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When do you/have you decided to cut your losses on social media and just use it as a place to have representation and not as a place to drive profit?

I think that only a very very tiny number of people are getting profits in excess of their spend on social media.  About the only ones who are are a few very lucky people and a bunch of social media evangelists who talk people into hiring them.  And there are a few people who think they are making money but they really aren't.

Sit on the sideline, wait until you see people pulling in buckets of money and then learn from them.  Right now, lots of money is being poured into it and not much is coming out.

Most of the content that I write is "evergreen".

However, I often find new information on a topic and update the pertaining pages on my site.   Then I promote those pages on my site, through my RSS feed and to my email subscribers.  I use Feedburner to collect subscribers and distribute the RSS feed and email updates.

Feedburner gives you links that deliver interested subscribers to a subscription form.  You can use that link on small banners on your site, text links, however, you want to promote.

When Feedburner distributes the information about updated articles, I usually get a lot of traffic from subscribers, and places where subscribers have shared.  I don't do much to promote my content.  I let visitors and subscribers do it for me.  I think that is what you have successfully done in the past.

The owners of the site are authorities in the field.

Why are you asking us?

The owners should know:  1) the questions that people are askin';   2) the questions that people aren't askin' but need to know;  3) the common misconceptions about the topics;  4) the topics that amaze people;   5) the topics that are hot in the news;    6) other information that "authorities" know that are high impact.

Google has been assessing sites with the Panda algo for over two years.  They are continuously changing the algo to promote sites that fit its requirements and demote sites that have content that does not.

In my opinion, your site has technical problems, thin content and duplicate content that could trigger Panda problems.  Read my replies to your previous questions to find them.

** Has My Site Been Hit by Panda 4.0?**

I believe that some form of Panda has gotten your site.

Here is what I would do...

First, I agree that the small biz owner does not want the 3000-word SEO article.

So, instead of writing a rehash of somebody else's article, I would write a simple, basic, 100% stand alone article that explains the topic to a noob.   Most of your visitors don't want the 3000-word so don't try to feature the other guy's article.  Feature yourself.

Instead of making an "Around the Web" section on the site, I would make a "Small Biz Tips from David-Kley".

You might be inspired by articles written by others, but don't allow them to set your course.

Instead, I would be writing short, clear, EVERGREEN, concepts.  That makes you independent of the other guy's content.  That keeps the visitor on your site and reading a second and third article from you.  Soon you will have a big collection and topics that fall into categories and you can cross-market same-category articles to the visitor, building an impressive resource library that is under your own brand.

Start with a plan of what you want this content to be... answering frequent client questions, explaining basics, addressing stuff that clients don't ask about but really need to know.

Begin with the end in mind and they work towards it.

(I am just going to talk honest stuff here.  It might get people's panties in a twist.  But, I would not want to be linking out to a bunch of SEO sites.  No sir.   Not only might they be bad neighborhoods (sorry guys) but I don't know if I am gonna be agreein' with all of the stuff that they wrote in 2011 or what they will write next week. Ain't linkin' to them.  No way.)

The reason it picks up links by itself is because I have spent time on it and in the past I could just leave and the links it would pick up would maintain its rankings.

Nice work!   Very few people are able to do this.  Many could do it but they don't have the courage.

If you start putting resources into linkbuilding you will have to take resources away from what you are currently doing so then did you really gain that much??   And if you were going to put resources into linkbuilding above and beyond your current work then why don't you just invest that spend into what you are already doing that is working?

I would not put a lot of faith in the staying power of these one-page sites.  I bet their content is crap and people go into those sites and then visit yours.  So, I would only give those one page sites serious consideration if that one page is kickass content for what the searchers are looking for or if your traffic is really down only because those one-page sites are taking it from you.

You gotta make up your mind on what you should do.... if it was me, and I might be a fool, but, I am not going to let these one-page site people move me off of my successful course.  I'll just work harder on the plan until I know that the plan isn't workin'.

What if someone emails this phony address and does not get a prompt reply?  Is that a problem?

Many universities have a "study abroad" program.  These programs usually have a faculty or staff member who assists students looking to spend one summer or one semester studying at a university outside of the USA.

If the program has a website it can usually be found in Google with a query like this....

site:.edu  study abroad program

Many universities also have internship programs.  These can be arranged through a central office or through faculty members in individual department.  Internships are normally served within the USA and within a short distance of the school.  Some might be open to internships abroad.  You can find them with queries like these....

site:.edu internship programs

site:.edu engineering internships

The best answer to this question depends upon what type of website you have, who the target audience is and the quality of the content that you have.

