lol   "ranking or banking"... nice.

AND YET IT HAS A ROOT DOMAIN OF "26" and page authority of 36

Why are you so worried about domain authority and page authority?

They don't influence the ranking of your site in google or produce income.

What, beyond these numbers are you trying to achieve?

hehe can I take the fifth?

lol.   No 

If you have any of the following types of content in quantity you can have a problem with Google's Panda algo.

--- lots of pages with small amounts of content - just a few sentences

--- lots of pages that are similar in content from page-to-page, such as service location pages with a few paragraphs and just the name of the geographic location changed

--- lots of pages that have articles that are also published on other domains

--- lots of pages with poor grammar, typos, etc

Some people have ounces of gold.  Some have tons of crap.

Numbers wise we are publishing an average of 125 articles a day

So, are these numbers ounces or tons?

I know lots of people who have two domains in same sector on the same server.   If there content is unique and very different and they are not heavily interlinked then I would be comfortable with that.

When I read your question I was on the assumption that they were on separate servers and that you were going to merge them into a SINGLE DOMAIN.

Now I am thinking that you are going to run both of them from a single CMS install.  That just sounds strange to me.  I wouldn't do it.

Merging two sites in the same sector or launching a second site in the same sector should always be given careful consideration.

My thoughts on this are.....

1. If you own the dominant site in a sector then you are in excellent position to launch a second site in that sector.

2. If you don't own the dominant site in a sector then you are better off putting all of your work into your best site (or your only site) to build it into the dominant site.

To me, those two situations are very clear.

About merging sites....

To me, if Site A and Site B have very little content overlap then a merger makes good sense.  The strength of the sites will be merged and the rankings might go up for lots of keywords.

However, if Site A and Site B have a LOT of content overlap then merging them requires more careful thought.   If one site is strong and the other puny, then the merger of the puny site into the strong site will not accomplish much.  I would rather put work into the strong site.  If both sites are moderate in strength then the merger will likely give a nice boost to the site that remains.

Before doing any merger I would be sure that both sites are clean of any Panda, Penguin or other problems.  Because you don't want to merge poison into a good site.

Selling on the web is a highly competitive game.  I am a tiny company and big companies crush little companies like me every day.  All they have to do to get into my space is to toss some new products onto their site and upload those pages and they could be kicking mylittleass by Monday morning.  Anybody between you and the heavy weight champion of the world could be showing up in my space within hours.

Kicking mylittleass is the profit growth that my competitor's shareholders are demanding.

So, if I do something like implement a new design and go to a new platform and tweak my UI and a few other things without getting some input from someone who knows more than I do, about different things than I do, and who is watching some of the other methods being used by other people that are getting success then I have really done nothing to improve my competitive position.

I can go into work next week, implement these new things, whistle while I work, sip coffee, stay comfy and think that I am being competitive or I can get a smart person to tell me where I am loafing, kick me in the pants and push me into kicking my biz up a notch.

Every dollar that I have made has been taken from somebody else.  Every single dollar.   That's how it works on the web.  So, if you are not reaching for their throat when they are reaching for yours then you might see your revenue fall by 50% by the end of the month.

Just saying that I get second, and sometimes third opinions on smaller moves than you are talking about for a company that is not that much bigger.   I am writing a check to a consultant almost every month.

I think that it is a lot better to get periodic input than it is to get input only at major changes and that is an awful lot better than to think... "I am a nobody and it really isn't worth paying somebody to tell me how I can kick it up a notch... and I don't want to hear them telling me "you are screwing up here".... "do this differently"....  "you are slacking here"....   If I have that attitude, I'll be a nobody for sure.

The heavyweight champ has a coach.  I think I could use one too.

I think that your managers made a good call at the time, especially for your industry.

I think my employees are glad that I am saying that "this is crap" for now.. .but they agree that we should do it within the next year or so.

We're obviously targeting authoritative sites which do do reviews.

OK... same crappy product getting no authentic reviews.  Suddenly a ton a reviews appear on "authoritative" websites.  Somebody did something to make that happen.

So Google has real people just combing the web for these types of cases? No algo?

They have a really simple algo that catches this stuff.

Product A exists for years and nobody is sayin' anything about it.  Then, BAM, a ton of crappy reviews appear on a bunch of crappy sites..... Somebody did somethin' to make that happen - especially when those reviews appear on sites that do not make a practice of reviewing products.   Engineers not required.

