Hi Andy. I would enter it into the tool without quotes. I believe searching a term with quotes is a type of Boolean search that most real people don't take the time to use. Someone might correct me on the Boolean part, lol, but unless you're visitors are librarians I doubt they use quote, brackets etc when typing terms into the search bar. Hope that helps!

Dana

Ah I understand perfectly what are trying to accomplish. You can put attributes in your XML file that indicate to a search engine spider how important the page is, but there is absolutely no guarantee that bots will pay any attention to it. In fact, they could use that as a negative indicator and discount those pages instead.

It's similar to the attribute in an XML file that tells a search engine how often the page is update. Because these things are easy to manipulate, I can almost guarantee that Google ignores them.

There is only one way to achieve what you want: be the best page on the planet for the keywords you want to rank for. That means writing mind-blowingly good content and getting more inbound links of higher quality than anyone else.

I hope that helps and gets you where you want to be.

Dana

Great comments Paul. Thanks for providing the info on Yoast. I was curious about it too.

Hi Antonio,

These are great questions because I am working on 3 WP sites right now too. I have heard that WordPress SEO by Yoast is a very good plugin for SEO, but am interested to know what others think in the comments here.

Personally, I don't think that there is anything wrong with having matching keywords in the URL and the page title. Yes, Google pays a lot of attention to page titles. As long as neither are stuffed, overly repetitive or you don't go crazy repeating those same keywords all over the page, I think having the URL and Page Title in synch is a very effective tactic.

Yes, the input fields on the plug-in you are using are meta tags. Consequently, populating the keywords field is something I wouldn't recommend. Google pays no attention to those keywords and they won't be visible on the page anywhere (i.e. they will not be populating any

,

type tags). The big difference between meta tags and <h>tags is that meta tags aren't visible on the page, <h>tags are. Technically, yes, your user can see the title tag in their browser tab, but technically I don't consider that to be "on the page" per se.

Curious to know what other have to say and whether or not they recommend Yoast.</h></h>

Hi Felix,

If there is going to be a relevant, equivalent page on the new site, by all means a 301 redirect is best. If the old content is really not going to have a parallel page on the new site, then a 404 would be fine. Just keep in mind that 404s can frustrate users who are trying to access your site. It would be best to create a friendly, customized and humanized 404 error page if you intend on allowing old pages to 404. Even if 404s arent in the plan, you're bound to have some eventually so I'd strongly suggest creating a custom 404 page anyway.

I agree with cardiganMedia's comment about using 301 redirects for any pages that have built up any page rank or inbound links. Check them in OSE and make sure you preserve the authority the old site had by making sure to 301 redirect high authority pages to their equivalents on the new site.

Good luck! I hope these are helpful suggestions.

Dana

Hi Antonio,

Great question and great example. Yes, Google can see "amdridlive" as "Madrid live." Consequently, I think your URL in option 2 is the way to go for all of the additional reasons you suggest: shorter URL, avoids repeating the word Madrid. So far you have really good instincts. Hope that helps!

Dana

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

Personally, I wouldn't do it. Does it work? Maybe. Or, maybe it works for a while and then Googlebot wises up and deindexes you. Is all the work you will have to go through for reconsideration going to justify hiding that tag? I'd say, definitely not.

It's just an

tag...leave it on the page and visible. Listen to your conservative gut and do what you know is the right thing. That's my two cents

You are very welcome Manelik!

Hi Andy and Paul,

I have been poking around some e-commerce sites, one is one I do SEO for and the other is just another site that was using rel=publisher. Here are the URLs so you can see how they display in Google's testing tool:

http://www.celebratecommunion.com  [home page, rel=publisher]

http://www.celebratecommunion.com/prefilled-communion-cups-with-wafers-box-of-500.html  [product page using rel=publisher]

http://www.uniquesquared.com  [home page using rel=publisher]

Worth noting:

• All results in the Structured Data Testing Tool show the brand logo next to results. This is not currently being displayed my Google.
• The Structured Data markup for my product page is being recognized in Google Webmaster Tools
• The testing tool also acknowledges my Celebrate Communion site as having both rel=author and rel=publisher, despite the fact that only the rel=publisher tag is in the source code.
• UniquedSqured.com's site uses rel=publisher on the home page only and does not use any markup on product pages that I can see.

