Welcome to the Q&A Forum
Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.
Most people start by carefully reading The Beginners Guide to SEO.
While you are reading you can start planning the optimization of your site and thinking about linkbuilding.
After you have done that you should ask very specific questions here.
That will yield better results that "give me tricks or hints". There really are not any "tricks".
Specific questions will give you actionable information.
We place product selections like this all on one page and use buy buttons for adding to cart.
We believe that this works better for multiple item sales than separate pages for each variation.
Lots of people buy different sizes and several colors in the same order. 
Links are getting really hard to acquire. Most of the people who blogged a few years ago have left for FaceBook.
I have not be aggressive with getting links for a few years and now I am convinced that Likes, Tweets and Shares are the future currency for ranking a website.
the content I create is nothing less than awesome and people do share them via add this and I do get occasional backlinks BUT not enough to secure a commanding position on the SERP 
Great! You are on the right track then if you are getting addthis action and a few links. The good news is that as your traffic goes up you will get more links and your progress will accelerate because of the greater exposure. Keep working.
But I have already submitted to these sites and do not get much traffic reason being they cater to specific audience tastes
This can be true. Stumbleupon can be the most versatile. If you can identify any way to share with like-minded people, such as through facebook, that could improve your results. Or, maybe you can find bloggers in your niche who will help you.
If it will effect your rankings or your clickthrough rate in the SERPs then it is part of SEO.
Why are you asking this? Are you trying to get out of work?
I like to attack with high quality content that will pull natural links continuously over time.
So, for a retail site I would be looking to produce great content in the same topic niche as the products. That content has to be useful to your visitors and be high enough in quality to attract natural links. The goal would be to have best-on-the-web content for those topics. For a niche retail site like you describe producing this content could take a couple months or more of full time work. Then you need to get a few links to get the ball rolling. At first this would contribute very little to the strength of your site but if you have done a great job on selecting the right content and preparing it superbly the strength of your site will grow steadily over time. And, most important, the growth rate of the strength will accelerate over time as your rankings climb and your traffic increases.
The value of a twitter follower depends upon YOU, not the follower.
Can you get the follower to your website so that ad impressions or sales are made?
Can you get the follower to make an action that will bring one of his followers to your website?
If you can't do the above then followers are worth zero. And, followers that are worth something to you might not be worth anything to me.
The only exception is when you are working for votes or working to get a message out. Then the followers value again depends upon YOU doing something to get specific actions out of them that help accomplish your goal.
We all know that Link building is a tough job which requires persistent effort , and for a content creator it takes focus away from his job , which is "creating content".
This is my philosophy. My job is content creation not linkbuilding. So my goal is to allow my content to earn links with very little effort from me. The problem is that you need visibility. You need visitors on your website to see your content and hopefully some of them will link to you from their blog or their website. How do you get visibility? Sites such as stumbleupon.com and reddit.com and slashdot.com enable you to submit a piece of content and then if it is superb you can get a lot of visibility - tens of thousands of visitors or even hundreds of thousands.
You can also find websites that already link out to content in your topic area and if your content is better than what they already link to, you might ask them to consider your content for a link.
You should also make it very easy for visitors to share your content with their friends. I use the AddThis.com button to make that easy.
If you follow the above you might get some links. If you are not getting links then there is a problem that your content is not very good - at least not good enough to get links. Also, if visitors are not sharing your content with the addthis buttons then you know that your content needs to be better.
What to do with that $200? Buy a digital camera and use it to take photos to support your content. A page full of words is not very interesting. However, a page with great writing and some great photos has a much better chance to succeed.
I've read that you lose all your valuable links doing this because they are domain specific and the 301 doesn't forward your links.
If you do the 301 redirect properly most of the link value will be preserved.
I would do Option 1.
I am a little concerened about search engine reaction to this content separation. Would this approach dilute the rankings of www.existingdomain.co.uk?
In my opinion, yes. If you move content to a subdomain the links into that content will have a lower benefit on the rankings of your main site and the links into your main site will have a lower benefit on the rankings of the subdomain.
I recently redirected two subdomains on an old site to folders in the root of the master domain. Rankings went up for everything significantly.
Nobody really knows what google used to demote websites during the Panda update. Maybe it was generated content, short content, spun content, grammar problems, ads, affiliate links, who knows. And, since nobody has yet recovered from Panda (if anybody recovered you would hear them yelling YEEEEHAAAA! in the forums) they can't tell you what they did to escape.
I personally don't care for the generated content. I would not have placed it on an important site before Panda and certainly would not use it now.
You can leave it off the site or you can publish it and take your chances.
