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Good answer. I like that.

SEOmoz has some great recommended firms.

Depending on the size, scope and budget I'd be interested in helping you.  I've been helping some companies do this for over a year.  Private message me up via my SEOmoz profile and I'd love to see if I could be of some help for you.

I don't wont to self promote but If my profile fits what you are looking for then I'd be interested.

That's it!!!  I'm not crazy.    Now I am happy.  I really have to pay more attention to that main blog.

Have you come across any documented change in they way they are returning SERPs?

I've been noticing a trend over the past month and a half.  My sites that use to get more than one page listed in certain SERPs are now being adjusted.  It almost looks manual but I know it is most likely a change in the algorithm.  Let's say I had a SERP where my site was showing two different sub-pages in a single SERP at #4 and #6 are now having one page being pushed up to #3 but the other page is being pushed back past the first page.

I'm not worried about penalizations or loss of value.  I have been seeing this accross many of my client's sites.  I just wanted to confirm that others were seeing it as well (so I'm not going crazy) and/or if Google has made any announcements or leaks regarding this shift.

Maybe it's just my sites coming of age or something but I would love to be able to explain it more knowledgeably than with a "Google might be doing this".

BTW - This is not effecting any of my Brand SERPs.

Did you get it to where you wanted it?  I see it has moved to the social share bar.

Thanks for the encouragement Martin.

As it turns out, with the help of the two previous answers, the script is actually based on a valid script adjustment that might actually help some people in their reports but the what my client thought was that this was an easy/quick way to get more traffic.  The article they found was saying this would dramatically change results in GA and then directly effect their site's ranking in the SERPs.

They had "proof" in the form of some GA screenshots so I needed more information on what the script actually does.  I was able to let my client know what exactly this was and recommend not doing it unless there was a problem in the GA reports that they wanted fixed.

Thanks again for your reply.

For the sites that I have added sitemaps to, no matter how small, it seems to only have helped.  Either brought out some areas I could improve on or just general site architecture awareness which helped me see a bigger picture.

Thanks for that link.

The site (link in the previous reply) my client referred me to was manipulating the way they were reporting the results.  The closer I looked at it, I realized that it was a little spike but then it went right back down.  Knowing them they just paid a bunch of people to visit the site.

This stuff is annoying and gives us SEO's a bad name.

The code was from this site http://millionairevolution.com/cut-bounce-rate-by-80/ and looking at the dates and analytics shown on the page this is nothing more than a misrepresentation of the facts and data.

I knew Google doesn't use data from GA but the data graph was showing a contradiction and I didn't know exactly what the script was doing.

I was referred to this "awesome" solution to high bounce rates.

It is suppose to "fix" bounce rates and lower them through this simple script.  When the bounce rate goes way down then rankings dramatically increase (interesting study but not my question).

I don't know javascript but simply adding a script to the footer and watch everything fall into place seems a bit iffy to me.

Can someone with experience in JS help me by explaining what this script does?

I think it manipulates the reporting it does to GA but I'm not sure.  It was supposed to be placed in the footer of the page and then sit back and watch the dollars fly in.

I haven't had an experience yet where my pages didn't get re-indexed.  It may take a few weeks to get back to where they were in the rankings but under normal circumstances after an extended downtime you likely won't have any problems.

I read back over what Rand posted over 5 years ago!  I have moved several sites and what Rand said is still best practice.  Google indexing is nothing to play with.  Taking down content and then trying to get it to rank again can look very spammy to Google.

This could be a very interesting thread.  Thanks for asking this Eliathah!  I've tried to reach you to webmasters before but without much success so I really can't speak to a solution or with experience.  Hopefully someone will share their experiences.

I'll speak to the duplicates issue since the other appears to be a CMS issue and how it is displaying the products.  Whenever I see the "page=1" in the URL I can usually fink a pagination script that isn't helping my SEO efforts.  But I don't know for sure in your situation, especially since you said you don't see any links on the product page.

As far as the "duplicates" issue.  Try to get them as distinct as possible.  With our product pages (starting with the most sold items) I have begun changing up the product name. We have the difference of only the height on many of our products so I'm having to get a little creative and add some other aspect to the URL that stays within the products title.  I only want one page from my site competing for that exact match product SERP anyway.  It's not a good idea to have two pages on your site competing for the same SERP.  It seems to always be treated with less authority by Google when that happened in the past.

Here are some questions I would ask myself:

**How long it had been on the top of the rankings?  **

• Based on this answer you may be looking at the natural flow of Google's algorithm and not a "penalty".  Your page just didn't have the authority to stay in the top spots.

**What links were pointing to the page?  **

• Smaller sites usually are not penalized, they just lose the authority of a once powerful link and therefore begin dropping.  The fix is just to gain better quality links and create more authentic authority.

