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All things being equal, one website has 20 pages of content around a topic and another has thousands of pages of unique content, which is likely more of a resource for the searcher?  The larger website.

That being said, Google looks at 100+ ranking factors so if you have hundreds of authoritative c-blocks linking to a landing page on a small site it could rank well for the keyword you're focused on.

I would check with GoDaddy.  If you do a whois lookup they're managing all the DNS for that website so likely the ones managing the redirect if it's not with their webhost or htaccess.

JIm

One of my brilliant strategists may have figured out the discrepancy:

Why doesn't Webmaster Tools data match Google Analytics data?

Webmaster Tools data may differ from the data displayed in other tools, such as Google Analytics. Possible reasons for this include:

• Webmaster Tools does some additional data processing—for example, to handle duplicate content and visits from robots—that may cause your stats to differ from stats listed in other sources. Some tools, such as Google Analytics, track traffic only from users who have enabled JavaScript in their browser.
• Google Analytics tracks visits only to pages which include the correctly configured Analytics Javascript code. If pages on the site don't have the code, Analytics will not track visits to those pages. Visits to pages without the Analytics tracking code will, however, be tracked in Webmaster Tools if users reach them via search results or if Google crawls or otherwise discovers them.
• Some tools define "keywords" differently. For example:
  • The Keywords page in Webmaster Tools displays the most significant words Google found on your site.
  • The Keywords tool in Google Adwords displays the total number of user queries for that keyword across the web.
  • Analytics uses the term "keywords" to describe both search engine queries and AdWords paid keywords.
  • The Webmaster Tools Search Queries page lists shows the total number of keyword search queries in which your page's listing was seen in search results, and this is a smaller number. Also, Webmaster Tools rounds search query data to one or two significant digits.

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1120006?hl=en

I've not seen it work at that scale, however if you were go to that route I would:

• Not roll out 1,000 pages at once - do it in stages.

• Make sure the content on each is completely unique so as not to appear like doorway pages.  So, content specifically about the city and region, etc.

Without knowing the site nav and existing size, it's hard to answer the linking question - but it needs to not look like a directory with a zillion links per page.  Maybe in map form with two levels of hierarchy.  Region, then county?

Infographics can be awesome vehicles for driving inbound links, thought leadership and social media activity.  You do have to promote it, though.  That means proactive outreach to industry sites, consistent push through your existing social media channels, etc.

The landing page you host it on should also have a substantial amount of written content.  You also want to make it easy as possible for someone to share it - so providing a copy of the code needed to republish/share right on the page is a good idea.

Good luck!

Hi Barry,

The purpose of that 3-digit min unique identifier is to make sure the filename is unique.  We recommend our clients add it to the tail end of the URL as part of the filename, so headline-of-article-12345.html

It's a requirement before you apply.  If you're already accepted as a publisher, make sure your News XML is working properly.  You should also start incorporating the new meta keywords tag for GN publishers.  We covered that update recently: http://www.brafton.com/news/google-rolls-out-news_keywords-metatag-to-identify-news-content

Jim