If you are the one doing this and this is your own site, I would use a Physician as itemtype then medicalspecialty then additionaltype (which you did right)

They will do whatever it is that they already do and their system handles the rest.

Emailing them might work. Sometimes it can change but dont get your hopes up. You can try, then follow up on it. It is yours after all.

If they dont, then be happy with a nofollow link.

Referrals wont hurt

It just means that you have those things on separate pages. Google indexed them so like Laura said, you need to put a noindex tag so Google can stop indexin those page

After that, wait for it to disappear. It's not that critical if you feel like you need to remove it from the index asap.

Itll always be the case. Youll hit a plateau eventually.

There will be some things you need to do, from A/B testing design tweaks (and extra features to push them to other pages)

or you can compile a list of keywords you are already ranking for but below #5 and work on those to move them to the top 3

or you can utilize other traffic channels such as social to push them to category pages so they can look at other news.

I would advice to put everything on one page. (This is also great for a broad keyword)

Then have short descriptions in there the a link to a specific page for each service. (Specific targeted keywords)

Honestly, I have never seen it work.

For me, it's just like any other badge, just for show, just to add to the credibility of the site which could indirectly affect bounce rates/sharing/etc.

Dont worry about the descriptions. It's just for additional info. I would prefer to have unique descriptions to maximize my visibility and relevance in Google's POV.

I did in my answer above.

If you want to totally solve it, also add a canonical to lead to a page that has ALL your posts shown. (Done manually, not through yoast)

You can just noindex those sub pages in Yoast under Titles and Metas

I would go 404's (and let them die) as I dont think those have any good content on them since it was just generated.

Redirecting them wont really do much.

Honestly, I have never seen it work.

For me, it's just like any other badge, just for show, just to add to the credibility of the site which could indirectly affect bounce rates/sharing/etc.

There's really no way for them to enforce that policy unless a lot of people squeal about it.

I know here at Moz, it's really something like a Taboo, but it's really not. Big companies do this daily and they do it in bunches.

I would suggest though (since you mentioned that it's just a bitly link) that you just go for it IF the price is right and if it's targeted enough.

Look at it at the standpoint of getting traffic. You mentioned that it's a good site then it probably has a good spot for your link so it can bring in leads. If you can optimize to capture these leads or just get them to your sales funnel, then it'll be worth it. You'll get more links down the line.

It's pretty much like guest posting or paying for a best of the web spot.

Noindex tags and your author page (if you only have 1 author)

For categories, leave it alone, just add a bit of unique content there, much like how ecommerce sites do it.

I would go 404's (and let them die) as I dont think those have any good content on them since it was just generated.

Redirecting them wont really do much.

They will do whatever it is that they already do and their system handles the rest.

Emailing them might work. Sometimes it can change but dont get your hopes up. You can try, then follow up on it. It is yours after all.

If they dont, then be happy with a nofollow link.

Referrals wont hurt

if it was indeed caused by submitting the sitemap, its too late for you to worry about it. My vote, another coincidence. Ive actually experienced this twice and i got my rankings back by analysing where i went wrong with the tech/structure.

With an alexa like that, you probably have a big site. Try to find a "main" problem and fix that first rather than going for different changes all at one time.

I would suggest keyword research and planning out how you want them to flow. You will also need to look at your permalinks since you are using wordpress as you might prefer to show the category in the URL

Easiest path would be to just let the post name be the permalink, excluding categories in the url, then you just move them to their respective categories.

Take your time and carefully plan everything out first, you will also need to fix the old URLs to point to the new ones so don't forget that.

Im not sure what you mean about preference. If you mean that if your "geo targeted country" has an effect on improving your chances for terms like "SEO Services in India" then my answer is not so much. You'll just have an improved visibility in the local engines but geo keywords will still take the same amount of work. I've played with this for my site recently. My geo targeting doesnt really affect my global geo related keyword rankings.

Hi

That's a lot of indexed pages. What were the bulk of those pages? Categories? Products? Random tags or thin pages?

Did you switch to https recently? Are all versions included in webmaster tools? With a preferred version? How about their sitemaps?

It's possible that it's panda. It's also possible that it's a technical side like a switch to https, improper redirects, etc.

I just find it weird to see a big site like that lose that much indexed content (assuming they were good pages) without incurring an algorithmic penalty or a technical problem.

Look at Google Trends, Quora, Yahoo Answers, keyword tools that get from Google Instant are also good.

Find forums. Look at Reddit (add /top/?t=all at the end to check out the most popular posts)