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To avoid a template change, you could also try using the "Force Rewrite Titles" option in Yoast.

From what I can tell, it is maintained; however, I believe the value of Web directories in general has fallen tremendously. Additionally, I feel like some of the sites on the list are low quality.

That's my two cents

Rather than disable or de-index archives, consider de-indexing the paginated versions (page 1,2,3,etc.), as this is likely causing the penalty. I also recommend adding category (and tag, if applicable) descriptions to the archive templates.

Yoast's WordPress SEO plugin can handle the de-indexing of the paginated archive/index pages.

I hate to be a Bernie Bummer, but Content is King, and I don't recommend going after the cheapest solution when looking to produce it. While it's theoretically possible to find an "overseas" individual or company willing to produce content very cheaply, the chances are very good that the content itself will generally be low quality.

In a nutshell, if you're on a tight budget, content is not the area to apply restraints to.

As others have said, it really depends on the topic. Personally, I find that pages with 700 to 1,000 words seem to perform best for me.

RSS Graffiti can help you publish RSS feed content to a Facebook page. I do not, however, believe it has the ability to post to Google+.

I think you can manage Google+ via Hootsuite and get all the features you want. I know there was some debate a while back about Google+ banning auto-posting services, but now I can't seem to find a reference for it.

You can also check out this "premium" script (there's also a WP plugin). I have not tried it.

http://www.nextscripts.com/google-plus-automated-posting/

Setting up an internal author bio would be, in my opinion, a credibility enhancer for the particular article/story; however, in order to take advantage of Google's Authorship feature in the SERPs, the author would need to have a Google+ profile. So essentially, I don't think setting up the profiles would have much (if any) benefit from a search engine perspective.

If the authors set up a Google+ profile in the future, you could always integrate it at a later time.

That's what I thought. Thank you.

Yes, the tag is a little too long, but how long ago did you change it? It takes some time for Google to update the indexed page titles -- if you've changed it in the last week it probably just hasn't been re-crawled and updated yet.

Thanks - I know the guidelines, but did not know the business was located in a residential area, and am wondering where to go from here -- delete and start over, or wait for Google. I've heard horror stories on the waiting process.

Hey guys,

My client is having issues with his Google+ pages and I'm wondering if someone can shine some light on the issue for me...

Basically the client has two businesses, both using the same residential address. The page was ranking well until a week ago, when it disappeared from search results and was listed in the dashboard as "Under Review."

I've heard horror stories about this -- examples of Google taking months to review pages and make a decision, and I'm wondering if if might be better to just delete the under review pages and start over (hiding the address on the new listing to comply).

Edward

Which is better? Personally, I prefer "www" URLs -- but this is just a personal preference. But either way, I do recommend setting a preferred URL within Google Webmaster Tools, as long as said URL matches the URL set as the default view for your site.

Some prefer non-www URLs because it saves character space in the URL.

The only benefit here would be a keyword-related domain name for each industry; however, as Google has made clear in recent history, this matters less and less.

The major downside would be having four or five sites to build up and promote to rank versus only having one.

While others may disagree, I feel your efforts will be better served concentrating on one site.

Interesting. I'm not a server guru by any means, but I wouldn't think there would be anymore of a security risk either way. Hopefully someone else can chime in.

Subdomains are technically treated by Google as separate site. That doesn't mean that blogging won't help your main site, but the benefits would probably be higher if you hosted the blog in a subdirectory rather than a subdomain.

Here's Google's Matt Cutts on the topic:

“My personal preference on subdomains vs. subdirectories is that I usually prefer the convenience of subdirectories for most of my content. A subdomain can be useful to separate out content that is completely different. Google uses subdomains for distinct products such news.google.com or maps.google.com, for example. If you’re a newer webmaster or SEO, I’d recommend using subdirectories until you start to feel pretty confident with the architecture of your site. At that point, you’ll be better equipped to make the right decision for your own site.”

Not a good idea:

http://www.searchinfluence.com/2012/03/google-places-virtual-office/

Sign up for Google+ Local using your residential address, and then make your business address private in the listing. This will still list your city and you can set your service area to include the surrounding areas.

Please don't take the above advice. I think the responder misunderstood your situation. If the externally linking page is broken, there's not much you can do. It will fall out of Google eventually.

Correct. The only way Google uses the meta keyword tag is in site search:

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/keywords-meta-tag-in-web-search/

It's listed right here in the Google Webmaster Guidelines:

"Building partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking."

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66356

The guidelines also mentioned "excessive link exchanges" -- so what's deemed excessive? This is definitely a gray area.

I would nofollow the links just to be safe.

The best way to do this is to get your site syndicated in Google News. Google identifies real time/breaking trends for queries and often displays related news results.

Here's more info on Google News:

https://support.google.com/news/publisher/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2481358

I've had a couple of sites accepted in recent years, and am very familiar with Google's requirements. Let me know if you have any questions.

The perp hasn't downloaded and copied your site. He/she is using domain masking to point the URL to your site. Still, I would consider doing something about it a high priority.

Instead of Skype, why don't you download the PDF and upload it to your server, and then share the link. I'd like to take a look.

