cant i de-lock my .co.uk tld from being UK centric as i have clients overseas.

    is it possible for me to set up folders to target different languages from a .co.uk tld?

  5. Just a reminder: please leave your question on the Google Moderator page, not in the comments here. When you leave a question on the moderator page, people can vote for the questions and I can see which questions people are most interested in.

  6. Woops, sorry for the double post. I meant to say:

    @Todd Johnson: Remember to post the questions via Google Moderator 🙂

    “Just a reminder: please leave your question on the Google Moderator page, not in the comments here. When you leave a question on the moderator page, people can vote for the questions and I can see which questions people are most interested in.”

  7. Thanks for sharing these wonderful videos with webmasters. I always follow your videos. Thanks for sharing
    Regards
    Paul

  8. Matt,

    Are you going to do as you did last time and pick questions that may be good questions but that the majority of people voted down or didn’t vote for at all? I sincerely hope you do, because for a change there are a few good questions in there, for example the one by Andreas in Switzerland (mod_pagespeed for IIS…that’s actually a good idea), that are getting voted down because they’re not the standard “why don’t I rank” or “when will Google update PageRank” questions.

  9. I’m trying to think of a question to ask that doesn’t give away all your secrets! All my questions are about changes to the Google algorithm! 🙂

  10. Matt,
    Since Google Webmaster Tools has forbidden webmasters from using auto query tools to document changes in ranking for different keywords. For years I have done it manually or had an employee do it. it’s billable as a monthly report, but if Google would allow webmasters to see specified keyword rankings, it would lessen the resource drain from off site auto query tools that everyone is using anyways.

    Any plans for Google, GA or GWT to have this feature next year?

    Thanks for keeping Google Spam free, (or at least trying VERY HARD).

    =-)

  11. Hi Matt, I really appreciate the time you put into collecting questions, and your thoughtful video responses. I feel much more confident about my SEO strategy when I hear it from you, as opposed to forums and other websites, where much of the SEO advice is mere speculation. Keep up the great work, Matt.

  12. December is an incredibly busy time for almost everyone and there never seem to be enough hours in a day to accomplish everything that needs to be done. Despite this, you’re still taking the time to answer questions and help people with their web sites. This is a tremendously kind thing for you to do.

    Take good care and have a wonderful 2011 – your efforts and the help you provide are incredibly appreciated.

  13. Thanks, Matt, for yet another valuable resource to us webmasters. I have to say, you put a good face on Google, despite the fact you didn’t attend Duke. (Totally kidding! Blue Devils nothin…)

    I’ve just posted a question regarding a potential negative impact of link spammers – my worry being that link spam will be or can be used as a potential threat amongst competitors. Anyhow – I do have another question:

    Why’d you pick Thesis? I mean: it looks great, but what were your reasons? (I’m currently theme shopping!) Merry Christmas, and keep up the excellent work.

  14. My question may be interesting for many people, question is:
    “Change google rankings and results for some web site if google know that other sites that linking to this website are owned by the same person?
    And in this way: Is it bad to have many sites and link them to each other?”

  15. Eduard,

    You would need to have a ridiculous number of websites to get to even a PR 1. I can’t imagine this would be a very good strategy.

  16. Great idea Matt and thanks for your time and efforts to educate us.

  17. Hey Matt,

    I guess you usually upload your videos to youtube?
    Could you please upload them somewhere else as well? I live in China now and youtube is banned here.

    thank you

  18. Hi Matt.
    I always watch your webmaster videos in youtube till i recently stumbled upon your blog. I am learning about the structure of your blog – particularly the SEO involved and hopefully i can apply to my blog. Thanks for continous informing us on SEO aspects.

    Edit: sorry didn’t notice that i need to put my full name.

  19. Hey Matt – I still have the old “May 2010” Google Moderatorvideo questions page in my bookmark files. Your new “December 2010” link is different from the old one. Perhaps you should take the old one down to avoid confusion?

  20. When will you post the video answers?! Thank you for the opportunity!

  21. I’m anxiously awaiting these videos. you answered 70+ questions? that’s a lot more than I was expecting.

  22. Google has a broad reach and many questions can come across as pretty parochial. In scanning through the questions I see that most that deal with Internationalization are voted down, I guess because most people are working with pretty small, local projects.

    Would you consider doing an ‘International session’ focusing on the particular issues related to multiple country, multiple language (translations, duplications, etc) sites?

  23. 70!? holy crap I thought you were going to do like 5. Nice one, much props for that matt.

  24. I posted a question, but it wasn’t answered 🙁

    Do you see Google eventually rotating top results (given that all websites that appear for a given search term are nearly equals as far as quality of their website) so that it is a more democratic system (and provides a better user experience) for local searches?

  25. Hello There Matt,

    Thanks a lot for your efforts again.
    I am just wondering did you released all 70 + questions you have taped? I looked every where (hopefully) and able to find only couple of Google Webmaster Help Channel on Youtube.

    Regards

  26. sir when will the answer video will be published? waiting for that to learn more

  27. It’s been over a month, when will you post new videos?!

  28. Dear Matt,

    In an interview you stated that a site needs to be built for the customer (as we have always focused on with success) you also said that search engines faceted navigation can be difficult from a search engine perspective (to my understanding and interpretation it’s a little conflicting which leaves me confused).

    Which brings me to my Question:

    With positive customer feedback we have been expanding faceted navigation (narrowed down sets of the same original content creating multiple pages by adding parameters in the URL) to help users narrow down our wide range products in any given category.

    Does Google view it all as duplicate or low quality content? If so what is the best solution to make it clear for the crawlers to index all the variations for the right relevancy?

    Jay, Monmouth NJ

  29. Matt, where can we post video questions for the current (APR 11) or upcoming months? I find it quite annoying that there’s no stable URL where you can do that. Thanks.

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