When I go to Amazon and their website says... "Hello EGOL"... I don't see the https.   I only see it when I am into account information.

When I go to ebay and look at the stuff I am bidding on or have purchased I don't see the https.

When I visit MattCutts.com I don't see https.  WTF?

Amazon and ebay and lots of other sites don't have https even when you are logged in and they show your personal stuff.... so I am supposed to get it for my peanut.com domain where nobody logs in and nobody has any information stored?

So, I am not doing anything right now.  I'll wait to see how many people step in poo setting it up and then, after the bugs are discovered and amazon does it... I might be ready.   (I do have https in my shopping cart.)

ADDED:   I just read Barry's post on SearchEngingRoundTable..

Google Change Of Address Tool Does Not Support HTTPS Migration..

That does it for now.

I took a quick look at the site and agree with Lee.  The content is good, could be a little thicker but that is probably not the problem.

Just tossing something out... a lot of space is given to huge images, huge whitespace, huge video, huge navigation....  So much that the first word of content is 800 pixels down on the content pages and over 1000 pixels down on the homepage.

So, I am wondering about two things.... 1) are people not going down to look at the content and instead bouncing?  2) are search engines seeing no content in the first thousand pixels and giving you a demotion.

Finally... and I am just saying this, knowing nothing of the business in specific, but being a person who has spent a long life in very intense athletics.   Between ages 15 and 45 I would have been one of your best clients.   Now, decades later, I am still someone's client, but not a client that matches my first impression of your website.  So, if your biz matches the images on the website then you have no need to change.   But, if your potential clients are below that intensity then they could be bouncing off of the website, in search for something less rigorous.  The images are much higher than  my impression of "physical wellbeing".

Maybe you have heard this famous quote that I read in a climbing magazine decades ago.... "The demands of the sport attract a certain type of person.... but at the same time severely limit its appeal."

....it has got to the point where people cannot access the site because of server errors.

As soon as I would see this I would go straight to someone who knows a lot more about servers than I do.  I would start with the host and if I get no help from them within a few hours then I would get someone who knows about servers to dig into this and be ready to quickly move the website to a new host.   If the host does not know how to solve it, and I don't know how to solve it.  Then it is time for bigger guns and possibly a new host - right away.

....they have just told us they moved the DNS records once the name servers were changed, and they have now fixed this and are waiting for the name servers to propagate again.

So, the website is now in the hands of a new host.  It is likely that the problem will be solved here it the old host was the cause of the problem.   Today, DNS propagates quickly,  I am having my morning coffee... if I don't see progress by the time I return from lunch then I am calling a pro.

I think that it is a good idea for anyone who has clients or an important website to have a person or a company that they can call straightaway for a quick couple of hours of investigation or advice.   Two hours of consulting is cheaper than seeing a business throttled for two days.

Also, I have learned to stay away from hosts who offer unlimited bandwidth and similar claims.  When you start to become successful you become unprofitable for them so they either have to limit your resources or confess that their claim of unlimited is an absolute lie.

All of my sites are with hosts who charge me for every bit of resource that I use.  The more I use, the more money they make and when I have a problem they are motivated to get it fixed immediately - because when my biz is dragging they are making less money.  They want me to make money because our interests are in alignment - not the opposite.

Cheap hosts are just as bad as the unlimited guys.  If they have a problem with your website it is cheaper to let you go and lose the few bucks a month that you are paying them than it is to pay their staff to fix things. (But they will not tell you to go to a new host - they will just allow you to have crap service until you decided to move.)     I make sure that the hosts that I use have a number of high profile sites under their care who will not tolerate one minute of BS.   These hosts are not cheap, but I am not interested in cheap, I want reliable.

My question is: will we get penalized by Google or other search engines?

Let us know how it works.  I might block New Jersey.  

I believe that great websites link to other great websites.  If nobody linked out the web would not be the web.  Based upon that, I think that links to great websites get a tiny smile from google.

Each day I add a few links from my website to other websites.  The requirement that these other websites must meet to get the link is that they must in someway be distinctly superior to my website.  I only link up, never down.