Personally, I would do it, as I'm always on the lookout for extra ways to market my services. There's also the networking factor, which can reap an endless stream of benefits down the road.

But all in all, there are too many factors to give a definitive answer. For example, how much time will the project require? Can you afford to work X number of hours knowing that the payoff may be gradual or may not come at all?

I would also avoid the link at the bottom of every page.

And on the flip side, there's the Harlan Ellison philosophy that seems to work for some folks

Exactly -- take advantage of all the tools at your disposal. In this case, local results will be displayed more often than not. In a nutshell, you need to be setting up Google+ Local pages for the businesses you are working with rather than clinging onto the hope of competing with the big dogs for organic search position.

https://plus.google.com/local

Your post leads me to believe you are getting organic search rankings confused with paid search (Google Adwords). Are you saying your campaign position in paid search has lost position? As Zachary pointed out, it seems unlikely you were ranking so high in organic search results for the keywords you posted.

The Enterprise option might work for that:

http://www.seomoz.org/plans/enterprise

However, I would get in touch with someone from SEOMoz to verify.

That's correct!

You may have success by requesting removal of the cached version of the page using the URL removal tool; however, I'm assuming you aren't the site owner, and thus do not have access to the forum's URL removal tool.

It really depends on the site. If it's a highly trafficked forum, it is likely crawled frequently. You may see it updated within the week. If it's not, it make a month or so, unfortunately.

This is primarily a concern for one author blogs -- if your main blog index page has a nice mix of posts from various authors, and doesn't match a lot of content from the individual author pages, you will be fine.

I highly doubt it...

WordPress powers roughly 54 percent of websites managed by a CMS, and approximately 15 percent of the top 1 million websites in the world.

http://om4.com.au/client/wordpress-market-share/

Do you really need a dedicated server? Consider a VPS. Or if you want to stick with basic shared hosting, check out BlueHost (get the dedicated IP add-on).

I'm going to agree with all of what Adam Thompson said, less the social bookmarking part. Social links can be valuable as they can lead to an influx of traffic (depends on the content obviously). Reddit can be particularly powerful.

Can you provide a link to your website?

In addition to Koen:

You should also be able to do this via cPanel's redirect tool, providing you're file/URL structure is unchanged. If your file structure is the same, check the "Wild Card Redirect" box.

Site still seems to rank #1 for "Poker on a Mac" query. Site search reveals lots of indexed URLs from the Pharm hack. I recommend removing these URLs via Webmaster Tools. As far as investigating the traffic drop, take a look at your top landing pages via search for the week before and compare to the data following the drop on the 23rd. I bet you'll be able to find some sort of pattern that will enlighten you a bit.

I think you are misunderstanding the purpose of Google Tag Manager. The meta keyword tag is ignored except in cases of site search.

To OP:

Social media is going to be your main source of traffic here, IMO. It doesn't mean you should completely ignore natural search optimization, but that the best way to drive traffic to your site is through social media. The rankings will come with traffic/shares/backlinks.

If you message or email the owner and ask for permission, you can avoid stepping into that fuzzy gray area.

Here's something else I noticed about OP's site:

Home page outranks privacy page when using site search -- yet home page appears to be filtered out of standard queries.

Try BlueHost for managed/shared hosting. I would stay away from GoDaddy and HostGator -- way too slow.

Actually, a 301 redirect can be avoided here, provided you maintain the same page/URL structure. You can use this WordPress plugin to generate the custom .cfm page extension and retain your URL structure to avoid hurting your rankings:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/custom-page-extensions/

It would be best to avoid a 301 redirect if possible.

Yes, to the above. Fill out your home page with more content and do something about your title tags. Presently the title tag for every page on the site is "Mardi Gras Parade Tickets 2013."

Just to add to the other answers, you can also remove the URLs (or entire directory if necessary) via the URL removal tool in Webmaster Tools, although Google prefers you to use it for emergencies of sorts (I've had no problems with it).

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=164734

If your title tag is too long, its also possible that Google is displaying a truncated version of the tag with the emphasis on the matching keyword.

Does the tag actually change or does Google just display a different part of it?

Google is pretty good and identifying the original source of content; however, it isn't perfect. I suggest pursuing the options to have the content removed from the scraper/spam sites whenever possible.

Here is a good article on the subject:

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/10-post-pandapenguin-era-links-acquisition-strategies/50414/

And here is another:

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/101-ways-to-link-build-in-2012/46988/

The type of opportunities you want to pursue, in my opinion, vary depending on the type of business/website you operate, as well as the applicable industry.

Guest posting is generally a safe and viable option around the board.

Edward

I would personally reconsider the use of .md as the primary domain, although I think it would be appropriate for a vanity URL to use in offline advertisements, etc., that redirects to your website.

Google does not just use the Geotarget data:

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=182192#2

Also, Google does not explicitly list .md in its list of ccTLDs that are considered generic:

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1347922

In the above link, scroll down to this section:

Generic Country Code Top Level Domains (gccTLDs)

I'm not guaranteeing you that this is a problem, but I'm saying I would personally reconsider it if the site is still fairly NEW.

The trackback links are generally nofollow, so PageRank isn't being passed. I wouldn't worry about it too much. Personally, I do not allow trackbacks on my WordPress sites.