Hi Vikas, I think there are a number of factors. I would agree with Explainafide about the main one - lots of webmasters don't even consider SEO or keywords. Also as Christopher says, the potential ROI could make a low volume, highly competitive keyword worth optimising for. And as you say, the keyword tool isn't totally accurate and webmasters may be seeing different results from what Google estimates.

Unless the keyword is highly valuable with a good conversion rate,I wouldn't put too much effort into optimising for low volume, highly competitive keywords. However the worth of that keyword is different to different sites.

Hi Joao, yes a 301 redirect would be preferable to a canonical. A 301 is more "absolute" - it lets search engines know that they should ignore the redirected page. A canonical is more like a piece of advice for search engines.

Canonicals are useful if you don't have the development skills or resources to implement a 301, and they can also be used when it's not practical to add a 301 to lots of web pages.

In short - use a 301 if practical

Hi Joao, some good advice from Duke here. A 301 redirect will solve this duplicate problem and help to consolidate the authority. However it's worth investigating to see what caused the problem and whether it is a wider issue, in which case canonicals might be more appropriate. Good luck!

Hi Vikas, I would be very cautious about this... it's a grey-hat area. If you're providing good quality content and including relevant links, you may see some benefits at first. But as ITRIX suggests, they're likely to be recognised as a blog network.

And of course, each blog would have to gain link authority before being able to pass much link authority on. A better strategy would be to dedicate that time and effort into putting quality content on your own site and earning links to this.

Good luck.

Hi Ben, I think that's a great question and something I've wondered about as well. I think that at some point, it's likely that Google will penalise bad grammar, excessive spelling errors etc. As you say, it's probably difficult to create an algorithm for this, but the Webmaster blog post on Panda  would suggest that it's something they do think about.

It's hard to say if this will come in the form of a direct penalty or if they will rely on indirect methods. For instance, it could be argued that link authority already does this to some extent because people are less likely to link to poorly written content that they are to professionally written content.

Hi Pravin, I wouldn't consider 120 to be overly excessive for an ecommerce site. However there's a danger that the footer links could be perceived as spammy (especially if the anchor text is keyword stuffed). I agree with Bryan - check to see if the links are getting clicks, and if they're not, streamline or cut them. Good luck!

Hi Sudha,

In response to question 3, I would say that if you already own the .co.uk domain, and you're targeting audiences in the UK, it's definitely a good idea to take advantage of it.

Users often prefer to click on a familiar ccTLD because of the trust that they associate with them (consciously and subconsciously).

You wouldn't have to build a whole new website or stop using the .in site. If you use canonicals and geo-taregtting (through Webmaster), you'll avoid major problems with duplicate content.

Good luck!

Ah I'm sorry I misinterpreted you - so it's essentially about pagination? Rel Next/Rel Previous is probably the best way to go - the first page will be given the equity and the pages won't have to compete with each other for ranking. Google have a pretty comprehensive guide: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1663744

Hi Sara,

If the articles are time sensitive but high quality, I wouldn't noindex them. They could still have value in the future (for example, if a related story comes up, you can link back to the old article). You might also find ways to refresh or recycle them, such as adding a follow up, updating the information, or promoting a really great post "From Our Archives". They could also be a good longtail source of traffic for people looking for information on past news/events.

Google will be able to index old and outdated articles, but it's smart enough to know that these posts are old and outdated and therefore won't assign big chunks of page rank to them.

However if the articles are low quality, I would take action to improve the good content/poor content ratio. The ideal situation would be to improve the articles themselves, but that might not be a feasible solution if you've been publishing three per day for an extended period of time. I would conduct a thorough audit to see what content could be saved/improved and what content should be deleted. I wouldn't bother with no index or canonicals - if it's good content leave it up and let it be indexed, and if it's bad content that can't be saved, remove it.

Finally if you are redirecting old articles, I would be careful about where they redirect to. Ideally you'd want to redirect from a low quality article to a high quality article on the same subject. A big increase in URLs pointing to the main news page could raise a red flag, and could force readers to look for information unnecessarily.

Good luck!

Hi Diane, I'm sure that's very frustrating. It's certainly worth contacting the Webmasters to request that the content is removed or credited correctly, and you can also file a removal request with Google.

Hi Joao, some good advice from Duke here. A 301 redirect will solve this duplicate problem and help to consolidate the authority. However it's worth investigating to see what caused the problem and whether it is a wider issue, in which case canonicals might be more appropriate. Good luck!

Hi Diane, link exchanges have the potential to do more harm than good, especially if:

• The link partner is low authority and/or low quality
• The link partner is in an unrelated niche
• The link partner has lots of other outbound links

One-way links give a lot more juice than link exchanges, so it's better in the long run to invest time and effort into producing quality content on your own site that might attract links. I would only ever consider a link exchange - on an individual basis rather than a scheme, which is against Webmaster guidelines) if the site was high quality, useful to my readers, in my niche but not a competitor, and had the potential to give me a lot of traffic through direct clicks.

Google guidelines on link schemes may help to clarify: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66356

Hi Joao, yes a 301 redirect would be preferable to a canonical. A 301 is more "absolute" - it lets search engines know that they should ignore the redirected page. A canonical is more like a piece of advice for search engines.

Canonicals are useful if you don't have the development skills or resources to implement a 301, and they can also be used when it's not practical to add a 301 to lots of web pages.

In short - use a 301 if practical

Hi Pete,

Sorry I was referring to the titles themselves. If Google doesn't think that the title is a good match for the query (maybe it contains different keywords or is too spammy), it will select another snippet of text to show in place of the title in the SERPs. This obviously isn't ideal as it takes the control out of your (and you client's) hands.

Hi Dena,

I wouldn't say images are strictly necessary, but it would certainly be much more of a challenge to create a good user experience without them.

Stock images are cheap and even standard digital cameras can produce high quality photos, so it seems like a bit of a no-brainer to include them given the importance of visual stimulation on the web.

Good luck with the client!

Hi Vikas, I would be very cautious about this... it's a grey-hat area. If you're providing good quality content and including relevant links, you may see some benefits at first. But as ITRIX suggests, they're likely to be recognised as a blog network.

And of course, each blog would have to gain link authority before being able to pass much link authority on. A better strategy would be to dedicate that time and effort into putting quality content on your own site and earning links to this.

Good luck.

Hi Sudha,

In response to question 3, I would say that if you already own the .co.uk domain, and you're targeting audiences in the UK, it's definitely a good idea to take advantage of it.

Users often prefer to click on a familiar ccTLD because of the trust that they associate with them (consciously and subconsciously).

You wouldn't have to build a whole new website or stop using the .in site. If you use canonicals and geo-taregtting (through Webmaster), you'll avoid major problems with duplicate content.

Good luck!

Ah I'm sorry I misinterpreted you - so it's essentially about pagination? Rel Next/Rel Previous is probably the best way to go - the first page will be given the equity and the pages won't have to compete with each other for ranking. Google have a pretty comprehensive guide: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1663744