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Ha! I was in the same situation recently and eventually decided to keep the page where it is and earn links towards the new resource rather than fiddling with 301 redirects. The reason was that both pages could convert (on both domains). I could have done a canonical and point to the page B, but that didn't seem fair either so I just left it as it is.
Ah that makes sense 
This could be a problem for our listing too actually as we're in a big complex with many businesses.
It will not pick it up automatically, however if you go massive with it or somebody reports you and you get a manual audit then you could be in trouble. There is a way of getting links without asking for links - and that is to create a need and reason for linking. For example you can provide them with optional code snippets that would save them time explaining the rules of the competition (T&C?) and other handy devices which would save webmasters time.
That is not the problem.
Simple search for a piece of on-page content reveals that Google chooses .com as the content originator. Again in the results the page has problematic URL. Perhaps it's a redirect gone wrong but this could be solved simply by canonicalisation or 301 redirection.
This is in case Mick does not need both websites online. If he does there is still a solution but it would involve introducing geo specific signals to Google and setting preference in Google Webmaster Tools (among other things). Diversification of content would take time and may not be feasible in all cases.
http://www.filmcellcostumeideas.com/ is fighting against http://www.filmcellcostumeideas.co.uk/ in SERPS.
Also seeing some funny URLs like: http://www.filmcellcostumeideas.com/%3C?php%2520echo%2520zen_href_link(FILENAME_CONTACT_US)%3B%2520%3F%253E
This is just the beginning of potential problems.
Do you run .com and .co.uk on purpose? (e.g. for different target markets)
Hey there,
I can still see TrueLocal but not the others.
The reason could be that somebody has created duplicate listings for this address:
What is this Google Places backhat!?!
I've also noticed a spammer has downvoted this particular listing and what seems to be all his competitors: http://maps.google.com.au/maps/user?uid=201850203609104288979&ptab=1
This is terrible.
Own Data:
Use data you have and nobody else does and write it using variables into normal human language acompanied with some pretty and easy to understand data charts (Set in tabbed view to prevent interfering with call to action elements).:
Examples:
Basics: Product Description.
The chance is that everyone will use same manufacturer-supplied product descriptions and specifications. Go through the trouble of rewriting to provide better descriptions in language users will understand and relate to. It's a big process so start from most important products and work your way down.
Encourage user-generated content (Reviews, quick like/dislike)
Use of relevant news feeds and social streams for that product or brand
It will be dynamic and you won't have to think and manually add canonical URL to each page you create. It will be done automatically. I suggest you test it as soon as it's set up by checking your source code.
You can install the "Canonical URL's" plugin straight from your wp-admin interface: yourdomain.com/wp-admin/plugin-install.php?tab=search&type=term&s=canonical&plugin-search-input=Search+Plugins
(should be first result)
This plugin is pretty basic but you can tweak its settings in the plugin configuration panel.
You will now notice that your source code contains another line:
rel='canonical' href='http://yourwebsite.com' />
Yes, good point. I forgot to mention that perception of your material might be different if users see that it's hosted on YouTube. Not saying better or worse - just different. Typically social and entertaining material seems to characterise Youtube more refined and artistic on Vimeo and specific on others (e.g. Howto videos).
Hosting your own videos means less leak to outside channels and your own branding. Every hosted video platform has a way of getting users away from your site (ad, logo to youtube, related videos...etc). If you introduce your videos on Vimeo, Youtube and such they can provide a valuable stream of traffic and extra exposure much like eBay does for product sellers who also have an eCommerce store of their own. If the video goes truly viral however, the bills for hosted solutions could be hefty with some paid video hosting providers.
Nothing that can harm you as far as I know, however it's annoying when you want to track success of a single video across many channels as all counters are adding up to a general number of views/likes/shares/comments...etc. This can prevent a potentially viral video from reaching its critical mass, at the other hand however, it gives a wider number of entry points for different types of users.
Very good point about updating WP promptly to avoid security holes. It may not be the hosting company at all.
Alan, Christine is looking for a host for a wordpress site. discountasp (.NET hosting) doesn't strike me as the right choice.
Our WP site has been hacked just about on every possible host and platform from shared to dedicated server. Entry points were different, sometimes through entire server, sometimes via plugin weakness. We're thinking about Amazon right now, still undecided as one of our staff gravitates towards hosting the site on our own box in the office.
PS: Found this presentation: http://blog.rochenhost.com/2010/06/joomla-and-wordpress-hosting-and-security-presentations-cms-expo/ I haven't heard of this hosting company before but anyone who is presenting on wordpress hosting security must be worth investigating further.
Strange, no local results for me. Only videos in one case or clean serps in all others. My guess is that it's location based.
I hear you... have been through the same and this feels like an oasis.
This is a smart move by SEOMoz, this forum will take over dwindling SEO forums we used to visit which are now full of spammers and ridiculous content. Barrier to entry is the key to quality here. Well done.
954 underscores in the source code of the first result? God knows. I suspect maybe comment material has lots of underscore_usernames/
This is not a question but something to share. If you click on all of these links and compare the results you will see why _ is not a good thing to have in your URLs.
If you have any other examples of working separators please comment.
Omg. Thanks. I will certainly implement rel="canonical" should have done that in the first place... any tips in terms of consolidating counters? I don't think either Twitter or Facebook have that (and neither does YouTube). To bad...
Absolutely. You're spending time doing low quality links and you're spending time getting high quality links. One of these two is a valuable investment of your time, the other one isn't. Perhaps it's time to stop link building and work on content a bit?
