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Thanks fellas.  Agreed.

Cyrus' webinar yesterday got me thinking about the use of bullet points and Google's increasing affection for context and semantics.

Because of their brevity, I can see bullet points parsing up context/semantics etc.

Some of our competitors (apparently trying to appeal to Google) are writing 2-4 sentences about the product in the desciption section followed by bullet points repeating the same information.  They'll also put a few sentences of description at the top of the page above the price and then repeat it below in the description (this is relatively common).

I put text in the description section and like bullet points as a shopper because I can quickly and easily see important information - therefore I use them heavily in product descriptions.

Is Google smart enough process bullet points and mash together context or would Google prefer content in well written sentences?

Should I be frying bigger fish?

Great stuff Thomas. Made some notes to self.

I'd put all the link building efforts into the main site and scrap the microsites.

As a customer, I don't like clicking on something and being redirected to another site.

As someone who links to stuff, I don't link to something that redirects people to something else.

Google not only knows your backlink profile and perhaps in your case, your motives.

Relatively speaking, your main site doesn't sell a bunch of different stuff.

Our site sells a bunch of different stuff.

I sense you're frustrated that page 1 for "plastic storage bins" is taken over by the biggies like Rubbermaid, Lowes, Walmart, Target, OfficeMax and lesser names with moz rank domain authorities over 50 when yours is at 27.

I think the microsite/doorway strategy was ill conceived.  The time would have been better spent on your main site creating new and improved content and perhaps an on-site blog linking to your products.

Why did you do this in the first place?

Wait a minute...I'm interested in this.

How did you ninjas find the website?  Must've been posted prior to the answers and removed later.

Luke, would you mind pm'ing me with the pages?  I think I could benefit from a look at it.

Is Penguin focused primarily on backlinks or does it also assess internal linking/anchor text?

We've lost about 3,000 visitors a month since the rolling updates were implemented. I'm always careful not to over-react to algo updates but enough time has passed that I think the dust has settled.

I try to stay white in all I do but I think if I've over-done anything its the internal linking related products/categories with exact match.

My backlink profile also has an over-abundance of affiliate links but that's kind of out of my hands isn't it?

Does the mark say, "EGOL?"

There may be some value in branding in that regard depending on what you're selling.

However, If its small and unobtrosive then the viewer probably wouldn't be able to tell what the logo is/says until they open the image.

Edit add - when its that small its easily removed and cropped so it really becomes a matter of whether you think its important as a branding element versus protection.

Hi John,

Considering I don't know where you are in terms of site development, I will offer some suggestions in general terms.

1. Do you keyword research to determine how your customers will find you. Include your city and/or state name in your searches. Build pages that your customers will find beneficial and optimize for those.

2. Use your city name and/or state in title tags and on page where appropriate.

3. Make sure you use your local area code, zip code, street address consistently in all your local directories and Google Places. Visit getlisted.org for directory submission ideas.

4. Put your address in the footer of your site.

5. A blog is a great idea for lawn seasonal lawn care tips. Take photos/videos of your work and post them on your site/blog to beef up content. Example: "Here's what we can do about chick weed starting to show during the winter months." - I called my lawn guy about it last week :).

6. Leverage social media (Facebook specifically) for connecting your customers and allowing your customers to share with friends.

7. I wouldn't have one picture on my site that was not a local picture. Name your files with localized tags and use proper alt tags.

8. Its okay to include surrounding communities in titles, meta descriptions and on-page etc. as Google will pick those up as well depending on the competition.

9. If you have relationships with local vendors ask them for a link.

10. Don't do more for your site than you can effectively manage. If you can't keep your site, blog, facebook page etc. fresh, don't do it. Scale it back, keep it simple and ALWAYS keep your customer's benefit the motivation for what you do.

Good luck!

Keeping in line with EGOL's linking building apologetics, we are trying to beef up our content to add relevant benefit to our ecommerce products. Specifically, we are adding new textual content where we can and videos to categories and product pages. How many Rand videos, white board videos and  Matt Cutts videos have you watched? In the preceding Matt Cutts article, Joe Brockmeier writes: "So if you're planning that 2012 site budget, you might want to think twice about hiring that SEO expert and find a content expert instead." Videos can be a valuable content tool.

Ecommerce lends itself to selling a lot of the the same products as other folks on the web with the same product information from the manufacturers. So, where do you come up with fresh and unique content?

Informative videos may help with that, so we are going to give it a try and see how it goes with attracting beneficial links.

A watermark won't affect your rank.

In my opinion this is more a matter of the use of your time.

I very rarely see watermarks anymore on ecommerce sites. I think a watermark will do more to pollute the appearance of your product than protect your images from piracy.

From a practical perspective, Google and other shopping feeds may have rules regarding watermarks and artwork associated with products so make sure you are aware of the rules if you use feeds.

Edit add - I can recall 1 ecommerce site I've visited using watermarks and the only other places I see it are sites that sell images and artwork.

How about creating some content that is unique, informative, relevant, timely and worthy of linking to.

Chris, if you can rank for up to 7 keywords on a page in a competitive space I might try to hire you someday.

Non-branded:  flannel lined jeans

Branded:  Carhartt flannel lined jeans

This content blew up a server with 80,000+ hits: http://noahsdad.com/target-down-syndrome/

I'd also consider the purpose of analyzing links. When I look at a competitors links, I look at the volume of linking domains, then I look at the kind and quality of the domains.

If I'm wondering why a competitor is kicking my butt, I don't care about the quantity of links as much as the quality of links.  I'll look through the links in the profile and pick out the links I think I can benefit from and pursue a link acquisition.

If you're only interested in face value information, the number of linking domains is most important.

As far as recommendations for eCommerce goes, here's what my short list looks like (minus about 3 others I can't find in the forums):

Everett Sizemore - seOverflow
Chris Menke - Metapilot
SEO 5 Consulting
Erik Ellsworth - Convergent 7
Thomas Zickell - Blueprint Marketing
Tom Roberts - So What Media
Robert Fisher - drumBeat Marketing

I would suggest a couple of things.

First of all I would suggest that bounce rate could be compared to a pulse. Over time, you'll discover an acceptable bounce rate (pulse) for a particular site and those rates may vary from site to site. An acceptable site bounce rate for us is about 50-55%. If the rate pushes toward 60%, it tells me there is something going on that I need to investigate more deeply.

If you're in ecommerce, product feeds will affect your bounce rate and you'll need to identify products that adversely inflate your bounce rate and address accordingly.

Secondly, bounce rate also applies to pages (which in turn affects site rate). Its relatively easy  to identify pages that are affecting bounce rate. I know what pages on our site will have a higher bounce rate than others. If there is something I can do do reduce the bounce rate for a page, I do it.

Having said all that, I would throw a guess out there that an acceptable bounce rate would be between 45 and 65% with a rate in the 50% being realistic.