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It looks like I have done it correctly with the rel canonical.  Open Site Explorer shows it as two different pages.  I suppose that is just the way OSE works.

This line:

is in the header of both www.mysite.com/ and www.mysite.com/default.asp.

www.mysite.com/ and www.mysite.com/default.asp are both showing up in open site explorer.  How do I make sure that these are not being interpreted as two pages when they are the same page?  (Both in search engines and OSE.)

Yes, I was specifically referring to Penguin.  I am seeing uplift in rankings for specific keyword phrases that dropped last October.  These keywords had backlinks disavowed in March 2013.

I just had a page/keyword that had an algorithmic penalty jump in rank significantly.  Once was ranked 3, ranked 80+ since October 2012, overnight it jumped to 31.

Google search is creating 4 sitelinks for a website.  One of these is the blog (blog.website.com).    Webmaster tools allows for site links to be demoted, but there is no way to demote the blog we which we don't want to show up since it is not a "/" extension.   Is there a way to remove it as a site link?

Volusion is based on programming that is over 10 years old.  It is difficult to customize as much of the programming is not touchable by the site owner.  They moved their hosting from Rackspace to their own servers.  Up time reliability is not what it needs to be.  They spend money marketing their product and not enough money on customer support.  Communication is not very open.  When a problem occurs, they blame it on third parties.

In short, they are riding on previous success and not making the needed customer requested improvements.

A couple comments:

On where to place you emphasis:  Both products, categories, and home page should be used for SEO.  You will capture the greatest number of long tail phrases this way.  Product pages will capture searchers with specific intent for individual products.  Category pages will capture searchers who have a more general intent.  Home pages can be leveraged for a few items or categories you want to spotlight. (Often used for new "featured" items).

Search term:  Basket ball shoe  - goes to category page

Search term: Nike 980 size 11  - goes to product page

On your Volusion / Magento issue:

Your Volusion issues with bandwidth can be solve with offsite hosting of images.  This will save you the bulk of your bandwidth problem.  (There are other issues with Volusion, but this one is easy to solve)

Magento seems to have speed issues when you scale up your web site to thousands of products and high order counts.  I have been looking at Megento, but do not use it.

Google isn't seeing the "hover", Google is seeing the code for the page.  If your menus are made with html, Google will be able to read the links just fine.  If you are using Java, Google has historically had a difficult time reading Java Script.  I have programmed menus that are html, but will substitute fancier Java code when the client can use Java.  This has given the best user experience while making sure that Google can read the links.

We are getting many crawl errors listed in Google webmaster tools.  We use some faceted navigation with several variables.   Google sees these as "500" response code.  It looks like Google is truncating the url.  Can we tell Google not to crawl these search results using part of the url ("sort=" for example)?  Is there a better way to solve this?

I always go for the "like".

The more "likes" you have, the more potential future interactions you can have with your customers.  This is what creates the "shares".

There is only one solution.  Write original content.

One easy way to do this is

1. read the manufacturers product description.

2. set it aside.

3. write you new description using your words

4. compare the two descriptions; make sure you have used the same sentences and make sure you have covered all the important facts.

5. (Bonus time) provide additional useful information that the manufacturer didn't.

It is possible that you have some broken links (bad urls) in you ads.  Adwords checks to make sure your links are valid when you set up the ads, but if something changes with your website url later, you can go a long time before you notice that the clicks you are paying for are not landing on your website.

Sigh....social spam.  We recently had a link go viral and had a site gain 2.500 real likes over a weekend. (it started with 1,500).  I was wondering how Google would view this "like" velocity.  I haven't seen any effect from it, but it sucks when you start worrying about too many people "liking" you to fast.

We are considering merging facebook profiles for our three stores.  If we do this, users will not be able to "check in" at a location, but wouldn't it be better to have 4,000 fans on one profile than to have 2,500, 1,000, and 500 fans on the three profiles?  The main site for these stores is also an ecommerce site.

We are doing a "soft migration" of a website.  (Actually it is a merger of two websites).

We are doing cross site rel=canonical tags instead of 301's for the first 60-90 days.  These have been done on a page by page basis for an entire site.  Google states that a "change of address" should be done in webmaster tools for a site migration with 301's.   Should this also be done when we are doing this soft move?

I would be concerned about some of your outbound links in your SEO text block at the bottom of the page.  You may be linking to sites google doesn't trust.

Here is a text block from your search result

:Homes for sale in Casa Grande AZ Casa Grande AZ real estate is now more in demand than ever considering the benefits

When I use this text as a search phrase, I am finding a bunch of other sites with near identical text.   You need unique useful content.  Your site seems cookie cutter and spammy.

You could easily by making to high a density of keywords on the page.

We have experiments up and running with youtube, wistia, and vimeopro.