The one thing I haven't been able to figure out how to do is to get a thumbnail of my product image to show up in the Testing Tool results for my product page instead of the brand logo thumbnail. It's fairly a mute point right now since Google isn't displaying either right now, but it sure would be nice to be able to tell Google which image to serve up in the search results. I do believe that is part of Google's intention with the rel=publisher markup.

How about the two of you can you find any examples of people using rel=publisher on interior pages?

I hope this is helpful. I am completely fascinated by this whole topic and want to be ahead of the curve when Google starts rolling it out.

Dana

Hi Paul,

I am in-house SEO for two e-commerce site, one large, one small. Rel=publisher is the way to go both on your home page and your product pages. You are correct in that rel=author is not appropriate in these situations. Andy is correct that Google is not yet displaying brands as authors, but I believe that is going to change over time.

Yes, if you mark up your pages for structured data using rel=author, the testing tool will display your brand image. It's just not displaying in Google search results yet.

Recently, Chris Goward of Wider Funnel marketing interviewed Janet Driscoll Miller (President and CEO of Search Mojo) about this very topic and she had some great advice which echoes what I've said above:

http://www.widerfunnel.com/events/google-and-search-engine-optimization-an-interview-with-janet-driscoll-miller

I have also appealed directly to Google for some guidance with this whole issue because not even expert search engine marketers and SEOs can seem to figure out how to handle it.

Hope this helps!

Dana

Thank you Gerd for your wonderful advice in this thread. This thread taught me a great deal and it's one of the reasons I love SEOMoz and the Q&A forum so much.

My first inclination is to say "be patient" and ride out the dip. I have never seen a complete site overhaul that didn't experience a dip in traffic. Next, I would say "Are your ducks in a row?"

What I mean by that is:

1. Have you set up appropriate 301 redirects if any of your URLs were re-written?
2. Are those 301 working properly (did you test them)?
3. If no 301 redirects, did you implement canonical tags?
4. Are you actively monitoring Google Webmaster Tools? Are you acting on those reports?
5. Have you created and resubmitted a new sitemap to Google?
6. Did you reinstall analytics or are you using different analytics? It could be that your analytics have changed more than your traffic (This is a big one....really consider this carefully).

If the answer is yes to all of the above. Be patient. I know it's hard, but don't freak out and sit tight. You should be fine after a little time.

Dana

Great answer AWCThreads. Mine would have been "ditto."

Hi Greg,

Well the fact that you're here in Q&A is a huge step in the right direction. I've been an in-house SEO for over 5 years now, and I never used SEOMoz or Q&A until the last 6 months. There are tons of great tools, but, as you might expect, each has its own learning curve, so be patient with yourself (and the tools).

SEOMoz is amazing of course. Screaming Frog is downloadable software that makes it easy to sift through and sort large amounts of information about your pages. Ahrefs is awesome, but I've never tried the paid version so I'll let someone else weigh-in on that. I have heard great things about Majestic SEO, but again I haven't used the paid version yet...we are planning to go with a paid version with them in the next few months. SEMRush is a great tool to gain visibility to what competitors are advertising.

First and foremost, I'd begin by snuggling up with Google Webmaster Tools. It's free and it's a lot of information. I like the backlinks comparative tools in SEOMoz and Ahrefs better thanGWT because, as you well know, some links are super valuable and some are worthless. It's really good to know which are which. One amazing link can be worth thousands of low-value links.

I hope that's helpful for starters. Chances are you'll gravitate towards some tools and not so much to others depending on your site and what your needs are. Good luck!

Hi! I thought I recognized this thread Yes, I am the culprit of the "hub page" suggestion.

