Maybe it has all to do with the site itself and the "human" approach Google is taking.

• The site is a non-profit organisation supporting the New York technology community. Domain is .org
• Let's review the page, in all reality such a page is useful -  it is showing internet companies made in NYC from a non-profit organisation. What other format would you take? Sure it only has links and looks spammy but it isn't a spam page. It has a purpose and exists in a format that is acceptable by its users - plus, it isn't asking for money. If you were to look at this from a human eye, you would go "this isn't spam"
• Taking the human approach again, if my friend was looking for a collection of internet companies in NYC and he had a  research pile with 10 documents and one of them was a handwritten version of this page, shouldn't it be there? Or should it be filed under his research pile of 500 documents? Maybe, we need to see Google differently, it's more complex than a "if statement".
• Maybe reciprocal links to non-profit organisations are viewed differently. A good Samaritan would go "yes" and maybe Google is taking a human approach and going "let me help you as you are a good non-profit organisation"
• Now the nofollow aspect, this is a technical element and I agree, shouldn't it exist? But again, maybe just maybe Google is seeing the site and going "I support such organisations" and the support this can give to other sites isn't so bad.
• Let's take Wikipedia. Would Google punish wikipedia if they didn't have a nofollow? Was the introduction of nofollow done due to Google or a decision Wikipedia made? Maybe it was Wikipedia who noticed users abuse their site and thus introduced the nofollow.

What I'm trying to say is that, maybe Google is evolving to be more complex/human like. It's doing a moral mind on decisions.

On the flip-side, it's just a software that forgot to notice the site amongst the millions of websites out there and in time, it will capture them.

All 3

• canonical-url-tag,
• changing page Meta;
• and Body text.

In addition to the body text, bring in city specific and state specific content for that category. Images, text and even cross selling to make the page unique.

• Webmaster tools.  Google, Bing (Yahoo) have them. Get your sitemap loaded and site set up in their webmaster tools!
• High authority backlinks. How about a wikipedia page? Or start creating some rich content that users will find useful and share? Even social media metrics come into ranking.
• Make your site run HTTPS and use a CDN
• Images and video. Don't forget users also land on your site from images and videos tabs+

I don't think there ever is an individual who knows the right answers to everything when it comes to SEO. We're all exploring ideas, learning and sharing knowledge of our own findings and research.

Let's step outside the SEO world, throw away our knowledge and look at the website. Would you say, it is a website your client should be on? If your client is indeed an internet company made in NYC, shouldn't they be mentioned in NY Tech Meetup? From this perspective, I would say yes.

My gut feeling is that, Google won't penalise a website who is an internet company made in NYC and listed on a non-profit organization website with a nofollow link. It seems like a natural fit.

Second, I'm looking at opensiteexplorer, the page has a page authority of 78/100 and 174 root domains including some big power houses like the guardian, bloomberg, forbes. (didn't see any nofollow)  I definitely think these are helping.I remember working on a client's webpage once, we optimised the page with rich content, clear call to actions and it was ranking on page 2, got 2 hyperlinks from the BBC and another high authority website and two weeks later, "boom", we were ranking on page 1, position 4.

Now let's explore the "black hat" technique. The core one would be the requesting of reciprocal links with the anchor text "Made in NYC" hyperlinked

You are right, that is "black hat" if I saw someone else do it, but in this scenario, I would go "that's fine". It all depends on the situation.

• A non-profit organisation focused on supporting new york technology community
• The webpage is specific to one and one thing only, listing internet companies made in NYC
• Their selection criteria focuses on active sites with 10k+ visits and ones solely made in NYC

You see, if I were to move this whole concept to a real world scenario, where nytm was a shop and they had a book listing other shops built in NYC, would you penalize them? "you sir, should not list such shops nor should other shops say you have a list of NYC build shops!"

In all honest, I don't see what they are doing as a big no no. I think things should be looked at as a case by case scenario, not to cluster everyone as a single group.

You mentioned why can't you create a .org page similar to this.. I say why not? Note their directory page isn't the core of what they are. This is just a single page of their entire entity and I think that plays a lot in their strength in reaffirming their presence in the web.

I realize you are frustrated, and all of us have our own thoughts. My thinking has always been to compare things to a real life scenario and focus more on creating great content that others will link to, rather than chase it myself. Sure, they might all use nofollow but they clicked through wanting to see my page and I'll let my rich content, site design and clear call to action turn them to a returnee.

Don't fret my friend. In a weird way, this is the perfect board to vent out and hear everyones thoughts and ideas. I hope my thoughts haven't put you off

Will your old site be replaced with the new website? If so, I would place the message on top, so it appears above the header. This message pushes the site down

The message could have a 'continue' button and once clicked, it will dissapear pushing the site back up. This way, everyone will see it no matter what landing page they arrive.