Was there a big shift in the SERP or does it seem as if your site was the only one that moved?
  - If there was a big shift (or even a small one), you may be looking at a change int he way Google renders the SERPs for that market.  I have a client that sells "medical equipment" and that SERP all of the sudden went local.  That changed the entire results.

Hope those help.  There are a ton of variables with this kind of stuff but I wanted to share what I would be thinking.  Hopefully it's just a "big" SERP dance and you end back up on the top again.

I would love to hear what decision you went with and how it turned out in the data.  I moved a large ecommerce site at the beginning of the year and didn't touch any image url's and they never showed up in 404 errors either.  I'm guessing the links to our site were not to product images but rather to product pages.

Even though I did it this way, I would love to hear how your's came out.

Thanks!

A recent article on Youmoz blog that has some great general ideas on this topic --> http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/identifying-link-penalties-in-2012

I know it doesn't go into many specific ways of rectifying the situation but it does have a lot of valuable information.

I don't know why I didn't think of this before but in the Community section of SEOmoz there is a Recommended Companies page. That would be a great resource to start with.  Many of those guys have written awesome article and spoken at events or in webinars so you know they are good.

(note: I don't know your budget so I'm assuming you are in the same boat as me, as far as pricing goes)

I would say the budgets needed to get some of their services (talking implementation not just consulting) are going to start around $5000 a month.  They are well worth it!  If you are even considering a really quality company I would give them a call and they will probably have some recommended companies or freelancers that they recommend that may fit into your budget.

I'd been dabbling in SEO since 2007 when I finally buckled down about 2 years and jumped in head first.  The biggest influence on me was the Beginner's Guide To SEO that SEOmoz just updated.  Then I went through every White Board Friday and Pro Webinar I could.

Followed key people on Twitter and asked some of the dumbest questions.  SEO's (at least good ones) are so incredible helpful and willing to help you out.  I can remember getting my first big client and I called just to get more acquainted with the Pro Tools here.  Actually got to talk to Cyrus, before I knew who he was.

So basically: read, follow, and ask.  With every change in the SEOsphere you become that much more of an expert.

I have yet to find a good company for a price within my budget.  I head up the SEO for an ecommerce site as well and am about to embark on a link building campaign.  I'm excited about the recent updates in Google because I think it will allow us to stay competitive by gaining a few great links more naturally than unnatural useless links.

I know there are some incredibly creative link building companies out there, I just haven't found one that works in my small budget.

I would have to say that in my experience the same principles that make a page able to rank for really competitive keywords would hold true for long tail as well.

Here is a cool thread from another Q&A  on SEOmoz --> http://www.seomoz.org/q/need-some-advice-on-long-tail-keyword-research-and-general-seo-methods

My vote goes to WPEngine as well. Great people there.

I was on a different hosting service and my sites slowed to a crawl when I began to grow my company. I moved to a hostgator reseller and have had great success but have heard of the situations where even they will kill your sites if they get too much traffic. Either way you go, always have a backup and a plan B. From my experience a really good hosting service runs anywhere from $20/month and up. A great Wordpress hosting service is WPEngine, but only if you have the budget and traffic to constitute the price. I love them, great group of people there.

For top level categories we are trying to make very unique content.  For similar subcategories there may be a little overlap in product description on the category page but we try to make sure they are atleast 70% unique. It's a subjective call, not a perfected science with that.

Taking the best sellers first is definitely the way to go about doing it.

I don't monitor page authority as much but our rankings have increased and stuck for rather competitive SERPs.  There are a ton of other variables that went into our increased rankings so to say that adding unique content to a page "caused" a ranking increase would have to be tested out.  I know it helped, just not sure to tell you how much.

You look more authentic to Google and Bing if you have unique quality content.

From the sounds of your explanation you are the business.  You may be "doing business as" a name but your customers and future customers are purchasing your services because of you.  I have seen a lot of people claiming their Google+ business page and using it in a tactical way but very personal as well.  It's going to be a different strategy but can still be very personal.

I don't know Google personally but... (a little joke there) I can only assume with the new rel="author" and rel="me" tags and all the connecting of Google's infrastructure that it understands people are becoming the face of their companies.

I would recommend claiming your social network identity for "branding" and creating a strategy around it.  Begin posting strictly business news to Google+ page and only referencing it.  Same thing with Facebook and Twitter.  Claim your brand identity, use the networks intentionally but keep your own personal pages so that you become the authority of your market AND your brand.

At least that's what I'm trying to do.

I have been working on an ecommerce site with probably 10% of the categories you have but I have seen incredible value from taking the time (no matter how much it it) in adding unique content to the pages.  This will not only help you rank well but it will (as I have seen) give your product pages and sub category pages much more credibility.

