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ok, apols for assuming name - just took it from user name and products.

Will have a think and reply if anything comes to mind. There are some gurus on here who will be to the rescue soon no doubt!

Hi, bit of an odd one.

Anything in Webmaster Tools in Crawl Error/Stats?

Anything being blocked by robots.txt?

I'd definitely get the 'power saving' issue fixed too, shouldn't be happening in this day and age with any type of web server. If bot tries to visit site and gets lost/confused, it doesn't take long for it to move on.

Oh, btw, i'd fix your title tag on home page while you're at it, seems a bit long to me.

Good luck.

PS - presuming your site is apogeecorp your content is viewable both with and without www, so i'd fix that too by permanently redirecting one to the other, probably non-www to www.

If G thinks 'wrong' page is best fit to query, i'd check your on-page optimisation for 'bad' and 'good' pages via Moz Research Tools then if 'wrong' page does come out best tweak it to reduce bounce.

(hope i've read this correctly)

Assuming no problems with the bulk of the pages, i expect these will be picked up over time. It might be a good idea to do Fetch as Google in WMT (under Health tab) on homepage and submit to index - click all linked pages too.

gl

Great help here folks, thanks.

One last question if i may - each of the 3 sites links to the other 2 in the header (on every page), so i've got x00 cross-referencing links.

Any value in making them rel=no-follow? Don't want to remove them necessarily.

Thanks for all the replies everyone. Tricky isn't it?

Moving to 1 site is probably the best medium/long-term option. The 3 sites thing is historical in that sites 2 and 3 were purchased (physically) by the owner over last few years.

Biggest problem with totally new is that (afaik anyway, according to hosting company) i can't 301 old sites to this new site due to the shared hosting issue (using IIS as well, not Apache), so perhaps getting them split out is proper interim measure. (I might be able to do something via WMTools with this though i guess)

Will do some more research into use of canonical cross-domain and attempt the on-page rewrite as well as talking to client about moving sites to unique hosts.

thanks again.

The benefit to the user is that they will need to visit physical site to view/purchase and as such, wouldn't click on say, North site (even if it was top 2 or 3) if they were in South.

Are you (both) saying it'd be ok to link rel canonical domain1/page.html on domains 2 and 3? (i.e. different domain names)

Thanks.

Hi everyone, appreciate any thoughts on this. (bit long, sorry)

Am working on 3 sites selling the same thing...main difference between each site is physical location/target market area (think North, South, West as an example)

Now, say these 3 sites all sell Blue Widgets, and thus all on-page optimisation has been done for this keyword.

These 3 sites are now effectively duplicates of each other - well the Blue Widgets page is at least, and whist there are no 'errors' in Webmaster Tools am pretty sure they ought to be ranking better than they are (good PA, DA, mR etc)

Sites share the same template/look and feel too AND are accessed via same IP - just for good measure

So - to questions/thoughts.

1 - Is it enough to try and get creative with on-page changes to try and 'de-dupe' them? Kinda tricky with Blue Widgets example - how many ways can you say that? I could focus on geographical element a bit more, but would like to rank well for Blue Widgets generally.

2 - I could, i guess, no-index, no-follow, blue widgets page on 2 of the sites, seems a bit drastic though. (or robots.txt them)

3 - I could even link (via internal navigation) sites 2 and 3 to site 1 Blue Widgets page and thus make 2 blue widget pages redundant?

4 - Is there anything HTML coding wise i could do to pull in Site 1 content to sites 2 and 3, without cloaking or anything nasty like that?

I think 1- is first thing to do. Anything else? Many thanks.

Ray, for the title tag you need some seo functionality or a plugin within your Wordpress theme. There may be something built in, or you can get Yoast (or similar)

i think, repeat think, this might help you with the canonical part too but if not you might have to edit the page from the editor function (sorry, not that knowledgable on wordpress)

There's actually two link rel canonicals on the page, 1 at the top and 1 on line 52. you only need one.

Good luck.

Hi, this may be nothing, but is the link rel canonical for the homepage a recent addition? I've had a similar issue since i added this on a site.

Also, (prob not connected) but you might want to sort out Title Tag on homepage:

<title></span><span>Photos on Canvas | Photo to Canvas Prints | Get Your Photo CanvasWhy Get Your Photo on Canvas Prints From Us?</span><span></title>

Good luck trying to sort it.

Hi Rochelle, Digital Marketing Manager (or even Online Marketing Manager) works imo.

Wondering if this is 2 roles though? Obviously depends on size of company/client types and demands but in my experience, SEO is often more suited to someone a bit more technical (e.g. can work through site/crawl errors for instance) whereas the SEM/remarketing role is a bit more sales/commercial focussed.

(just my thoughts - hope this helps)

Ben, i'd love to know how much the On-page versus the Off-page stuff accounted for the rankings boost but can't put an exact value on it. All i know is MozTrust is up, DA is up so am happy for the time being. As soon as the next Index update is done i'll do a before and after Keyword Analysis report to try and get more granular.

Personally, i think Directories will become less relevant as Social takes over as a 'vote of trust' but don't think G is killing off the directory business quite yet. Am definitely sticking to quality over quantity for these however.

Ah yes, Step 0 is paramount! Thanks for the comment.

..or subtitled "This is how I did it"

Managed to get clients second most important keyword to #1 on Google recently (most important is about 5 or 6, am getting there with that one)

Yes, we all know 'rankings aren't important, traffic/searches are' but you know what -  when a Client sees their keyword at #1 it kinda helps getting paid.

Thus, in summary, this is how I did it. I don't think there's anything earth shattering here but it might help a few out as I see so many 'where do i start' type posts.

1 - Do everything within Webmaster Tools that is humanly possible. Sitemaps, fix errors, preferred domain the lot. Spend ages here!

2 - Get your on page optimisation sorted out. Decide on THE main keyword for page, fire it into your campaign and test it. Do not give up until it's an A and you've done ALL the tips/hints (yes, even bold text on the page.) It's obvious but you have to tell a Search Engine exactly what the page is about - and give it a few hints too.

3 - Links - ahhh, good old links the bain of our lives. This site was struggling for links so i bought some - yes, the shame of it. I still think the best directories are a good starting point, spent about £400 or so. (BOTW, JoeAnt, HotVsNot etc,) Also, find low hanging fruit places for links. See where top 3 or 4 competitors are getting links from (via OSE) and get your site linked there too. These aren't always chargeable.

4 - Get rid of as many errors you can from Crawl Diagnostics (Roger) and do everything you can to ensure page(s) load as quick as possible. e.g. for images, resize them and reduce colour depth.

5 - Go over Steps 1-4 again and again AND AGAIN.

I think that's about it (will add anything if i think of it), this all took about 4-5 months - not to do the SEO work but for Google (or any SE) to recognise it all, so thanks to all at SEOmoz, the blogs and this forum for all the assistance. (Just need to get Linkscape updated quicker now folks - i couldn't resist that one!)

+1 for Screaming Frog.

Paid version can do more more depth/links etc, but definitely worth it. Can even build a Sitemap for you if needed. A must in any SEOs toolbox.

Dan

Hi everyone,

Can someone explain the benefits of adding OG tags to a site?

As far as I can see/read doing this 'enables a site to become part of the FB social graph' (or similar..)

...and that's what exactly?

(confused smiley)

Cheers.

Would a 301 from .com to .co.uk work better?

Hi, never had any problems with Tsohost.

Good luck.