We do something similar for our cookie message

Matt has summed it up, but my question is..why don't you get a wildcard certificate?

It will make it much easier and if you ever move your website to a CDN network, an HTTPS website with a wildcard certificate makes the process smooth!

This might be a stupid question but the homepage of SEOMoz doesn't have img alt tags on the three feature screenshots.

I've hovered my mouse and looked at the code, the images just have the link to www.seomoz.org/features

Everyone goes adding image tags is key, any reason why SEOMoz don't?

When it comes to backlinking, I can offer a suggestion. Get a list of competitors and use opensiteexplorer. You will be able to see what websites your competitors have content on and are generating backlinks from.

Now go through that list and identify the top level domains and see if you can also produce a high quality content they would link to. A great inforgraphic, or top tip article, something users will find relevant and useful.

I would suggest that as a start, It's something I've started doing but the key in my mind is not to spam but build reputable links that resonate with your company.

Agree with Chris and Moosa's points. The following worked for me

• Schema
• Create meta descriptions that will encourage click throughs. For a product page, our meta description summed up what the product did  and the ranges we offered. It led to more clicks.

Now that I know what they are "link titles", I was able to find this old (but useful) article on moz

Link Title Attribute and its SEO Benefit

http://moz.com/ugc/link-tilte-attribute-and-its-seo-benefit

The comments section really fleshes out some good points even if the article is 4 years old. Recent comments SEs don't consider title, hmm...

Ofcourse! I kept thinking "hmm why isn't any text appearing when I hover my mouse"

Thanks Simon

Thanks Everett,

• Rel="canonical" is in place, so that's covered
• The urls with the parameter are only accessible if you want to directly access a particular size. If you are on the default page and switch sizes from the dropdown, no URL change is presented.
• I have left webmaster to decide what should be crawled or not. The parameter has been mentioned though.

SEOMoz's Opensiteexplorer? You can look at the external link domains, it even breaks it down to show you the page on the external site with a link to you

I don't see any problem in that.

Make sure you use hyphens to separate words as Google reads hyphens and not underscores as spaces and a user is more likely to search 'dublin places to rent' or 'places to rent in dublin'

Should I address this issue now or is it too late to matter?

• Never too late

How would i do it, a link audit through a freelancer?

• Depends on your budget and time.  Rebecca's suggestion is good to use a tool like Link Detox and contact every webmaster. If you got the time to do it yourself, go for it..otherwise if you got the budget, hire a freelancer but check everything.

What do you SEO mozters recommend?

• Rebecca's post summed it up

Sometimes google will change the description and title depending on the search term. I believe this is what is happening. You searched for the URL and it changed the meta description.

here's a screenshot of your page when I searched site:bestathire.co.uk 1648

http://imgur.com/kmfPcTC

As you can see, your meta description is appearing correctly. Google's Structured Testing tool is also showing the schema

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bestathire.co.uk%2Fproducts%2Fview%2F1648%2FCarpet_Cleaner_Domestic

What I also spotted on Google is duplicate content indexed in Google

• http://www.bestathire.co.uk/products/view/1648/Carpet_Cleaner_Domestic
• http://www.bestathire.co.uk/thanks/1648/8845/DIY_tools_equipment/Cleaning_equipment/Carpet_cleaners

Hope that helps. You can also tag your page using Google Webmaster tools >>Search Appearance>>Data Highlighter.

Hope that helps

I agree with Michael, it's about identifying the problem and dealing with it.

A valuable tool I use is google's text cache to see what spiders see http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.njhypnotherapy.com/&strip=1

Are spiders seeing your key term? You've got testimonials as images which are great content users will find useful and so will search engines.

Also think about the homepage, what should it really rank for? We tend to think "I need my homepage ranking for core keyphrases" but should it? I believe the homepage should rank for a generic search phrase and appear for brand searches. Other pages on your site should focus on the specific keyterms you want to target. In your case, the homepage should be focused on "hypnotherapy" and pages built for 'hypnosis for anxiety', 'hypnotherapy fear' should rank for them.

I would even do small changes like change the title to read: **Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy in New Jersey, NJ | Imraaz Rally C.ht, NLP **and reword the meta description to bring hypnosis and hypnotherary more in front. Users land on your page searching for hypnosis and hypnotherapy in NJ, your name/brand seals the deal in my opinion. Not the other way round.

Interestingly, I can't see your site appearing as a local search when I searched for hypnotherapy, nj. This would be ideal for you and could drive traffic that is local and relevant.

I can see you are using authorship on your blogs, but your image isn't appearing in search results. Have you set it up correctly? In your Google+ have you linked the site and set yourself as a contributor to the site?

I would also look at things like introduce schema.org to microtag your site for search engines.

