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I would also like to ask why you have 350 sites,

I was going to ask that too but didn't want to seem like a wise guy if the OP has 700 people workin' on 'em.

Start by clicking the "Learn SEO" link at the top of this webpage.  Study everything that you find there.

Come back here and ask specific questions when you have them.

If you feel i am wasting my  time  putting articles on free sites then please do tell me

Yes.  If they sites where anybody can post any article then, yes, you are wasting your time.

However, if you are a fantastic knitter (plus a fantastic writer) and the most authoritative and picky websites about knitting will post one of your articles - and even pay you for it.  Then you are not wasting your time... but even in that situation I would not be giving my articles away.

....but, that's just me talking and 85% or more of the people out there will be giving you different advice.  So, the answer to this question is not how many people are saying something, the answer really is what strategy should you should be listening to.

The answer to this question will vary depending upon the type of business your client is running, company philosophy towards customers and the resources that the company has to engage visitors to their facebook page.

If you are asking about "how this is done" then maybe you should not be running clients facebook pages.  Also, there are certain types of businesses and Facebook engagement strategies that will require you to have very deep knowledge about the clients products, how they are used, etc.

"Wrong page ranking even after fixes. Why?"

Because you are fixing the wrong page. 

No, seriously... don't expect a subdomain to inherit much authority or linkjuice from the root domain.

If this was my site and I wanted to fix this... I would redirect that subdomain to a folder in the  root and then try to rank the page in the folder.

If you 301ed last week there may be some normal instability in your rankings... but should recover soon.

Just to be sure that you didn't screw up go out and look at some of your old URLs to be sure that redirects are working properly.

Multiply the original MozRank by a buck two eighty.

I have a domain wwwkeyword4u.co.uk and I have reaped in no benefits from having this in the URL.

I can tell you why... nobody anywhere is searching for "keyword 4 u".

The big benefit is for exact match domains.

...my problem is that the website developers are telling me that SEOMOZ and all the other tools are wrong...

Trust developers/designers for making things look good - if you like their style.... but when it comes to SEO you need to have your head examined if you are going to listen to your developer instead of trusting SEOmoz.

Here's something every professional SEO knows.... developers/designers generate a lot of business for SEOs (and lose a lot of money for webmasters) because they don't understand search engines, change all of your URLs, hide text because it stinks up their design, want to make your entire site in images, create navigation bars that spiders can't crawl, allow session id's to generate duplicate content and suck up all of your linkjuice.... I could go on and on here... You must be very careful and watch what they are doing - closely.

Do i believe the developers and trust that google has it sorted or go through the process of hassling the developers to get a rel=canonical added to all the pages?

lol.... I don't think that "hassling" is a very good word.  I would either be kicking their asses or firing them and getting a different developer who understand who owns the website!!!

Sometimes you have to assert yourself when somebody is going to screw up one of your websites. If they were trashing one of my good sites I would exert my authority as owner of the site.  If it is a choice between my site and their opinion... they lose swiftly.

Now i believe i can fix this by chucking in a rel=canonical at the top of  each page ?

Great, you know what to do.

If I can access the same content via 4-5 different cID's is that classed as duplicate content?

Yes, that is duplicate content - and all of the extra pages are a linkjuice sink.  You might be able to fix this with rel="canonical"

see Matt Cutts video here.. http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=139394

If they are all going to good neighborhoods then I would not worry about it.

I have seen blogs run by professional societies where all of the posts are written by guests. These are professors, business owners and government folks.  Very high quality.

Let's imagine that you have three websites with identical articles - which are of very high quality...

Website A does not link out

Website B links out to a few trashy articles per page

Website C links out to articles on other websites that do a superior job of explaining a subtopic

Which one of these sites serves the visitor the best?  Which one is most likely to receive links?  Which one would you prefer?

Search engines should answer the same as you do.

Submit site to all major search engines

That set off my BS meter.

1. Does having the label "guest post" devalue the links at all?

Probably not.  Why should it?  Bill Clinton might write a guest post for somebody's blog.

2. Does the fact that the sites often allow for guest posts devalue the links?

Maybe.  If they are accepting guest posts that link to trashy websites in bad neighborhoods, then YES.

In 2010 we redirected two subdomains into folders.  The results have been kickass.  KICKASS!

