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In my experience the links still count. The original article should contain a canonical URL which declares it as the original.

We have had several articles shared and the links show up in opensiteexplorer.

We're building a blog on a subdomain of the main site. The main site is on Shopify and the blog will be on wordpress.

I'd like to keep the user experience as simple as possible so I'd like to make the blog look exactly like the main Shopify site.

This means having a menu in the blog that duplicates the Shopify menu.

So is it bad for SEO to have someone click on the 'about us' button in the blog subdomain (blog.mainsite.com) which takes you to the 'about us page' on the main shopify website (mainsite.com)?

The ideal scenario would be to set the site up as a subfolder however they have a site which is based on shopify so we will be building a separate site/hosting on blog.domain.com.

Unless there's a way of using sub-folder that has different hosting to the main site?

I have a client who uses a .com for there website in Australia. Were now building an external blog which will be on a subdomain.

We recently discovered they also own the Australian version of there domain name.

Should we build there blog on:

1. blog.currentdomain.com

2) blog.newdomain.com.au

Thanks

Just want to get peoples idea on how the best way to measure the success of the best articles on a website/blog.

I'm looking at a few different options that can give each author a fair chance without being overlooked.

For instance if we just look at the most clicked on article then its not fair on articles published in months with slower traffic like January.

So should we measure the success by

a)most page visited after an article view

b)most clicked on article by month(this would be unfair for slower traffic months)

c)most shared via Social

d)article with most new visits

It would be great to get everyone's expert opinion on this.

Yes. the blog would be set up on am Aussie host.

It is a custom domain

Make sure you have a 'dofollow' link on your front page back to your Google Plus page.

Something like this : [Google+](https://plus.google.com/your id)

If you use Google adwords try adding it as an extension to your ad as this seemed to speed up the process for us.

We recently lost our G+ page so were essentially have the same problem as you.

I have a client who currently uses shopify for there blog. I want to set them up with a separate blog away from the shopify system and host it in Australia.

I know the best option is using a subfolder but as the shopify system is an unmoveable CMS can I somehow point my subdomain to a subfolder and get the benefits of the domain name?

I could do this by using the rewrite rule in the htaccess file.

If I was to do this would it end up cloaking the URL's of the articles?

The first thing is to start getting some regular traffic from your articles.

Start with evergreen content with titles such as ' the benefits of ...' or 'top tips for saving energy' or ' what to look out for in choosing solar panels'. All these kind of searches will start generating traffic and links naturally.

Once you have a good basis of evergreen content you can start to have more of a mix of news articles.

This would be articles based around seasonal events such as 'saving money on your energy over christmas'. Also look for anything coming up over legislation that you can write articles about to become an authority on solar panels.

Try and produce the articles using Google plus authorship to help with the ranking and again to help build up trust and authority. Post all articles to your google plus profile. Facebook also may help with some unique articles, polls and sponsored stories.

Does the company have any success stories where you could perhaps produce a video? Dont just think of content marketing as just content. It could include infographics, video and whitepapers.

Were just doing the same kind of thing with our own website.

Make sure you run the existing site through screaming frog and open site explorer. You want to make sure any incoming links are pointing to relevant pages within the new site. there are a number of plugins in wordpress to handle 301's but I usually start by adding them to the htaccess just because it keeps things a bit tidier.

Have you checked webmaster tools to make sure any broken links are addressed?

Also you'll need to add your Google analytics code to the new site. Maybe try Google tag manager if its a new site.

In my experience the links still count. The original article should contain a canonical URL which declares it as the original.

We have had several articles shared and the links show up in opensiteexplorer.

I'm just starting out doing SEO as a main role. Im going to be the only person there who knows anything about SEO.
Without a team of SEO dudes to ask questions too, SEOmoz is ideal.

If I were you I'd ask as many questions as possible as this will easily justify the payout for membership.

This will be seen as duplicate content and will halve the benefits of any pages.

Parked domains generally just point to one site so all you've done is create two identical sites in Googles eyes.

Why would you submit two identical sitemaps? You could declare within the htaccess file which is the original content but again your making things complicated when you link build as you dont want to double the work needed to get your site ranking benefits.

I also like to add my URL that I've added content to to web 2.0 sites like digg.

Hi, It does sound like a similar problem to a client of mine.

We submitted all their dodgy backlink sites to Google webmaster tools but there's no way of contacting Google to see when these sites will be de-indexed.

Have you tried posting within the webmaster tools forum?

I also noticed your still using meta keywords, although this isn't harming your site, it could be perceived as Keyword stuffing.

Just wondering what the best practise is for unique meta desriptions on blogs.

When I post a blog on my wordpress, clicking the title takes you to an individual page with that blog on it.

I understand how important the title tag is on this page but when I create a meta description:

a) is it useful?

b) Should it be unique or is it ok to copy part of the post and insert that as the meta tag?

Thanks

The first thing is to start getting some regular traffic from your articles.

Start with evergreen content with titles such as ' the benefits of ...' or 'top tips for saving energy' or ' what to look out for in choosing solar panels'. All these kind of searches will start generating traffic and links naturally.

Once you have a good basis of evergreen content you can start to have more of a mix of news articles.

This would be articles based around seasonal events such as 'saving money on your energy over christmas'. Also look for anything coming up over legislation that you can write articles about to become an authority on solar panels.

Try and produce the articles using Google plus authorship to help with the ranking and again to help build up trust and authority. Post all articles to your google plus profile. Facebook also may help with some unique articles, polls and sponsored stories.

Does the company have any success stories where you could perhaps produce a video? Dont just think of content marketing as just content. It could include infographics, video and whitepapers.

Just had at look at my notes from when I did my research.

Quantcast seemed good, as did Kissmetric. They all seem to allow free trials.

I think your best off starting with an SEOmoz crawl on your site. Then if you need any help with specific errors we can help you with that.

Your asking for a site audit which can take a lot more time than if you were to do a crawl and link with your Google analytics account.

Were just doing the same kind of thing with our own website.

Make sure you run the existing site through screaming frog and open site explorer. You want to make sure any incoming links are pointing to relevant pages within the new site. there are a number of plugins in wordpress to handle 301's but I usually start by adding them to the htaccess just because it keeps things a bit tidier.

Have you checked webmaster tools to make sure any broken links are addressed?

Also you'll need to add your Google analytics code to the new site. Maybe try Google tag manager if its a new site.