I am telling my visitors... HEY! LOOK AT THIS!   If I think that my visitors are going to ask... "Why did he link to this?  Then, no way will I place a link.  Could not pay me.  Because I want to send my visitors to great stuff - better than mine.

Generally, I find, if someone is arguing with me about something, I don't do it.

So, do these guys have something awesome, kickass or wonderful that is distinctly better than mine.  If they don't then drop the link to their site and find something better.   When they ask WTF?  Just tell 'em that you link up to better stuff.

In my opinion, kulraj.org/author/admin/ is essential because it is the main listing for your blog.

As the number of posts on your blog grows you might want to add categories back.  They can bring in a lot of traffic if the category names match a topic that people are searching for.  With a small number  of posts on your blog it is very easy to encounter duplicate content problems.  However, once you have a large number of posts then breaking them into a small number of category pages can become an important opportunity and a minimal duplicate content risk.

If you do that I would limit the number of words that are displayed for each post.  I would also carefully choose the categories to match what people are searching for.

I have a blog that does not have tags and does not have categories.  I do that to avoid duplicate content.  However, lots of my topics overlap and I have lots of linking from one blog post to another.  I also have some hand-built FAQ pages that link to my blog posts and other informative content.  These pages can bring in a lot of traffic.

In my opinion, websites are similar to boats.... the heavier you load them the deeper they ride in the water and the more difficult it is to gain speed and control them.

I did this search and found the guy jumping with the briefcase and the top part of your article on seven different pages.  That is way too many in my opinion.

On my site, tag and archive do not exist.  Category continuation pages do exist but they are noindexed.  I threw these overboard a long time ago to lighten the load and now my ship floats higher, accelerates faster, steers easier and competes with greater strength.  I don't need those pages, my visitors don't need those pages and Google HATES them.

About your questions....

1. rel=canonical..... I would not use it.  If I delete the pages mentioned above I don't think that I will need it.

2. why the post is omitted?   The first four paragraphs of that post appears on seven pages of your site.  Google hates that.

BTW... I read that whole article and really enjoyed it.  It's not the type of reading that I normally do but it was very interesting, well-written and thought provoking.  Nice work.  Great content.

Here is the best way that I know to check that.   Do a site query like this if you want to see the pages on your site that are relevant for "baloney".

Site:egol.com baloney

My site is like yours.  I have product pages and often multiple information pages and sometimes blog posts.  I make sure that all of those link to my preferred ranking page.   Also, the most important ranking pages on my site are in the persistent navigation.

But, I have a site with a few thousand pages, so the secondary and tertiary ranking pages have multiple links to them from other topic-relevant pages.  To get my preferred page ranking in the SERPs, I do these things....

1)  get as many RELEVANT internal links as you can pointing to your priority pages for any given keyword

2)  be sure that your priority pages have the best on-page optimization for your preferred keyword

Much of the time, my informational pages rank best because they receive more external links and because they have much richer content.  So, to drive traffic to the money pages, I have multiple links on them to the money pages and even display ads for the products on the money pages.   Just like running ads for your own products.

How important do you think social sharing for SEO is for this type of content?

I honestly don't know.  If you are getting a lot of traffic from social sources then it might pay.   Right now you are giving massive amount of page space to social sharing.  I would simply use a very sleek AddThis.com widget.

Would say A/B testing for more social shares be a high priority?

I would use AddThis.com widget in an obvious spot.  I think that the quality and usefulness of your content will be the major driver of social shares if you use an obvious widget.

I would question if my content is of high enough quality or of the right type to trigger sharing.

I am confident that the images make a great impression on visitors.  Just, would some assessment done by Google, for example, Panda see them as non-content above the fold.

You never know what google is doing.

In general, my approach to ecommerce pages is to invest enough time and energy into them that they have no duplicate or thin content problems.

I try to create a generous description with facts and statistics about the item being sold.  When I can't do that I might have multiple related items for sale on the same page.

I do have some retail pages that have been on my site for a long time.  For those, I am working to improve them so there is very little risk of Panda problems.  On a site where I did have some Panda problems, I have noindexed the problem pages until I have them improved for indexing again.    I don't want to abandon these pages because I have a big investment in photography, writing, and inventory.

About 301 redirecting retail pages, yes, I do that, but I don't feel that they are really SEO assets to the site beyond being a page relevant for specific keywords.  In combination with that I view each retail page as dead weight on the site that must be lifted with popular pages in my content areas.