So far we only see the youtube video's are indexed.  (they indexed in just a few hours).

At this time, the youtube are NOT imbedded.  In one case, it took the first position, in another, it took #3.   Our related web page is still showing on the first page.

We will monitor and see what results we have over the next week.  Curious to see what the imbeds do.

As someone who is getting close to adding several thousand videos to product pages...... I now have a new concern.   I would love to see an expanded topic / research on this.

Present the buttons to your visitor at the point in time your visitor is most likely to want to follow you.  (We called this the "point of maximum like")

For most ecommerce sites, this is not before they make the purchase.  Don't distract them with social stuff when your focus should be on converting them to a purchase.  Give them an option at the end of the checkout or in a follow up email.  We increased social shares and follows doing this by such a large percentage that made our previous efforts (share buttons on all pages) seem insignificant.

A follow up and update to my adwords adventure.

I the end, it seems capitalization did not matter.  The quality score of our keyword settled over those first few days at 3/10.  In trying to figure out more about quality score I found two incredible resources which answered many questions.

First was this blog post

http://www.epiphanysearch.co.uk/blog/decoding-the-quality-score-2/

This has a graph for each QS and charts position vs CTR.   This data gave me bench marks to understand what I needed to achieve with CTR.   "Broadbeach Media" replied to this post and reinforced the idea that CTR was the leading indicator of relevance.

I also read all of the blog posts at

http://www.clickequations.com/blog/

This was an invaluable resource.    So many time I spend hours doing searches look for answers to questions; Then I find a gem like this blog that answers so many questions it kept me up at night reading.

I didn't give up on my keyword.  I kept my bid high.   MY CPC was at 450% of where I started.   I split test my add like a madman.  Originally couldn't imagine a better ad than I had.   I made 6 different versions of my ad title.   I used a statistical significance spreadsheet (wish I could tell you where I got it, but the author didn't provide that information on the spreadsheet.  There are several of these available online).

As I gain significance each day, I was able to eliminate ads.  Just with title change, my best performer was able to get a 5.6% CTR (from 4.5% before).  Through out this process I watched the average position to make sure I had comparable data.  (I manipulated my bid to maintain a constant average position.)  Then I started testing a few change in the body of the ad copy.  Goldmine!  My best performer was now hitting 7.9%.  QS was increasing slowly over the 3 weeks. (QS is now where I was pre-test QS=7).  A few days ago, I let loose on the bid.  My average CPC is now the same as it was pre-test.  My average position is now 1.2 (from 2.7).  CTR is between 8% and 10%.   If my QS goes up again, I will be paying less per click than originally.  total clicks for PPC have just about doubled!

I am suddenly confused.  I thought Vimeo was recognized as being on the imbedded website (unlike Youtube).   You are stating that it is treated the same as Youtube.  This sounds like Wistia is the only good choice for SEO.

I have access to dozens of legitimate websites and knowledge of their SEO.  One of the sites received the notice from Goggle, but had no rankings drop.   Another site had sudden rankings drop for permutations of a keyword (went from averaging position 8 to averaging position 23).

I looked into what made these sites / keywords unique.

We did not knowingly use any blog networks. (and if we had links from them, it would have been low quantity)

We had many anchor text links.  The quantity was similar or less than other website which received no penalties or warnings.

The website that received the warning did have some pure spam PR backlinks, but they were removed 7 months ago.

What seemed to make the website which received the warning unique was the high percentage of anchor text links to natural social and forum links.   The website had less than 1,000 links total.   Other websites with 2,000 to 10,000 links (and a similar to slightly larger quantity of anchor text links) received no warning,

What seemed unique about the site that received a drop for one set of keywords was that the site was having ranking problems with that keyword and a push was made to make more inbound links with that keyword. (we talking 10's of links, not hundreds or thousands.)

These sites have competition with 10,000 to 50,000 inbound links I would call "unnatural"  we haven't seen those website dropping in rank.

It seems to me that google was very upfront when they state "over optimization".  It is relational to your total link profile.

I have access to dozens of legitimate websites and knowledge of their SEO.  One of the sites received the notice from Goggle, but had no rankings drop.   Another site had sudden rankings drop for permutations of a keyword (went from averaging position 8 to averaging position 23).

I looked into what made these sites / keywords unique.

We did not knowingly use any blog networks. (and if we had links from them, it would have been low quantity)

We had many anchor text links.  The quantity was similar or less than other website which received no penalties or warnings.

The website that received the warning did have some pure spam PR backlinks, but they were removed 7 months ago.

What seemed to make the website which received the warning unique was the high percentage of anchor text links to natural social and forum links.   The website had less than 1,000 links total.   Other websites with 2,000 to 10,000 links (and a similar to slightly larger quantity of anchor text links) received no warning,

What seemed unique about the site that received a drop for one set of keywords was that the site was having ranking problems with that keyword and a push was made to make more inbound links with that keyword. (we talking 10's of links, not hundreds or thousands.)