I have lots of pages that have matching <title>and <h1>. They rank great.</p> <p>I think that the practice is smart - saves time. </p> <p>Wordpress and other content management systems do this buy default.</p> <p>Someone somewhere started preaching that these should not match. My experience is different.</p></title>
KW domains are very helpful where competition is low. But as competition increases it becomes more a battle of links.
Some people are going to be slapping me for giving this kind of advice... but I think that linkbuilding is secondary to promoting your content to your current visitors and making it easy for search engines to crawl.
Be sure that you have a design that strongly presents your content. Article titles and images should stand out and invite the visitor to read. Have navigation that makes getting around the site and finding what visitors want easy. Have "recommended article" lists with related internal links a couple of places on every page. Have good internal search. Offer an RSS feed so people can subscribe to new content - in multiple categories.
Most important.... Make social sharing very easy - use AddThis.com buttons or another sharing tool.
You have TEN MILLION monthly visitors. Dude, if you have great content that is more powerful than a team of linkbuilders.
Great sites don't need linkbuilders. Visitors do that work for you.
The problem is I have a lot of Widgets and this could get messy: ABC Green Widgets, Small XYZ Widgets, many combinations. I can see my Widget page teetering on being a link farm if I start throwing in all of these combos.
salivating This isn't a problem. It's an opportunity.
It would not bother me to have a huge page of links to internal content on my site. It would really impress any person who arrives. I would make this page look great with images and icons, color blocks and headings.
If you are not comfortable with a single huge page then break it into multiple category pages. These would compete in the SERPs for secondary keywords.
Go for it! Good luck!
I think it's a good idea and may open up some content syndication options that were discounted before...
In the past I have been firmly against content syndication - I want the content on my own site. However, if I think that the search engines are going to give me credit for doing it then I might do it when a great opportunity arrives.
However, it wouldn't be hard for Google to have a system whereby they recognize that my site was the first one to have the rel author and therefore I'm likely the original owner. This is basically a content registry.
Oh.... I really like that. I would like to see google internally put a date on first publication. One problem that some people might have is that their site is very new and weak and content scrapers hit them with a higher frequency than googlebot.
This might be helpful for you, especially if you can get the syndication sites to place author tags on the blog posts.
rel=canonical might also be worth investigating.
I am also confused about this. I'd like to see more information from Google on exactly how these will be used - especially in cross-domain situations.
I would go to that meeting with some examples....
Joe Schmoe dentist has articles about this and this and this on his site.
Ask what are his specialties? What expertise does she want to share? Pet peeves?
This is your dentist's opportunity to improve the dental health of every person who visits his/her website.
Google is now encouraging webmasters to attribute content to authors with rel="author". You can read what google has to say about it here and here.
A quote from one of google's articles....
When Google has information about who wrote a piece of content on the web, we may look at it as a signal to help us determine the relevance of that page to a user’s query. This is just one of many signals Google may use to determine a page’s relevance and ranking, though, and we’re constantly tweaking and improving our algorithm to improve overall search quality.
I am guessing that google might use it like this..... If you have several highly successful articles about "widgets", your author link on each of them will let google know that you are a widget expert. Then when you write future articles about widgets, google will rank them much higher than normal - because google knows you are an authority on that topic.
If it works this way the rel="author" attribute could be the equivalent of a big load of backlinks for highly qualified authors.
What do you think about this? Valuable?
Also, do you think that there is any way that google could be using this as a "content registry" that will foil some attempts at content theft and content spinning?
Any ideas welcome! Thanks!
However, he's a busy dentist and can't develop all the content himself.
It is really hard to get webdesign and SEO clients to author their own content. They don't "get it" that this can be some of the most important marketing for their business and a way to demonstrate their credibility, professionalism and unique style.
I think that it is worth getting some ideas about the benefits of authorship together and approaching the dentist a second time about this subject.
Those are called "site links". Google awards them when a page of your site is very dominant for a specific search query. The homepage sometimes has them and interior pages can have them too.
The example in the URL that you provided shows seven site links (there is often six or eight in that configuration). There can also be a smaller set of three or four site links such as these....
Google awards site links when they identify potential links that will help people access specific pages of your site directly from the SERPs.
Here is more info straight from Google...
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=47334
The biggest thing would have to be the continuity with the other answers and familiarity with the poster over time.
This is a very important point. Some posters can toss out sarcasm and people who don't know them read it as gospel.
When I ask a question I am looking for answers from experienced professionals.
I'd say that you will get the most reliable advice when you use your one private question per month. Then your answer is coming from an SEOmoz staff member.
When you ask a public question anybody can answer - experienced professionals, amateurs, kibbitzers and trolls. Those public questions fetch free advice and you know what they say about free advice?
You can even pay for advice and get really really bad stuff.