Sometimes I have wonderful images that are relevant to the topic of an article and become part of the article's content.

I have been posting them below the

but above the content of the article.  These images are big and beautiful and I am certain that people like them.

But, I honestly have the same question that you have.  Is this pushing text content down "TOO FAR FOR GOOGLE"?   I honestly think that my visitors enjoy these images... but they don't determine the rankings of my pages in search.

Google repeatedly changes their mind about some things.

They have repeatedly changed their mind about subdomains.

At some times in the past they treated subdomains exactly like they were part of the root domain.  At other times they treated them like a separate site and they have been in the middle some times too I am sure.

If you want your blog to be treated as part of the domain then put it on the domain.  If you want your blog to be treated like a separate domain then put it on a separate domain. By doing this you will always be right.

But, if you place it on a subdomain then I am betting that you will be wrong about 1/2 of the time - if you are lucky.

I think that you are off to a good start and have some good content in the Bank Holiday area (I didn't look at others).

If this was my site I would do a couple of things.....

1. On this page http://www.followuk.co.uk/bank-holidays a person must scroll down to see the real content.  There is a lot of eyecandy at the top but what people really want is deep.  The first bank holiday date is 700 pixels down!   I would redesign to lift that up a lot higher.

2. On the bottoms of your pages you have paragraphs that explain the bank holidays.  I would link the name of the holiday in the table to those explanations.  That will help optimization and allow visitors to BAM...  get that info.

Nice work.

thinking about moving it to the main domain in a sub directory. What are your thoughts on this?

If this was my site I would move it to /blog/ (or a folder with another name) immediately and use 301 redirects.

All of  my blogs are in a folder on the main domain.

I took a quick look at the BalhamDentalCare site.

You ask... "Does any one think this can be beaten".

In the organic SERPs, yes, absolutely.  They can be beaten.  There are many things that competitors could do a LOT better.  But those competitors would have to do a LOT of work to match them.

In the local results.  They have great position - but a smart competitor who is willing to work hard could beat them.

You also ask.... "or does it just come down to the fact that they use  "Balham" in the domain name?"

Having the word "Balham" is slightly helpful.  But that word in the domain will only decide their position against weak competitors.  When competition increases a word in the domain means very little compared to all of the other work that needs to be done to be competitive.

Quite honestly.  balhamdentalcare.co.uk has done a fantastic job creating content.  If they ever learn how to do really good SEO or hire a really good SEO then the other "dentists in Balham" are going to have a difficult time beating them.  If they simply write better title tags and sharpen the optimization of their pages they will be a lot stronger.

A small amount of smart work could make them a lot stronger, but most competitors have an enormous amount of work just to pull even with them in their current state.

Beat them now while they are in low form and hope that they don't get smart.

**....but heard that it may be beneficial to our SEO if we add ecommerce for a few products.  Is this true? **

If you start selling a few products you are going to need inventory, shopping cart, credit card processing, PCI certification, secure server, phone support, shipping containers, I could go on for a while longer...

If you want to start selling a few products because you want to get into retail then that is the right reason but if you are going this because somebody says it is good for your SEO, it might not work how they expected.

I have content websites with small stores and small retail websites with content libraries.   I can tell you that the content and not the retail drives the rankings and traffic.

A couple tips for Q&A....

1. Use the "Email Updates" button for any question that is interesting or that might be useful to you in the future.   That button will cause a copy of all replies to that question to be emailed to you.   That allows you to see all of the replies that occur and learn a lot from other members.   This is one of the fastest ways to improve your skills and knowledge and learn who can answer the questions where you need help.    http://moz.com/community/q/how-to-learn-a-lot-from-moz-q-a

2. Visit Q&A even when you don't have a question.   Somebody is probably posting interesting stuff so pop in a couple times a week when you need a break.    If you see a question that you can answer, share your expertise.   If you do that regularly, people will remember that you are a helpful person.....  and when you ask for help you will probably get GOLD in return.

3) Pay attention when somebody comes into  Q&A cryin' and says... "Wah!   My traffic dropped."   That's how you learn about the trip wires that Google has set out to catch weasels and innocent people too.