These sites have competition with 10,000 to 50,000 inbound links I would call "unnatural"  we haven't seen those website dropping in rank.

It seems to me that google was very upfront when they state "over optimization".  It is relational to your total link profile.

We have one keyword that brings our site the most visitors.  This keyword is the brand name we carry.  We have several years of tracking it in Adwords.  For some extended time, this keyword [exact match] has averaged 19 cents per click, 2.7 average position, 4.5% click through, and a quality score of 7/10.

We wanted more clicks.   We could think of what was needed to increase the quality score.  Sure, we could change the meta tag title and the adwords title to be the same as the single word keyword, but this would be less informative.  We decided to keep these titles as phrases which include the brand name.

First change we made: we increased the bid.  After all, it was profitable for the two ads above us, right?  We increased our bid from .50 to $1.50.  Effect?  Average position increased to 2.3 from 2.7.  Click through increased from 4.5% to 4.9%.  Cost per click went from .19 to .51.   The incremental cost for each sale was......well really really high.....this didn't work. (oh, we rank #2 organically.  Our organic CTR dropped from 3.2% to 2.9% with this change as well)

Reversed back to where we were and decided to focus on the quality score.  We realized that the keyword was part of an add group with about 20 other keywords.  This word was important.....lets put it in it's own ad group.  We then made an "exact" copy of the ad and started up a new ad group.  Paused the old keyword.   We very quickly realized that the quality score on this "same" keyword was now 4/10.   That was odd....lets give it a few days......quality score drops to 3/10 and no longer qualifies for first page.   What was different we wondered?   AH!   We capitalized the first letter of the word.  Changing this took the quality score up to 6/10 instantly.  hmmm, we thought capitalization didn't matter?  Seems it did.  We now wait to see where the quality score goes.   Saga to continue....

I am seeing thousands of 404 errors.  Each of the urls is like this:

abc.com/abc123/tel:1231231234

Everything is normal about that url except the "/tel:1231231234"

these urls are bad with the tel: extension, they are good without it.

The only place I can find this character string is on each page we have this code which is used for Iphones and such.  What are we doing wrong?

Code:

Phone: <a href="[tel:1231231234](tel:7858411943)"> (123) 123-1234a>

It has been my understanding that words in a URL closer to the left are more important.  I would look at search volumes and try to use the same word orders as the higher search volume keyword phrases.

Thank you for your reply.   I gave a more extensive feedback to the previous message.  I have seen the retargeting options and had not tried them.  I will look at these closer.   I always must remember that the way I search is not the way the average person searches.  I get retargeted by ads and usually find it funny that I am being marketed for services I have already received.  I personally make buying decisions within 48 hours of my initial search.  Targeting ME after that is a waste of time.

Thank you for your reply.

I have generally found much more cost effective conversion rates when I am not trying to get the first position.  I still GET the first position a lot, I just reduce my bid on it until I average below 1.5

It is an interesting idea to me to delete keywords based on quality score instead of CTR.  I had not done this because I have had some low quality score words that were converting well.  I understood that CTR effected quality score and that overall account CTR can have an effect.

I have not done much with conversion optimizer.  I seemed to have trouble with this as I had so many keywords that getting statistically significant data was tough.

I have only use GeoTargeting for the regions I sell to.  I have not used day parting.  I guess it is possible that behavior changes based on the time of day, I am just not sure why it would do so.   I have tried display campaigns, but only using contextual keywords.  I will look at this again.  I n the past, I was not able to get good conversion costs on contextual ads.  I have wondered if display ads can create a branding effect that is not measured.

Before I started working on Organic SEO, I did Adwords.  Being that I am entirely self-taught with adwords, I am concerned that about what I might not know.  From time to time I have looked for outside advice, but I never got very far.  It seemed that I would be talking to a salesman, someone who knew less than me, or someone who was horrified that I had 7,500 tracked words.  So I am presenting my methods here for comment.

Each keyword I have used is placed into an exact match campaign, phrase match campaign, and broad match campaign.  Exact match gets the highest bid, broad match the lowest.  Every week, I cull new keywords from phrase and broad results.  I also create negative keywords each week based on searches that are obviously not looking for my products.  Over time, I get very few searches triggered from broad matches.  Keywords are kept in ad groups that generally have less than 6 keywords.  Acceptable conversion costs are decided based on product category.  I have made an assumption that first position adwords results are too expensive (idiots overpay for them).   I automatically reduce my bid 10% on any ad that has an average position of greater than 1.5.   I automatically reduce my bid 10% on any ad that has a conversion cost greater than my target.   I delete keyword that have a CTR below 1%.  I generally require 300 clicks to make a determination.