I call a page a "hub page" if it functions like the center of a wheel with a bunch of spokes attached to it. Okay, so for example, you have a store selling sweaters. All of your seaters have a specific part number based on size, color and style. You have some choices. You could create a separate page for every part number. However, this quickly becomes a daunting task for you, and an impossible site to navigate for your customers because you could have 200 separate product pages all for the same sweater, with the only difference being size and color.

Instead, you could create a "parent" page that is just for this one particular style of sweater. You create "children" pages for all the possible sizes and colors. You then allow your customer to select size and color either via dropdown menus, charts or whatever seems best for a particular product. You set all these product pages as either "children" of the parent product or attach their part number to specific options, so that when that option is chosen that part number goes in the cart. The customer never actually sees an individual product page for that color and size of sweater, it simply exists in the back end as a means of allowing your customer to pick specific items from your inventory.

So, you see, because you created (technically) separate product pages, you technically have a whole bunch of URLs but all circling around or connected to the parent page. The individual part number "pages" are like spokes on a wheel connected to a parent "hub" page.

Now, all that being said...a hub page on a content site can follow the same principle, however for completely different reasons. This even happens in e-commerce. For example, say you sell clothing. On your site, you also have size charts. From every clothing page you link to your size chart page. In that case your size chart page becomes a "hub." Hub pages tend to outrank other pages because you are pointing to them with lots of your pages, indicating to both visitors and search engines that they are somehow especially significant.

So, on the one hand a hub page can be used for online merchandising, on the other it can be used as an important reference point for visitors. The simplest version of a hub page would probably be a main category page on a Website.

This is really my own viewpoint. I have had extremely good results ranking well for hub pages. I am interested to know what others think and how they explain the concept.

Yes Marisa. I have seen both Amazon and eBay creeping into the top results for a niche product we sell that only churches buy. I am wondering if this is less Google and more a concerted effort by Amazon, eBay and Wikipedia to dominate. Let's face it, they have resources for research that we little guys don't have.

Thanks very much Paul! This is wonderfully helpful. I do believe they have their hosting information so we should be able to proceed this way if necessary. I appreciate you pointing me in the right direction!

Dana

Thanks Jason,

Yes, that appears that it might be it. Of course I am getting an "Access Denied" response right now which is understandable. I have sent this along to the folks at the organization in hopes it rings a bell and they can track down login credentials.

I just discovered that the way they've been "updating" the site for the past several months is by creating PDFs and uploading them via FTP

ugh...

This is really a developer/Webmaster issue. The closest category available to select was "Technical SEO" - but technically, this isn't a question about SEO, per se.

I am doing free SEO work for a local arts organization as my way of giving them a charitable contribution. Despite my advice to stay on Drupal and improve the site on its current platform, they want something easier to manage for volunteers. This is perfectly understandable, although not my recommendation.

Of course, not knowing anything about SEO, their first impulse was to simply shut down the old site, cancel all of their old pages, point the domain to their new WordPress site and completely start over. Thank goodness I yelled "Halt!" before they went this far

They really have no idea what they are doing and I want to help guide them through this process in a way that preserves as much as possible their inbound links (they have tons of .edu and .gov links because they are a local community arts organization). Of course they don't understand how valuable these are, so I have a lot of educating to do.

I am trying to get them a quote from a professional developer to help migrate from Drupal to WordPress. The only login information anyone has been able to send me is login to their FTP. No one seems to have a login for the Drupal CMS back end, and when I asked for it they looked like deer caught in headlights

Can someone tell me, or even send me a screenshot of what the admin login page looks like for a Drupal site, so I can explain better to this client what I am looking for? I have no experience with Drupal, but surely, there is a backend where the site pages and content can be updated.? There must also be a database of customers/registrants, etc. not to mention a place where all the meta tags, etc can be entered and stored?

Last but not least, if no one is able to find their site's Drupal login info, is there any way under the sun for me to retrieve it for them?