4. If you ask a question and get two replies.  The suggestion that requires the most work is probably the better one.

I think that it would be nice to see more.... "This was my problem, and here is how I fixed it" posts on YouMoz.

Keep up the great work!

Give us an example of the keywords that you are concerned about.

I looked at this page....

http://www.utahdefenseattorney.net/criminal-defense/drug-charges/possession-of-marijuana/

It is not optimized well for anything.  The title tag is....

<title>Marijuana Possession Attorney in Salt Lake City | Intermountain Legal</title>

....  but the visible text on the page is not optimized for that.

Also, I see an instance of the title tag higher in the code....

.... which might or might not be causing a problem, but which I would definitely eliminate because you can never be sure of how a search engine will treat it..

Dr. Pete has posted about this on the Moz Blog.  Four of these changes in June/July alone..

http://moz.com/blog/the-month-google-shook-the-serps

Nice work!

Nice Work!

Good point, Doug.

I have one site, built about ten years ago, that I have not edited in several years.   It is a Panda barometer.   It gets hit, comes back as strong as ever for several months, drops again, comes back. It has been in and out several times.  (currently it is out and on the first page of google for its main keywords)

This is a site that receives a lot of traffic in a rather uncommercial niche - so it is not a priority for me to fix.  I have work that is more enjoyable.  Even when hit it gets xxx,xxx visits per month.  It is interesting to see that Pandas can not make up their mind about what to do with some sites.

So, my own advice, on my own sites, is sometimes to.  Do nothing.   Doing something costs money.  Do something if the potential gain is worth the work or the money.

I have seen Panda problems on my own sites.   I know a lot about Panda and know my sites well, so I can look at the sites with an eye that can pick out the content that could be causing the problem.

Some of these sites have pages that were made over a decade ago.   They were great pages in that day but if I was to make them today, knowing what I know, they would be a lot better.  So when Panda hits, I have a good idea of what might be causing it.  It has always been legacy content.  The first two times Panda arrived I picked some pages to axe, picked some to improve, and picked some to noindex.  Panda went away a few weeks later.  Today I have another encounter with Panda, and I have taken the ax, again, to some of this legacy content and will see if Panda goes away again.

These are all sites that I have been involved with building every page and I know them very well.  Still, I am lucky to know a couple of people who are experienced with algo problems and know my site very well.   I see what they have to say about my proposed changes before I make a final decision on amputations or improvements.  That's what Panda usually requires.

However, if I was an SEO and a client brought these sites to me, I would get familiar with the site, see the legacy content and it would send up a red flag.  So, another thing that I would do if I was an SEO receiving these sites would be to  give that new client a list of content that might not work well with Panda.  Then, if they see a traffic drop on a Panda date they will know what I am going to tell them to cut or fix or noindex.  Will not be a surprise to them.

And, if they are smart and want to mitigate they can decide to amputate or improve now.  My own decision has been to wait until I find out if it is a problem because I think that I can take care of it quickly. But I would be more nervous about doing this with a client, so would inform them of my concerns right away.  It is possible that the things that I see as concerns have already hit their site, so a long-time-line traffic review - back to about 1/1/2011 - would be done to look for historic hits.  We might be able fix the problem and get them a traffic improvement that they were not expecting.

I honestly think that you didn't get replies for two reasons....

1. There were really many questions in your post and people didn't want to respond because they felt that they would need to address all of them.. or several of them.

2. Every question that you asked has been featured in at least one WhiteBoard Friday program and multiple posts on the Moz blog and numerous other locations on Moz.

So, what should you do?

I would try breaking your request into two or three very specific questions.  Those usually receive better attention and more specific advice.  Also, if you use search you will find a fantastic amount of content about the subjects in your questions.

I might not meet the stated qualifications for replying... and I am not going to talk about algos... but I will say that I have very carefully watched a small number of sites for over a decade and have experienced several huge losses in income caused by something that Google had done.  So, from the standpoint of wallet smoking, I feel that I have a good reply.  I have also been a student of Google - and shareholders.

What I am going to explain here is a long-term trend for Google.  Google used to be a very crappy webmaster.  They gave all of their traffic away.  Google used to be a revolving door.  Traffic came in and went out.  Google kept little of it.  Google monitized only a fraction of the searchers.

Over the past few years google has become a better webmaster and has become better at keeping traffic on google.com or giving a higher percentage of that traffic to people who are paying them.