So, if you provide the URL of your website you will get better suggestions for promotion.  If you don't want to share the site URL then a detailed description of your site, its content, and your audience will be helpful.

This medical practice should have a security advisor who they can go to for answers on this type of question.   They are who you should be asking.

I'm taking our web pages and trying to figure out if they're targeted poorly or written using terms that the average searcher would not think to ask.

This is good.  Nice work.

As Keri suggests, I think that it would be great to add an update to the original question.

We would like to hear if you tried anything and how it worked.  That type of sharing is a way for everyone to learn - especially if you tried something that we suggested and it didn't work out. 

I am glad that you are interested in doing this.  So many people ask a question, we spend time to reply and they never even return to the post to disagree with us.  

Don't bet on anything.

Pintrest can follow or nofollow at whim.  Google can honor them or ignore them at whim.  What they do now and what they do in the future can be changed without tellin' you.   (There are four combinations here... that means that you got a 25% chance of bein' what you want.)

If you are going after these it gotta make sense for reasons of traffic and exposure....

Honestly, most people who see your images there don't know you made 'em and aren't coming to your website.  And most of the people who do see your image and come to your website are not buyin' anything - they are just interested in stealin' more of your images.

Pinterest is a valuable strategy for a very small number of websites. Everybody else has been fooled.

Or do I just use "125" as an abstract number of measurement with no concrete reference to a real number of searchers

I take a quick look at the numbers in wordtracker.   I am not trying to get into a big mathematical exercise.  When looking at wordtracker I am just trying to make a "yes" or "no" decision about creating content.... or trying to make a "this keyword" or "that keyword" decision on how to optimize.

I am highly inclined to mathematics but I don't spend much time on these numbers. I do know some people who would make a three-day study about this with spreadsheets because they are thinkin' about writing a two paragraph page.  That is a total waste of their time.

Is the wind blowing or ain't it?   Get to work or abort.    It is that simple.

The more important question about these number is:  "Are people really searching for the same meaning of the keyword?"

Take an example the word "sapphire".....  You got in mind a blue gemstone... but that word could be used for graphics cards, pokemon, credit cards, mobile phone windows, Ford motor cars, strippers, who knows what else... so most of that volume that you saw in wordtracker and got excited about is not relevant to what you are selling.

In this Q&A we see lots of people pouring buckets of money into a website and their competitors are not who they think they are.   They just looked at these numbers instead of trying to understand what people are lookin' for and more importantly, who is competing.

Sometimes the strength of the sites going after the small part of the volume is overwhelming compared to the sites who have the information that everybody is lookin' for.  That, in my opinion, is why Google started Knowledge Box... and where they now display Knowledge Box they have given minor volume competitors better positions in the SERPs and pushed the sites with what people are looking for down to second and third page - because they want you to use the Knowledge Box.  They want searchers to think "Google got the info" - even though they scraped it from my site and gave me a link in microscopic black font while links to alternative searches on money keyword with lots of ads are in big blue font.

I believe that Adsense can negatively influence your rankings. That can happen if the adsense causes the visitor to scroll before seeing your content or causes the visitor to have a hard time recognizing your content. What you describe is very very conservative. Should not cause any problem.

One of my first posts to you was to get a list of all of those pages, go through them one-by-one to find out where they are coming from.

Are they pages that were made by you or company staff, where they spawned as tags or pagination or something else by a content management system, were they made by a hacker posting Ugg boots on your site?

If you want to know where these pages are coming from you gotta spend the time and do some manual work.

with all due respect, my SEO provider (MOZ approved) disagrees with you.

That's OK.  Lots of SEO providers disagree with me.

You can believe whatever answer you like the best, or whichever one you think is right.

Lots of guys have pretty faces too.

I think that Rand would get a pretty good CTR if he made some content about women's fashion.... putting his face in the SERPs where women are looking.   He should do A/B tests between the bearded manly look and the shaven young pup presentation. 

I think that Rand looks like Jeremy Piven in Mr. Selfridge.

I am only going to say that you should read the feedback given to some of your previous questions before you go much farther.  Your site has technical issues and content issues.  It could have Penguin issues. I don't know.

If a site is performing at 50% efficiency then you are only going to get 50% benefit out of any content, SEO, marketing, etc. that you put into it.

The smart spend is to fix the issues or start over.

I am actually glad that they took the photos down because I am not as pretty as my competitors.  

But, I hope that they are using it to determine who is producing a good mass of credible work and then allowing reputation to influence the rankings of "next item published".   Before this "authorship" I was not adding my name to any of my content.  I just wanted it to be viewed as property of the domain.  But I felt forced into using authorship because it became a potential part of the "arms race".