I have a Developer in mind whose got loads of experience migrating from Drupal to WP, but he needs a .sql export file with the contents of the curent databse in order to give us a quote.  Does anyone have any advice? (Other than "This should teach you not to offer your services up to charity!" LOL)

I like this suggestion Andy. Curt, this might be worth a try if you haven't done it already.

Also, have you compared your link profile to your competitor's link profile in Open Site Explorer? You might get some insight there as to how your competitor is buidlng their Page and Domain authority.

How old is your competitor's site? This would also be a factor.

Good luck Curt!

You are very welcome. I think "simpler" could be a relative term All three are appropriate in different situations. However, there are times when people have very limited access to source code or to the backends of their websites, so then one solution might work better than another.

As far as 404s go it's really all about what's best and most appropriate from a user standpoint. If you can guide visitors to content relevant to their search query via a 301-redirect, they are probably going to be more satisfied with that than a 404. This could potentially indirectly effect your SEO because if your bounce rate increases or your 404 pages results in a lot of pogo-sticking by potential visitors, your site could be effected negatively by Googe's algorithm.

When at all possible, I try to do a 301-redirect. But in the cases of really old content that may no longer accurately represent our content or products (and that also doesn't have veyr many inbound links) a 404 might be just fine.

Sorry, that's a bit of a long answer, but I hope it helps!

Dana

Yes, you could allow those pages to 404 and in some instances that may be preferable to you. No, there is no negative effect on SEO from 404's. The only negative impact is really on your users. To minimize this, you might consider creating a nice, friendly, customer 404 page instead of using Google's defult 404 error page. Hope that helps!

Dana

Have you looked at your site by typing "site:http://www.YourDomainName.com" in the Google search bar?

If you see any results there, it means that you have been indexed. Even for sites experiencing the "sandbox," they are in the SERPs, they just aren't ranking very high.

Have you tried also viewing your site using the tools at http://www.semrush.com?  It could be that you are ranking for some terms, but they might be obscure.

Hope this is a bit helpful. New sites can appear overnight, take a couple of days or a couple of weeks to start showing up in SERPs. It's much faster now than it used to be as Google has become much faster. If it's been 6 weeks, I am thinking you are indexed, but maybe just not very high up yet.

Dana

I think you should be fine, and Owen's comment below is excellent advice too. Following his suggestions may help prevent future problems too.

Hi Kyu,

Yes and yes. However, one word of precaution, if it appears that you are trying to manipulate the page authority of your homepage by creating duplicates and then putting 301 redirects on them, Google may frown on this. I'm not suggesting that's the case here at all, but just in case other people read this thread and get any crazy ideas....just don't go there

Best of luck to you Kyu,

Dana

Hi Kyu, Yes, you are on the right track with your approach to 301 redirects. The question you ask about having different Title tags and meta descriptiong completely solving a duplicate content problem is a very good one. For example, say you had to very similar products on an e-commerce site. You decide to use exactly the same on-page copy for the on-page description, but you write unique meta description and title tags. Let's say you went one step further, and even put canonical tags on each of these pages. From the viewpoint of GWT or SEOMoz's crawler, no, duplicate content wouldn't be identified. Googlebot, however, could see this differently and determine that it is indeed duplicate content. Matt Cutts has even gone as far to say that content that is "substantially similar" can be flagged as duplicate content. That being said, even if your content isn't showing as duplicate with some of the tools you can use, if you know it's duplicate, fix it and make it as unique as possible.

Hope that helps!

Dana

Hi tagbiomed,

I want to help, but I first want to clarify something. In your post, you said  "it dropped from the page 1 top ranking it had for years on that primary keyword to page 13."

Did you mean that your page dropped from #1 to #13 spots in the SERPS, or from page 1 to page 13 in the SERPs? There's a big difference between those two things and I just wanted to clarify.

Thanks!

Dana

Thomas, I've been doing a little research trying to support my hypothesis that the location of your hosting company can effect your SERP results and I found this:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/international-seo-where-to-host-and-how-to-target-whiteboard-friday

This is probably a great starting point.