Shareholders want revenue growth.  Google has owned almost all of the USA search volume for over a decade. So they are not going to get growth from claiming more marketshare.  Instead they are going to get growth from being a better webmaster.  They are going to get growth out of making more paid clicks.  That means your clients and their organic or local traffic are in the crosshairs.  For the past several years they have been the targets of google's revenue growth.  That is not going to change.   Your client's current profits are google's future growth.

OK... Where has made my wallet smoke?  One day I wake up in the morning and find one of these.  These traffic losses are not temporary, they are not recoverable, they are permanent.  BAM!

When my income has taken the greatest hits.. the hit was usually NOT caused by an algo, it was caused by a change in the format of the SERPs... and since my competition is usually confined to organic listings I have been clobbered by these..

-- In the early days of Adwords, the ads were only displayed on the right side of the SERPs.  When Google got the smarts to display them above the SERPs my retail income was hammered.

-- One day google decided to start displaying a sample of the image search results near the top of the SERPs.  I have a couple sites that are heavily based upon images and those sites lost an enormous amount of traffic.  Tens of thousands of visitors per day disappeared overnight.  More wallet smoke.

-- Then google added "Product Search Results" to the top of the SERPs.  My retail sales for pages ranking in the top three postions of the organic got hammered.  I decided to jump in to product search. Did that and got some traffic and sales back.  Now product search is pay-to-play.  Google grabs some of my profits if I want to play or some of my total revenue if I ain't going to play.

-- Then google decided to change the image SERPs.  Instead of the visitor clicking on my image and being delivered to my site they started to show my site in a frame.  Lost a little income that day.  They they decided to display my image on a page of google.com and only have a tiny link to my site.

-- One day I wake up and google is showing a big map at the top of the SERPs.  Sometimes it has pushpins, sometimes it doesn't.  Familiar smell of currency and leather smoldering in my back pocket.

-- One day google started showing carousel at the top of the SERPs.  Now, instead of the visitor clicking straight to my site it clicks straight to more SERPs.

-- This year Google started adding knowledge box to the top of the SERPs.   (Just my weak minded observation... when they did this they demoted a large number of informational pages.  Go search for "jade" the green gem.  Not long ago that SERP was filled with oriental history pages, museum pages and pages of vendors selling the green gem.  Now the organic SERPs on the left side of the page are very different.  Wikipedia is there but the museums, sellers and oriential culture pages are gone.  Instead they have a knowledge box that answers light queries, If you are lucky your site might appear in the knowledge box.  But they have obvious links to other Google queries in large BLUE font the knowledge box but links in microscopic black font to your website.

OK... Now you ask about what to do for your client.  First.  Explain that he has a little algo risk... and that he has a little competitor risk... but also explain that even if you achieve the miracle of getting his website to one of the top ten positions of google that he will still be subject to a much greater risk for which you have absolutely no control.  That is SERP format risk.

So, I would take a screenshot of his target SERPs on the day that he signs your contract... and when he calls you about his wallet smoking you will be able to show him that google has changed the playing field by changing the format of the SERPs.   Your clients profits are the field that google is plowing to get the growth that their shareholders demand.

Just saying what I would do.. and I would not have any problem adding something like this to one of my sites.

I would write an article about hiking clubs and the benefits of finding and being involved with one.  People who want to go on your adventures might benefit from these clubs by learning about hiking, finding several local people of similar interest and ability to hike with, get in shape so that they will be ready for your adventure, learn about fun hikes in their local areas, hiking is an activity that is more fun with some friends.

So, on my site this article would be in the left column of the page and the list of hiking clubs arranged by geographic area would be in the right column.  Some photos and quotes from happy hiking club people would be used to balance out the column lengths.

This article and the list of hiking clubs is a great service to your potential clients.  The article gives greater value to the list of clubs.    You don't have to link to them.  You can simply publish their URL if you want.

I used to live in a town that had a couple thousand people..  It was the largest town in the county.  The county was large enough that it would take 1.5 hours to drive from the northwest corner to the southeast corner - not because the distance was that great - but because there were few good roads in that direction.  Many of the people lived on an unpaved road and most of the people had a well instead of water service.