We have been updating page titles

When you update the titles do the URLs change?  (you probably know about this but you didn't say so I gotta ask)

rankings have plummeted

You say that your traffic plummeted.... Where was that traffic coming from... what keywords were bringing it in.... what pages on the site were getting that traffic.

It is possible that your title changes deoptimized the pages away from their original traffic flow.

This information is the key to your diagnosis.  With the skimpy information that you provide here all anyone can do is guess.

Go look at the above information and study it... then tell us where the traffic fell off.

Here is what I would (probably) do.....

If there is just one subdomain... I would 301 redirect it to the root domain.

If there are multiple subdomains.... I would redirect each of them to a folder.

I would then try to get the links changed to directly hit the proper content in the proper folder.

Learn from the Moses of linkbuilding.

Never assume that you understand you audience.

You don't.

Learn from your audience.

Observe what they engage.  Make note of it.

Observe what they ignore.  Make note of it.

Give them more of what they want and less of what they don't... but don't bore them with repetition.

Never assume that you understand what they want... because they will want different things over time and as your audience changes.

Finally... It is possible that only a small group of your audience is your real target population.  They are the important ones.  Don't let single voices steer you - unless they are voices that you must heed or voices that give great advice.

Sell them or let them expire, then use the income / savings to buy one of these to fuel your content attack.... or you could use the money to buy beer.

Simon has given great advice.

SEOmoz provides information that can give you the knowledge to become a great SEO.  SEOmoz also provides data that can guide you in doing SEO for your website.

However, it is up to YOU to do the learning, up to you to do the analysis and up to you to do the work required to build a great site and market it.

If you are in an easy industry or industry niche you might have success if you study, learn, implement and work hard.  However, there are industries that are very competitive and success there is very difficult.  If you are working alone in these areas and without resources to hire assistance you will have difficulty succeeding unless you are very smart and work very hard.

SEOmoz can give you all of the information and data that you need to succeed.  It is up to you to apply it and decide if you can compete in your niche.

I think that an SEO log should look like a log for a science experiment....

I did xxx because I thought it would result in yyyy.   Two weeks later here is what happened.  Four weeks later here is what happened.

The main value of an SEO log is to learn from the changes that you make on your site and how those changes influenced your rankings, conversion rate, etc.

I can't decide whether to remove .html endings from the urls and 301 redirect to the new ones or leave them with the older ending.

If you redirect you will lose some linkvalue and some anchor text value.

I have learned to tolerate "untidy little things" that are very expensive to change.  I don't want to put 5-10% (just tossing out a number) more effort into ranking my site just to get rid of .html endings.

Thanks, as you know it's very time consuming.

"Finance" is ultra competitive.  Make plans to spend LOTS of time.

No, just no!

This made me laugh... but I absolutely agree.

The Kelsey Lake Diamond Mine, is located near Fort Collins, Colorado on
the state boundary between Colorado and Wyoming.  It was opened as a
commercial diamond mine by Redaurum Limited in 1996.  Great Western
Diamond Company, a wholly-owned subsidiary of McKenzie Bay International
Limited, purchased the property in 2000 and operated the mine until 2002.

Most of the diamonds produced at the Kelsey Lake Mine were clear,
gem-quality stones and almost one-third of them were one carat or
larger in size.  When the mine closed there was an identified resource
of 17 million tons of ore with an average grade of 4 carats per hundred tons.

Before you dig deep into SEO, I think that it would be best to plan the following.....

*  The objectives of your website (what do you want to accomplish for yourself and what you want your visitors to do that will make your goals happen)

*  The content strategy for your site... create a list of content resources for your site, determine where they will come from, how they will work together to accomplish your goals

The above will work together to determine the design of your site, the navigation and the keywords that you will be attacking.

After you have done the above then read the SEOMoz Beginners Guide to SEO.  Then, after you know something about SEO, go back and revisit the objectives outlined above and tweak based upon what you have learned.  Then, go back and restudy SEO.

Defining your objectives and determining how they can be promoted with SEO are two very important parts of being a good webmaster.

If you were doing an AdWord campaign on that keyword, would that also affect your organic rankings in the SERPs for that keyword?

NO. Absolutely not. Never.

We have been running adwords since it was new.

We run adwords in the same SERPs where we hold top organic rankings.