Hi Thomas,

I am always learning too and am very interested by your question. Are you based in the UK but hosted in the US? Or are you based and hosted in the US? The reason I ask, is that if you are based in the US, I presume that your target market is US. If you are based in the UK I presume your target market is UK-Europe. If the latter is true, have you considered changing to UK hosting? Although I don't know the whole story, it seems from looking at your site that you are indeed UK based.

I am thinking that you are having a bit of trouble ranking for a more British term because you are USA hosted. I do think the location of your host is a factor in ranking for certain terms. The problem is, I can't point to any proof to support that opinion. I am interested to hear what others have to say about this.

Thanks Thomas!

Dana

Hi Memoz, I think this completely depends on how it's done. Footers are a completely normal and expected part of Web design. For example, when you go to a new site you've never been to before, you almost expect to find "About Us" and "Contact Us" links in the footer. You also expect to find some redundant navigation, like "main products" or "clearance items."

Now, if you have a footer that does something like this:

Used Cars Seattle

Used Car West Seattle

Used Cars East Seattle

Used Cars Bellingham

Used cars northeast Seattle

Used Cars North Seattle

and so on....

Yes, I'd say Spam-A-Rama! Probably not a great idea.

Trust your instinct. If you stop at some point and think to yourself, "Self, this is looking mighty spammy," then, it's probably spammy and don't do it.

Can anyone say for sure what Google will see as spam and penalize and what it will leave alone? No. So I can't tell you what Google will or won't do and how Google will or won't view your content. I'm just sayin' trust your gut.

I hope that helps!

Dana

Hi sirana, Keyword Difficulty is a calculation done by the SEOMoz research tool that takes into account a number of things including: competition (how many pages are currently ranking for that particular term), how many people are bidding on the term in paid search, how expensive are the clicks and how many people are actually searching for the term online.

I'm not quite sure mathematically how SEOMoz puts all these things together, but it calculates a percentage score that gives you an indication of how hard it's going to be to rank highly for any given term. Obviously, the ideal scenario would be to find keywords with a lot of searches, but low competition. In that case, it would be much easier to compete and rise to the top. The worst scenario is if you have keywords with very few searches being done for those terms, but with a lot of competition.

In SEOMoz, the higher the percentage for Keyword Difficulty, the harder it could be to rank well for that term. The lower the percentage, the easier it might be to rank for that term. That being said, depending on the quality of your site and your content, it could be that you rank really well for a highly competitive, difficult keyword, but maybe not so well for a keyword that SEOMoz identified as easier.

I hope this helps!

Dana

I really like Chad's last comment. Yes, if they start talking about "proprietary" software and intellectual property, they are probably full of beans. If you aren't going to own your data after you leave them, or if they won't give you 100% transparency into their methods and which keywords they are going after, then the aren't worth pursuing.

Hire someone who acknowledges that SEO is a matter of time, patience and intelligent work...not magic potions, spells and chanting.

Best of luck to you!

Well said. I agree with IPROdigital's comment completely.

Hi Jonathan, Yes, we have used prices in our titles to improve CTR. We only include the price in the title when we know we have the lowest or close to the lowest price of anyone in the industry. The interesting thing about doing this is that including the price like this also seemed to push us up in the search results. No doubt because Google wants searchers to be happy, and searchers are happy when they get great deals. "Free Shipping" in the title tag also helps in that way.

If your pricing is MAP or not very competitive, I'd leave it out of the title and target something else that is compelling about the product to help your CTR.

Hope that helps

Dana

Good question!   I use a browser extension in Firefox called SEO for Firefox. It's free and one of the many things it will do is highlight "followed" and "no followed" links in different colors so you can quickly see which is which. I highly recommend it. It also will catch broken links. It's very handy!

Hi again. I did a little further investigating. It appears that nearly all links that go out to business Websites from DexKnows are "no follow." This means you aren't going to benefit from them as inbound links. However, I discovered that the links to a company's Website inside the company's Mobile site profile are followed.  It appears your client's competitor has figured out where the followed links are. There may be other places, but there is definitely that one.

