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Some points not mentioned (I think) yet...

The number 1 way to get links to a website is traffic...the more people that see the site, the more chance of it getting links, social shares etc. If PPC traffic & organic traffic (& other types of traffic) are not going to the same domain they're likely to get less links per domain, which reduces their chance or ranking well organically, which is contradictory to what you are wanting to achieve. If I were the client and I were getting links to non indexable pages, I wouldn't be happy. I would investigate if those PPC landing pages actually do have links/shares and if so use that to support your case i.e. those links could have been pointed at the domain you are trying to improve organic rankings for.

Remarketing via PPC is a huge opportunity via display and especially RLSA. If I was running their PPC it would really annoy me that the audience that I could remarket to is reduced  because the traffic is split over domains and not consolidated in 1.

Analytics is really messy. I'm a firm believer that any web reliant business needs to understand and use the data available to them in order to grow, especially if traffic/online revenue is significant. Splitting analytics (GA or otherwise) and KPI's over multiple sites, analytics accounts etc is not conducive to managing and benefiting from that data.

Sub domains - might not be relevant, based on why they want to use off domain pages but could you suggest they use sub domains instead of different domains? This way they can still promote/operate separate sites but you'd have the advantages of 1) capturing link equity 2) increasing your remarketing audience 3) having all your analytics in 1 place.

Maybe they were paying attention, spooky timing! http://www.seomoz.org/blog/web-directory-submission-danger

"Content is king" is the old saying in SEO and whilst content 'may' actually only be a prince or duke nowadays it is still very important unless your site is especially high authority.

If you dont include the keywords or variations of them that you wish to rank for you're going to struggle to rank for them. Logically if you dont have the word 'red widget' on the page you're unlikely to rank for it. If a page is about red widgets why would it not include the keyword 'red widget'? Again if your site is high authority then this isnt so applicable - www.cadbury.co.uk used to rank 1st for 'chocolate' and it didnt even have the word on the home page. How did they do it? Lots of links creating high authority and using chocolate anchor text.

There is however a not so fine line between including keywords in the content (including meta info, link text etc) and keyword stuffing. As Des in this thread mentions and as I just referred to 'meta info' under the umbrella of 'content' - if you dont have the keywords in your page title or meta description you're much less likely to get users to click on your search result as (most of the time) your page title & meta description is what is returned as your search result.

If I understand you right heres a few things id do:

• http://www.newtravelsite.com/hotels/bristol/stgeorgeshotel/ isnt a great url protocol as you have 3 sub folders in there i.e. /hotels / bristol / stgeorgeshotel. It would be better as something like /hotels-bristol-st-georges-hotel. Also not the spacing between the hotel name, works better for seo and will help clickthrough rate in search results.
• Optimise the Bristol hotel page for Bristol hotel phrases. Optimise the hotel specific pages for hotel specific phrases, clickthrough rate and conversion rate should be good that way. You could also mix it up a bit on the hotel specific pages e.g. if you have a hotel near the docklands, inc it in your page title/h1 etc e.g. XYZ Hotel near Bristol Docklands. That way you're actually optimising for hotel name + hotel near Bristol Docklands (which should be pretty easy to rank for).
• Inc user reviews on the hotel pages and use rich snippets for the reviews, review count, pricing - this will then show up in your search results and give you a huge lift in clickthrough rate (ive seen 30%+ on the last site I did it for). Aside from that reviews are pretty vital in the hotel decision process. Obviously if the sites new this is a bit tricky though.

Andy

Make sure in your rss feeds you have your link/anchor text back to your site. That anyone copying your feeds is inadvertently giving you a link to the original source.

Theres a 1000 bullet points that could follow but heres a few important ones:

• Stop keyword stuffing in your content e.g. here http://www.tickettrail.com/performer/madonna-tickets.aspx. You've overdone 'madonna tickets' to say the least.

• You have no h1 on the performer pages.

• There is little content, you need to write more descriptively and for the user not search engines.

• Be more focussed on the keywords, you're right theres lots of ticket sites. You are a long way from competing with them for terms like 'madonna tickets'. Things like 'tickets for madonna paris' you have more chance of ranking for and its more targeted.

• Your url structure could be improved e.g. http://www.tickettrail.com/tickets/stadio-giuseppe-meazza/06_14_2012_800_pm/madonna-tickets.aspx is 4 sub folders deep - which could make those pages appear really unimportant, something like /maddonna-tickets-rome-14th-june would be better.

• These pages could also attract really targeted visitors if for example you optimised it for 'madonna tickets rome 14th june'.

• You've got some weird stuff going on in your code. Look at line 25 in your source code for the madonna tickets page!

Bear in mind theres been alot of recent Google algo changes, your rankings may have changed because of something other than page titles.

BTW - I say that especially applies to the travel industry - ive seen alot of flux for aggregators of late.

Breadcrumbs are a great way for engines to understand how your site is structured and to pass link juice logically and evenly to the places you want it. For bigger sites especially I really wouldnt advise not using breadcrumbs.

Hi h2o2, maybe the phrasing wasnt clear but I think you misunderstood:

"For bigger sites especially I really wouldnt advise not using breadcrumbs."

Its one of 2 things id suggest:

This is most likely your issue: bear in mind Google Webmaster Tools data is not real time - it doesnt show the last few days worth of data so it will look like your impressions are always 0 for the previous 2 days, if you are looking today, this would coincide with the Penguin launch and explain your concern!