My advice after having taken the time and still taking the time to do the (non glorious) work of a ton of on page optimization is to keep at it. Just grab yourself a big cup of coffee, a pair of good headphones and get to work.  After a while you'll get a system down and be able to go through it much faster or you can outsource it to someone who can then follow your system.

Most of all with ecommerce, keep at it.  Just plow through the incredibly monotonous tasks that it requires.  Set up the system/method you need to go through for each on page area and then teach someone to do it.

Spend the time doing this --> http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-perform-the-worlds-greatest-seo-audit

Set up actionable methods and clear expectations on reporting not results.  I go over "expected" results but I never say we "will be at this level" or something.

If funding allows it, get a consultation from a well established company like SEERinteractive or Distilled in order to get started on the right track with such a competitive market.

Most importantly, set expectations and do work. Keep at it and you will see some awesome results.

That would be my assumption.  I'm sure there is some value placed on the links you place from your Facebook page timeline as well but not as much.  I would consider this type of stuff to be "signals" not direct brand ranking factors that Google would see.  Signals are the first step though and seem to be having a big impact on my client's brand recognition.

As far as I can tell, social is a big part of the authentication process and filter of Google for Brand signals.  If you establish solid (not spam) social accounts with your brand identity then, yes, I am saying that will help with branding.

A good way to test is by searching your "brand" in google and see what shows up.

I've had similar experiences after migrating sites over to a new CMS.  The links are being picked up from somewhere so the best thing to do is create a 301 redirect if there is a valuable similar page to the 404.  The only other option is to lose possible link juice from where ever the link is coming from.  It's always better to have a pure link (no 301) but if you can't contact the original link then there is nothing you can do.

I'm curious as to where the links come from as well.  Maybe someone will be able to speak to that.

I have experienced the same type of companies.  There are so many of them because this crap SEO still works in some situations.  What you will always have to worry about is building a business on top of shaky ground like that.  It may work for a season but it won't last.  @WilReynolds said recently " why build your business on a one legged stool?  It may work for a season but..."

I would definitely recommend reading through the "Beginners Guide to SEO" (http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo) and evaluate the possible SEO help based on the fundamental methods explained in that.

Alice is right.  Taking the time to invest in unique content, descriptions, image file names, alt tags and URLs are going to be make a big difference on an ecommerce site.

We sometimes assume that because we didn't rank for something it is a penalty when in reality it was just never indexed like we wanted it to.  You product and category pages may do a little Google wiggle in the beginning but that is common.  Usually it take me a few weeks to see have a good idea of where my product pages will rank and then optimize from there.  Don't assume that because you showed up in the top of the rankings at first and then dropped back that it is a penalty.  It is usually just the algorithm's way of evaluation the place of the page in that SERP.

Created quality unique content for a researched keyword, watch the results, analyse the data and then rinse and repeat.

My conclusion would be to look elsewhere and as you said, sit back and watch them closely.  Maybe some linked sites got hit hard and lost their weight in Google over the last week with this latest algorithm change and it indirectly effected your product pages.

Social networks, citation sites, and local directories would probably be a good place to start.  Since I began a social campaign for one of my (non)brands I've seen a big improvementsin rankings for branded results.

It is really interesting to see you pose your question this way.  We have been seeing all the big dogs say that the exact match TLD is going to matter less and less over the coming years.  I wonder if this is an indirect attack on that form of SERP manipulation.  (note: I'm not saying you were trying to manipulate anything but that is the general use of generic TLDs)

You know, Rand just spoke about this in a WBF recently but I can't seem to remember which one.  He said that based on current research the connection between .EDU and authority in Google's eyes is based on content not a causation of the .EDU domain name.  It's weight is determined by that site's content and links just like every other TLD.

Since PR has many different variables I would recommend taking the site as is and not trying to ascribe a certain authority based on PR or .edu domain name.

Run it through OSE and compare it to other similar sites then run some organic searches for keywords you know it is ranking for.

I am going to be watching the responses here because determining the value of different ranking factoring aspects seem so subjective.  We all know what elements are important.  But, determining the level of priority in the whole scheme of things is a judgement call based on the bottom line, skill sets, and a company's ability to invest the time and resources.

From the sounds of it you aren't only dealing with hours of billable time but also on the possibility of losing sales because of the bloat that would take place while making the changes.  I would say a slower site would have a much more drastic effect than ugly URL's.  I would also say that pages with ugly URL's still do ok in search as long as there is good site architecture, quality, and unique content.  That is what I would concentrate on under your current system.  Then I would probably look at weighing the options of moving CMS.  That isn't easy either.  Migrations always take a hit on rankings, visitor loyalty, and page authority.  You will probably come out much stronger but it would be an investment.  (experienced first hand)

Just my 2 cents.