Does you client have a mobile site and have they completed their Mobile site profile in DexKnows? If not, I'd recommend it so they can get that inbound link.

Hi The Optimizer, Have you checked your link at DexKnows to make sure they set it up right? The reason I asked is that you made me curious. So, I went to DexKnows for Tacoma, WA, clicked on the "Auto Dealers" link (http://www.dexknows.com/local/automotive/vehicle_sales/auto_dealers/geo/c-tacoma-wa/) and was taken to a page listing a bunch of dealerships. I clicked the "Website" icon for the very first dealer on the list (Austin's Pro-Max Automotive Repiar Centers)and I received a 404 error. Either their link wasn't set up right, or they don't have a Website.) If your situation is similar, this would explain why your link isn't showing up in your reports.

I hope this helps!

You are very welcome Daniel. I agree with Klarke, do both if you can.

Hi Danny,

I just watched an interview posted by Chris Goward (Wider Funnel) with Janet Driscoll Miller (Search Mojo) about how to best set up Google+ businesses pages without having the issues I mention above. I included a transcript where Janet describes in detail how best to achieve the separation between brand and personal pages. I also included my own "summary" of how to do it in three steps (see the very bottom post in this thread). Did I get it right? Thanks so much for your help,

Dana

Aha! I believe I have found the answer to this question. Thanks goes to Chris Goward of Wider Funnel Marketing. He interviewed Janet Driscoll Miller at SMX West after her presentation on Google+ and SEO

Here is the excerpt that answered my question about Google+, personal Gmail accounts, Google+ pages for businesses and branding:

"The administration of those pages can be tricky, because it's not exactly like Facebook pages. People expect it to be like Facebook and it's not. You can have multiple administrators but there's still one owner. So, for instance, if you're the business owner, you should go in and do it, so it's under your email address and you always have the ultimate control. So make sure that the person you're giving it to, that either it's an email address that multiple people can get to or that the owner of the company could. The other challenge is that most people use their Gmail account to sign up. Well, the problem is, if I'm the social adminstrator and I leave the company and I used my Gmail address to set up the page, I can never transfer that Gmail, necessarily. So you want to try...you can set up unique profiles, with your own domain name. So I like to recommend that, just because I feel like it's safer for companies."

So here's the best way to set up a Google+ page for business:

1. Have a business owner create the account using a Gmail username related to the business or brand, something like this:

MyBrandName@gmail.com

2. Don't use a gmail account as the email address in the sign up process. Use an email account that is a general email address at your company that multiple people could have access to if necessary., something like this

GooglePlusPage@MyBrandName.com

3. Have your social adminstrator or social media manager and team members associate their Google+ profiles  with the core Google+ page set up by the owner. That way, if they change positions or leave the company, they can be disassociated with the business page, but maintain their personal profile as they move on to something else.

Hootsuite is awesome....and SEOMoz Pro members can get a discount I think.

Hi Kristopher,

I went and checked out your site. It's very pretty. I think the picture of you and your son is adorable! Okay, so here's my advice:

Right now, in your blog, there are lots of great photos. To me, your blog is looking more like a portfolio than a blog (not a criticism, just an observation). What if you started writing posts about photography that would appeal to other photographers? I know that you aren't necessarily wanting other photographers as "customers" but if your advice is valuable and unique, it would attract inbound links. Lots of inbound links from other photographers would set you up as an authority. The stronger your authority the higher you rank. The higer you rank, the more traffic you will get. That new traffic, once they see that you have an authoritative and active blog (even if they aren't photographers and don't understand a word), they will be more likely to choose you for their project.

Also, I'm guessing the photography world is pretty small. I bet if you asked someone influential to write a guest post for you, they'd probably do it.

I'm thinking you're pretty passionate about photography. The great thing about that is you will never run out of ideas to write about.

I hope this helps!

