Welcome to the Q&A Forum

As far as the post-panda world goes, I found this post to be helpful for both beginner and advanced SEOs alike: http://www.whitefireseo.com/site-architecture/subdomain-or-subfolder-post-panda/360/

Thanks for the help George and participating in the discussion.  I like the ease of the syntax involved with the non-www version, but I think people's and browsers natural inclination towards the www version makes it the most practical at this juncture.  Perhaps if you're building a new site the less traditional non-www might be used, but like yourself, I also prefer the www.

Thanks,

Marty

Yes, I realized my typo after I posted, thanks.  We do use the www version consistently, so no problem there.  That being said, what's your take on the www vs non-www preferred domain structure, I've noticed some popular site (mashable comes to mind) going away from the www preferred domain -- just like to hear differing opinions if/when you have the time.

Thanks,

Marty

Yes, I realized my typo after I posted, thanks.  We do use the www version consistently, so no problem there.  That being said, what's your take on the www vs non-www preferred domain structure, I've noticed some popular site (mashable comes to mind) going away from the www preferred domain -- just like to hear differing opinions if/when you have the time.

Thanks,

Marty

We have a similar thread going, and I believe it may help resolve some of your questions concerning the trailing slash:  http://www.seomoz.org/q/trailing-slash-and-rel-canonical

Hello George, thank you for your helpful response.  While I knew it was the case for absolute URLs and subdirectories, I was unsure whether it also pertained to the root domain.  The link provided a helpful explanation, although SEO's have been, "reasonably sure that just about all search engines will be normalizing all those URLs to be the same," in the past only to have those certainties change unexpectedly.  That being said, I think the forum made a good point in saying,"search engines generally don't want to deliberately add duplicates to their index."

With our canonical URL set to www.domain.com , do you believe there will be any loss of link juice with backlinks using both the domain.com and domain.com/ , or will it just be a better indicator to the search engines that both URLs are one in the same?  Also do you think it matters that the domain root with the trailing slash is the one that shows up in the Google SERPs? --- to me that seems to indicate that Google prefers the root domain in directories to have a trailing slash

Our website is in a directory format:

http://www.website.com/website.asp

Our homepage display URL is http://www.website.com which currently matches our to eliminate the possibility of duplicate content.

However, I noticed that in the SERPs, google displays the homepage with a trailing slash http://www.website.com/

My question: should I change the rel="canonical" to have a trailing slash?  I noticed one of our competitors uses the trailing slash in their rel="canonical"

Do potential benefits outweigh the risks?

I can PM further information if necessary.

Thanks for the assistance in advance...

You can check out the other thread I mentioned, and SeoMoz has a new feature available MozCast which allows you to view the Google Algorithm flux graphically (very basic at the moment, but definitely something nice to assuage your fears/insanity haha).

Thanks as always for the help Dr. Pete, much appreciated!  Seems like there's a lot going on with the algo at the moment, guess we're all just along for the ride.  Thanks for mentioning the MozCast tool (http://mozcast.com), very interesting and a great graphic to help me know I'm not crazy haha, and a long needed tool overall; I look forward to seeing the added functionality you guys incorporate in the future.

People seem to be experiencing similar issues in my thread (http://www.seomoz.org/q/google-algorithm-update-july-30-2012-anyone-else-notice-a-major-drop-in-keyword-rankings), so I referred them here.

If you guys get a handle on what the flux is all about, please let me know or better yet blog it to the Moz faithful. Thanks again Dr. Pete.

-Marty

Each day, we take the current top 10 and compare it to the previous day's top 10 (for any given keyword), and calculate a rate of change or "delta".

Dr. Pete provides some insight into the issue on a similar question found here: http://www.seomoz.org/q/mozcast-com-what-happened-on-the-27th-hottest-day-of-the-month .  But basically everyone is still investigating and no one is exactly sure yet it seems.  I'm sure more people will begin to notice an issue as their weekly rankings roll out.  Hopefully we will all be able to figure it out and rebound, because we have  seemingly been doing everything right thus far, just as you've stated Chad.

Unless they are a partner or affiliate site I would never recommend linking out on your homepage.  Good luck with the link building, here are a few other posts that might help you get started...

http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo/growing-popularity-and-links

http://www.seomoz.org/q/link-building-i-really-dont-get-it-is-there-an-easy-way

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/link-building-tools

Here's a great SEOMoz post on the subject:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/authorship-google-plus-link-building

And if you're using a Wordpress CMS: http://www.devonwebdesigners.com/3278/relauthor-step-by-step-for-wordpress/

Best of luck, I'm in the process of implementing this myself.  And as others have noted, you can test if it's working through GWT.

From July 30th to the 31st many of my keyword rankings in Google plumited 30 spots or more.  Has anyone else notice this on their site?  Does anyone have any idea for the presumed penalty?

I can PM my site information if needed for further assistance.  As always thank you for the assistance, and any help in this matter is greatly appreciated!

Thank you Geoff, I create a bunch of content regularly and I was really just wondering if social bookmarking was worth the time anymore. And I figured it would likely be fodder for Google sanctions and penalties down the line; I'm very OK with social bookmarking going the way of the dodo, thanks.

dodo.JPG

This should explain everything for you need to know for a variety of options: http://www.webconfs.com/how-to-redirect-a-webpage.php

Personally I never remove 301's (being a "permanent" redirect), for fear of 404's from some outside links.

Here's a thread from Matt Cutts discussing the difference between 301 and 302 redirects: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-discussing-302-redirects/

Hello George, thank you for your helpful response.  While I knew it was the case for absolute URLs and subdirectories, I was unsure whether it also pertained to the root domain.  The link provided a helpful explanation, although SEO's have been, "reasonably sure that just about all search engines will be normalizing all those URLs to be the same," in the past only to have those certainties change unexpectedly.  That being said, I think the forum made a good point in saying,"search engines generally don't want to deliberately add duplicates to their index."

With our canonical URL set to www.domain.com , do you believe there will be any loss of link juice with backlinks using both the domain.com and domain.com/ , or will it just be a better indicator to the search engines that both URLs are one in the same?  Also do you think it matters that the domain root with the trailing slash is the one that shows up in the Google SERPs? --- to me that seems to indicate that Google prefers the root domain in directories to have a trailing slash