We have turned the ads off frequently - sometimes seasonally, sometimes when we went out of town, sometimes when we are busy, sometimes when we are low on merchandise, sometimes when we don't want to work as hard... and we also have gotten aggressive for short or long periods.  All of that time the organic rankings are unchanged.

There is no tie between adwords and your rankings in the organic SERPs.  NONE.

I have a blog that gets lots of posts that are of temporary value.  We delete a couple thousand posts each year, but before we do that we run analytics to determine which ones are pulling significant traffic from search engines or from links on other websites.  When we find these we create improved and current content on a new URL and do a 301 redirect to the new page.  All other pages are 301 redirected to the homepage of the blog.

Do these pages receive any traffic?  Do these pages have any links from other websites?

If either of the above are true then they might have some value.

This should not have an influence on your linkjuice, rankings or traffic as long as you don't make any changes to the files that are on your server.

People move from one host to another all of the time.  Google understands this.  Also hosts move websites from one machine to another all of the time. Google understands this.

The only caution that I might have is.. are you moving to a different country?

To work that fast, I am betting that they have a link from a page with enormous power.... PR8?

Of course, "spray in bedliners northern ky" is a wimpy term to rank for... tell her to call him back and ask for a real money term.

whispering

Please consider deleting this thread so nobody finds out. 

PPC people are smarter than organic SEOs.

It appears that the site www.wilsonevergreens.com has all of the strengths in place but cannot get past the 'plateau' for ranking for 'christmas wreaths.

Are you sure?  I think that the competitors have you outgunned, have better content and have superior optimization.

Not bashing... just sayin'.

If you buy a keyword domain and put your same site with same assets on it you will still be getting your butt whipped. You would still have the same problem.

I say improve your current site and forget about the microsite.  Attracting traffic to a microsite to hope that they click off to your main site and hope that they buy something there is like trying to kill a rabbit with a ricochet.  Forget that and just shoot the damn rabbit!

Your site appears on page four for "christmas wreaths" with the index page ranking.  Although your wreath's page is better optimized than the homepage it is not your best ranking page for that query because it is a weak page.   Your homepage is more powerful than your wreath's page but it is poorly optimized for "christmas wreaths".

If I owned your site my short-term attack  would be to reoptimize my homepage... load it with christmas wreaths... and use it to attack the  "christmas wreaths" SERPs.  That might improve your rankings but I am still confident that your site will not have the mojo to make the first page.....  so my long-term attack would be to produce incredible, fantastic,  asskicking, best-on-the-web content in the christmas wreath theme, get it on my site and promote it with the hope of attracting a lot of very high quality links.

"christmas wreaths" is not the easiest SERPs to win and there are a number of fantastic sites above you.  Do not think that you have an easy battle in front of you.

If you want to win in these SERPs you will need to develop an attitude.

You will need to exert yourself and improve your site so that it will convince everyone everywhere that you are The Man in the christmas wreath business.  If your attitude is for anything less then you are not going to win.  Keep in mind that at least a few people above you and a few people below you are excited, hungry and aggressive about doing the same thing.  So be sure that you set your goals above what is already out there.

If you think that you are The Man in the christmas wreath business then you might be able to do this... but keep in mind that it will not be easy.

Good luck!

hmmm......

I don't know how carefully you have thought about this.

**I want to know how I can identify the top bloggers? **

It does not sound like you are very familiar with the bloggers in your area.  Maybe you should get to know them well before you count on them to attend something and blog about it twice.

Are there 20 bloggers in your area?   Have you ever been on their websites?

If you invite 20 bloggers will they attend?  Some might be busy on your open day... some might not like paintball... some might be too old for paintball... some might... you get the idea?

So if you identify 20 bloggers you might get 2 who will show up and that will not produce the kickass blogger gathering that you are planning.  If you invite 20 and only 2 show up they are going to write on their blog that nobody cares about your paintball and zorbing.

If you expect to get 20 bloggers you should invite at least 100 and entice them with free food, free beer, gift of paintball guns, free swag and $100 gasoline cards.

Something else....  You have the potential to pull search engine traffic for almost any word combination that appears on your page.  In fact, many websites get more traffic from these "long tail" search queries than they get from their primary keywords.

The more different words that you have on a page the more of this type of traffic you will receive.  We once upgraded a lot of our content from short descriptions of about 50 words to 300-500 word articles and the traffic went up 3x.  Then upgraded to 1000+ word articles and traffic doubled.