Rework the structure and your good content will build external links, you can even go beyond and do things like trustpilot reviews and run some location specific PPC ads that will show up the rating stars from trustpilot

Absolutely, as Don and Monica have raised, your unique content is outweighed by your "duplicate" content.

Get some more rich text. For instance, put yourself in the shoes of your customer and think about content that would make you buy the product with NO DOUBTS!

• Things like testimonials/reviews will aid the user
• Why not introduce some protocols or tips to make the content different?
• More images with optimised file names and alt tags (don't just name images 187041111-370_370.jpg!)
• How about a short description of the product on top under the title and then a descriptive unique one further into the page? It helps spiders crawl your keywords early, it sells the product in a instant to users and it enriches the page.

It's no different to real world. In the real world a user might do research before making the purchase instore, why not offer that research on your page itself to re-affirm this is the product you want and in turn make your page a more optimised one?

• Can you reduce the duplicate content by turning it into a footer link? For instance, you could move the entire 'about the company' tab to a link in the footer that links to an about us page. I've seen plenty of sites that focus on product pages that link out to specific pages like 'terms and conditions, about' and only keep what is relevant to the customer on the page
• No need to spam pages with content for the sake of content. It's about placing content that is relevant. Quality over quantity.
• Let the unique product descriptions, titles, headers, images, image tags, seo friendly urls, breadcrumbs and a good sitemap help you structure the pages correctly. You will start seeing improvements.
• Throw in a valuable blog focused on your area that users will find useful to build quality external links and you will further benefit.
• Better yet, look at moving your site to HTTPS, Google recently announced they value sites that move to HTTPS. You have an e commerce site, it will help

Absolutely,

I would also suggest being wary of Google's EMD update. If you don't have a domain with quality content, it won't rank you high just because you have the keyword in the URL.

Here's something I wanted to do. Use Google Hangouts for a webinar.

No only is it free, but it can boost your Google+ presence and brand awareness.

No problem, Moz can highlight duplicate content for you. Run a crawl diagnostic and review the report.

There is no doubt in my mind, search engines will get smarter and punish those who abuse the system.

It's been the norm since the beginning, from keyword stuffing to exact match-domains. Eventually search engines will catch up and punish. When this happens, you'll be in the deep hole trying to recover rather than strengthen.

My advice would be to go down the correct route for tagging product pages. I don't think an author tag is right for a product page, but introduce breadcrumbs, prices, ratings and product images. Last thing you want are users clicking on your page and leaving.

If I wanted to buy a laptop and saw the face of an author who wrote that page, that's a WTF moment for me. Instead, show me a screenshot of a laptop, the price range, number of reviews and the breadcrumb structure...yeah, I'm clicking that.

What i'm trying to say is that, rather than focusing on the competitor and mimicking, focus on your customer and what best would turn them from newbie to a returnee.

• Have you seen websites use double dashes?

A single dash has become norm and users read it and use it that way, but a double dash is outside the norm in my opinion and you could end up with a lot of incorrect backlinks. A customer might type the URL with a single dash and end up with a 404 page for instance.

Hey, I had the same question and got some good answers, check out my post

http://moz.com/community/q/hover-texts-for-hyperlinks

I noticed in the latest Yoast newsletter that they are releasing themes in February. I'm a big fan of the Yoast SEO pluggin so his themes might be something to look into as well. No doubt, they will be seo focused.

Here's an online link to the newsletter http://us1.campaign-archive2.com/?u=ffa93edfe21752c921f860358&id=958ca84faa&e=6d12308613

Hope that helps

Let's say they do, but does that mean you stand a better chance to rank higher than a competitor who uses hyphens? If hyphens represent spaces, and a user searches chanel number 5, doesn't that mean a website that has the url chanel-number-5.html might rank better than chanelnumber5.html.

Similar to a human, it would be easier to read chanel-number-5 than chanelnumber5.

So even if the bot reads a url without a hyphen, a competitor with a hyphen might edge out.

That's my two cents

From my experience, change always happens..

• People might request a change in URL structure (then it will lead to 301 redirects and setting them up)
• It's better to let Google crawl a rich page than a weak page. When it comes to ecommerce sites, you don't want "page not found" as the product hasn't been published but its category page is done. If the sitemap leads to broken pages - well, customers won't like it, so don't expect bots to do either.
• I would work on your ecommerce site, get it done in preview and all ready to go. You can also setup things like Google Webmaster Tools, Bing Webmaster tools, ensure your sitemap is ready, url structure is fine and get it ready.

So my advice is to set it up and then launch. You don't want to end up "fixing" your website post launch.  Here's another way to look at it.. your credit score - it's easier to work on building a good credit score, than having to fix a bad one. SEO is the same.