So what I would really like to know is - should small businesses continue to focus on developing great content? How has your marketing strategy changed?

The last time I changed my SEO strategy was in 2005.

I have to disagree that an "SEO specialist" would complete any of these tasks, to be honest.

Lots of this stuff is done by robots and the "SEO specialist" (ahem) takes credit for it.  

... and the webmasters who want their site to receive genuine "bookmarks" or "shares" or "listings" have content that is either so skimpy or so bad that they don't need an SEO specialist.... they need a magician.

• Create ten pieces of unique content for specific audiences .... with the intention of having that content appeal to the user-base of those audiences.

If you do what Jane suggests, and do it exceptionally well, you will not need an SEO specialist or a magician because your visitors will do the bookmarking, sharing and listing for you.  Visitors to websites love to tell their friends when they find fantastic stuff.  It makes them feel like Christopher Columbus or Indiana Jones and they wanna tell their friends about their discoveries.  Also, a busybody or a gossip can be better than lots of SEO specialists.  They tell everybody everything - but this works best when you have juicy stuff to talk about.

Needs a grammar check too. 

For example we have 27 articles, and 440 tags.... that should give you some insight as to the website I'm trying to clean up....

With this information.  I can say that I would delete all 440 tags if this was my website.  I would not need to think about it.  These pages are going to be duplicate content and dangerous to the health of the site.  They will also be a power sink.

I would do a 301.

If you use the URL removal tool that only works for google.

If you do a 301 that is on your server and every attempt to access that page goes where you want it.

I don't trust having Google do stuff for me that I could do myself, because plenty of times Google says how they are gonna do things and then change their mind without tellin' anybody.

Go into your analytics and see if they are pulling any traffic from search.  See if they are pulling in any traffic from referrals or social media.

I am willing to bet that those pages are dead weight.

This types of pages do not exist on any of my sites.

So, if you find in the analytics that these pages are dead weight then delete them and use 301 redirects, and turn them off in your content manager.

If you have content that you want to promote or that lots of people are lookin' at, then give those pages links in obvious locations on every page of your website.   People will look at that... they will rarely click a tag.

I would wait until you have BOTH  the "Small Business of the Year" Award and the "BusinessWoman of the Year Award".  Then I would get in touch with editors of some Tampa area news magazines, business development organizations, chambers of commerce, etc who have websites and newsletters that are published online, plus some websites in your industry.

I would send them suggested article text and several nice photos and quotes from a few of your well known customers.

Before I did that, I would have a great page of information bragging this up on your website and linked to obviously from your homepage.  This article page would go well beyond the biz-of-the-year and the biz-woman story to tell about other staff.  This page is great for a newsletter to give you a mention and a link to this page for people who want to know more.  That gives you both a linkbait story for other sites plus a landing page for people who just want to give you a mention.

Don't underestimate biz development organizations.  Part of their job is to beat the drum for great stuff happening in their community.  They probably have a person who is supposed to tell about this in their newsletter, annual report and on their website.  They are also content providers to the local newspapers, area websites, etc.  Find the person over there who is their media relations director.   Big city like Tampa should have a few of these people.  Help them do their job and they will love you.

I think that you should be negotiating quality rather than price.

Some people spend $5 for an article.  I spend about a week.

There are several questions about Yelp removing reviews in Moz Q&A.  Here is a recent one with lots of background information.

http://moz.com/community/q/having-yelp-reviews-removed

If anybody has any recommended places to look that would be very helpful as at the moment I am at a loss.

Go look at the SERPs.  Did rankings change?   Did adwords change?  Did google products change?  These are just examples.  You can probably think of more.

Go look at competitors.   Did they change prices?   Did they change shipping?   Are they sold out?  These are just examples.   You can probably think of more.

Go ask the client.   Is manufacturer running ads?   Did manufacturer change MSRP and client didn't?   Was celebrity seen on TV using product?   Did client change HIS price?   Did client change HIS shipping?

There are dozens of other reasons.  And then this could just be one of those "mysteries of life".

Most likely, I think that the answer to this question is going to be found by knowing the business rather than lookin' at tools.

Yep...  you got it.

I would not do it.  Why?

1. there is a good chance that it will outrank your website

2. I think that a nice article about your company, posted on your site as an "about us" or "our history" page would be more beneficial.  If people like you they will share that page.

Matt Cutts video on this topic from November, 2013

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHG6BkmzDEM

Just saying what I do.  Not saying that it is best.

Instead of making my "add to cart" buttons into  links, I have them process through a form.   I don't want to blast thousands of links into a shopping cart.