I think that is a good idea.  yes!

I would do my best to promote these pages.

I would have a special page on the site that links to all of these resources.  A link to that page might also go in your persistent navigation.  I would also have links to these pages from relevant product pages.

Don't for get to use these pages to promote relevant products.  This can be done by placing text links within the articles and image links in locations where they will be obvious.

Most people think that keyword cannibalization is a problem.  But here we see Gifts.com use it as an opportunity.

If you want to start taking over more SERP real estate for your money terms then produce more than one page that targets those terms.

Intentional keyword cannibalization is not a sin, it is a way to dominate your SERPs.

My main targeted keyword is coming up in 3rd place, but the number of clicks has not gone up very much.

Change your title... offer Free Beer or something else that will surprise them. 

Is this data 100% accurate?

One person could be responsible for all of the search for some long-tail keywords.

SEOs are known to be compulsive ranking checkers and can enormously inflate search counts.

Are there other methods or tools for measuring this better?

I would not believe any low-volume data.

I run adwords and bid enough to make the first page when I want quick volume data from a reasonably known source.

I like to answer questions here and respond to lots of them.

However, in this situation, I think that you are in a lot better position to come up with answers than anyone else.  Plus, if you are really excited about this business you should be thinking about it all of the time, know your products incredibly well, have a constant eye on your competitors and be researching these answers yourself.

I am not trying to be a wise guy... just challenging you to come back with some ideas that you think might be possible answers.  We don't even know what industry you are in so guessing is not a very good use of our time.

Now... just to let you know that you need to expand your thinking... the answer to your question might not be on this person's website.  It might be were her ads are running and how much she is spending.

Plus, even if this competitor has the same amount of traffic that you do she might sell an awful lot more because of an excellent on-site presentation that converts more visitors into buyers, has more effective advertising, better prices, free shipping or some other value proposition that is missing from your business.

1. Can you Share tools for google and msn adwords

Do the Google Adwords Professional training... http://www.google.com/adwords/professionals/

2. Any project Management Software or Template for ppc

Excel

3. The Best Book from A to Z about ppc advertisement

http://www.advancedadwordsbook.com/

4. Share your MOS Importanz Stepps to Build really competitive campaign and to Be Number 1 on pair Search results

Probably more important is to go into adwords with a different philosophy than BE NUMBER 1.   You need to become a mathematics expert to find the sweet spot among bidding levels, conversion rates and profit margins.  You must become an Excel Guru.

Ryan, do you think that a VeriSign, McAfee, Authorize or other "more accepted" "certification seals" might have any influence on rankings?

We have a site that is categorized by folder so we place separate .htaccess files in each folder... that keeps them relatively small instead of placing all of redirects in the root.

Content writing is a skill that is learned through practice and revision.  It is not a body of knowledge  that you can learn by reading.

Hire a good editor - a hardass,  picky, SOB.  Then write something, give it to the editor, let him tear it up in front of you and give it back to you for improvement. Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat.

Then hire a different editor and go through the process again.  You will learn something different from each person who critiques your work.

If you hire an editor who loves everything that you write you will not learn anything.

Bob, if I was doing this I would take off my SEO hat and put on my mountain biking helmet.

Your customers don't want to read keyword articles.  They want information.  Decide what they need to know and produce it.  Throw the SEO hat out the window.

If I sold mountain bike tires I would have articles with videos and lots of photos on topics like this...

** types of mountain bike tires - which work well for road, mud, sand, gravel, etc.

** how to select a mountain bike tire - importance of tread, width, kevlar

** how to change a mountain bike tire (all of the details)

** changing a mountain bike tire in 40 seconds (video of me doing it)

** all about tubes for mountain bike tires

** all about pumps for mountain bike tires, floor pumps, frame pumps, CO2 cartridges

** why am I getting all of these flats?   lesson on rim strips and kevlar belts

** tools for changing mountain bike tires: levers, patch kits, strong hands

Forget about keywords and impress the Hell out of the visitor with your knowledge of the subject and  your enthusiasm for helping the potential customer get the most out of your products.

If you publish a library of the above, I think that you will get links and rankings.  It will also get the trust of your visitors.

Defeat the competition with your content and you will soon have the rankings.