You can use OSE (OpenSiteExplorer) and type in the url of a competitor. That will give you the breakdown of links to that site, how many, and where they come from along with a ton of measurable data.

Are you referring to a competitors competing page?  Are you wanting the meta description and meta title for each page for your competitors site?

I'm seeing a lot of movement on my client's ecommerce site as well.  Mainly I've seen my homepage drop from rankings that it never really was purposed for and product pages are staying strong if I optimized and have supporting content for that keyword.  There are a few exceptions but not many.

I have been adding the name of the company (3 words) after the product name on some products and it doesn't seem to be effecting my rankings at all.  It's something I do if my product title is really short.  I feel if a user sees a two word title in the SERPs they won't take you seriously.

What is the slogan's purpose?  Are you using it as a ranking factor or to help the end user?

That article is great.  I would emphasize the video sitemap and adding rich snippets.

If the videos are a great resource then you probably won't have much trouble getting links.  Just do a search for your local area "blog:city name" is a good place to start.

I just tried this out and it works.  You may have to do some work on adding the right URL since it only scrapes the url you enter but it does grab the cotent and keeps it up to date.

http://googledocstips.com/2011/04/15/how-to-scrape-website-content/

What CMS are you using? What type of "errors" are you searching for?

I just went through this as I had a huge ecommerce site migration in January and then added a huge amount of 301's upfront with a regular dose of 301 updates as the 404's came in that I missed.

I didn't see any negative results from 301'ing the 500 pages and then the several hundred after that but that might be due to the fact that I redirected them to pages that were filled with the same content or associated with the same content (i.e. - category of a product instead of a list of the product variations page).

I've found my optimized pages were sticking a lot better and our new pages were being indexed quicker (90%-95% of sitemap urls are indexed).

A few things I was careful about when doing this was that I didn't just redirect to the home page.  If the page didin't exist anymore and there wasn't any associated content I would just let it die after making sure there weren't any inbound links or onsite links to that page.

I can imagine that if you redirect 1100 pages of your site to the homepage it is going to hurt some of your site architecture as Google sees it and could therefore reflect in how Google or and other SE sees your site.  Cleaning up your site is one thing but just redirecting to the homepage is another.

Try redirecting to a similar page, repurposing the old page (add a few links or a suggestion to the content "This event has ended and it was a huge success but check out our future events over here").

Not much to add except that I feel it has paid for itself every month for me as a freelance SEO.  I have started including it in my resume and have had several opportunities simply because I emphasize my membership so much.  I know that if I didn't have the membership I wouldn't be where I am now in my freelance career.

We have several links showing up as 404 errors because of the way our site is set up.

I want to know if this is hurting our ranking because Google sees it as 404 errors or is it just something I can ignore because it works for the user?

If it is hurting our quality and therefore our rankings, how can I correct it so that best practices are used?

I have attached an image of the links and here is an example page --> http://www.sourcemedicalequipment.com/Perch-Polyurethane-Industrial-Stool-18-25-p/idst2.htm

The links in the description section have anchor text "All 3 Choices" and result in a popup information page.  If you cut and paste the URL's that they are redirecting to end in a 404 but if you use the link on the page it results in a popup information window.

Hope I explained that well.  Thanks for your help!

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I just found this article by Yoast himself.  Sounds like he ran into a few of the same hurdles you have and created a PHP script to help build a sitemap.  http://yoast.com/xml-sitemap-php-script/

Hope that helps.

The only other option I would recommend is to build the sitemap yourself.  I recently purchased http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ based on some of the other Q&A threads in SEOmoz and used it for a large ecommerce site.  It was a good fix to my problems.  Maybe a help, maybe not.

I've got a little bit of a dilemma.  A company I'm working for has an ecommerce site that is moving to Volusion.  It is impossible to add "domain.com/blog" so I am forced to use a subdomain in order to keep consistency.

We are starting a push in Social media and have secured shorter handles for the brand to use on the different networks.

One of the main goals originally for developing a blog is to build trust but since the domain names are so big (26 characters) and the ecommerce sites already have a good amount of trust building factors in them I am beginning to question my original plan.

My question is this: If I go with a shorter brand recognized domain name to develop the blog on which is different than the ecommerce domain (keyword matched) will I loose too much trust and ranking opportunity because of the difference in domains.

I know there isn't a golden bullet for this question but i would love to get you your take on it.

I kinda came into this after the schedule was set so I was given the task of making the best SEO decisions I could. Thanks for the advice. It confirms for me alot of what I already thought. Any thoughts on the blog work around since they don't have a way of integrating WordPress or anything? I'm guessing I need to recomend a subdomain like "blog.domainname.com" or something but just wanted ot pick your brain. Thanks again.