Thanks so much to you all. This has gotten us closer to an answer. We are consulting with the folks who developed the Web store to make sure that these solutions won't break other things if implemented, particularly something mentioned to me by our IT Director called "Sim links" - I'll keep you posted!

You came to the right place for the validity you seek I frequently vet things here in the forum and it has proven very helpful in convincing other members of my team to go one way or the other. Also, I completely agree with George's suggestion to use the "alt" attribute if it is indeed an image we are talking about, but it appears we are really talking about a bonafide

tag for text with keywords in it.

That being the case. Stick to your guns and insist on it being visible. If you really feel that it disrupts the design...it would be better to leave it out than to make it invisible.

Good luck!

Dana

Google did some user testing on this topic, to find out if users preferred longer pages or paginated pages. According to their research, users preferred longer pages because there is always latency when moving from one page to the next. Here's the video where a Googler cites that research: http://youtu.be/njn8uXTWiGg  If you want to have it both ways, you could always break your content into pages, but put a "View All" option at the top. Personally, I am one of those folks who doesn't mind scrolling down through comments. If given the choice to continue on to a second page of comments, I probably wouldn't.

From an SEO standpoint, provided the pagination is handled properly, I don't think there's an advantage one way or the other, unless you take into consideration that your bounce rate could potentially go up with paginated pages. Even if it did though, I doubt that would significantly hurt you from an overall SEO viewpoint.

I totally agree with Marie. First and foremost, be calm. Don't freak out and start changing a whole bunch of things. Make sure your client knows what's going on. Far better for them to hear it from you than discover it on their own. Make a plan. First, document everything that has recently changed. Hopefully you've done that already. Start with that 301 redirect. You already know it's a problem, whether it's caused this or not.

Has anything else changed? Meta tags, specifically title tags? I have seen a site drop from a #1 branded search position and disappear for up to a day because the title tags were updated. Then it reappeared back in it's original spot. It's possible that your clients site is in a Google dance, but my gut says that's not it. Start with the 301...and while you're at it, check and make sure that the non.www version of the homepage is properly redirecting via 301 as well as any other potential URL versions that also produce the homepage and that may have inbound links.

Good luck and please let us know what happens. Hang in there!

Hi Bob,

I'm going to take your questions one by one:

1. (1) Do charity websites or company websites with link pages ( about5-10 other links) or links / logo's on the front page offer value even on unrelated sites?  - YES, definitely. This is a great way to get .edu links. find out what universities are selling sponsorships for their websites, or contribute enough to make a good scholarship fund and then ask to have your company logo and link on every page of the site. THere is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Several e-commerce sites have done a good job of doing this.

2. What happens if 80% of the link building I am doing comes from blogs? - FABULOUS - I don't see any problem with this unless you are out there planting blog comments that are spam.

3. I have links that are clearly spam - GET RID OF THEM (I'm sorry, Did I shout????)

4. The "key" here is genuine....c'mon, your next door neighboor  kcan tell if that page is keyword stuffed or not. If you read a page and think to yourself "Gee, hmm, I wonder if that's keyword stuffed..." - It probably us. Rewrite it.

I hope this helps a little!

Dana

You might try the good folks at http://www.goinflow.com/ - Everett Sizemore in particular. He gave a very good mozinar on eCommerce SEO here: http://moz.com/webinars/ecommerce-seo-fix-and-avoid-common-issues  This is how I became familiar with him.

There are also two guys at http://www.melen.net, Matthew Prepis and Oleg Korneitchouk (Oleg is active here in the Moz forum) who performed a high level audit for us that was top notch. They were striving to win our business and are still in the running. They are excellent.

Either of these two might come in quite a bit lower than a company like RKG, depending on the scope of the project of course.

Howdie,

Yes, I believe we got this sorted out. Interestingly, it wasn't any of the suggestions made here causing the 301 status code responses. I posted a thread in Google Webmaster Tools Forum regarding the issue and received a response that I am 99.5% sure is the correct answer.

Here is a link to that thread for future readers' reference: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!mydiscussions/webmasters/zOCDAVudxNo

I believe the underlying issue has to do with incorrect handling of a redirect for this domain:  ccisound.com

I am currently pursuing getting it corrected with our IT Director. Once the remedy is in place, I should know right away if it solves the issue I am seeing in the server logs. I'll post back here once I am 100% certain that was the issue.

Thanks all! This has been an interesting one for me!

Hi Garrett,

It really depends on the nature and use of the image. I'd really take that on a case by case basis. If you created unique images that received a ton of links or social shares, or they provided something important to your end users, than sure, recreating them on the same URLs might be a great idea. You might want to spot check a few in AHrefs, OSE and Google ANalytics to see if they were generating buzz, traffic, links or all three. Choose some likely candidates and find out what you see in those tools and let that guide how you proceed. Cheers,

Dana

Hi,

I agree with EGOL that the "100 links" rule is old information.

To more specifically answer your question, yes, all links in your global navigation, footer and links on category and product pages are all counted as internal links and all (provided you haven't done anything silly like added "no follow" attributes) pass link equity throughout your site. For this reason it's important to be strategic about the architecture of your navigation and internal linking structure. Ideally, your top most important pages should be included, if possible in your navigation and/or footer.

It's not unusual for large eCommerce sites to have significantly more than 100 links on a given page.

For example, Home Depot ranks #2 in Google for the term "flushmount lights" with this page: http://www.homedepot.com/b/Lighting-Ceiling-Fans-Ceiling-Lights-Flushmount-Lights/N-5yc1vZc7nk

As you can see from the attached screenshot, this page has 523 links on it. While clearly exceeding the "100 links" - this page still has no problem ranking very well for a targeted keyword.

For verification that Google dropped the "100 links" rule, check out this Matt Cutts video from November, 2013 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHG6BkmzDEM

EGOL is also right that Moz should update their suggested SEO best practices to reflect more current methodology.

Hope that's helpful!

Dana

BVeoZ

I completely agree with this. Well researched and reputable directories are still worthwhile. As long as they are part of a mix that includes some link diversity, I think they can be a very valuable way to jump start a brand new site.