Check to see if your website has been compromised. Log into Google Webmaster Tools and check your keywords. If you start seeing: serial numbers, casino, xxx, viagra...etc then you may have a problem. We were hacked a year ago and lost our rankings in a similar way until we discovered what happened. Another way to check is Google's Malware check tool.
Note: When manually checking for site hacks going to source code of your site is not good enough. Check source of your cache too.
Here's a dead obvious advantage of YouTube over Vimeo:
Why is this important? Because PageRank flows to those pages internally and from other sources and in Vimeo's example it doesn't pass any love back to the author.
Your risk is not in PR itself but in your link building style. I would avoid buying links from known link sellers, blogrolls that go out to totally irrelevant topics, paid editorials etc. Natural link growth is characterised by both high and low quality links at the same time and in different proportions.
Having only high PR links that look like they were purchased can hurt you if you get manually reviewed by a member of Google search quality team.
What an interesting topic. Has anyone done any testing around effectiveness of PDF vs HTML resources and whether it treats anchor text in the same way?
I guess you would 301 if the offer doesn't exist/apply anymore and canonicalise if the page could have a long-term practical use even after the promotion expires. Right?
Suggested title tag:therapist: You need it if you can't read it.
My advice is not to be scared of document size. Have as much data in there as needed to inform and provide regular call to action throughout. Good semantic structure will help Google understand what you're really about. Don't stuff your TITLE with many things - I am guessing you're about a single product or service. Often people try to put too much in key areas, forgetting that Google will pick up miscellaneous other terms from the page and have it rank for it as well.
Exactly - Don't touch it. Start with new pages and you'll be fine. Even Google admits that 301 may not always pass all the goodness across.
If I think about this a bit, in a natural environment there could be websites that are set to noindex yet they still accumulate links. That won't be a problem. If you suddenly lift noindex and votes start counting for your position your site still start getting ranked, however I don't think it will absolutely shoot up. As far as too many links too quickly goes it's still a low risk, however, I would not waste time building links the way you do now. There are plenty of solid "should have" links anyway in each industry - so to stay safe I would focus on that before the site goes public.
My vote goes for 1) as it goes in line with Google's request for disclosure and it will contribute to your branding as well.
Best of luck!
50 sites is enough to hurt your rankings if Google should detect a scheme (either by algorithm or manually). Without seeing details it's hard to say how high your risk is but I would refrain from exact match anchor text, heavy interlinking or anything that may be seen as blatant manipulation. If you're compelled to do something then I will share things I have seen and experienced, but cannot endorse or recommend as it's all pretty much greyhat:
I have seen examples of mini sites created on exact match domains and harvesting traffic that way sending it back to the main site. It's an effective exploit of Google's preference for showing brands for branded search, and almost not an SEO tactic as it's dead simple to achieve - however again it is a scheme.
Some webmasters use their microsites to offer links to naive webmasters and ask for links to your site in return. The odds are, you won't get any great link from that.
Another option comes to mind... if they have really good content I would move it to your main site and redirect these 50 domains to your main domain. Again, something Google might find suspicious, even though you did it for legitimate reasons.
Perhaps a safe way to link would be to provide a disclosure type statement on these sites advising that this site has been acquired by [you company name].
My overall judgement is - it's a pandora's box. I'd be scared opening it!
Hi guys, I've done something rather stupid... allowed Google to index two variations of a single viral piece therefore fragmenting the way it's being distributed and diluting its effect.
Here are the URLs:
If I 301, what happens to counters?
What can I do?
PS: I cannot update my post on Youmoz now that it's published but I cannot stress the importance of a single solid location of something you want to act as a linkbait.
Exactly, and what I also try to explain to people is that privacy policy type page is additional signal for Google when they try to understand the type of site you are and how trustworthy it is. Why in the world would you noindex something like that?
Well said. You and Daniel are spot-on.
Amen. Couldn't agree more and looking forward to see this image replacement madness stop for once.
Nofollow should not be an issue if Twitter feeds raw data to Google directly via firehose. I do of course appreciate the fact that there are secondary benefits to nofollowed links.
Wow. Hashbang - a protocol I was completely unaware of. Thank you!
It could be the case of different browsers hitting different data centres which have not yet consolidated their rankings.
View all! Of course... how did I not think of that before? Thank you.
To me this sounds like a completely legitimate reason to 301 the pages to that new location. If you do get in trouble with Google it will be pretty straightforward to explain it. If you run into an algorithmic penalty the solution would be to remove 301s. This, however is not a likely scenario at all.
Another option you have is to use rel="canonical" to tell Google that the page they're crawling has a correct canonical version. This will not only fix duplication but will also consolidate link juice much like 301 redirection.
Having company address in the footer could be a good practice but it's not an absolute must. The fact that it may reside in an include does not affect SEO at all if that include renders as part of the same document.
Let's ignore the "social metric" value of Twitter links and mentions and look at it from the pure link juice point of view.
Twitter accounts such as http://twitter.com/randfish used to have their own PageRank and were treated as separate URLs. Twitter changed that to http://twitter.com/#!/randfish consolidating all their content to a single URL. When I search for "randfish" in Google, however, the result is the first URL version.
Some clarification on this matter would be much appreciated.
Here's a tip.
Focus on phrases that bring best traffic increase.
Aside from that it's a good practice to clean up all easy phrases you're already ranking for (but not high enough to get the desired traffic).