The problem that we all face is that search engines do not reveal all of the rankings details and even if they do those details can change over time without any notice. On that basis I consider every answer here to be a personal opinion - (but it is always nice to see an answer that links to a quote from a search engine representative like Matt Cutts or an SEO who has published verifiable data. Unfortunately those are not that abundant.)
The bottom line is... I am not going to agree with anybody on every topic. So, I read a lot and make up my mind on what I think makes the most sense from a search engine's perspective and then place my bets.
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Here is something to keep in mind.....
Free advice usually isn't worth very much.
Cheap advice is worth even less.
Expensive advice is sometimes good.
Where were you when I was selling diamonds?
If the pages where those links exist are in the Google index then I am betting that some value will be passed - even if the pages currently register PR0 on the toolbar. The question is how much value and what type of value.
If they are indexed then each of these links will pass a tiny amount of pagerank. However, we know that pagerank in itself does not rank a website.
If you believe that Google passes some measure of trust with a link, then I am betting that the trust associated with a link from Berkeley will be nice but that Ezine will past almost nothing. This is because Ezine links to crap but Berkeley mainly links to quality. Lots of people might disagree with this idea of "trust"... but, just saying here my opinion of the relative value of these links.
"how to value organic traffic"
That's a different question than "how much can I get for a website?".
But getting to your real question of "how to value organic traffic".... that depends upon what you can do with the traffic (display adsense, sell merchandise, generate leads).
Although you can put a generalized number on that the bottom line for the buyer of your website depends upon how effective your website is at converting customers for a specific service provider. The generic website that you have for sale has zero value for the service provider.
You are selling a sign post without a sign, not a money-making machine.
I think that you have a lot more money making potential selling SEO services than selling pre-ranked websites.
You get what you can convince someone its worth.
I agree.
I believe that most people who own wedding shops will be much more inclined to invest in having SEO done on their existing website or on a domain that matches the name of their business than they are to buy a website from a Joe Schmoe who is trying to sell them YourPodunkWedding.com.
If they already have a website they probably have a relationship with a local person or company who built the site for them. They will call that person who they know and trust and say... some Joe Schmoe is trying to sell me YourPodunkWedding.com... and he will say.. "They are probably going to sell you the site and then pull the links as soon as they have your money."
The domain authority on EzineArticles is an impressive 91.
That domain authority number is blind to some important factors. One is Google's opinion of the domain. The domain authority of berkeley.edu is about 86. Where would you rather have a link?
Which is worth more? 100 drunks voting for you or one Pope?
Nobody knows for sure how google values a link.
However, the links that you are talking about can be acquired by just about anyone, much of the content used to get these links is garbage, the articles fill search indexes with duplicate content and Google through their actions has confirmed that these are not favored websites. So, you can only hope that they are worth anything at all.
If I was the boss at google these links might carry negative value because they are so often used for manipulation.
I would invest my time elsewhere.... but, that is just an opinion.
I have not heard of any sites that were hit by Panda being released from the problem. If people were getting out they would be yelling YEEEEHHAAAA! in the forums. So, until that happens you can only guess at what might be holding your site back.
I would focus for now on an overall improvement in content quality. That is always a great investment.
Beyond SEOmoz tools you might want to be sure to make it very easy for visitors to share the bloggers postings via Facebook, Twitter and other social sites. A service such as the AddThis.com buttons might work well.
I suggest this because a lot of audiences are very heavily involved in social media and have little to no involvement in blogging/webpublishing. From my own experience, a good article can get hundreds of FaceBook "likes" for every real link that it received. And, Google confirms that social media data is starting to be used in their algo.
Do not exclude.
People will link to it.
PDF documents can rank in the SERPs if you complete the properties portion of the document. The title in the properties will serve as a title tag for Google SERPs.
PDF documents can accumulate pagerank and pass that pagerank though any links in the PDF document. (Be sure to place a few links to your website in the PDF. Because....pdf, .ppt, .xls and many other file times display in my google webmaster tools backlinks).
Encourage other webmasters to download your pdf and post it on their server and link to it from their website. That will give you backlinks from their domain. You can get a kickass number of backlinks from this. (I usually don't advocate giving content away but I have seen success from "whitepapers" like this. You might consider offering them a "branded" copy of the document to post on their own site - you would add their branding for them.)
Its a good idea to lock the .pdf document so that others can't change it. They can always make their own document from your content but don't make it too easy for them.
I have used .pdfs and have not seen a duplicate content problem from them. However, the content of the pdf is not exactly the same as what is on an .html page of my site. It sounds like you are planning to have richer content on your site than in the .pdf so I would not worry about dupe content. Just be sure that there is a significant difference.
I would leave them because search engines change their mind on many things.
The WP on my blog is set up as follows (this is a blog that gets between four and ten short posts per day - about two to four sentences, each post linking to an article or other content on a topic-related website)
Homepage: Full text of the most recent 25 posts are displayed. Pagination pages are not indexed (blocked by robots.txt).
