[RedEvo]

I know SEOMoz is popular with some of the SEO's in here but if you are a DIY SEOer hungry for free dependable SEO help and advice this article should prove to be very helpful.
If you are looking for quick fixes and instant results......don't bother

d

[Alvin]

Excellent SEO advice .

Alvin

[sally]

Very good post, thanks d.

May I ask some questions please:

1. Maybe this is a 'how long's a pice of string question' but as a new site that hasn't been professionally seo'd how long before you would expect to see some ranking in the serps?

2. I think I have asked this 50 times but still don't know the answer. If people link to my blog is that a tick in the box for the site as far as search engines are concerned or do the engines see the blog and site as different entities?

3. My site has 455 restricted URLs (including the forum) because of the nature of the site. Will this hurt search engines trust in my site?

4. Since I changed my blog theme and title google can't find 17 URLs all relating to blog posts. Will these pages be dropped from google now?

5. Google is suddenly reporting duplicate meta description as follows:

Country Couples is a dating and friendship community for rural minded people in the UK

/
/index.php/photo_view.php?
photo_id=67
/photos.php
/privacy.php
/search.php?st=online
/tos.php

Should I be worrying about this and trying to change that line on those pages (although I have no idea what most of the pages are - what on earth is page */*).

6. Am getting totally frustrating with google and links. I know I have links from dating directories, blogs and countryside sites but when I do link:mysite it only gives me 5 links - so where are the rest and why aren't google seeing them?

[LinkingClever]

1. Maybe this is a 'how long's a pice of string question' but as a new site that hasn't been professionally seo'd how long before you would expect to see some ranking in the serps?

Your sites position in the serps does depend on many factors, but generally the important ones are; How often is your site crawled by the Google Bot? If its daily, your rank should change within days, if its monthly it could be months. Google will index and rank a page within minutes/hours at its quickest...

2. I think I have asked this 50 times but still don't know the answer. If people link to my blog is that a tick in the box for the site as far as search engines are concerned or do the engines see the blog and site as different entities?

It would be a tick for the domain and the page. So it depends how you have it set up, if the blog is on the same domain etc

3. My site has 455 restricted URLs (including the forum) because of the nature of the site. Will this hurt search engines trust in my site?

Google willl index and rank what it can, so you miss out on the ranking/traffic from those pages.

4. Since I changed my blog theme and title google can't find 17 URLs all relating to blog posts. Will these pages be dropped from google now?

Yeah, if Google can't get to them, they will be deindexed at some point. It may be worth 301ing the old urls to new pages/sections, relevant to the old post.

5 - not sure, but different descriptions are benificial to SEO.

6. Am getting totally frustrating with google and links. I know I have links from dating directories, blogs and countryside sites but when I do link:mysite it only gives me 5 links - so where are the rest and why aren't google seeing them?

Google won't show all the backlink info. Use yahoo (link:domain.com) and http://backlinkwatch.com is also good.

Hope that helps
Jay

[RedEvo]

These are my views on your questions.

Originally Posted by sally

1. Maybe this is a 'how long's a pice of string question' but as a new site that hasn't been professionally seo'd how long before you would expect to see some ranking in the serps?

You need to decide what you want to be found for. The answer to this is simple. Find out what people who could use your services search for using Wordtracker, keyworddiscovery etc and optimise your site for these phrases. This includes on and off page.

Originally Posted by sally

2. I think I have asked this 50 times but still don't know the answer. If people link to my blog is that a tick in the box for the site as far as search engines are concerned or do the engines see the blog and site as different entities?

Yes so long as the links are not no followed and are from pages that are passing trust/rank/cred AND are related to your subject area. If a page about pet food is linking to your site that's not much use.

Originally Posted by sally

3. My site has 455 restricted URLs (including the forum) because of the nature of the site. Will this hurt search engines trust in my site?

Not in my opinion.

Originally Posted by sally

4. Since I changed my blog theme and title google can't find 17 URLs all relating to blog posts. Will these pages be dropped from google now?

Consider 301'ing these changed URL's

Originally Posted by sally

5. Google is suddenly reporting duplicate meta description as follows:

Country Couples is a dating and friendship community for rural minded people in the UK

/
/index.php/photo_view.php?
photo_id=67
/photos.php
/privacy.php
/search.php?st=online
/tos.php

Should I be worrying about this and trying to change that line on those pages (although I have no idea what most of the pages are - what on earth is page */*).

Meta descriptions should either be unique or omitted. If you omit them Google will use page content for the SERP text snippet.

Originally Posted by sally

6. Am getting totally frustrating with google and links. I know I have links from dating directories, blogs and countryside sites but when I do link:mysite it only gives me 5 links - so where are the rest and why aren't google seeing them?

Use the Yahoo tool or Google Webmaster Tools to monitor links, not the links command in the Google search box.

[sally]

Thank you very much guys.

I am a bit lost on the 17 URLs for blog posts as they still exist and are showing on the blog the only thing that has changed is the category name and blog title.