SEO Questions – Asked & Answered

Ask me any question you like by scrolling to the bottom of this page and submitting your question. I’ll answer each one personally as time allows, answers will be posted here, and you will be notified by email once complete.

Recent Search Questions:

1. Rating: +4

   How many times are you allowed to repeat a keyword in the header tags before it is considered spamming?

2. Rating: +2

   Does a description tag matter for ranking or not? We've gotten conflicting answers. Our SEO consultant wants different tags on every one of 200+pages, but other people say it doesn't matter for ranking.

3. Rating: +2

   Hello Scott, I want to learn Search Engine Optimization. can you give some idea how i learn it. i want to become a good optimizer so plz give me good suggestion. Thanks

4. Hi Scott, I have a new domain name, www.click4promos.com (less than a month old) this domain is coming up in Google with out the www. is this a problem and how would I fix it? Thanks, Rick

5. Rating: +1

   Is it true that you don’t get penalized for linking to a banned site? I can’t imagine google would expect us to constantly monitor our links to make sure the site we linked to has not suddenly become spammy and banned.

6. If you pay a ghost writer to write unique content, say 250 - 500 words per page for about $10 to 15, and you add it to your site at least once a month, are you "adding value" to your site as Google asks you to in it's webmaster guidelines, or are you still at risk of having them deem the content "thin"?

7. do you know of someone i could hire to organize my 10,000+ songs on i-tunes? i'd like to hire a consultant to help as i can't delete out of i-tunes and need to copy music and delete off my computer from there but then have to go back to i-tunes and delete from there....it is daunting and i need an expert to help me! thanks in advance for your help! christine snow

8. I live in Colorado and Comcast recently blocked port 25 for sending email. I use Outlook 2007 for my work e-mail account (not my Comcast account), and now I can't send messages when I'm working from home. I tried changing to port 587 for outgoing mail, but it still does not work. Any ideas?

9. Is there a tool - paid or free - tell show me the URL referrals of my competitors. Not keywords, but URLs.

10. Rating: +1

    Scott, Are iframes bad for SEO? Why? thanks

11. Rating: +1

    Scott, I have a wordpress question. What plugin do you use for meta description? Also, is pdxtc.com and searchcommander.com two separate wordpress installs? Thanks for everything!

12. Rating: +1

    Scott, about three months ago I found your site and started implementing some of the things you said for my site. I had only 30 inbound links. I bought the Blog Finder you recommended and have been regularly commenting. I also have been adding content. I use linkvana, but I have only posted three links in it to my personal website. I discovered today in webmaster tools that I now have 2634 inbound links. Yahoo is showing 841. Do you think you can get too many links in a short amount of time. I have not done anything shady, just blog commenting and adding content.

13. Scott, I was wondering how you are able to create such nice screen casts. I have tried to replicate it with less than perfect results. The main problem is that verbiage on the screen is all fuzzy, plus the file size is huge even on smaller videos. I was wondering if you could pass along any tricks.

14. Rating: +1

    Scott, do you inhibit your ability to score a top ranking in the Google SERPS by using a geographical term in the title such as Atlanta, GA?

15. Rating: -1

    Scott, How important is dedicated ips to SEO. Matt Cutts said that they do not punish virtual server hosted websites over dedicated. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/myth-busting-virtual-hosts-vs-dedicated-ip-addresses/ How about shared hosting, is this the same? Do you recommend every site be on its own unique ip address or unique class c address?

1. Rating: +6

   I keep the Windows Task Manager handy when I'm on the Internet, and each time I find a program running that I'm not familiar with, I do a search to find out what it is. Most of the time the information has been reassuring, but not in the most recent case. I found one called 55AutoRun; did a search; all I could find was 3 results with chinese characters. It sounds pretty ominous to me. I tried checking with Norton by e-mail and I got the run-a-round with instructions that are not related to the problem. Any ideas?

2. Rating: +0

   We frequently receive e-mails with an attachment that is supposed to be a picture, but all we can see is text and/or lines of code. (We have Windows Vista). What do we need to do to see the pictures?

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