Post Pages: Full text is displayed and the title plus a few words of 20 related posts are displayed.
Category Pages: I have over 100 categories and each post is placed into at least two categories (one by location and one by topic). Some posts go into three or four categoreis - sometimes more. Each category page displays the full text of the most recent 25 posts. Categories do not have pagination pages (blocked by robots.txt).
All of the above pages are fully indexed and a long list of category pages appears in the left-side navigation. I don't use tag pages or archive pages. There is a lot of dupe content in this system but so far I am lucky that it does not cause a problem. The category pages pull a lot of organic search traffic.
In January of each year I delete all of the posts that are over a year old. Before doing that I identify those that are pulling reasonable traffic and either redirect them to a permanent page about same topic, write an article about that topic and redirect, or recycle that post. All the rest are redirected to the homepage of the blog.
I would be inclined to do #3. Nothing.
That option requires no work and you will not need to worry about client seeing that they are removed and coming to you with concerns.
If you are inclined to do #1 then I would mention it to client before they are removed. Possible reasons to remove might be to reduce the amount of code on the page and some people think that meta keywords can be used by competitors to see what rankings you are thinking about.
Both www.cardealer.net and www.car-dealer.com will lose type-in traffic to www.cardealer.com.
I would find another domain that is a .com without a hyphen. After you have put a lot of work into the site you don't want your traffic going to the competitor.
According to Matt Cutts, when you nofollow a link the pagerank that would have flowed through that link dies. So, it does not make sense to nofollow an internal link anymore, instead you should let the pagerank flow in and distribute on to pages that the receiving page links to.
Note.... Originally google said that the pagerank that would have flowed into a nofollowed page would not die. Instead it would remain within the larger part of your site. Google later changed their mind on this, started killing the pagerank and Matt Cutts then told webmasters about it in a YouTube video.
So, the advice that I give you, I believe is correct for today, but Google can change their mind again, who knows?
I believe that if Website A links to Website B and at the same time Website B links to Website A that the links can still be valuable. Great websites link to other great websites all of the time. I don't think that Google will discriminate against those links unless.......
A) the websites are entirely unrelated to one another (about very different topics
B) the links are in a dumb location such as on a "link exchange" page or footer
C) the links are highly optimized anchor text
So, as long as the links are placed in a context that is valuable for the visitor these links still have a chance to carry value.
As for guest blog posting... if you have a local history site in the United States and guest blog on a site about hydraulic jacks in Germany then I think you are wasting your time. But if both of these sites are about the local history of the same area then, in my opinion, these webmasters could very legitimately be colleagues who refer to each others work and enthusiastically share ideas with one another's visitors.
I think that buying traffic is not going to bring good results.
Maybe you should subcontract this job out to someone else?
I believe that these will be valuable links. I would go after them and that job would be priority on my list.
Why would they want to buy a website from you? They probably already have a site, have spent a lot of money on it and want to continue using it. Your site would not feature their store or their products or their staff or their salesmanship. The site would need to be built over again. A waste of your time or their money.
I think that you will get a better return selling SEO services to the biz owner who is currently in position #7 who would like to be in position #1.
If the site received 500 visitors per month and 5% of those became customers multiplied by the average profit per customer - that would give a monthly value of the website.
I think that your 5% is really high. In a small town there might only be a few places to buy these products and the shoppers already know about them. Where there is a larger market the buying decision is going to be based more on the products for sale and less on the rankings of a website.
Also, I think that your valuation is high.... why should they pay you the entire profit on the monthly sales? They are in business to make money for themselves - not to give all of their profits to you.
This is a huge question and the answer depends upon the type of site that you have. Retail sites might focus on popular products, new products, special sale products, most profitable products.
You basically want to show visitors the things that they might find most interesting but at the same time link to things that you want visitors to discover.
For best advice tell us more about your site.
It's possible that putting a reasonably intelligent human on the job for a couple of months could pay back big time. I'll bet a good title tag job would pull in thousands of dollars worth of sales every month.
If a lot of traffic is coming in through 18,000 pages that have duplicate title tags I am willing to bet that there will be a huge increase in the amount of traffic that those pages pull when unique and relevant title tags are put in place.
So, although there is a small chance that traffic will go down, I think that there is a much higher chance that traffic will immedately shoot up spectacularly - and the quality of that traffic might also improve.
I would archive the site, run a script to replace the title tags, see what happens. You can always put the old title tags back up if this doesn't work - but I bet it works great.
Phooey... I knew that this would happen as soon as I tried to pick a mellow topic.
I think comments are great as long as you have a thick enough skin.
This made me laugh... Thanks! It's very true!