All ads have been endlessly split tested to the point I don’t split test them much now.  I judged ads for both click through rate and conversion rate.

End result:  After 4 years of doing this, conversion costs are below target costs.  Not sure what else I could do to improve it, but looking for ideas.  Management of the system is pretty easy now, as well.

Anything I am missing?

I am working on a site redesign and re evaluating concepts I haven't thought about for a few years.

I generally see site navigation that is either "top-down" or "left bar".

Top down navigation normally uses the left nav. for search refinements.

The benefit of top nav. is that it clears up the center of the page for non navigation content.

The drawback is that you can't fit as many categories in a top nav.

Left side nav. can hold a long list of categories, but subcategories are often in the center of the page.

In the past, I have preferred to use left nav. with a multi level scroll over search refinement.  I believe this allowed users to get to their destination page with fewer clicks.  (I have always believed that every required additional click causes lost customers).  I also believe that this has caused me to get more juice flowing to deeper pages on sites and better long-tail conversion.  This means I have had pages with a LOT of links.

With this method, I have tightly controlled my categories.  What on other sites are often dynamic search refinements, are on my sites additional categories.

I am considering making a site with a top down navigation system.  I like the additional screen space in the center I get to work with.  Is my assumption about pages created by search refinement wrong?  Is it ok for SEO to have a left nav that has a bunch of search refinements that are dynamically created?

Thanks for your insight.  I find it interesting that people who follow companies will follow them across multiple platforms and desire unique info from each.

I thought that people choose their favorite method of getting information and want to be able to get it all using that method.  The idea that I need to watch a company through all the different social platforms to get a full spread of content is annoying to me.

Random presentation of items is not what you want.   You want to tightly control which items are displayed on your front page.

Reasons to display items:

Hot seller you want your customer (who might not have searched for it) to see.

New Item you customer may not know about you want them to see.

Items you want want a little extra juice to flow to so they rank higher in search results.

Items you want to get crawled faster (often new items)

Ask him the same question on all his social media platforms.  He will appreciate the ability to gain SEO friendly content with unique answers across all platforms.

We use Twitter, Facebook, a blog, and Google +.   Currently we create unique content for each.   These platforms have the ability to "cross-post" (Where what you put on your facebook or blog gets tweeted, for example).

Is it important to keep this content unique?   Or can we duplicate across these platforms?

Thank you.  I was concerned I might have split my juice between two versions.

"OSE will also calculate redirected metrics into calculating scores such as MozRank and Domain Authority, and I believe there are plans (if they haven't been implemented already) of including canonical metrics into these calculations."

This is interesting.  If I understand this correctly, this tells me that when you have inbound links with affiliate codes and such attached to the URL that MozRank is not calculated correctly; it is split between two "versions" of the same page.

I do have access to the page.  I am slightly confused by your reply.  I was thinking that this was a reporting issue with the OSE.   I shouldn't need to use a 301 when a

rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com" />

is in the header

When I look at my back links in OSE, I see two landing pages on my site that are really the same page.  www.mysite.com/ and www.mysite.com/(affiliate code here)

These show different inbound link characteristics and page authority.

The page in question has a rel=canonical tag.

Am I doing something wrong?

I was looking at a youtube account.  When video is embedded, options exist to not show display related video options at the end of the video.   This seems to imply that you can have youtube videos on a website without ads.   Am I seeing something wrong?

I am looking for this solution as well.   Looking at Wistia right now.  Not sure how it compares to the other options.

If you use Vimeo, you may still want to put videos on Youtube.  This will get you increased exposure through Youtube when viewers look at competitors videos.

I will try and provide some useful information as a follow up.

Sales on site B are slowly dieing.  The brand that this web site  sells is no longer in business.  It has great rankings mainly because no one is competing for this brand and it specializes in that brand.  It has a good link profile from other site pointing to it as a place to get the brand it sells (as they are now hard to find).

Site A is the site that has the longer term potential an is trying to be built up.

If a merger can only help site A sell the brand of site B, then there is no reason to do it. The desire is to boost the overall rankings for site A.

that seemed to work.  Thanks

Our Client owns two ecommerce websites.

Website A sells 20 related brands.  Website has improving search rank, but not normally on the second to fourth page of google.

Website B was purchased from a competitor.  It has 1 brand (also sold on site A).  Search results are normally high on the first page of google.

Client wants to consider merging the two sites.   We are looking at options.

Option 1:  Do nothing, site B dominates it’s brand, but this will not do anything to boost site A.

Option 2: keep both sites running, but put lots of canonical tags on site B pointing to site A

Option 3: close down site B and make a lot of 301 redirects to site A

Option 4: ???

Any thoughts on this would be great.  We want to do this in a way that boosts site A as much as possible without losing sales on the one brand that site B sells.