Dana

Hi Kristopher. I am a big fan of this site too  When you say "how do I go about attracting natural" I am not sure what you mean. Do you mean "How do I go about attracting organic (natural) search results?" or do you mean "how do I attract search traffic that's more interested in nature photography?"

Answer that and then I feel like I can tailor my advice appropriately.

Dana

Hi Finind Design, Whew! I am so glad it's Flash we are talking about

Okay, here is an article that may be very helpful: http://www.hochmanconsultants.com/articles/seo-friendly-flash.shtml

Here is an excerpt that I believe addresses your concern:

"My recommended Flash SEO method uses a DIV with search-engine-accessible, primary content, and an open source Javascript function called swfobject() to detect when browsers are capable of viewing Flash. When an appropriate version of Flash player is present, the Javascript manipulates the page's document object model (DOM) to replace the primary content with the Flash movie. Most search engine spiders can't handle Flash, so they will elect to view the primary content. The primary content may contain links, headings, styled text, images—anything we can add to an ordinary HTML page. With SEO copyediting and coding skills applied to the primary content, Flash becomes a non-issue.

Flash accessibility programming isn't spamming, as long as the primary content and the visible movie are essentially the same. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) specifically states thatmultimedia content should have an alternative representation available. Accessibility programming creates the benefit of presenting visual information without losing the visitors and search engines who depend upon textual content.

As of July 2007, I discussed this method with Dan Crow of Google. He warned that this programming method could draw attention because of the possibility for abuse. If you use this method, make sure the alternative content is a faithful representation of the Flash content, and avoid combining this with other coding methods that could be abused. While this SEO method is not abusive, it is aggressive because there is a small risk that the search engines could mistakenly decide that the primary content is a form of cloaking."

This is great advice - I highly recommend reading his entire post.

I hope this helps!

Hi Daniel. Yes, there is another schema.org tag that is available to businesses and that is rel=publisher. This would accomplish what you are after. But, like you said, most of us who have implemented this mark up are still waiting for Google to do something with it (i.e. display a brand logo next to a listing). Mine is displaying in the Structured Data Testing tool, but not in Google search results, yet. Hope that's helpful!

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 am going to jump in and respond, but before I give you the "Noooooo, don't do it!!!!!" speech, may I ask, what is the purpose of the text you wish to hide from your visitors?

You might also ask Volusion if they have changed your site to a new server recently. I assume you are on a shared or semi-dedicated server with them. Sometimes, as you well know, if one of the other sites on that server loses reputation, it can effect you too.

Volusion has also had some down-time recently. That may be a factor too.

You are right about shocking the engines. It happens, but then usually things bounce back. It sounds to me like you are really doing all the right things. Be patient, I think you're going to be fine. Your link profile at Ahrefs.com looks really good. It sounds like you have good instincts.

Let me know what happens!

Hi Chris,

Hah! What a coincidence. Okay, so I do have a specific siggestion pertaining to Volusion. Yes, you are correct in that when you are first setting up your store, if you write SEO friendly URLs (I believe they pull it from the "Product Name Short" field), Volusion automatically takes care of the redirect in that situation. However, if you then decide to change one of those, I believe you need to manually set up a redirect in the 301 redirects database section of the back end. This may even be true if you had default URLs, launched your store, got crawled and indexed and then updated to a SEO-friendly URL. (You may want to check with Volusion on that - but sometimes their tech support is hit or miss).

You may have already done this too, so again, if so, I apologize

Also, have you checked to see if Google might still be indexing the old URLs in addition to the new ones? If so, when you click on the old one, are you getting a 404, does it stay the same, or does it redirect? If it redirects, what is the canonical tag? When I was last on Volusion they hadn't implemented a good way to manage canonical tags either. Because of their template, the canonicals were all http://www.MY-STORE.com , which wasn't good. They may have improved that since I managed one of their stores, not sure.

Also, are the stats in your original question purely out of SEOMoz, or are they from Google Analytics? I find SEOMoz can occasionally fluctuate wildly if I change targeted keywords in a campaign.

Just some thoughts to hopefully help!

Dana