If its not that then its like this: Its a glitch - you cant have 0 impressions and not see a decline in traffic!

Presumably you are looking at the search engine optimisation report in analytics that is imported from Google Webmaster Tools? Its possible your Google Webmaster Tools account is no longer hooked up to your analytics account.

Dont know about theme but you NEED the Yoast SEO plugin for wordpress - it really is awesome.

No is the short answer. Having almost identical pages  with only minimal differences (for the purposes of SEO) is exactly the kind of spammy thing the recent Penguin & Panda updates are clamping down on. If you dont have stores in california, new york etc Google doesnt want to rank you for those terms.

PPC would be a better solution for those kinds of terms if they can get past the minimum search threshold.

Optimising product pages for types of hammers e.g. claw hammers is the way to go.

You said you set up targeting for the UK so why are you concerned that it doesnt rank on Google.lk?

If you want to geo-target a website for a particular countries search results you'll find lots of good blog posts about how to do it right here on SEOMOZ. Aside from that heres a few pointers:

• You really need the country specific TLD or at worst a country neutral one e.g. .net. If you want to target the uk then you will do much better having a co.uk TLD. If you DO have a co.uk TLD this is the main reason why you dont rank in Google.lk.

• Ensure the website content is written in the language of the country you want to target.

• Try and attract links from country specific tlds e.g. if you want to target google.lk search results try and get links from .lk websites e.g. website.lk

You have to add the filter for 'only external' links. See here http://screencast.com/t/L4b7J4PA

Heres a relaunching a site SEO checklist I did a while back which may help.

The Penguin update as described by Google is to hit 'over optimized' sites. Creating duplicate pages with minimal word changes for the purpose of SEO is exactly the kind of thing that Penguin is for - so no, its not an easy opportunity, its not an opportunity at all.

301 redirect to new domain likely wouldnt help, you're bringing the tainted link juice with you, assuming links is the issue.

Most 'experts' think you wont recover from Penguin until the next Penguin update. Its unclear to me if this agency 'kept sending automated links' that you would have been cleared by any update if this process was still ongoing.

Bear in mind Penguin isnt just about links.

Changing domain might be a valid option but it does depend on the site itself, authority, number of spammy links you still have etc.

Not that its much comfort but id also say, remember Google isnt the only source of traffic.

No problem Paul, hope it helps, let me know if you have anything to add the list, ill credit it back to you.

Definitely not the sub domain. Assuming you're adding content to help rank well for additional phrases and to improve your sites authority this is best done using subfolders i.e. store.com/answers. You'll get more link juice to those pages keeping them on the root domain. Also any links you get to these new pages benefit the whole root domain i.e. store.com, which isnt the case with links to a sub domain.

I've gone through several large relaunches in recent years. I kept bullet point notes on what should be done to avoid ranking decline & wrote about it on my blog, hope it helps - http://www.andy-maclean.net/seo-website-relaunch-checklist/.

If results fell off a cliff, my 1st port of call would be checking the redirects were handled correctly, nothing untoward is going on with your robots.txt file and check GWT for any significant issues.

Andy

Try some AB or multi variate testing. It neednt cost the earth, or anything.

You can use content experiments via Analytics.

A few comments on current home page:

• The images on the home page look like ads rather than navigation. I dont think that works.
• What is it you want people to do when they get to the home page? Do a wine search? If so make the wine form search facility more prominent.
• I would include 'any' in your dropdowns. Its feasible people get to your site and dont know what winery name they want.
• Get rid of 'start over' you dont need it until they've done a a search.
• Look at your in-page analytics and see where people navigate to from the home page. That will tell you alot about what you should be featuring more on that page.

Andy

Google Webmaster tools will tell you aggregate rank data by keyword per page including search impressions. This gives you a great way to know which keyword SEO opportunities there are.

FB

Twitter

LinkedIn

If the site has good authority/PR I wouldnt worry about it although I would look at in-page analytics to see whether people actually click the links. If its setup like this to pass link juice the above is more applicable, if not look at whether people are actually clicking the links and if they arent id suggest an alternative navigation.

Using all applicable Adwords extensions. They can make such a difference to campaigns. Some of my client ads look like they're on steroids compared to the competition

If you want to see ALL the page titles and meta descriptions on a competitors website Screaming Frogs SEO Spider is awesome. It can downloaded free here http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/ Note for large sites you may need the paid version.

"When you do a search would you rather get the official companies or a site with a news feed or aggregation ran by a 3rd party source?"

• As I say in many cases the branded site isnt going to be your first port of call. E.g. Who buys their Wilson tennis racket from Wilson.com when you can get the same product may times cheaper elsewhere (random example, im not picking on Wilson!) and with honest reviews e.g. 'the strings on this racket are poor'?

In the Google Places listing the 'categories' are mega important but under-used. If they arent using all 5 available categories they are missing out on serious traffic.

Most hotels will just have 'hotels' or 'self catering' (i forget the exact default options). Use ALL the categories to rank for more terms. If they need traffic pronto add 'spring break', 'mothers day' 'weekend break' 'last minute break' categories - you get the idea. This is an awesome trick I use for a holiday cottage client e.g. I use 'christmas break' 'easter break' 'dog friendly' and other out of the box terms as categories to keep pace with seasonal demand.

Note: Google will not always listings for ALL category entries, you'll have to try it and see.