Go type "search box optimization".   Nuthin'

So, if these guys don't even have their own queries nailed down then they either are not very good at this or the cost isn't worth it even for them.

Honestly, this isn't going to work for most queries.  The average searcher isn't typing the words in the right order to get YourBusiness added to the end of a query.   And, if you watched in that video they had to type out these big, long, improbable, almost worthless queries (that you would probably own anyhow) just to see the brand name.   To me that was mighty convincing that this is a baloney service.  We were laughing about that here.

Websites compete against each other one page in the SERPs vs one page in the SERPs.

Let's imagine that you expand this idea... if two websites are better then ten websites should be awesome.

So you build ten websites, each with ten pages and put them out in the SERPs to compete.  But your competitor puts those one hundred pages all on the same website.

Every time someone lands on that 100 page site they say.. "WOW this site has everything" and they tweet about it share it and link to it.  That big site is going to become really popular.

You have ten websites and when people land on them they say... "meh...  this site is OK but a am not tweentin' about it because that big site is a lot better":.

So, you can attack with ten slingshots or attack with one battleship, which one is going to defeat the competitor when you are fightin' one page in the SERPs vs one page in the SERPs?

All of my money is on the single big site with all of that awesome content.

The only time that I would consider making site #2 is when you have site #1 beating everybody everywhere.  Then what it is going to do is push your competitor down in the SERPs, but really instead of starting that second site you should just be expanding the big site into new keywords.

Matt Cutts has a November 2013 video that provides greater clarity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHG6BkmzDEM#t=58

This question is asked over and over and over  and over again in Q&A.

I would like to see someone from Moz respond to this question with a link to a page that thoroughly provides the answer.  Also, a link to that page should be huge and obvious within the tools where people are encountering these error messages.

Noobs and first time users of  moz tools are wasting lots of time worrying about these error messages.  They might be needlessly tearing their sites up to respond to Moz telling them that they got too many links.

I would like to read an article about this question written by somebody who has done some research or someone from google.  I think that Matt Cutts has given guidance on that old 100 links rule.   I am sure that plenty of people would say that I have too many links on the pages of my site... but I am pretty confident that I don't and the number of links that I have actually puts me at an advantage over people who are listening and responding to these error messages given by moz tools.

Sorry to hear about that.  I know it feels to see a good answer go up in smoke.  Thanks for giving it a shot.

Interesting discussion.  I have been watching it.

I have a couple of questions?

Are you, Robert, able to write a review on Yelp about Yelp?   It would seem only fair that such reviews should be allowed there.  However, I can say that on Amazon, you can review the performance of every marketplace seller and every product -- but you can not review amazon's performance as a seller.   I called the company to complain and the person who receives complaint calls didn't know that you can't review amazon.

I'd think for a company like Yelp that they should have two (or more) categories of reviews.  Those from consumers (which will probably be mostly glowing) and from biz owners (which will probably be mostly snarling).

Second, have you seen this WSJ article about a carpet cleaning biz owner, how a Yelp review case is in the Virginia Supreme Court and about SLAPP and Anti-SLAPP suits?

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303847804579477633444768964

I agree with Prestashop.

These will probably be skimpy pages.  Matt Cutts recently said that authors with low quality content could see that work to their disadvantage.

Let's say I wanted to help them increase their rank for used trucks in buffalo, NY.

If they have a sales lot within Buffalo then using local search is the best place to start.

Would I regularly publish blog posts about used trucks?

This is a good way to waste a lot of time.  I only use the content attack when I have topics to write about that are of very high interest.  You gotta do a great job.  There are tons and tons and tons of stuff about used trucks on the web.  Most blog posts about them will be lost on the forest.  If you are not producing content that stands out then you might be wasting your time.

I want to come back to something important.  I want to preach to your boss.

Search engine battles are won through smarts and resources.  Resources are content, user experience and promotional  investments that you have made in your website.  Smarts includes these things:  the knowledge, skill and ingenuity of a dedicated staff.

As I said above I have been doing this for a long time.  I don't know everything.  And, everything in SEO changes constantly.  The knowledge that you have today will be less valuable over time.  To continue building and revising  my knowledge resource, I read and participate in a couple of SEO forums every - single - day.  I read what smart people write every - single - day.  Two hours a day.   I don't have a large company, three or four people.  But that investment is made in continuing education.

Above I told you that....

You are being sent out to fight the heavyweight champ alone.