In the entire county there was one tiny hospital, a few grocery stores and enough stoplights that you could count them on your fingers.  But there were more campsites than residents and the population of the county would double the day before the first day of deer hunting or trout season.

If you had a healthcare emergency you better be right with God.  It could be an hour before an ambulance gets to you and another hour before you get to a tiny hospital with a couple GPs and one surgeon and then transferred to the hospital of a small city another hour away.

In some parts of the United States people use town and city names when they talk about where they live or where things are located or where they are going.  These people usually live in towns and cities and that is how they think about places.

However, many people live in rural areas - not in any town or city.  These people often use counties, instead of cities when they talk about where they live or where they are going.

The lower the population density the more likely they are going to use counties instead of towns and cities.  Why?  Because the tiny towns and cities where they live are unknown to most people.  Everyone has heard of Pittsburgh and Cleveland but nobody has heard of Gassaway and Erbacon, yet they probably know the name of the county if they live in that region.

People who live in cities "don't get it" when they hear rural people talking about what county they are from... but people who live in rural areas understand city people talking about what city they are from.  This shows that rural people are smarter when it comes to geographic locations. 

lol....  Something like that might get fantastic action if it is on one of the big newspaper sites.

TheDude:  Thanks for sharing this information.  Sorry that this has not worked as expected.

I am surprised that the spectacular prize has not produced a spectacular impact.  Really puzzling when free money isn't like throwing gasoline on a fire.

Good luck.

I do this on lots of pages.  LOTS.

Many of my pages have an

title

at the top of the page and a short description beneath it.  That short description is also used as my meta description.  Sometimes I add a few extra words if it is short.  I don't think that this hurts me a bit in the search engines.

My client purchased over 500 URLs...

OMG!   I would allow at least 400 of them to expire and buy beer with the savings. 

It's impossible for you to take the time and effort on each domain, so the entire campaign will suffer. Instead focus on a single domain, and build that up to cover the areas you want to.

I am in complete agreement with William.  I would work on one site and only use a second domain when my main site was killing the SERPs for a specific topic area (not a keyword - a whole topic area).

I think that you could display these reviews on a page that is noindexed or within a frame that is not crawled.  But, I agree with Travis that it is a little risky to display this content that is highly duplicated across the web - especially placing it on a lot of your own pages.

I have switched several times.  No problems.  Just have your software and site up and tested before editing the DNS.

This is just my opinion.  I am certain that accountants and pseudoaccountants will disagree.

This is how I would value the site if I owned it.

If your website provides accurate, easy-to-find and easy-to-follow advice for lots of Norton's most frequently-encountered customer problems then the website might have a positive ROI from a branding perspective.  Since you don't sell anything or try to sell anything then you really can't calculate a direct ROI.

If your website provide skimpy, inaccurate, hard-to-find advice then it should be closed down because because it is stinking up your brand and the ROI is negative.   Lots of companies have support websites like this.  The worst ones have a forum that nobody visits where you can ask a question and it might get answered next year by a spammer.

I don't have any problem linking out if I know the site that I am linking to really really well.  I don't see anything wrong with your list of "SEO and Marketing Resources" if you want to recommend them to your clients.

I am assuming that you would like to have content on your website that educates your visitors and showcases your expertise.  If that is the goal, I would be concerned about finding articles other website and using them as the basis of a short article on my site.  All that does is turn your website into a signpost that promotes other people.

I would rather spend a little extra time per article and write a library of articles on my own site that explain mostly evergreen topics.  Why?  If these resources are being prepared as a knowledge base for current and potential clients then I would want to keep them on information that I produce and control than send them out to other websites where my branding and expertise is lost.

Using articles on other websites might seem like a time-saving effort that saves you from explaining the nitty-gritty - you just link to it.  But it doesn't have the same impact as explaining the nitty gritty on your own site and keeping your voice and your branding in the visitors mind.

What happens when the other website deletes that article or goes out of business or starts publishing stuff that you don't agree with?  This is going to happen eventually.  Then all of the work that you put into that article is gone.

Also, this isn't going to earn you likes, links, tweets and mentions.  It is going to earn those things for the other guy.  You are simply turning your website and your labor into an advertising effort for other people in your industry.

Why not build a resource for yourself?  Write a weekly or monthly original stand-alone, evergreen article service that people can subscribe to, tweet about, mention, link to and like.

That is how I would approach this.