You don't want to do that.  If you have a consultant and make a few firm friends here then you can use those relationships to take a gang to your fights.   By asking and answering questions for a long time here I can ask lots of people who I have helped but who know things that I do not for assistance and they give me enormous immediate help.   You should start building this.  Your boss should understand that this is a valuable investment for his business and give you that time.

You are the guy who will be makin' the rain.

Companies who understand this have entire teams of SEOs who will be competing against you.  And, they will get advice from their consultants too.    Don't fight them alone if you care about winning.

Just to let you know.  I have been doing SEO since about 2000 and posting every day in SEO forums since about 2002.  I run websites that get millions of visitors per month.   I have seen and solved lots of different SEO problems.

Still, when I have to make any important decision, an important repair, a change in the site, or even if I am just looking for ways to improve.  I regularly consult with people who know more about these things than me.  I often consult with two people on the same problem.  Why?   I run a few sites but they do SEO on MANY sites.  Their experience is broad and they have seen many things that I have not.

I consult with at least one of them every week.  Sometimes two or three.  I am waiting to get on a call with one of them today.   SEO is a highly technical, highly competitive business.  Nobody knows everything.  One piece of knowledge can increase the income of your site by thousands of dollars a month and millions over time.

You are being sent out to fight the heavyweight champ alone.

Your boss needs to understand this.  Share some of the comments you receive here with your boss.  I am not trying to sell you anything.  I only work on my own sites.  Just telling you what I have learned to be valuable.

I give you lots of credit for coming here to ask questions.  As you learning and have questions post them here when people can help you. But, small questions about a single topic are the best.  You can get quick answers.

Look at many questions here everyday.  Subscribe to them so you learn answers.  You should read everything that penalty experts like Marie Haynes write.  Here is one of her sites and a good place to begin. http://www.mytrafficdropped.com/

She sometimes answers questions here in Q&A.  Read penalty questions going back to about 2011 to hear what might affect your site.  She has written many good posts on the moz blog.  Here is a simple one about penalties.

Your boss should read it too.

http://moz.com/blog/google-algorithm-cheat-sheet-panda-penguin-hummingbird

You will also find that people, even experienced ones with lots of clients and websites under their care will not agree.  Why? Because nobody knows exactly how search engines work and how they will respond to changes on a website.  There is a lot of guessing but different people guess about different things and different people know about different things.  That is why I regularly seek advice from others, here and in private.

Good luck in your work.

I remember you have 1500 domains with tons of links between them.

You might have been hit by Panda or Penguin or unnatural links or just been throttled for spam or many other possible problems.

These are complex things to diagnose.  Anybody who gives you an answer without looking into your big bunch of sites, your historical traffic, looks at the content and links into your main site and examines your content for panda problems is guessing.  Doing all of this work properly and making a recommendation will require a lot of work, and still there will be some guessing.  A few to several days, done by someone who knows the problems of sites that have suffered traffic loss will probably be needed.

Some questions are too complex to solve with a quick Q&A consultation.  This is one of them.

If your company is depending upon this income to support cashflow, jobs and pay the rent then spending the time needed to get your own skills up might be much more costly than going straight to someone who might be able to solve the problem and get you on track.   Your current situation reflects man-years of poor work.  Will not be solved overnight.

Not trying to be rude.  Sorry if it seemed that way.

Just saying that one of the greatest values here is getting feedback from people who do the same thing as you.   Lots of people do lots of work when a small change could make a big difference.

If you want to tell us what you have done in detail we can tell you if the same thing has worked for us.

If you want to post the URL of your website with a specific question, someone from here who knows about your question will probably take a look at it and reply.

In my opinion, Q&A is the most valuable part of moz after the beginner's guide and the webinars.

Tell us what you have learned here and how you used what you have learned to improve and promote your website over the past six months.

We will let you know if you are on the right track.

Some people go to SEO conferences, sit there all day sippin' coffee and fartin'.  Nothin' happens with their rankings because those guys do the same thing every day at their office.  

Google has been killing sites with lots of cookie-cutter pages for at least 8 to 10 years.  In busy niches they get killed quickly.  In sleepy niches they can persist a lot longer.

For years I've heard SEO experts say that this sort of thing is frowned on and that they will get penalised, but it never seems to happen.

Those experts are right nearly 100% of the time.  These sites rarely survive today.  So, I think that your use of the term "never seems to happen" is because you are frustrated with this guy.

On rare instances, I see a site like this persist in the SERPs of a sleepy niche for years and years.  They often have a lot of people talking about them, giving them lots of social attention, citations, mentions, etc.  I believe that may have something to do with why they survive.

Have you seen this guy perform?   If you haven't, maybe you should.

Thanks for the details.

Hang in there.  Tell staff we are cheering for them.